Dining at the Texas Culinary Academy

Hidden away between The Domain and Burnet Road is the Texas Culinary Academy, which boasts two restaurants. We visited the more formal of the two, Ventana, for dinner a couple of weeks ago. The restaurant is staffed by students in both the front of the house and in the kitchen.

Students heading home

The healthy-looking herb garden

It's an official Cordon Bleu school

Appetizer: chicken kabob with quinoa

Appetizer: Catfish beignets

Salad with fried goat cheese

Salad with pickled onions

Snapper

My shrimp linguine - prepared at tableside!

Gnocchi with spinach and mushrooms

The menu is prix fixe at 2, 3 or 4 courses, so it's a lot of food for a pretty good price. We were happy with the food and it was interesting to try something new. The building that houses the restaurants is the same building where the classrooms are, so you can walk around and get a sense of what it would be like to be a student. There's also a store for supplies, and a large window display of decorated cakes with varying degrees of absurdly ornate icing.

Cooking in hotels (and schools)

The excellent public radio cooking show, The Splendid Table, featured this guy a couple of weeks ago. Being hungry in a hotel room - and not wanting to pay for room service - is something I can definitely relate to. Though I'd be wary of using the kettle for tea water after making tortellini!

The same show featured an excellent interview with the head of lunch programs in St. Paul, MN, about getting healthy food in public schools. (Scroll down about half the page.)

Mooncakes

When I was a freshman in college, one of my friends introduced us all to mooncakes, which her mom had sent from a special bakery in Georgia. I remember finding them beautiful and delicious, and have been halfway tracking them down ever since. It took me a long time to figure out that they're only available during a special time of year, but this year I went up to the giant Asian supermarket to get a box of them.

Of course I don't have the attachment to tradition or the holiday per se, but the mooncakes are a unique dessert; maybe they'll catch on with a wider audience eventually.

This one is filled with red bean paste, but the box of 6 I got had two each of red bean, date, and lotus. They're all pretty sweet, and best with tea.

Faves: Vegan Desserts

Some years ago, vegan baked goods started making inroads into the Austin scene. Wheatsville had carried them packaged for a long time, as had other health food stores, but suddenly Wheats had its own bakery case. Then there was Dhaba Joy, and vegan cupcakes (admittedly outsourced) at the cupcake sellers like Hey Cupcake.

I like vegan baked goods because they're usually not quite as sweet as regular ones, and their flavors can be more subtle because they're made with more spices, different flours, or other unusual ingredients. It's a less-guilty guilty pleasure.

Wheatsville's vegan Mexican Chocolate Cake

The wider acceptance of vegan sweets may never catch on, but Wheatsville is still going strong. They have about seven or eight cakes, cookies, and muffins that they rotate. This cake was crumbly, kind of like a coffee cake but less rich. It had a complex spicy flavor that I couldn't quite sort out, and made a nice mid-morning snack.

Remembering the Cold Drinks of Summer

I had a goal of collecting pictures from lots and lots of frozen/cold beverage purveyors over the course of the summer, but didn't get as many as I had hoped. Nevertheless, now that fall is around the corner, here are a few mementos of the most palatable form of nutrition when it's 105 every day...

Homemade Lassi

Just some ice cubes, sour yogurt, and honey (and I like to add rose water too). Delicious and frothy, and another use for the hand blender.

Shaved Ice from Hola Aloha

This little pop-up shaved ice stand features all-natural flavorings on their shaved ices. We got Mango with coconut milk and Ginger-Lime with coconut milk. Pretty good. Definitely less sweet than your average shaved ice.

Outside Hola Aloha

Horchata from El Chilito

Horchata, how I love thee. So creamy, yet not made of milk. Cinnamony and sweet, I can drink gallons of this stuff (though I try to restrain myself). El Chilito's version is pretty good.

Frozen Sangria at House Wine

Frozen sangria sounds great, but it didn't have as much flavor as I wanted it to. In general, it seems like it's rare to get a good syrup-to-shaved ice ratio for the more boutiquey shaved ices that are getting popular. But it did make a pretty picture.

Potato Zucchini Pancakes

Potato pancakes, or latkes as we sometimes called them when I was growing up, were one of the first things I learned to cook when I left home. The recipe I have, typed and sent by my mom to me at college, is spattered with oil. I always loved latkes, both because they're kind of like a glorified French fry, and because they have the same name as a great Andy Kaufman character.

I haven't made latkes so much in recent years, mostly due to the amount of oil involved in frying them. And the fact that frying is tedious and messy, especially in a small kitchen. But recently I decided to try pan frying--and it worked pretty well. These are very simple--grated potatoes and zucchini, egg, and seasonings. Even better with a little cheese melted over the top...

Coconut Milk Bread Pudding

An excess of coconut milk and a desire for cinnamon rolls collided recently in the form of this bread pudding, made from a modified "New Orleans Style Bread Pudding" JOY recipe (1 cup of sugar instead of 2, coconut milk instead of regular milk, and no bourbon sauce!)

The coconut milk I'm referring to is not the kind that comes in a can--this is a new product from So Delicious that has appeared at the grocery store recently, and that is being marketed as yet another milk substitute (along with soy, almond, hemp, etc.).

My question: can it be used in baking, and if so, will it leave evidence of its pleasingly faint coconutty flavor?

The bread pudding turned out fine, but lacked the coconut flavor. However, warming it with a little coconut milk poured over the top did the trick.