SHOW & RECIPE FOR MARCH 8

GETTING IN THE GROVE
Houstonians are enjoying their first chances to get to know the park called Discovery Green right in front of the George R. Brown Convention Center – and that’s a tasty project indeed. Thanks to the Schiller-DelGrande Restaurant Group (of Café Annie and Café Express fame) there’s an important new eatery called The Grove right inside the park. Executive chef Ryan Pera joins us to explain what the concept’s all about.

HEALTHY CHEF GREG
Greg Gordon is best known as the chef and visionary behind La Vista, the strange and wondrous neighborhood restaurant with two locations in Houston. Today he comes into the CNN 650 studio to talk about what he cooks when he cooks healthy – which to look at him, you’d think he must do pretty often. Greg is this month’s Healthy Chef in Houston Health and Fitness Magazine.

LATE NIGHT AT ARMANDO’S
To date, Armando Palacios has made his name – years ago and again more recently – as the guy who adapted Tex-Mex cuisine to suit the River Oaks palate. We’ve talked to Armando in the past about his achievement, as well as about the chic “taco truck” he uses for upscale catering. This time the subject is his new late-night menu, and an intriguing thing it is, if only we can stay awake long enough.

This Week’s Delicious Mischief Recipe…
ST. PATRICK’S DAY BEEF & STOUT STEW

2 pounds lean beef stew meat
3 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 pinch cayenne pepper
2 large onions, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 1/2 cups Irish stout beer (e.g., Guinness)
2 cups chopped carrot
1 sprig fresh thyme
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley for garnish

Toss the beef cubes with 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil. In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper. Dredge the beef in this to coat. Heat the remaining oil in a deep skillet or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the beef, and brown on all sides. Add the onions, and garlic. Stir the tomato paste into a small amount of water to dilute; pour into the pan and stir to blend. Reduce the heat to medium, cover, and cook for 5 minutes.

Pour 1/2 cup of the beer into the pan, and as it begins to boil, scrape any bits of food from the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. This adds a lot of flavor to the broth. Pour in the rest of the beer, and add the carrots and thyme. Cover, reduce heat to low, and simmer for 2 to 3 hours, stirring occasionally. Taste and adjust seasoning before serving. Garnish with chopped parsley.

SHOW & RECIPE FOR MARCH 1

CHEF’S BARBECUE JOINT
We all know the Great Texas Barbecue Joint. And the people who cook in such a place tend to be veterans and zealots to be sure, but not trained chefs. That’s only one of the things that make Beaver’s Barbecue so interesting, since it’s the brainchild of Chef Monica Pope of today’s t’afia and the fondly remembered Boulevard Bistro. And if one excellent chef were not strange enough, she’s hired others to help her cook barbecue in this former Houston icehouse.

WINES FROM ALEXANDER’S PLACE
Greek wines have enjoyed both evolution and revolution in recent years, with a massive investment in both talent and equipment. The result: Greek wines aren’t just your mother’s retsina anymore. In this Grape & Grain segment, we hook up with wine importer Konstantine Drougos and the owner of Pavlou Winery in the north of Greece. In addition to qualities evident in the bottle, there is the sheer fascination of new vintages from the ancient kingdom of Alexander the Great.

KILLER WINE
Many wine lovers complain these days that one or two wine critics exercise too much power over the wines that get made and marketed. Yet it’s a safe bet most of us have never considered knocking one of these guys off. That is precisely the premise of Peter May’s brand-new mystery “The Critic,” which he joins us to discuss. What’s more, the Scots-born May now lives in France and has done extensive research (a.k.a. drinking) into the wines of Gaillac for his page-turning novel.

This Week’s Delicious Mischief Recipe…
VENISON STEW WITH WILD MUSHROOMS

3 pounds venison shoulder, trimmed and cut into cubes
½ stick butter
½ cup vegetable oil
½ cup minced shallots or onions
½ cup flour
1 teaspoon Spanish paprika
2 medium size yellow onions, peeled and diced
1 ½ pound fresh wild mushrooms, washed and sliced
½ pound lean bacon strips, cut into juliennes
½ teaspoon dried thyme
¼ teaspoon rosemary
½ teaspoon salt
8 black peppercorns, crushed
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon tomato paste
1 cup whole cranberry sauce
1 cup heavy cream
2 cups beef broth
2 cups dry red wine

Spread the cubed venison on a large serving platter. Mix the flour, paprika, salt, and dust the cubed venison generously. Heat a heavy duty casserole, and brown one fourth of the venison in one tablespoon each of the butter and oil over high heat, transfer to a bowl. Brown the remaining venison in three batches, adding more butter as needed. Stir-fry the onions, shallots, and bacon with the remaining butter and oil. Return the browned venison to the casserole, add thyme, rosemary, tomato paste, bay leaves, peppercorns, and mix well.

Add red wine, beef broth, cranberry sauce, cover the casserole and simmer for 2 hours over low heat, or until the venison is tender. With a slotted spoon remove the venison and place in a serving bowl. Strain the sauce into another pot, add the mushrooms, cream and simmer for five minutes. Adjust the thickness and taste. Pour the gravy over the venison; serve with pasta or traditional spätzle. Serves 8.

SHOW & RECIPE FOR FEB. 23

FISHING THE RIGHT REEF
Like a lot of other Houstonians, we first met Chef Bryan Caswell when he was cooking Jean-Georges-style at the Hotel Icon’s posh dining room called Bank. When Bryan left, it was to work toward opening his own upscale seafood restaurant, which as Reef has emerged as one of the city’s finest dining destinations. We sit down for a multi-ethnic seafood tasting with this talented chef – and ask him too about his sea-foam green Midtown restaurant’s impressive “wall of wine.”

PRESENT AT THE CREATION
These days, most of the major bourbon producers have nudged beyond their best-known traditional products to offer a higher-priced, smaller-batch variation for those consumers who insist upon it. But there was a time, only a generation ago, when anyone around a distillery even suggesting such a thing would have been dismissed as crazy. In today’s Grape & Grain segment, we taste and talk with Bill Samuels of Maker’s Mark, widely viewed as one of the true visionaries who made today’s small-batch bourbons a reality.

NIGHT AT THE OPERA
If all you know about opera comes from Bugs Bunny cartoons or Marx Brothers movies, Jake Heggie would like to think he and HGO have a new opera for you. The San Francisco-based composer joins us for a discussion of his new work “Last Acts,” enjoying its world premiere here in Houston with a cast led by international legend Frederica von Stade. Plus, as a young guy, Jake talks about the long, winding and unexpected road to hanging the “opera composer” sign above his door.

This Week’s Delicious Mischief Recipe…
RODEO BAKED BEANS

2 (15-ounce) cans pork and beans
2/3 cup brown sugar
½ cup chopped onion
½ cup prepared ketchup
1 tablespoon prepared yellow mustard
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
Salt and black pepper to taste
2 slices bacon, chopped

Combine the pork and beans with the brown sugar, onion, ketchup, mustard, Worcestershire and vinegar in a baking dish and season with salt and pepper. Mix in the chopped bacon and set dish in a preheated 35-degree oven. (You can also set the dish in the smoker, as many barbecue places do). Cook until the sauce is thickened, about 1 hour. Serves 8.

SHOW & RECIPE FOR FEB. 16

BEYOND THE PUB LUNCH
Our friend Craig Mallinson joins us from the Red Lion Pub to talk about some of his new lunch items. If the British concept of “pub lunch” was once pretty much shepherd’s pie and bangers and mash, the increasing ethnic complexity of the British population has inspired pubs (yes, even here in Houston) to offer more and more ethnic fare. For starters, Craig serves up some of the niftier Indian flavors anywhere, along with unexpected tinges of Thai.

ZERO IN ON ZONIN
Zonin USA may be based in Charlottesville, Va., not far from Monticello and looking like it was designed by America’s first wine lover, Thomas Jefferson. But the house of Zonin was founded in Italy almost two centuries ago and has expanded to incorporate operations at 11 vineyard estates in all of Italy’s most important wine regions. The family is still very much in charge, as we discover during today’s Grape and Grain segment.

SOMETHING-LICIOUS
Two different Houston writers have recently launched cookbooks, and we’ve invited them both into our studio to tell us all about it. Peggy Touchstone Sholly calls her volume “Dome Home Delicious,” and it is much as the words proclaim: simple, filling dishes based on the best that Texas and its neighboring Gulf Coast states have to offer. Besides a TV appearance on Iron Chef, Dominica Catelli has a new cookbook called "Mom-a-licious," which is aimed at “fresh fast family food” for the “hot mama in you.”

This Week’s Delicious Mischief Recipe…
MIMI’S CHICKEN

1 roasted chicken (available at Spec’s)
½ cup chicken broth
1 can cream of mushroom soup
½ cup fresh sliced mushrooms
1 teaspoon curry powder
½ cup mayonnaise
Grated cheddar cheese
Unseasoned bread crumbs
2 tablespoons butter, melted
Steamed white rice

Cut all the meat off the roast chicken, discarding skin and bones. Cut the meat into bite-sized pieces and combine in a casserole with the broth, soup, mushrooms, curry powder and mayonnaise. Cover with the cheese and breadcrumbs, brushing lightly with the butter. Bake at 350 degrees until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Serve over steamed rice. Serves 6-8.