Author: arielleclementine

Odd Duck Farm to Trailer

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I was a happy, happy girl as we headed down the road to odd duck.  First, because I will happily eat almost anything that comes out of a food truck.  Second, because this place sounded right up my alley (they spend the day traveling to area farms to get what’s fresh, and then open the trailer at five to serve a menu of local small plates).  And third, because I was excited to proudly proclaim that we’d take one of everything.  How often do you get to say that? And only spend $40 in so doing?

When we rolled up to the window, the bloom came off the rose a bit for me.  Dylan, one of the chefs, I guess, asked me what I wanted.  I proudly stated “we’ll take one of everything!” and he said “can you wait a minute?”.  I guess he hadn’t asked me what I wanted after all.  But I felt slightly pouty about that.  Anyway, moving on.  Dylan said it’d be ten minutes, so we found a small table (it was pretty crowded here at about seven o’clock) and spent some time ridiculing all the LA hipsters who are in town for SXSW.  I kid! Welcome to our fair city!

So, about ten minutes later (Dylan was true to his word) our plates started coming out.  Oh! Here’s a photo of the menu so you can see what we had:

First out: Texas Cheese Plate ($8):

This was fun! I forgot what all the cheeses were (see previous post re: attending a food blogging workshop).  But they tasted nice.  The bleu cheese was especially lovely (top right).  Those red things are honey carrots and man! they were really delicious.

Next up: Carrot Soup ($4), Goat Cheese Toast with Duck Egg ($5), and Pork Belly Slider ($6):

All three were terrific.  The pork belly slider was Andy’s favorite bite of the evening.  It is a very manly little sandwich- sweet and smoky from the wood-burning grill and topped with local sauerkraut.  The fatty part of the pork belly was melting-ly tender, and really delicious if you have no qualms about eating a mouthful of pork fat. We all adored the carrot soup.  Sweet, creamy, smoky from cumin- it was fresh and lively.  The goat cheese and duck egg was probably my second favorite dish.  Just beautiful- dipping that cheesy bread into the just-pierced duck egg yolk was a true delight.  This is the dish that convinced me these people know what they’re doing.  You could really get a “symphony of flavors” experience here: first, the tang of the goat cheese, the woodsy-ness of the mushrooms, the buttery richness of the egg yolk, and then a final swell of toasted pine nut that lingered on your tongue.  So, so nice.

Our last three dishes: Grilled Broccoli with Poached Chicken ($5), Grilled Quail ($5), and Lamb Stew with Grits ($6):

The grilled broccoli in the first dish was beautiful- that wood burning grill is a marvel! But we all agreed that this was the least successful dish. I think this was largely because it was served cold- cold poached chicken, cheese, and broccoli.  That was kind of odd.  The quail though- sweet lord! This was hands down my favorite.  Perfectly seasoned, beautifully crispy skin, tender meat.  Quail-y but not at all game-y.  Last up, the lamb stew.  I thought this was fantastic.  The grits were great too- they had a nutty, pecorino-y taste that was hard for me to identify, but really delicious.

All in all, very well played, odd duck! We’ll be back soon.

Ok, while I’m here, I’ll talk a bit about Gourdoughs too. After my bout of poutiness above, and what I have to say about Gourdoughs here, you might think I’m a, how do you say… cranky bitch?  I’m generally not though, so keep that in mind.  We went to Gourdoughs, a donut truck right next to odd duck, a few weeks ago when my mom was in town.  Gourdoughs has a really appealing menu- bacon donuts, donuts served with a chicken strip and honey butter icing- you get the gist.  Who wouldn’t want to ‘go to there’, as they say? Well, when we went there were like 5 guys in the trailer all totally wasted on Lone Star.  At first we thought- how cute! How fun and youthful! And then we waited 45 minutes for our three donuts, and we thought, this is not fun.  It’s annoying.  And where’s my donut?!  Also it was cold outside… The donuts themselves really are pretty good.  They’re enormous (see below), and you’re really better off splitting one with a friend or two unless you’re really hungry or a champion donut eater.  Today, we just ordered one donut- a peachy little number, and it came out pretty quickly:

It was really good.  For my money, I still think the donuts with savory elements (bacon, chicken strip) are a bit better- this one was really sweet- but they’re all pretty damn good.  Maybe the moral is to hit this place up earlier in the evening, before the donut-makers have their way with a case-and-a-half of lone star.

Ok, bye!

Fried Chickpeas with Chorizo and Spinach

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Umm.  Sorry about the picture, dear reader. I should probably sign up for one of the “Introduction to Food Blogging” events at SXSW this week.  I bet they heartily endorse the idea of photographing your meal before you’ve eaten the whole thing.

This is another recipe from Mark Bittman’s Minimalist column.  If you’ll recall, I recently made and raved about his Ginger Fried Rice. This hybrid Spanish-Indian chickpea dish is another winner. It was dead easy, too- it probably took 20 minutes, start to finish.  My dear friend Molly joined Andy and me for dinner and the three of us devoured it. So either we are all healthy little eaters, or this recipe doesn’t really make 4 servings.  We ate it with bolillos from La Mexicana bakery (39 cents each!) and had ourselves a real good time.

A note about the sherry in this recipe.  Bittman calls for a sweet one, like an Amontillado, but I used the traditional dry one, and it came out great. A new bottle is like $11 and it’ll last for months in your refrigerator.

Fried Chickpeas with Chorizo and Spinach

  • 1/4 cup olive oil, plus more for drizzling
  • 2 cups cooked or canned chickpeas, as dry as possible
  • Salt and black pepper
  • 4 ounces chorizo, diced (the dry Spanish kind- look in your deli section, not the fresh Mexican kind)
  • 1/2 pound spinach, roughly chopped (don’t chop if you use baby spinach)
  • 1/4 cup sherry
  • 1 to 2 cups bread crumbs.
  1. Heat the broiler.
  2. Put three tablespoons of the oil in a skillet large enough to hold chickpeas in one layer over medium-high heat. When it’s hot, add chickpeas and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
  3. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook, shaking the pan occasionally, until chickpeas begin to brown, about 10 minutes, then add chorizo. Continue cooking for another 5 to 8 minutes or until chickpeas are crisp; use a slotted spoon to remove chickpeas and chorizo from pan and set aside.
  4. Add the remainder of the 1/4 cup of oil to the pan; when it’s hot, add spinach and sherry, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and cook spinach over medium-low heat until very soft and the liquid has evaporated. Add chickpeas and chorizo back to the pan and toss quickly to combine; top with bread crumbs, drizzle with a bit more oil and run pan under the broiler to lightly brown the top. Serve hot or at room temperature.

Sugar Plum Clafouti

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Hello, friends! Do you like my new springtime-y blog design? (Note to Google Reader-Readers: you do not want to miss this hot English Pea action).

Helen and I got back from Granny Cruise 2010 late on Saturday.  We had tons o’ fun, but I am so glad to be home! I’ve got some rockin’ pictures of our trip posted on Facebook– friend me if you’d like to see them!

Anyway, on Sunday, Andy and I went to Central Market and it felt like I was in a wonderland after a week without being able to cook. Our cart overfloweth(-ed?) with fresh produce (right now I’m having a lovely lunch with radishes, fresh butter, and sea salt!), including a dozen sugar plums!  What’s a sugar plum? I had no idea, but I wanted to find out.  Here’s what they look like:

 Here’s a sugar plum compared to your everyday-plum:

Little darlings, aren’t they?  Anyway, I decided I wanted to try them out in a clafouti, which is a classic French dessert that I hadn’t made before.  I had all the ingredients except for the cup-and-a-half (!) of heavy cream that the recipe called for.  Andy graciously volunteered to go to the Mexican grocery store around the corner from our house to pick some up.  Turns out they don’t sell the kind of cream I’m accustomed to there, so I ended up using this instead:

Man, this stuff is good! It’s thicker than regular cream and smells intensely buttery.  I will definitely use this again.

So, for the clafouti,  I cut my plums in half, pitted them, and arranged them on a pie plate.  I tasted them at this point too, and they weren’t very ripe.  They were still slightly sweet, but pretty firm.  I reasoned that they’d soften up and sweeten during baking. (This assumption turned out to be wrong!  Don’t make clafouti unless you have ripe fruit!).  Then I mixed the batter and poured it on top of the arranged plums and baked it for 35 minutes.

The result?  Well, the thing was beautiful, especially once the top was dusted with confectioners’ sugar, but the fruit didn’t pop through the top like it’s supposed to (clafouti is traditionally made with cherries).  The taste was quite lovely.  To my mind, you could describe it as the love child of flan and a dutch baby. The fruit was a problem though.  It was too hard and not sweet enough.  Boo. But don’t let that discourage you from trying it! Make it with cherries, or with Ina Garten’s recommendation of sliced pears, or perhaps with very ripe plums 🙂

Sugar Plum Clafouti
Adapted from Ina Garten’s Pear Clafouti from Barefoot in Paris

  • 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
  • 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
  • 3 extra large eggs, at room temperature
  • 6 tablespoons all purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 cups heavy cream (or Mexican crema fresca!)
  • 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
  • 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
  • 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 12 very ripe sugar plums (or 2-3 bartlett pears or the fruit of your choice)
  • confectioners’ sugar
  1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Butter a 10 x 1 1/2 inch round baking dish (or a pie plate, if you don’t have one of these) and sprinkle the bottom and sides with 1 tablespoon of the granulated sugar.
  2. Beat the eggs and the 1/3 cup of granulated sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.  On low speed, mix in the flour, cream, vanilla extract, lemon zest, and salt. Set aside for 10 minutes.
  3. Meanwhile prepare your fruit.  If you’re using sugar plums, cut them in half and remove the pit.  If you’re using pears, peel, quarter, core, and slice them.  Arrange the fruit in a single layer in the baking dish.  Pour the batter over the fruit and bake until the top is golden brown and the custard is firm, 35-40 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature, sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar.