Hi Friends,

Perhaps this week’s missive should be called “WHERE’S BEN?” As I may have mentioned last week, he spent last weekend out in the country near Bertram – so you got my cooking. This week, he’s in New York. How did this happen, you may well ask? Well he’s visiting our dad, who spends most of the summer in a big old house in Saranac Lake – about 10 miles west of Lake Placid in the Adirondacks. It’s pretty nice up there. And it does leave me tallying things up. Let’s see… Judy got 3 weeks in Maine, uhmm Ben’s going to upstate New York for a week. I went to Balmorea for one evening. It was a nice evening, but sheeesh. I’m not sure about all this, and I am definitely next in line for vacation.

But, enough with the whining. Stephanie and I are planning the dinner menu this week, as we don’t expect Ben back until late Thursday night. I shopped at Boggy Creek this morning – what a wonderful place. I got beautiful squash, four different eggplant varieties, Mexican heirloom garlic, beautiful cream (shell) peas, some young fresh arugula, and a boatload of gorgeous new potatoes. They had some purslane and amaranth greens which do well in hot dry conditions, but these were a bit more exotic than I had time to plan for (especially with Ben unavailable) and I decided to take what I had and get back to it.

Checking out, I listened to Carol Ann reflect on how challenging the weather has been for them this summer and the limitations this has placed on their summer offerings with only half my brain – I was thinking how beautiful everything was and about the bounty I had hauled in.

And that lasted until I stopped in Central Market to pick up a few items that we just can’t get locally. I needed some greens to put with the steak, a few green beans, and some radicchio among other things. The green beans had been available locally until about a month ago. Same with the chard. But now the green beans are only available from Canada, and the chard from California. Still, it didn’t really seem like cheating (not that much…) – I mean we just had that stuff here a week or two back. And what the heck – as long as I was buying stuff coming from California anyway – why not spinach and some dandelion greens – I like spinach way better than chard.

By the time I got to the check out stand, I had a big cart full of dark green leafy stuff – all if it trucked or flown in from far away, composed entirely of things that stopped growing here back about May when we jumped into triple digit temperatures and stopped getting any rain. I was face to face with the dilemma that we discuss every week, but that I don’t usually have to deal with so directly. Now I was looking at it in all its color coded pageantry. Exactly how local are we going to insist on being? Especially in mid-August when so much of the leafy green stuff has long since given up the ghost and headed for cooler climes, as all of us would do given then the time and the money.

Long winded way of saying – we’re serving spinach and dandelion greens with the tenderloin this week. Next week Ben’s back – it may be purslane and amaranth greens.

Come eat!

Murph

Hi Friends,

Well.  I’m so proud to be able to say – on this, the first weekend of our second year of cooking this crazy dinner that comes straight from the farm to you, by way of our kitchen – July was our busiest month to date by a factor of almost 20%.  Frankly, I’m just amazed.  People are traveling to cooler climes as fast as they can get out of town.  The economic news hasn’t exactly been all May sunshine and pony rides.  But we’re been building up steam here and getting busier it seems every week.  If it’s this good in July – we can’t wait until the fall.  What can we say – thanks so much for your support.

DINNER THIS WEEKEND

OK – It’s August, and with the weather pattern staying hot and hot.  On the bright side, we getting a bunch of cool stuff in for dinner regardless:  Squash blossoms continue to be quite popular.  Stuffed with local chevre from Water Oak Farm in Bryan, and sautéed in Ben’s special top-secret blossom batter made with Perrier.   Hey it’s got warm goat cheese and it gets sauteed in olive oil – how bad can it be?

Cool cool cool.  Chilled cucumber soup – I know, it sounds kind of funky, but it’s really, really good.  The cucumbers are an Armenian variety grown locally at Boggy Creek Farm in east Austin.  The ceviche which made it to last Saturday’s menu, but didn’t actually set up in time for service, is really finally ready now.  It’s made with gulf black drum, red onions from Boggy Creek, and lots of fresh herbs.  Also we’re going to keep the gulf shrimp salad on the menu – this week we’re going to add a little avocado.

A couple of thoughts on main courses as well – we’ve found a great source for tomatoes even this late in the summer. They’re coming in from McCall Creek Farm in Blanco.  They are beautiful red and ripe.  This makes a certain amount of sense to me, as I drove through there on my way to meet JC (uhmm, that’s JC who’s art currently hangs in the bakery, not JC we all grew up hearing about on Sundays) in Balmorea last Monday, and I have to say – the further west I got, the cooler it seemed (especially at night) and the greener everything was.  They’ve clearly been getting a lot more rain west of us than we have here in town.  Anyway – we’re putting their wonderful tomatoes with some fresh fettucini that Stephanie is making as I write

(that’s Steph, giving me the business – oh hell, that’s not Steph, that’s Nigella Lawson – wonder how in the world that could have happened???)

Oh well – the pasta is also going to get roasted garlic and big handfuls of fresh herbs.  Should be great.  Finally – those of you who we’re in last Saturday may remember we had a brined pork chop from Burgundy Farms on the menu.  It rocked – it’s back – we can only get a few this week, so ask Hall Sheriff if you want one because it won’t be visible on the menu (it’s only visible to those of you who read my emails and are really committed.  For the rest of you – read my emails, no new pork chops).

JUDY IS BACK (AND SO ARE HER TARTS)

Judy is back from (a month in) Maine (yes were jealous – wouldn’t you be?)  She spent this afternoon making her world famous bittersweet Scharffen Berger chocolate tart, plus a really nice lemon tart as well.  We’ve tried our best in her absence, but just couldn’t get it right – maybe it’s just that none of us love sugar as much as she does – who can know… (This means you CW)

TANGO DANCING W/ GLOVER GILL ON TUESDAYS VERY SOON

Great news.  Our friend Claudio – an avid member of the local tango dancing community – approached Glover Gill about doing a regular evening of tango dancing here at TFB.  We met with Glover – he’s aweseome – and he thinks he can make Kara’s grandmother’s old piano sing.  The gameplan to start doing Tuesday nights here at the end of the month, or at the latest, in early September.  I think you can actually get a lesson at the events – if you need one (how hard can it be, long, long, short, short, long – hell anybody can do that) – but I know you can get dinner.  Dancing should start about 8pm.  We’re staffing up and we’ll be open 5 nights a week this fall.

Check the DINNER MENU on our site for a more complete listing of our plans this week.  And seriously – we’re so excited this is working – I’m litterally knocking on wood and pinching myself every 5 minutes – thanks to all of you.

Come Eat,

Murph

Boy.  Time sure flies when you’re having fun.  It was this weekend last year when we threw caution to the wind and began making dinner a few nights a week.  So this would seem a fine time to take stock of exactly what we have accomplished over the past year.  Our primary observation is this – cooking dinner for you guys has been unbelievably fun, exciting, at times terrifying, and more engaging than we could ever have imagined when we started last August.

Not that we don’t continue to face some very challenging obstacles, but Ben and I both returned to Texas French Bread around 2001 – a time when the company’s prospects were not nearly so hopeful as they seem today.   And for better or worse, we spent years trying to faithfully preserve a vision of Texas French Bread that was not really ours, and did not really seem to want to be preserved.  It belonged to another time and another group of people – Judy, Michaels Macguire and Hile, Jack Freidricks, Patricia Butler, Terry Baker, Paul and Ann, Louis Clement, Janine Gwaltney, Holly Horan, John Pluta, Jenny Kallenberg and so many countless others who made the bakery something very special back in the day.

Last year, when we dived into this new chapter – we suddenly found that for the first time, we really owned this thing.  The future, whatever it might hold, now seemed to really belong to us.  For me – the experience of keeping track of the dining room, and having so many of you express such unreserved joy (even on our off days) in what we are attempting – has been unlike anything else I can remember.  We’ve put our back into this thing and worked it with everything we’ve got.  You’ve done your part.  You showed up and supplied the energy and the love that make this thing go.

So this weekend – on the one year anniversary of our experiment transition, and its leading edge, our farm to table dinner – we want to say thank you.  Especially to those of you who have come in over and over again and been so verbal in your support.  We’d never have gotten this without you.

THIS WEEK’S MENU

Speaking of people who used to work at TFB – Ben ran into Elliot and Virginia (the cutest couple ever to work here, they had just moved to Austin when they signed on several years ago) at Boggy Creek this morning.  Elliot’s mom was in town from Indiana.  She is a professional chef, and she was at Boggy Creek this morning selling beautiful chanterelle mushrooms scavenged on her property in (southern?) Indiana.  Ben bought bags of them.  He’s going to put them in a pasta with a little white wine, chicken stock and goat cheese.  Come on! That’s going to be awesome.

Actually, we got a bunch of other stuff from the market today, so dinner should be good this weekend.  We do have some Colorado sweet corn – Ben’s going to make succotash (sufferin’ due to a lack of lima beans, but succotash nonetheless), and we plan to continue our sardine fest, while the west coast sardines are available.  Finally, sad to say, no more gazpacho – too few tomatoes – but Ben is going to make a chilled cucumber soup with an avocado/jalapeno yogurt and fresh chives which we hope will more than compensate.

bon appetite – hope to see you all this weekend,

Murph

To your left would be Hall Sheriff.  See how relaxed he is?  He doesn’t seem to be sweating or worrying.  He seems to be… how can I put this – keeping it CASUAL. Let’s make him work a little more, shall we?  I mean, I’d like to see him hustle just a bit, wouldn’t you?

More to the point – yesterday I kind of threw down the gauntlet.  I mentioned on this very page that Ben has retreated to the countryside.  Steph and I are bringing our own particular brand of flash and sizzle to the whole kitchen thing.  And frankly, we were ready.

Ben’s out until next week.  You probably are going to want to come check it out and see for yourself who can really cook around here…

See you tonight.

Murph

BEHOLD – THE LOWLY SARDINE.  Let’s not let his sacrifice go to waste.  Let’s gratefully eat him for dinner, no?

He, and others of his kind – never frozen – wanting only to share the bounty of his origins in the cold water off the coast of Oregon – filled with omega 3 essential fatty acids – low on the ocean food chain – he is delicious.

We’re serving him up with a Sicilian style pasta with raisins of all things (I thought no, but then I tried it – whoa…).  We also have him (or one of his friends) available sauteed in olive oil and served straight up with a side of lemon.

Ben’s in Bertram – Steph and I will be holding down the fort in the kitchen.

Come eat!

Murph

PS – You know, M.S. (aka, tomato lover) just loves sardines.

Wow – I want to start by thanking everyone who has come in to try our food the last several weekends. It’s July. It’s hot. Ben and I have worried that things might just grind to a halt, but instead, we’ve been really buoyed by your support. We both want to express our gratitude and our amazement at how much good will we seem to get every week and how much slack people routinely cut us as we try to work out the details of learning how we can get better at this work.

This week, surprisingly with heat, we’re still getting tomatoes from Boggy Creek – 5 varieties in fact (early girl, celebrity, roma, yellow boys, and green zebras). That means we’re making gazpacho for at least one more week. Ben also picked up several varieties of eggplant as well – those will be going into the ratatouille, which we will serve again this week with polenta made with a substantial amount of fresh corn from Hondo, and a sprinkling of parmesan.

But here’s what were most excited about this week. First of all – we finally were able to get squash blossoms in from Animal Farm. These are one of our favorite appetizers – very simple. Ben stuffs them with goat cheese, batters them in a mixture of wheat flour and perrier, and then sautees them in olive oil. They’re really good.

We’re also trying a crazy Sicilian pasta recipe – it’s got fresh sardines, saffron, croutons, and raisins. We’ve never tried it, but we thought is sounded really interesting – so we’ll see how it comes out.

In other news – Ben’s taking this weekend off and going up to Laurence’s property in Bertram, AKA Rocky Creek Farm. So if you come in this weekend, you’ll get me and Stephanie in the kitchen. I’m thinking you’re going to get some particularly fine meals on our watch…

Hope to see you all this weekend

Murph

This week we’re focusing more on salads and lighter fare.  Ben’s making a grilled cheese on our sourdough that we will serve with a spicy slaw $7 – come on, that’s like recession pricing ya’ll. We’ve got one last week of local heirloom tomatoes, so we’re making a tomato salad with lots of parsley and herbs $8. Then we’re adding a zucchini salad with prosciutto and fresh mozzarella.  In another homage to the season, we’ll be stuffing Boggy Creek red bell peppers with lamb, pork and ciabatta croutons – baking them – and serving them as an appetizer $8.  And finally, Ben is planning a shrimp salad with tarragon, Boggy Creek red onions (and California celery).  Celery, you might well surmise, doesn’t really grow in Texas in August, because it’s really, really hot out there.

How hot is it?  Don’t ask.  Last year, we were able to get lettuces even in August from Animal Farm.  My understanding is that they used Israeli made high-tech shade clothes and retaining walls to block the hottest sun in the late afternoon.  We can only hope, but we haven’t seen anything like that so far this summer – it’s just too hot.

No matter – we’re still upbeat about the menu.  But it does raise interesting questions for us about our mission, and our level of fidelity to the whole local exclusivity thing.  Ben spoke recently with John at Angel Valley and asked him what they anticipated selling in August – the answer?  Nothing. They’re headed to Montreal for the month.  So, I guess one way of dealing with the heat is to leave town for cooler climes.

But assuming you’re here and you want to eat?  Well – we have a couple of thoughts.  First – we do grow wonderful squash, eggplant, peppers, okra, etc. during the hot months.  Second – nobody’s perfect.  We may have to cheat a little bit and use produce grown further afield – celery for instance, from California.

Also wanted to thank everyone who dropped by last weekend.  I have to say – on Saturday night, with the music turned up (Hayse McCaulley sat in for Paul Ray on KUT and played among other things, early Eisley Brothers with a young unknown guitar player named Jimi Hendrix) – the room was filled with people and energy – well, it just felt like we were part of something really fun.

Hope to see many of you again this weekend.  As always, please don’t forget that while we may not have a wine list yet, our neighbors at Junior’s across the street are stocking some very nice choices for us in the $8 – $15 range.

Bon appetite,

Murph

We start underwriting spots on KUT this Tuesday, so I want to welcome anyone who has found their way here as a result of those spots.  If you generally come in only for lunch or breakfast (or maybe you just hadn’t thought about us in a while), we want to let you know about the Farm to Table bistro dinners we’re cooking on Wednesday through Saturday evenings at our Rio Grande cafe.

Just in case you hadn’t heard, we started cooking dinners several nights a week beginning in August of last year.  We serve a casual bistro menu that combines many of our culinary interests—in particular, our interest in the techniques of traditional French country and Mediterranean cooking.  We place primary emphasis on Alice Waters’ dictate to go forth and find fresh, simple, nutritious foods that that are produced locally using responsible, sustainable methods.   For more about our nascent nighttime restaurant venture, you can go to History.

The menu changes – generally weekly – depending on the weather, season, etc.  The dinner menu generally gets updated on Wednesday afternoons.  By then, Ben has done most of our shopping (at Boggy Creek and the afternoon Farmer’s Market at the Triangle) at which point we finalize the menu and I (with a little luck) put it up on the site.  You can also sign up for our email list (in the right sided column), and I will send you our menu when it comes out.

If you’d interested in joining us this weekend, you might want to email us (reservations@texasfrenchbread.com).  June has been fairly slow, but a lot of folks seem to be back in town and we already have reservations coming in for Friday and Saturday.  Feel free to call us if you have any questions, and we hope you can join us for dinner soon.

best,

Murph Willcott – 512.499.0544

PS – Congratulations AR on a truly awesome match Sunday.   It’s going to be that much sweeter when you beat that guy the next time out.

YES – We’re open tonight.  The very talented and good looking Chef Ben (you know how he got that way?) will be doing that voodoo that he do at the stove tonight. So don’t be bashful.  Come join us.  Remember – we’re still on corkage holiday – byob for free!.   Oh, and do listen for us next week as we begin underwriting on KUT and KMFA.   We’re about to get a lot busier, and you know you’ll want to be able to say that you were a regular before we had our own show on the food network and started holding the corner table for Mick Jagger because he happened to be in town and that kind of thing.

Bon Appetite (repeat after me using a very FRONSH accent – Buuhn, Ah pu teeee.)

Murph

PS – Speaking of saving tables – super kudos to frequent diner Andy Roddick for taking it to Andy Murray this morning and advancing to a finals match against Roger Federer this weekend.  Andy – we’re rooting for you man.  This morning was huge!

Wow,

I wrote an email yesterday – nothing too exciting – just a quick note to let you know that we will be open Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evenings of this forth of July weekend – but likely closed on Saturday the 4th.  However, as this email seems never to have left my computer, I tried again today.  For those of you that may not have gotten it – here you have it – plus corrections from my fabulous editorial staff per the comment section below.

First – the produce this week looks great – I’ve been shopping like crazy.

Murph at the market

Oh shoot – that was Ben that did the shopping – oh well – I looked great shopping, don’t you think?

Anyway – we’re still getting lots of beautiful tomatoes along with the beginning of the eggplant.  And in deference to the many requests we’ve had for vegetarian items, we will be serving….  Oops.  Wrong shot again – I just can’t seem to get the hang of this photo thing.  What I meant to say was that in deference to the many requests we’ve had for vegetarian items, (and the begining of the eggplant) we will be serving a ratatouille with Ben’s delicious fresh corn polenta.

As for the photo above – let’s see.  I meant to tell you that we are working on a burger.  We really love burgers, and we are going to try our hand at making a really good one.  We’re making a brioche bun and Ben plans to make homemade pickles and chips.

Finally, we our current plan is to be closed on Saturday evening as we assume most folks will be making other plans.  That said, we have had a couple of emails asking about Saturday reservations, so if you’d like to come eat on Saturday before you head out to see fireworks, let us know asap.  If we get enough reservations, we’ll, we’ll go ahead and stay open on Saturday night.

Look forward to hearing from you,

Murph

PS – many of you have written to comment about Ben’s hair – specifically my contention that he had “Flock of Seagulls” hair.  Some of you have even gone so far as to challenge my veracity.  So, in the spirit of full disclosure (hey, if it works for Mark Sanford, why not me) voila: