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A Dish Best Served Cold... With Figs
By Louise Ducote
Photography by Sarah Bork Hamilton
Last summer I developed an intense craving for fresh figs. Each Saturday at the Sunset Valley Farmers’ Market I bought two or three pounds of the expensive little suckers, came straight home to our screened back porch and ate every last one myself (fortunately my children don’t care for them). This would be early afternoon, and I’d often hear our young next door neighbors gearing up for their day...
A Breed Apart
By Elizabeth Winslow
Photography by Jody Horton
At a dinner party five years ago, Lloyd Wendel and Isabelle Lauzière experienced an epiphany. Upon sitting down at the table, the couple was a little disheartened to discover that lamb was on the menu. “Isabelle’s never really liked lamb,” Wendel explains. “But she took one bite of this lamb and knew it was something different.” Indeed, it was. The lamb was from a breed called Dorper—a cross between European Dorset and African Persian—and it got the couple thinking.
American Letterpress
American Letterpress: The Art of Hatch Show Print
Zen and the Art of Food Maintenance
By Robin Bradford
Illustration By Kylie Budge
Everything in our lives is practice.
—Dogen, Instructions for the Zen Cook
Our group of 20 Zen students ranges in age from 25 to 75, and when we’re not chasing enlightenment at Zen camp we love burgers, Diet Coke, wine, M&Ms and seaweed. It’s up to me to feed us for a week, even though with the exception of a long-ago fling with an Italian who taught me to turn Romas into marinara sauce, I have no training as a cook.
Lara Nixon's Bitters
By Veronica Meewes
Photography by Dustin Meyer
As handcrafted pickles and house-cured meats continue to grace the pages of menus across town, and waiters wax at length about where local greens were sourced, more and more local bartenders are also arming themselves with an artisanal arsenal: aromatic bitters made either in-house or by small-batch producers.
Praise the Lard
Live long enough, and eventually you’ll witness repeating food and fashion trends. Personally, I didn’t think I’d see that ’70s look—bell-bottoms, platform shoes and polyester—ever again. Surprise!
In the food category, we’ve observed a return of the fondue craze and renewed interest in home canning and, believe it or not, lard.
For the Birds
By Carol Ann Sayle
Illustration by Jenna Noel
In Central Texas, September is a major planting month. It starts off, unfortunately, as hot as summer, and often as dry—conditions that make it tough to start crops of vegetables that love cooler temperatures. We hope for the miracle rains that might purge our ground of summer’s inevitable sodium buildup—and resulting rise in pH—and keep our soil intact so that it doesn't leave the farm as dust. We also hope that the days don’t bring unwanted visitors of the nonhuman kind.
Pastured Poultry: Vital Farms
By David Ansel
Photography by Robert Kraft (self-potrait) and David Ansel (mobile chicken unit)
“My guitar is under the bed, next to all the rifles,” says Robert Kraft, manager of Austin’s Vital Farms. It stands to reason that an egg farmer/short-story writer/carpenter/voice-over specialist/fugitive-recovery private detective/jazz singer/heavy-equipment operator/guitarist would naturally stash important possessions under the bed of his two-room trailer.
Spicin' Bison
By Lucinda Hutson
Barney made an impressive getaway! He busted through the gate of the neighboring estate, trampled the new landscape and catapulted 1,800 pounds of bulk into the swimming pool—pulverizing its imported mosaic tiles in the process. Even though he caused $10,000 worth of damage, Barney wasn’t ground into patties, but rescued because he was much beloved—the only bull in a small herd. Yep, Barney was a bison (aka a buffalo), raised on my friend’s Hill Country ranch about 15 years ago.
La Cruz de Comal
By Jessica Dupuy
Photography by Andy Sams
There’s a little winery near Canyon Lake that’s turning heads among Central Texas’s top wine experts. La Cruz de Comal, nestled in a small valley just beyond New Braunfels, is fast becoming known for producing crisp, delicate wines that reveal an authentic character for the place in which they were made. One sip, and you’ll taste an inherent uniqueness—something a little different about these wines.
Flight of the Honeybee
By Susan M. Cashin
Photography by Lucinda Hutson
Beginning in 2006, and appearing again last spring, a mystery worthy of a CSI team hit professional beekeepers in the U.S. Once healthy and well-populated honeybee colonies were discovered devoid of bees, with only the queen and a few worker bees left in each hive. No bodies were found outside the hives, no signs of marauders; the bees were simply missing and the colonies died.
Cooking Greens
By Lucinda Hutson
Photography by Lucinda Hutson
My grandmother loved Galatoire’s, the iconic New Orleans restaurant where customers have sipped Sazerac cocktails and enjoyed traditional French Creole fare like oysters en brochette, shrimp rémoulade and crabmeat maison for over a century. It was in Grandma’s honor that I slipped out of a recent conference to poke my head into this French Quarter establishment, even though I knew it wasn’t yet open for lunch.
Lay of the Land
By Jessica Dupuy
Photography by
At first glance, Elgin is one of those quaint small towns east of Austin with a historic district and a laid-back feel. And thanks to companies Meyer’s and Southside Market, it’s known as the sausage capital of Texas. Yet, if you look a little deeper, you’ll discover Elgin’s identity is deeply rooted in the soil as a vibrant farming community. With an ever-encroaching Austin skyline from the west, though, and developers eyeing the fertile landscape for suburban development, the potential threat to Elgin’s farming community grows palpable.
Tomato Sauce
When I think of tomato sauce, I think of a crimson pool speckled with green, orange and off-white flecks of herbs and aromatics; a savory, slightly acidic—with the insinuated suggestion of sweetness—and hearty yet sophisticated base for an infinite number of soul-pleasing meals.
Of course, tomato is the star of this show—anything added to the pot after or before is merely acting in a supporting role.
A Side of Fresh
The bevy of bars near 7th and Red River in downtown Austin may not be the first destination for a seasoned locavore, but revelers in search of a uniquely farm-to-glass cocktail should dive into the side bar. Behind its long, L-shaped bar, under a Bob Wills poster and next to the beer taps, sit two giant decanters filled with delectable vodkas infused with locally sourced, seasonal produce and spices, just waiting to delight the most discerning foodie’s taste buds.
Secrets of Salt
By Amy Reynolds
Photography by Jody Horton
Salt is the most universal condiment found on the planet. And not just the iodine-laden, burned-at-1,000-degrees-Fahrenheit shaker salt we all know, but the sun- and earth-baked, mineral-filled, rainbow-hued, sea and rock salts dotted across the globe now gaining in popularity. With an almost 5,000-year history of making and breaking the strongest of empires, inciting wars and causing the construction and destruction of countless cities, salt might be considered the most valuable treasure in human history.
Herbal Vinegars
By Lucinda Hutson
Photography by Lucinda Hutson
A generous splash of vinegar—with its tart and tangy essence and intense burst of pure flavor—can brighten and balance a recipe like nothing else. My kitchen shelves are laden with aromatic vinegars of every kind—from syrupy, aged balsamic to fruity pear, fig, raspberry and blood orange, to rice, sherry, champagne, red wine and, of course, my favorite homemade herbal vinegars.
On a sunny Saturday in March, when the heat hadn’t yet driven everyone inside, hundreds of gardeners and wannabes strolled under the oaks in Govalle Park for the third annual Passion for Plants event.
Sponsored by the Travis County Master Gardeners Association (TCMGA), the Texas AgriLife Extension Service, the Holistic Education and Health Network, Sustainable Food Center and Green Corn Project (GCP), the East Austin garden fair offered resources and free information on many gardening- and environment-related topics from double-digging, growing native plants and composting, to gardening for butterflies and more.
Wandering among the fairgoers, and collecting information for herself (because, as all gardeners know, there’s always something new to learn), was longtime Green Corn Project gardener Paula Gilbert. The curly-haired University of Texas employee was just another attendee until noon, when Gilbert was announced as an honored gardener.
Mike McKim
By David Ansel
Photography by Dustin Meyer
When Mike McKim, founder of Cuvée Coffee, prepares his morning cup, he’s meticulously exacting with his weights and measurements—like an engineer, alchemist or apothecary. It’s a fitting comparison, really, because McKim is actually equal parts of all of these. The scene opens with McKim heating filtered water to 200 degrees, then using it to rinse a paper filter that’s set inside a conical glass perched atop a Chemex (a sort of Erlenmeyer flask).
A+S
By Terrence Henry
Photography by Jody Horton
The adventures of A+S Farm began on a drizzly morning in the spring of 2008 with “The Great Chick Run,” as Amy and Shaun Jones—a newly married couple in their late twenties—set out from Houston to Fayette County to become sustainable farmers. In the car with them were 150 chicks in a cardboard box, kept warm by a heat lamp running off of the car battery—a move that resulted in a completely drained battery by the time they reached the farm.