Phil & Leona's

Wednesday plate lunch. Braised turkey wing, mac and cheese, and string beans. Not too bad the leg part could have cooked some more but it was flavorful, Good mac and cheese and wonderful beans. Nice and spicy with pork flavor
You also get a butter on top roll. Made a difference.

This is their bread pudding. Very moist with loads of cinammon, raisins, and some nuts. Not bad for $7.

Donald Link Style Black Drum

A run into Beaumont yesterday at Floyd's Cajun Seafood and Texas Steakhouse with a blowout on the interstate and a two hour wait for the tire change left me hot and not wanting to blog. I cannot say too much about the lunch except everyone agreed that it was good enough to go back.
I had some wild caught black drum which I though was skin on so I was going to try the redfish on the half shell recipe. However it was skinned. So using the flavor profile of Chef and a little trick that Joe Heacook (director of Sowela Culinary program) taught me years ago I did my own riff.

Below is the ingredients

I seasoned the pan and not the fish

Since I was using my tabletop appliance that has a light technology component I could not cook skin side down. So I cooked skin side up and put my special salad dressing for a little protection. It is basically made of oil right.

The finished product and it was great. May do this treatment on fish fillet again. Wonderful flavor and cooked just right.

Vickie T's

I am back. I have a backlog of pics that I will whack away at. Below is a plate lunch from the donut shop on Broad. When I started to write the review currently in Lagniappe I realized it would be mega short so I headed out to try another plate lunch. Alas for me and them they were on vacation. When they came back I gave a pass by to see what the plate lunch was. Remember they only do it on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This was a Friday. When I saw shrimp stew I had to have it. It was a decent interpretation although it could have used a little more spicy. The deep rich shrimp and roux flavor was there and the corn had been smothered to almost caramelization. The dessert was a lemon filled donut that I ate on the way home. The only complaint and it is not a serious one is that there is too much rice. It is good rice and I tend to stuff myself on it

Gordita Slop

As promised I went drive thru for a gordita at Que Pas and as I suspected it was terrible. There is enough stuff here to make at least 6 gorditas. Gordita means "little fat one". It is a thick corn tortilla grilled and then split like pita bread. Meat, beans, lettuce, cheese and perhaps avocado and salsa added. Besides too much stuff the meat supposedly carnitas was pork loin with no flavor and chewy instead of pork shoulder or butt braise until fall apart tender. At this point I will not be darkening the door here until I hear it has changed hands or gone back to what it should be. Which will probably be never

Pho Tien

A blog by Allison Cook a food critic out of Houston made me hunger for our local version

http://blogs.chron.com/cookstour/archives/2009/07/thien_ans_banh_1.html#more

What you get is a rice flour crepe stuffed with sauteed shrimp, pork strips and bean sprouts. On the side you get basil, cilantro, pickled carrots and daikon with lettuce leafs and nuoc cham. Traditionally you eat as a lettuce wrap. Cut off some of the crepe and put in a torn off piece of lettuce with whatever you want to stuff in there. You did in the fish sauce sauce and eat it up. Very light and refreshing on a super hot day. It provides a variety of textures and flavors.

Clabber

All this cooking with buttermilk has reminded me of my youth. Before my paternal grandmother's death they keep a milk cow on the farm. When I would come down there would be bowls of milk sitting on the counter waiting for the wild flora and fauna to turn it into a cultured product they called clabber. That is what buttermilk today. It is a milk product inoculated with a standardized culture. It is not what is left over from making butter which it used to be. I am on a whole milk kick now and so I bought whole milk buttermilk. Drinking what remained from making the recipes brought clabber back to my mine because it taste just the same.

Que Pasa Taqueria

I have not been to this place since it first open. The only thing that drew me back was the fish taco. It has changed a bit. No longer counter service and the condiment bar has been eliminated. The menu is heavily Casa Manana with bastardizations of the true Mexican dishes. A sure sign of that was the customers. No longer Hispanic families just middle age gringo women. Service was good but pesky. I do not need to be asked every 5 minutes if I need something. The chips were hot and the salsa good

The tacos al pastor were fine but like most Americanized ethnic food too heavy on the meat and if the pastor pork was sliced off a tompo I am a monkey's uncle. This dish is Mexico City street food meant to be a snack of two bites per taco eaten while waking. Below is not that. It was not in balance and that is important to me

Now for what I came for. They started off alright. I prefer fried fish in my fish tacos but everything after that was just wrong. It should have been plain shredded cabbage and not huge hunks of in a nasty little sauce. Again too much protein thus the need for two tortillas and it could have used a nice sour creams with herbs. Unless major changes occur here and I doubt it will I will not be a regular customer. Although I may do drive thru for a Godot to see how they have messed that up.

This I enjoyed. Called sopapilla strips. A doughnut dough cut in strips and fried then topped with your choice of cinammon sugar, honey, or powdered sugar. I got mine cinammon sugar and a side of caramel dipping sauce. Not as good as churros but nice.