Catering

Catering is a noun, a grueling noun; I define catering as the sport of serving food and beverage outside of the restaurant setting and recommended only for the young, strong and healthy restaurant athletes.

For me it began at Lakeway and this initiation into the world of catering definitely left a bad taste in my mouth because it was an extreme sport with so many transfers for each and every item from land to water and then from one water vessel to the next water vessel and then all in reverse to get back home.  The biggest calorie burning catering event was on the Marine Yacht Lakeway which was booked as a sunset cruise with full bar service and food service ranging anywhere from light hors d’oeuvres to a 3-course meal all on a 65-foot boat that had no kitchen, so you had to take everything including any equipment needed.  The food, beverages and catering equipment varied according to the size of the group and their planned menu.  It all started in the main kitchen, where I began the catering process by packing up everything in bus tubs, boxes or ice chests to get ready for the haul.  Now follow along as I go through the setup procedure and see if you can keep count of how many times I picked up each box, bus tub, ice chest, etc.  First I loaded all equipment, food and beverages into the kitchen elevator taking it the elevator down to the loading dock, then moving it all onto the loading dock, from there I loaded it into the catering van and drove it to the boat ramps, where I unloaded everything onto the boat ramp, from there I lifted it onto a beached pontoon boat and drove the pontoon boat to the dock where the M.Y. Lakeway was moored, after I tied the pontoon to the dock I then proceeded to unload the supplies onto the dock next to the boat and lastly lift it from the dock and up onto the M.Y. Lakeway boat.  Lost track, well the answer is 7 pick-ups and carries.  Once on the boat there was much more moving around of all the equipment and food to get my new “home for the evening” arranged just so and to get the service areas ready to roll.  At the completion of the catering we had to do the cleanup and this was a repeat of the “getting ready” just in reverse and now hauling dirtied pots, pans, platters, etc. all to be washed in the terra firma dish room.  The reason I went through this long explanation is to show you how physically demanding catering is.

While running the Wineskin Restaurant in Aspen we did lots of offsite events and notice I now call them “offsite events” because catering has such a bad connotation for the seasoned restaurant worker.  We did all types of catering, from Jimmy Buffett’s bachelor party to the American Orthopedic Party to a 3-day gourmet horse trip.  This event called for 6 additional pack horses just for the transport of the beer.  The more bizarre the event, the more we charged so at the end of the day we really loved the weird and wild.

Hudson’s did a lot of catering, it was really great money and refilled our bank account, which was very important in the early days of the restaurant.  Our first catering job was way off site, it took place on a wild game ranch in Brenham, Texas.  The owner of the ranch made his wealth in oil and California real estate.  He hired us to cater the wedding party for his daughter and nothing was too expensive.  Our caravan left the Hill Country at the crack of dawn.  We arrived at the ranch in the early light of the morning and as we were winding towards the property, I noticed plenty of active cattle pastures and magic mushrooms growing out of the cow patties.  I pulled the caravan over and proceeded to jump the barbed wire fence to harvest the mushrooms.  A bull from across the pasture decided to charge towards me and my harvesting came to a halt.  I jumped the fence to safety.  I was 35 and fearless and maybe a little crazy, they go hand in hand, fearless and crazy. I had harvested just enough mushrooms for my silly group to keep it silly, but sadly not enough to take home.  By the time we arrived at the ranch, the mushrooms had begun to take effect and the entire crew was laughing at stupid stuff.  There was a double gate 50 yards apart from each other to keep the wild game contained, but a clever Ostrich ran alongside our vehicle to direct us and simultaneously amuse us, or at least that is the way I remember it.  One of our waiters was being a “negative nelly” and said “I don’t see any wild game”, at that very moment a dozen giraffes galloped in front of us, not another negative word was spoken.  There was an abundance of game I had never seen before and a veterinarian living on site to make sure all the animals stayed healthy.  We did our “Hudson’s” thing serving venison, quail, rabbit etc. which we served ala carte.  There were only 75 guests, so all in all it was a fairly simple affair.  When it came time for the bill the father of the bride declared it was the best meal he had ever had and proceeded to hand me a signed blank check and said to fill it in.  Rule number 1, you never give a caterer a blank check. The restaurant could have used an extra infusion of cash, but I filled it out for the amount we agreed upon with a little extra for the staff.  I blamed my uninvited integrity on the mushrooms.  We must have done a great job, damn, if I could remember, it must have been the mushrooms!

One of the first employees of Dell employed me to cater a party every year.  They had a great ski in, ski out house in Snowmass that I used this yearly catering event as barter for the use of the house.  The going rate was $40,000 per week.  Robert DeNiro had stayed there the week before us. I always said I would not return to Colorado until I could do it with style.  This mountain chalet was style!

Mike Reese and I became fast friends through the restaurant and my cooking schools at the house.  When Mike asked me to cater his daughter’s wedding, I knew it had to be extra special.  He is a talented designer and along with his wife Pam they built outrageous airplanes for some of the wealthiest people in the world, so I knew everything had to be perfect.  We only closed the restaurant once in 31 years, but we soon realized that a proper number of employees for the catered job would leave no one to staff the restaurant so that was the one time we shut her down. There were 350 guests in a fancy Canterbury style tent with a large kitchen tent attached in the rear.  It was ala carte, so we set up 2 identical production lines to produce the food and plate it up.  A big wedding with big name entertainment has lots of potential problems and that’s why they hired an experienced planner and with lots of planning and worrying and preplanning and pre-worrying, everything came off perfectly.  Any problems were addressed before they became large and thus, they were not a problem.  We did many catering events for Pam and Mike following the wedding, however none as grand as the wedding.

Throughout the 32 years of Hudson’s, we catered lots of events on and off the grounds of the restaurant, we soon realized that if we did a good job it became positive advertising.

The recipe below is one of our most requested recipes.  It is the corn pudding.  It holds well and is very sturdy.  You can add cooked bacon, boar, chicken anything to customize it. This recipe is the base, just sweet corn.  It is vegetarian, add sun dried tomatoes or mushrooms to keep it vegetarian the list is endless.  It has lots of baking powder, so you are not making a mistake. The baking powder is what makes it airy and light

Corn Pudding
There are 3 different mixes, dry mix, wet mix and veggie mix.  Prepare the 3 mixes separately and then combine all 3 mixes before pouring them into your casserole and baking.

Ingredients
Dry Mix
1 1/4 cups AP flour
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cayenne powder

Wet Mix
6 large eggs
1 stick melted butter
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 8-ounce can cream style corn

Veggie Mix
1 medium poblano pepper, ¼” diced
1 pound sweet corn
1 medium red bell pepper, ¼” diced
1 jalapeño, ¼” diced

Method
Butter a medium casserole.

Pre heat oven to 350. If you are using a convection oven pre heat to 325 and cook 10 minutes less.

Prepare all 3 mixes separately.
Stir all 3 mixes together and pour into the casserole.  The mix may vary from 1” to 2” in depth when poured into the casserole.  If it’s 2” deep add 10 minutes to the cooking time.  It should be an even golden brown on top when ready.  It should be firm in the middle.

Mexico is the answer

Restaurant chefs have known for decades that the best cooks come from Mexico and to further this well-known theory, some chefs think that the best cooks come from a specific region of Mexico.  After a lifetime in the kitchen any prejudices that I had acquired during my childhood were briskly dispelled.   When your butt is hauled out of the weeds, as we used to call it, you quickly oust all pre conceived prejudices and luckily for me this enlightenment happened early in my life.  When you are cooking during a Saturday night rush and your fellow cook pulls you through the rush with his “can do” life experience and effortless natural “God given” ability your prejudices melt away.
The depiction of a sleeping Mexican with a sombrero pulled over his eyes, napping in the shade of a tree may be true, but what was not seen in this picture was that this fella got up before the sun and worked hard for eight hours into the heat of the day and it’s the smarty pants that learn to nap during the heat of the day.
It is true that with any group of people, there are some that are lazy, however it is my experience that the folks that immigrate to a new and strange country looking for a better life are the strongest.  And don’t forget, that after all, the Mexicans were here first; look at history and the names of our cities in the United States, do you think an orange Anglo would have named cities San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, San Antonio or El Paso, etc.?.   Every nation has entry level jobs that are often filled by immigrants.  We should thank our lucky stars that the Mexicans are here with their rich cultural heritage and that includes their amazing cuisine.  It’s not their fault that our immigration laws are broken, but I will now get off of my soapbox.  Before I go, please realize that your favorite meal in your favorite restaurant was probably cooked and seasoned by a Mexican.
At Hudson’s we had our share of employees with a vast array of legal status from green cards, visas, legal immigrants and illegal immigrants both from Mexico and Europe.  An employer has to photocopy a driver’s license and social security card and include them in their employment file.  It is very hard to tell the difference between legal and illegal because these can be bought at the flea market.  In the past, the status was never questioned and most employers looked the other way when verifying status but it is getting harder to “look elsewhere” with all of the new laws.  The coconut telegraph in the Hispanic community is alive and offers accurate reporting to their community regarding the restaurant community.  Through a friend of a friend of an uncle of a mother, prospective employees know which restaurants are sympathetic to their needs.  The great part is that if your kind to them and considerate of their needs they will tell other family members that this restaurant is a fair place to work.  This worked for the Irish, Germans, Polish, Chinese and Mexicans, all immigrants.
My favorite Mexican Chef is Blas Gonzalez.  His family lives in San Luis Potosí in central Mexico.  We often joked that we were related because on my mother’s side of the family there were the Hess brothers that lived in Germany.  They avoided military service by immigrating to the Americas, one settled down in Pittsburgh and the other landed in San Luis Potosí.  Blas worked his way up to sous chef at Hudson’s before moving his wife, Addie and their three babies to Lajitas to run the Ocotillo Restaurant that I helped to create and open in the area.  His next move was to Kerrville, where he can be found today.
No Hudson’s story is complete without mentioning Abel Garcia.  Abel came to Hudson’s 30 years ago and today I can proudly say that he is a member of our family.  For 30 years he kept Hudson’s well maintained and running all while building my house.  The man can do anything and everything!  He hurt his back while helping me build the Ocotillo Restaurant and he was given a workmen’s comp check and told to go home to rest his back.  He took this check to his home in the mountains of Mexico and now has a very successful avocado 🥑 business, three homes and a happy village that adores him and his family for all they have brought to their village.  And this is just part time stuff for him because he spends half of his year hanging out with me in Austin creating my wildest whimsical ideas.
Hudson’s success was achieved with the help of our many dedicated cooks from Mexico.  Along with their daily hard work, they also contributed to the Southwest thing we did with lots of great recipe ideas.  The recipe below is Mole that Blas’s mother cooked.  Mole is cooked for special occasions.  You can freeze it to make it easier the next time, but it’s so good you’ll want it weekly. I like it topping anything off the grill.
Like all recipes, read it before you cook it.

MOLE

Ingredients
1 cup celery (rough chop)
1/2 cup carrots (rough chop)
1 cup onion (rough chop)
8 cloves garlic
2 jalapeños (rough chop)
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons Mexican oregano
1/2 cup chili powder
1 cup ancho purée (rehydrate ancho in water then purée in blender)
1/2 cup tomato paste
1/4 cup cumin
1 cup slivered almond (toasted)
1/2 cup sesame seed (toasted)
5 cups good chicken stock
1/2 cup Worcestershire
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
8 ounces chopped chocolate
2 bunches cilantro (rough chop)
2 tablespoons sea salt

Method
Add celery, carrots, onions, garlic, jalapeño to the food processor and spin until mashed together.
Sauté mashed veggies in very hot oil until light brown.
Add oregano, chili powder, ancho purée, tomato paste, cumin, almonds, sesame seeds and sauté for 10 minutes over medium high.
Add all to simmering chicken stock and Worcestershire.  Simmer for 10 minutes
Remove from heat and stir in cilantro and chocolate and continue to stir until chocolate has dissolved.

Serve atop grilled chicken, pork etc.

Earth oven, cooking in the dirt!

Archeologists have been finding centuries old cooking pits across the planet during their archeological recovery digs.  Hard core foodies really must at some point re-create this style of cooking for a true culinary adventure and the tastiest of cuisine. 

There are many styles of earth oven cookery and the differences are created by what’s available in your region and what is appealing to your taste buds.
I had the good fortune to be taught the art of cooking in the dirt by Abel Garcia who grew up west of Morelia in the mountains of central Mexico where he was taught by his father. 

The Reese’s were throwing a large party at their Hill Country Ranch and appropriately we cooked the wild game that had been hunted and gathered on the Reese Ranch in their earth.

The end result of cooking in your Earth oven is a deliciously moist product with a wonderfully smoky outdoor flavor. 

We cooked a 5 lb. venison roast and a 5 lb. boar roast in our pit together at the same time and take note that the weights were the same because you must avoid cooking a 20 lb. roast with a 5 lb. roast in the same pit because obviously, they will cook at different rates.  For maximum flavor, leave the bone in whenever possible.  If you cook too much, freeze it for later use; it makes great taco filling months later.   
I’ll go through the process from start to finish.  Remember that once the pit is dug and lined with rocks 50% of the work is done and can be considered a permanent fixture if you so choose, never to be dug again because you will want to repeat the cooking process again once you taste the flavor that the Earth oven adds to your meats.
Our cooking pit was 5’ across and 4’ deep before we lined it with rock.  Do not line it with limestone rock as limestone will explode when super-heated. (I’m guessing the water in rock expands and causes it to explode, but I’m not a geologist).  Yes, you can use fireplace bricks from Home Depot.  We used dark rock from the dry river bed on the property.  If you want to use mortar use fireplace mortar because it can take the heat.
Once all the rock is in place start your blazing hot wood fire in the earth oven and continue to throw in more wood as it begins to burn down and keep that roaring fire burning for at least 4 hours.  That will properly heat the rocks.
While the fire is still at full tilt, prepare your leaves that you will use to wrap the roasts, we used agave/maguey leaves but most people use palm tree leaves, because that is what they have in their backyard. The agave leaves are rigid so to make them soft and pliable you need to scorch both sides.  Place 3 2” metal galvanized pipes over your burning earth oven while it is still a roaring fire and scorch the agave leaves by placing them on the pipes over the fire and with this roaring fire it will only take one minute on each side.  Don’t worry if it looks burned, this will add good flavor to the roasts, you need to be a fan of rustic flavor, but who isn’t.  Set these leaves to the side to be used once the fire has burned for 4 hours.
After the fire has burned down to coals, place a fireproof two-gallon bowl into the coals, making the bowl steady by pushing it firmly into the coals.  Fill the bowl 1/4 full with beer or wine.  This is when you can make it your own, whatever you put in the bowl will flavor what’s cooking so go wild.  We put in our bowl: beer, lots of ancho peppers, jalapeños, chopped onion, celery, carrots and lots of garlic.  Now place a wire rack over the bowl to hold the roasts, we used an oven rack. 

Next place the burnt agave leaves in the pit on the rack in a circle formation with the center being the middle of the bowl, overlap if needed.  When finished it should look like a huge sunflower. 

Next coat the exterior of the roasts with a smoking/cooking rub.  I’ll include my rub recipe below, but use your favorite.  The drippings from the roasts are flavored with the smoke rub as the seasoned meat fats drip into the bowl and what is left in your flavor bowl is a great soup base just add chicken broth and the soup is ready.
Next place your raw seasoned roasts on the leaves that are on the rack that you placed on top of the bowl.  The agave leaves will now be surroundings the roasts so fold the agave leaves over the meat so the meat is completely encased in your leaves.

Next cover the agave with water-soaked burlap.  The burlap is the barrier between agave/roasts and the dirt that seals the earth oven.  Burlap sacks are found at feed stores, but be creative, two old beach towels will work great.
When the meat is covered and protected, shovel the same dirt you just dug out to make your earth oven on top of your roasts.  It may seem like a fool’s game, but when you taste the cooked meat it all becomes worth it.  Fill the dirt all of the way up to the 3 pipes at the top. 

Then put sheets of metal across the top of your earth oven, followed by adding more dirt on top of the metal which is on top of your earth oven.  We used 8’ sheets of old corrugated metal roofing for our metal covering.  When the dirt is completely covering the metal sheets your oven is well sealed.
Walk away or leave it overnight, leaving it to cook at least 10 hours.  Let the magic happen.
The next morning dig it all up removing the dirt, roofing, more dirt, cloth and agave to find tasty meat.
Abel told me to bring tortillas and lime. When we uncovered the roasts, Abel reached his hand in and pinched off the tender meat, placed it into the tortilla, squeezed 1/2 a lime on top then handed it to me to eat.  Later I learned that to be offered the first bite from the pit was considered an honor and a big deal.  All I knew at the time was that it tasted super.  No wonder it is a spiritual/culinary awakening in many parts of the world.
The list of foods that are prepared from this smoky moist delicious meat is endless; tacos, enchiladas, tostados with tomatillo or mole sauces are just a few.

You do not have to cook exclusively with “wild game”.  This style of cooking is great for roasting a whole pig or a 5 lb. pig roast, beef roasts, and for tough lesser roasts of meat.
When we season roasts with our rub, we add water to the rub to make a paste that is ketchup thick which makes the application of the rub even and fast.

You will find our dry rub recipe below.
You will also find our tomatillo sauce recipe. It is great on anything that comes out of your earth oven.  It’s super on grilled fish too. Dry rub
All ingredients are dried.  Mix them together and you’re ready to season. Season liberally, remember you are only seasoning the outer surface.

1 cup paprika (sweet)
1/3 cup onion powder
1/2 teaspoon hot cayenne
1 teaspoon white pepper
2 tablespoons chili powder (ancho)
3 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1/2 cup garlic powder
1 tablespoon curry powder
1/2 tablespoon black pepper
1/3 cup sea salt

Tomatillo sauce
8 whole tomatillos (roasted under a broiler until mushy—turning them over once).  Scrape into a blender cup. Including the juice.
4 cloves garlic in the blender cup
1 bunch of cilantro in the blender cup
2 serrano peppers in the blender cup (add more if you want more heat)
1 tablespoon sea salt also in the blender cup
Blend until smooth.

To a very hot sauce pan heat 3 tablespoon of olive oil to smoking and then add the blended tomatillo sauce.  It will bubble and splatter. That’s a good thing.  Turn off the heat after 1 minute.  Serve and enjoy.

Where there’s smoke there must be fire.

At Hudson’s we always cooked and smoked all of our meats with a wood fire using Pecanwood in our smokehouse and in our live wood fire grill in the kitchen.  In the very early years in the kitchen we experimented with all woods and at the end of the trials, Pecanwood won out.  Pecanwood, native to central Texas, is stronger than most fruit wood but milder than hickory and mesquite with a round yet mild flavor that works great with pork, poultry, small game birds, venison and beef when smoking or grilling. 

Texas pit masters (BBQ masters) love the flavor of Oak but we found it too harsh for Hudson’s.

Texas BBQ masters also use Mesquite, burning it down to coals which eliminates the harsh green flavor caused by the creosotes of the burning Mesquite.  Mesquite is fine for an open fire grill as it burns very hot and your food is exposed to the mesquite smoke for a very short time.

We always treated smoke as one of our seasonings.  Sometimes we deviated from Pecanwood with our woods in the smokehouse to obtain a variety of flavors, but these were used only in the smokehouse never the grill in the kitchen as the inside grill was used to cook or finish cooking, not smoke. 

In the middle of a busy night the grill cook could not flavor the food evenly, this all happened in the smokehouse prior to showtime.  In the smokehouse we placed the heat source in the corner surrounded by fire bricks at 250 degrees Fahrenheit.  When the Pecanwood burned down to coals, we would smother it with applewood chips, cherrywood chips, pecan shells, grapevines, aromatic cedar chips or dried herbs, the list goes on and on.  My favorite was fruit wood, applewood landing at the top of the list.

The smoke flavor resides on the top ¼ inch of the meat and is called the pellicle or the red ring around a properly BBQed food, that is as far as the smoke flavor penetrates.

This smoky flavor in food acts as an appetite stimulant.   Remember as a youngster when your dad cooked burgers on the grill in the backyard, nothing absolutely nothing tasted better!  I’ll include charcoal briquets as a live fire, they are not my first choice, but better than gas.  Gas fired grills are easy and clean but don’t impart smoke.  The “outdoor” flavor comes from the fat dripping out of your food onto the gas fired hot grill. Not healthy and very messy but very memorable.

At Hudson’s we smoked the meats to rare and after removing from the smokehouse we would hold the meats in the cooler until evening service and then finish the cooking on a wood fire grill in the kitchen when it was ordered.  This method accomplished two things; first the smoking of the meats extended the shelf life and secondly it gave the meats a more intense smoke flavor that was described as “double smoked”.  Our ribeye steak would be smoked to rare as an entire roast and then sliced to a steak and finished on the grill, that’s double smoke. 

The smoke house had four open wire shelves that were attached to chains hanging from the roof.  Smoke and heat were a low-tech variable.  Experience told you how hot to make the fire and which shelf to put the food on.  Hot air rises so the top shelf would be the hottest.  I knew that college education would pay off some day.

I was in the Jeffrey’s Restaurant kitchen and witnessed a great idea.  They had two shelves mounted above their grill and used these shelves to hold food and finish cooking their grill items, perfect little carryover cooking spot with the smoke from the grill continuing to add flavor.  That very week, I had Abel mount two open wire shelves above our grill.  A live wood fire grill has an 8” hot spot where you begin the cooking process and make those fancy restaurant grill marks.  The grill cook then places the food in a cooler spot to slowly finish the cooking.  When the shelves are mounted over the fire you have opened up more space on your grill and you have created a forgiving area to hold the meat plus you get the bonus of more smoke. Thanks Jeffrey’s.

It takes a special cook to grill on an open fire and experience with the fiery grill is the best education.  When Hudson’s cooked 200 dinners a night, the grill turned out 150 of those meals.  You could tell you had a great grill cook when the food came off the grill in a timely manner and very few of those dishes were being returned to the kitchen due to being over cooked or under cooked.  On a typical week night we had three cooks on the hot line: sauté cook, middle cook and grill cook.  We had one to two cooks in the cold kitchen preparing salads and desserts. 

One of my proudest moments was one busy week night I assumed the responsibility of the grill because our scheduled grill cook was out of commission at the last minute.  We did 180 dinners and nothing was returned.  I earned the respect of all the cooks.

We were years ahead of the “farm to table” that is so popular in today’s restaurant world.  It was a theme that was natural for us and with smoke in our wheel house, live fire and smoke completed the “cook what’s in your backyard” theme.

Now that I have sold the restaurant and retired, I no longer have a smoke house at my disposal and to fire up a big barrel type of smoker is a lot of work for a small amount of food so I now get my smoke flavor from the stovetop smoker by Cameron.  We used it at Hudson’s Cooking Schools to demonstrate how to smoke a small amount of beef, game, seafood or veggies.  It is available at your local kitchen supply store or on the web.  The Cameron Smoker is stainless steel and lasts for years.  Best of all you can successfully use it indoors without setting off the smoke detector. 

The recipe below is Smoked Duck Breast in a Red Chili Glaze.  One side of duck breast per person is plenty. Smoking a boneless duck breast is simple.  Duck is forgiving, it is moist and delicious when cooked to medium rare and unlike chicken it is safe when cooked rare.  The smoker comes with a variety of wood chips to flavor your food.  I like the applewood chip flavor the best.  The Red Chili Glaze will hold in your refrigerator for weeks.

Smoked Duck Breast

Follow the instructions that come with your stove top smoker to prepare the smoker for cooking.

Remember to salt and pepper the duck before you smoke it. 

To achieve a medium rare end result, cook for 8 minutes on high. 

Duck breast is small, but it still needs to rest 5 minutes before you slice it. By letting it rest will allow the moisture to reenter the protein and insure a moist result. 

Red Chili Glaze

It is fast and easy to prepare and is good with a variety of foods: seafood, pork, beef, etc.  FYI, McDonalds made it as a dipping sauce for McNuggets, but please note, I made it years before Ronald ripped me off, don’t know if he changed three of the ingredients to make it his own, what a clown!

Ingredients

1 cup rice wine vinegar

1 tablespoon red chili flakes, add more heat is desired

1 tablespoon minced garlic

2 tablespoons minced white onion

2 cups dark brown sugar

¼ cup tomato paste

½ cup soy sauce

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 stick of butter, cut into 10 cubes

Method

Simmer vinegar, chili flakes, garlic and onion in a heavy saucepan until reduced by half.

Add brown sugar, tomato paste, soy sauce and salt and return to simmer for 3 minutes.

Remove from heat and whisk in butter cubes.

What’s in a name?

Throughout the 32 years of Hudson’s life, there were many famous folks that graced our doorways leaving us with stories to tell.  I’m sure there are many more but here is a list of those that I remember: Lance Armstrong, Ray Benson (Asleep at the Wheel), Albert Brooks, Mack Brown, George W. Bush, Butthole Surfers, Earl Campbell, Sheryl Crow, Olivia de Havilland (Gone With the Wind), Johnny Depp, Farrah Fawcett, Robert Foxworth, Kinky Friedman, Pat Green, Patty Griffin, Akeem Abdul Jabbar, Jane Krakowski, Lady Bird Johnson, Tommy Lee Jones, Tom Landry, Jane Leeves, Natalie Manes (Dixie Chicks), Elizabeth Montgomery (Bewitched), Willie Nelson, Robert Plant, Rick Perry, Dennis Quaid, Dan Rather, Ann Richards, Robert Rodriguez, Bob Schneider, Maria Shriver, Emmitt Smith, Barry Switzer, and Jerry Jeff Walker.  I’m sure there are many more but please excuse me as my mind is like a sieve these days.

Lance and Sheryl dined at Hudson’s on date night, Albert Brooks was joined for dinner by Jane Leeves, Robert Foxworth and Elizabeth Montgomery stopped by for a dinner al fresco whenever they were in town, Robert Plant and Patty Griffin were our oft time guests when they lived in Austin, Ann Richards and Barry Switzer were the oddest of famous dinner dates, I still can’t imagine what they had to talk about. 

Mack and Sally Brown lived very close to Hudson’s and we were on their “go to” special place list and we did a lot to encourage them by making each of their visits extra memorable.  After they won the Rose Bowl bid, we covered their table with rose petals, we added specialized items on the menu i.e. longhorn, etc.  My favorite memory is when Sara was fetching a bottle of wine from the overhead wine rack right beside Mack and Sally’s table and when she slid the bottle out of the rack another bottle jiggled loose and began hurtling towards Sally’s head.  Sara grabbed the falling bottle with her free hand in a very elegant underhand scoop landing the catch as it was just inches above Sally’s head.  Mack knew how close his beloved wife came to being knocked out, so much so that Mack said “we have try outs next week, you should come and try out as a receiver”.  Who can argue with Mack!

The “Butthole Surfers”, a punk alternative band that originated in San Antonio, now living in New York City were known to play and dine with Hollywood players. When they dined at Hudson’s they offended everyone with their nouveau riche behavior, they would scan the wine list and order the most expensive wine with no regard for the type or taste, just high rolling and their loud, boisterous, rude and profane behavior offended everyone, our guests and employees alike. I finally was forced to ban them from dining indoors and told the front of the house that the next time they came they would have to sit on the patio or not at all.  They were not in the habit of making reservations; they were always a walk in and always arrived en masse.  Sara was the hostess on one of these nights when they gave us a surprise visit.  They were not aware that they were no longer allowed inside so she heavily promoted the loveliness of the night and suggested that they would really enjoy dining on the patio; it was a mild spring night and Sara got a quick yes.  I agreed as long as they stayed outside.  As she was outside putting 3 tables together to accommodate the party of 10, the door opened and someone from the group was approaching her and offered to help with the table set up. She looked up at the kind soul to see that it was Johnny Depp, he was giving the Butthole Surfers a new reputation, but they still were not allowed inside!

On one rocking Saturday night we had in attendance all at the same time; Kinky Friedman, Lance Armstrong and Maria Shriver all with their own group…it was a starry starry night.

Nothing exciting about Willie except duh it is “Willie” and when he and his entourage walked through the dining room in their custom-made New Balance running cowboy boots every head turned.  Per his request, they were seated in the Private Dining Room (PDR) for a quiet meal and some privacy.  In order to maintain their privacy, when fresh air was called for, wink wink, they would exit and reenter their dining room by crawling in and out of the window.  They parked the bus up on “the hill” and I assumed they were headed up to his bus to smoke a big fatty which was absolutely fitting because the “hill” was known as the “joint” headquarters.  I was just appreciative that they didn’t fire up in the PDR, it has been done but I won’t name the groups that lit up in that room unless you twist my arm, okay I have never been famous for keeping secrets, a local real estate firm was the worst offenders.

The “hill” was where our guests would park if the paved lower lot was full and the staff would also go to the “hill” to unwind and most often that included a toke.  We had to feign surprise when guests would come to report to us that it smelled like a skunk up there.

Dan Rather has a house in Lakeway which became their primary residence while he was recovering from the blindsided firing by the evening news.  He loves to bass fish and Lake Travis is chock full of bass.

There is an occurrence in the restaurant business that is not publicly discussed, the “Bus Tub Buffet”.  When a wait person sees an untouched or barely touched or even heavily touched entrée that looks yummy headed for the dirty dish window, it becomes fair game and if you know someone that works in a restaurant, trust me they have participated in this practice.  I have known many starving college students that sustained life by eating leftovers.  

Now that you are well schooled about “bus tub buffet” I continue, Dan and Jean Rather were having dinner one evening and the waitress who was waiting on Dan and Jean cleared their entrée plates and noticed a piece of snapper in a pecan crust was only half eaten, so when at the dish room window, she ate a piece of Dan’s leftover snapper.  However, I use the term “ate” loosely, she did not fully chew and swallow the bite before returning to his table to offer dessert and coffee.  When she opened her mouth to recite the dessert selection, a piece of Dan’s entrée fell from her mouth and cartwheeled in the air and then began a very slow-motion descent before landing on the table right in front of him.  Our waitress quickly scooped up the fish 🐠 with her crumber and took his dessert order.  I don’t know if it would have made any difference one way or another, but he did not know that it was his very own food. 

Most of the time When Dan entered the restaurant heads would turn.  When the Dallas Cowboys had training camp at St. Edwards, Emmitt Smith became a regular at Hudson’s.  One evening, Emmitt walked into the restaurant about 5 yards in front of Dan and Jean.  He was lean, mean and still bulging and shimmering from a very physical day of practice.  Emmitt wore a silk suit vest with no shirt showing off his perfect physique.  All eyes were on Emmitt.  No one even noticed Dan.  Dam later wrote the foreword to my 1^st cookbook and I’m forever grateful.

If you go to Kerby Lane on a Wednesday night, you will most likely see a dad with his kids, it is a fairly common post-divorce custody arrangement.  Well, if you are Robert Rodriguez you take your kids to Hudson’s on Wednesday nights.  On one of these frequent visitation nights, there he was on his birthday celebrating with his kids minding his own business perusal.  There was another birthday celebration in the PDR that evening, family of 8 that had really pulled out the stops and arrived in a limousine.  When the gentleman in the PDR received his check at the end of their meal, he was really upset that the server had added the gratuity (normal protocol around the world for a party of 6 or more) but he interpreted it that the server thought he was a cheap low life and also he was quite buzzed so not at his rational best.  He was inconsolable and ranted loudly in the lobby for a good 20 minutes at the manager.  Mr. Rodriguez came into the lobby and told him it was his birthday and he was ruining his birthday with his loud tirade and that he would pay the angry fellow’s check if he would just hush and leave.  Weeeeelllll, that was not well received and Mr. Angryman said, “you don’t have enough money to pay my check you snake chasing taco eater”.  The manager and Robert exchanged a highly amused look and then she thanked Robert for his aid but sent him back to his table.  This fellow had no idea who Robert Rodriguez is. 

There are thirty years of stories, these are just a few that kept us amused.  The Pecan Crusted Snapper was our most popular seafood dish for many years until the Hot & Crunchy Trout was created and elbowed the snapper out of the limelight.  In 1987 Gourmet Magazine printed our recipe for Pecan Crusted Snapper.  Throughout the years the Pecan Crusted Snapper made reappearances on the menu.  It was always tasty and it kept the Dan Rather story alive.  Below you will find the recipe for the Pecan Crusted Snapper.  You can use a variety of fish, i.e. red fish, flounder, trout, etc.  The freshest fish is the bestest fish.  Enjoy

Pecan crusted snapper

Pecan Crust Breading

Serves 6

Ingredients

1 cup bread crumbs (dry)

2 cups pecan pieces

1 teaspoon each dried basil, dried oregano, dried thyme, granulated garlic, granulated onion, white pepper

Method

Put all ingredients in a food processor and pulse until well blended but still coarse. 

Set aside in a breading dish.

Breading the Snapper with the Standard Breading Procedure:

Mix 2 eggs with 1 Cup of milk for your breading station. 

Set up three casserole dishes, first with flour, second with milk and egg mixture, and third with the pecan breading.   

Coat each fish filet (6 ounces) with AP flour and then dip into the wet mix of milk and egg.

Then press into the pecan mixture.  Use the heel of your hand to increase pressure, this coats the filet with the pecan crust breading. 

Bread all filets and set aside. 

Refrigerate if you bread hours before you sauté.  You can bread up to 4 hours ahead of cooking.

Sauté the Snapper

Heat a non-trans fat oil to 375 in a 12” sauté pan (just below smoking point).  When the oil is ready it will shimmer like a Texas blacktop road in August when it’s ready.

Cook 3 filets at a time.  Don’t over crowd the pan because it will lower the temp of the cooking oil.

You can hold the filets in a warm oven at 175degrees while you cook round two. 

Sauté each side to a golden brown.  About 3 minutes per side.

Serve with your favorite topping, i.e. lemon herb compound butter, salsa, etc.

Remember change 3 ingredients and the recipe is yours!

Normally I don’t devote an entire blog to an individual, but Abel Garcia is the exception, as he is exceptional. 

Let me start at the beginning, about 1988 Abel showed up at Hudson’s and I hired him to wash dishes.  He was an illegal immigrant with a fake social security number and a Texas driver’s license all purchased at a local flea market.  Back in the dark ages of the 20^th century, employers were not held responsible to check on the validity of the social security or driver’s license credentials.  If all documentation looked valid, we photo copied the ID cards, had the new hire fill out a W-4 and put it all away in their employment file.  Thirty-one years later, Abel is now an American citizen, a multiple homeowner (2 homes in Mexico and 1 in the U.S.) all three paid for in full…amazing for a minimum wage-earning dishwasher.

It has been said by all that know me that I am but half a man when Abel is in Mexico because I am constantly dreaming up fabulously creatively outlandish ideas that are just that, ideas without Abel’s renaissance man skills. 

Looking back to the day that Abel appeared in my life I am very humbled and I let it be known that from that day forward, I do believe in fairies.  Little did I know how very blessed I was to become, I have been fortunate enough to work with Abel for 31 years and much of Hudson’s was still standing and expanded and rusticated because of Abel’s handiwork.  He can do damn near anything, from keeping Hudson’s running and up to code for all officials, to helping me cater, rewire expansions, plumbing rehab old and new, remodeling, finish carpentry, paint, he was the master gardener in charge of our herb gardens at the restaurant, stonework to carpentry Abel could do it all and the list of his accomplishments is as long as the day.

I knew he was gifted when I noticed him staring at the broken ice machine one day and I almost yelled at him to get back to work, but something told me to let him do his thing; after all I had already called the repair company and they could patch-up any damage done by Abel.  Abel studied the cycle where the water turns into ice cubes and then they drop in the ice bin.  He then grabbed a screwdriver and a set of vice grips, proceeded to make a few twists and turns and voila, the ice machine began to produce cubes again.  I was quietly chopping onions while watching Abel fix the Japanese ice machine. Not a word was said between us as Abel went back to the dishwashing room. The repairman arrived and scratched his head as he found nothing wrong with the machine, but gave me a service call bill of $75.00. I gladly OK’d and paid the bill knowing I had just witnessed Abel’s ability. I also learned an important lesson—let Abel think and observe.  Abel soon became the only R&M man Hudson’s ever knew.

I will try not to get political, but this entire nation was built from the front door to the back door and all rooms in between by entry level immigrants and slaves.  We don’t need a wall but what we need is a system that fixes immigration.  When the Irish or Polish etc. came into this country in waves we found acceptance but when folks with deeper colored skin came in, we felt threatened.  Restaurants and the entire nation need immigrants. I don’t pretend to know the answers, but it needs to fixed by Washington.  Fix it now.  All chefs know the best cooks come from Mexico.   

The years have passed and Abel continues to do his magic, a little magic can take you a long way.  I continued to buy Abel equipment to assist his work, a table saw, welder, complete tool set, power planer, whatever he needed, the equipment always paid for itself in the end product.  Many times, I would take it upon myself to do some of this handiwork at the restaurant only to later find Abel taking apart my work and re doing it better.

I was the general contractor when I built our house and obviously Abel and his friend did the finish carpentry, stucco, tile, dry wall, the list goes on and on. Abel wanted a smooth, straight look but I was looking for a feel that was a cross between San Miguel and Santa Fe so once he understood the look I desired, it never had to be talked about again.

I spent a lot of time and money getting this look of rustico, we drove into Mexico to acquire rustic exterior and interior décor.  I found a rusted cast iron 1860 coal burning stove at a garage sale in south Austin and as Abel took it apart l measured the burner ports and decided what would be enameled and what would be chromed.  After measuring I discovered that Wolf Stovetop replacement parts would fit so I ordered the parts.  As I was leaving the chrome shop with the parts poking out of the box in random order, I passed a burly group of Harley riders headed into the shop.  They said, “What you got there?” and I sheepishly replied, “It’s my stove”.  Not another word was spoken.  Abel did some fabrication and hooked the re enameled re chromed stove up to the propane line.  20 years later it’s working great.

With all of my finds at San Miguel and Dolores Hidalgo I loaded up my little 4X8 trailer chock full of one of a kind décor.  Of course, after Abel re loaded the trailer and did it mas fuerte we headed home with Abel behind the wheel.

The way that Abel would pass the slower cars on the road was more exciting than a carnival ride.  He would pull the suburban and trailer into the oncoming lane, pass the slower vehicle in front of us, with the oncoming vehicles driving off the pavement and onto the dirt shoulder of the road.  All the time I was screaming and pounding my feet on the dash bracing for impact.  Everyone on the road played along, thank God.  By the 4^th time he pulled this sequence of driving mastery, I had let go and let God and I had quit screaming.  We arrived home safely with a short inspection at the border.

Abel would cook lunch for the staff at Hudson’s.  His rustic lunch tacos became famous.  The linen delivery guy, repair men, the milkman, employees that were not scheduled would show up along with Abel’s family and friends.  His most popular lunch was smoked prime rib sautéed with veggies and rich stock, all cooked into taco filling.  When Abel was out of town there were sad faces at lunch time.

When I built out Ocotillo, our restaurant on the border in Lajitas, Abel was a natural to be involved.  While he was in Lajitas helping me, he hurt his back by improperly picking up a heavy box.  He was laid up and I sent him home to heal with a big workman’s comp check in his hand.  What would he do with the extra time and money?  Abel’s home is 3 hours west of Morelia in the sub-tropical mountains of Michoacán.  It is gorgeous and has a perfect growing climate. In fact, it’s where the monarch butterflies go to winter because of the cool mornings and mild warm afternoons, even in the summers.  Abel’s father was given a large chunk of land by Pancho Villa, the famous revolutionary, and this land was passed on to Abel.  Abel invested his workmen’s comp money in avocado trees and planted this land with the trees that to this day continue to produce avocados twice a year.  This accidental endeavor employs his sleepy village and has made him king of the region.  All of his avocados 🥑 are shipped to Japan. 

Sara and I made the journey to his home.  We flew into Mexico City then caught a flight into Morelia where he was waiting to pick us up and wrap up the journey with a 3-hour road trip to his village. On the hill overlooking his village Abel built a very conventional home with indoor plumbing and complete with all the modern conveniences, however we noticed that his family still uses outdoor fires to cook, the al fresca pantry from the days of old and an outdoor dish washing station…old habits are hard to let go of.

When we sold the restaurant, Abel stayed on and still works with us keeping our personal property in tip top shape and continues to make all of my wildest daily dreams come true.  Abel is family. It will be a sad day when he retires in Mexico.  Who knows we may move there?

The recipe below is shrimp quesadillas, Abel’s favorite.  We had agreed to film a BBC food show “Floyd’s American Pie”.  The film crew was scheduled to arrive by 3:00pm, after all it was a busy Saturday and we hoped to have them gone before our dinner rush kicked in.  The crew arrived at 6:00pm and it was 7:00pm by the time they were set up and ready to film and of course by this time we were very busy with what we do on a Saturday night.  The film crew was like an extra piece of shrapnel in the exploding hand grenade of a restaurant rush.  As we were putting out the food it became obvious that they had planned to arrive at our busiest time to film and capture the drama and real experience of a Saturday night behind the scenes.  We started to prepare the shrimp quesadilla.  When I was slicing the avocado 🥑 a small sliver flew onto a 1000-watt light bulb.  The light bulb exploded making everyone jump.  The glass from the exploding bulb went all over the food preparation area.  When I saw shards of glass in our steam table, I knew we had to throw everything out and start fresh.  All of a sudden, the free PR got really expensive.  Ahh Hollywood.

Shrimp Quesadillas

Serves 4

Ingredients

4 flour tortillas

1 avocado cut into quarters.  Slice each quarter into 3 slices.

12 shrimp —cooked—3 shrimp per tortilla

4 ounces of goat cheese

¼ cups-grated Monterey Jack cheese.

1 tablespoon minced garlic

3 tablespoons sour cream

1 tablespoon minced blended herbs

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon sea salt

Method

Combine goat cheese, garlic, jack cheese, sea salt and sour cream into a bowl over lightly simmering water, as cheese begins to melt blend the ingredients together.

Slather the cheese blend onto the tortillas.

Place 3 slices of avocado onto each tortilla. Place them on the lower ½ of the tortillas so it can be folded in ½.

Place 3 shrimp onto each tortilla. Place them on the lower ½ of the tortillas so it can be folded in ½.

Fold all the stuffed tortillas in half.

In a large skillet heat the olive oil to the smoking point over medium high heat.

Place all tortillas in the heated oil and cook for 2 minutes.

Flip tortillas and cook the other side for 2 more minutes.

Remove from skillet.

Cut each tortilla into 3 wedges.  Making sure that each wedge has shrimp and avocado.

At Hudson’s we topped with mango salsa or cotija cheese.  Add your own topping to make it yours.Serve warm-enjoy

Hudson’s sauces

The sauce business began very organically and insignificantly and was initiated because quite often we had requests from our restaurant patrons to take a taste of Hudson’s home with them on their way out the door.  To satisfy these requests we began to jar-up a few of our most popular tastes and from that innocent little action, the sauce business became a snowball rolling downhill, gaining speed and size.

Off I went to the nearest arts and craft store to procure some glass jars to fill with our sauces which we then labeled with labels generated on my office computer.  Being naïve to the particulars of packaging product for sale, Jay Moore and I categorized the sauces as “to-go” food; easy breezy and all was well or so we thought, until the Health Department spotted our “to-go” rack of yumminess in the lobby.  Our motto was to ask for forgiveness instead of permission.  

On any given day the Health Department can shut down a restaurant for any variety of reasons and that is why they are so greatly feared.  The Health Department inspectors are primarily interested in the cleanliness of the kitchen where the food is prepared and the walk-in coolers where the food is held and sometimes won’t even include the dining room in their inspection. 

When we first installed the sauce display rack in the lobby, the health squad didn’t spot it on the following visit, but on their next inspection they did.  The Health Inspector ventured into the front of the house on his way to inspect our smoke house and the bathrooms to make sure they were up to code and on his way he had to walk right past the rack that held the “to-go” products. 

They grinned and smirked at our innocence as we explained it was “to-go” food and we certainly had done no wrong.  The inspector told us that bottling these products was illegal and dangerous and then explained that bottling products was a different branch of the Health Department and we could expect to hear from the State Health Department soon.  The very next day we had that visit from the State Health Department and they supervised as we opened and poured all of our “to-go” products into the trash can.  They then sat down with us and told us the path we needed to take to be legit sauce purveyors.

I spent three days at A&M in College Station learning how to become a legal bottler of food.  There are a series of requirements that the sauce needs to meet before it is ready to be bottled and labeled.  I learned things like, most bacteria grow best around neutral pH values of 6.5-7.0, so obviously you have to have pH level below 6.5 and then the sauce needs to be at 180 degrees or hotter at the time of bottling.  The sauce heat kills the bacteria and as it cools in the bottle it contracts and sucks the plastic liner and the lid in to create an airtight seal.  There was a new bottle cap system on the market that was proven to be safer, it has a soft pliable yet strong plastic ring in the cap and it safely seals the bottle.  As your product cools you will know the jars are safely sealing as you hear the pop of the lids, just like Grandma’s mason jars.

With the knowledge of right way versus wrong way, bottling sauces is a simple task and takes nominal money, enter the “Mom & Pop” parade of salsa production. 

The hardest part of my A&M schooling was separating the information that applied to our specific sauce production because there were folks from Frito-Lay, Coca Cola Food Division, etc. in the same class speaking a language I was not familiar with.  They asked a lot of questions about a retort, I had no idea what a retort was.  Before the new procedure you had to put the jars in a retort.  In an attempt not to look stupid I held my tongue until lunch and found the campus book store and a dictionary.  I looked up RETORT and found out it was a big oven that operates at an optimum temperature range of 1,400 to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit.  Campbell Soup would load a railroad car completely full with cans of tomato soup and drive it in the retort.  It would kill the bacteria and seal the soup, it was now shelf stable.  I returned to class equipped with retort knowledge.  Aww knowledge.

This “book learning” part was just the beginning, now it was “do it” time.  In my quest to gain further knowledge I called an old friend who knew Spike Robinson who knew Dan Jardine.  Dan was like us in that he started his salsa bottling with a lot of elbow grease and a small budget.  I was introduced to Spike and he very kindly took us to meet Dan.  He had done well with his sauce business and now his multimillion-dollar new bottling plant was almost complete.  He shared his pricing strategy which was simple, if the total cost including product, label, labor, jar and lid was $3.00 his retail price was $9.00 and his wholesale price, i.e. grocery stores was $6.00. Most folks start with one or two products but ignorance is bliss and our startup were eleven different products.  Our menu of bottled sauces was Tomatillo White Chocolate, Mango Jalapeño,

Guava Sour Cherry, Herb Vinegar, Bourbon Vanilla Praline, Mexican Marigold Mustard, Orange Ginger BBQ, Chipotle BBQ, Madagascar Peppercorn, Brandy Apple Cider, and Strawberry Raspberry.

With ingredients in the back of our cars, Jay and I headed to Dan’s bottling facility.  We had to adjust our recipes to get the pH level down, acids lower the pH, some recipes we added more vinegar others we added more citrus juice.  However, the recipes that we started with were very close so with a little tweak here and a little splash there, the recipes were a success. 

We thought the hard part was done, wrong, like most new products, advertising is the hard part.  At the onset we signed on with Dan to package and market our sauces but we soon left Jardine’s umbrella and went out on our own when we realized Dan was doing very little promotion and was charging us an inflated price for his services.  After some checking around I found we could rent an approved bottling kitchen and do the entire production ourselves a whole lot cheaper than Jardine’s.  No regrets as the education that Dan gave us during our early beginnings was very valuable.

Hudson’s already had a well-established name and the local stores were promoting local chefs so it was easy to get our sauces onto the shelves in local Austin stores.  To get on the shelves in other city’s we had to increase our sales numbers to prove to them it was a profitable and sought-after product.  After our initial surge in the local market, we had to keep the consumers excited and interested in our sauces to increase our sales.  To do that I put on my chef’s coat and did grocery store tastings.  Well that got old fast.  What I did realize is that my in-store tasting was dual purposed, advertising the restaurant while hawking the sauces.  When our first cookbook was published, I triple marketed, the cookbook promoted the sauce line and the restaurant, and the sauce line promoted the cookbook and the restaurant, and the restaurant promoted the sauces and the cookbook, something for everybody, win, win, win!  I soon realized there were not enough hours in my day to promote all these revenue streams that I had created and I had to hire people to promote.  No one wanted to be the grocery store taster, but it was a great part time job for the college kids in our life, my son did it while at UT and about the time he graduated, Sara’s daughter started at UT and took the tasting torch for some spending moolah.

We were a little ahead of our time with the sauces and people were uncertain of what to use the sauces on and were used to cooking with sauces, but ours were finishing sauces.  You would grill, bake or sauté your main course and then top your entrée with one of our sauces, just like your favorite restaurant.  It was an educational process that was not easily explained.  Our sauce business was tasty and profitable, but didn’t spread like wildfire, you need a person with the passion to be the sauce boss.

During production you have to number each bottle, record the production date, how many bottles per batch, pH level, temperature at bottling time and you document all of this and have these available for the inspector.  When I lost interest the information charts didn’t get completed and the health department recalled all of our products when they discovered our shortcomings.  We had already had a good offer to sell the restaurant and the buyers were not interested in the sauces so I let it die.

Below you will find the recipe for Bourbon Vanilla Praline Sauce and our recipe for Bourbon Vanilla Sweet Potatoes.  This recipe was reprinted in the local newspaper for years as the favorite sweet potato recipe at Thanksgiving.  During the holidays we had to highly increase production of this sauce to keep up with the demand.  The name may appear to be misnamed as there is no bourbon in the sauce rather the vanilla in the sauce was grown on the Bourbon Island.  It does have reduced rum and brandy in it.  Your recipe uses rum extract.  When we first produced the sauce, we used store bought rum and would reduce it ourselves. It was safer to use extract.  I was in the restaurant driveway reducing 2 gallons of rum.  I had a 20-gallon stock pot set atop a butane fired turkey fryer with 2 gallons of bubbly rum in the bottom.  When I lit it a 30-foot blue flame appeared.  It was 5:00am and the sun had not risen.  It looked like a rocket ship going the wrong way.  The county sheriff happened to be driving by.  He slammed on his brakes and came back to say “what the hell are you doing?”.  I replied “just reducing rum for a big recipe”.  He shook his head and drove away.  I wonder what he was thinking. I wanted to say “I’m a mad scientist testing rocket fuel”.

Be careful when reducing alcohol and enjoy the sweet potato recipe.

Bourbon Vanilla Praline Sauce

1-quart light corn syrup

1/3 cup vanilla (preferably bourbon vanilla)

2 tablespoons rum extract

2 tablespoons cinnamon

1 tablespoon nutmeg

2-pounds dark brown sugar

1/3 cup brandy

2-pounds butter

1 cup pecan pieces

2 tablespoons sea salt

Method

Mix all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to simmer for 8 minutes.

Serve warm atop cheesecake or ice cream.  Use your imagination.

You will have extra sauce. 

It will hold for months in your refrigerator.

Bourbon Vanilla Praline Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

6 large sweet potatoes (boiled in water until tender to knife—cool and peel

1 ½ cups graham cracker crumbs

2 tablespoons butter

1 ½ cups pecan pieces

2 cups Bourbon Vanilla Praline Sauce

Method

Slice and shingle sweet potatoes in a casserole dish.

Add the butter.

Pour on BVP sauce.

Cover with pecans and graham crackers crumbs.

Bake at 350 for 35 minutes.

Cookbooks

The year was 1990 and Jay Moore was the executive chef at Hudson’s on the Bend.  Whenever Jay or I dined out at other restaurants, we would hurry home to give each other a report about our dining experience comprehensively reporting on the menu, atmosphere, location, service, etc.  Every chef has their own distinct autograph flavor palate, some like it spicy, some like it herbaceous and some like it salty, but everyone has their own level of seasoning and this is reflective of their early dining experience from their mother’s cooking.  Most chefs in the restaurant business try to appeal to the masses and as a result their food can be seriously lacking in salt and seasonings.  If the reported food needed imagination, or more flavor we said that the chef had the “fear of cooking” and this opposite mindset of “fearless cooking” became our kitchen mantra as we created our daily menu.  My personal fear in the kitchen was quite the opposite of those fearful chefs, I had a fear of not enough and if one is good more is better and we went to great lengths to avoid bland frightened food!  All kitchens go through phases with new dishes and it often takes the chefs many attempts at the dish to get the flavors up front, not at Hudson’s, we cooked fearlessly so much so that was the obvious name of our first cookbook “Cooking Fearlessly”.

In order to diversify the income at the restaurant I had begun doing cooking classes and about the time Jay was the chef I had finished my new home on Hudson Bend Road with a fully loaded outdoor kitchen and stadium seating with a stunning view of Lake Travis as our backdrop and the classes began to grow in popularity.  The cooking classes always revolved around a 4-course meal, from appetizer to dessert and all points in between.  Jay and I would agree on the menu and determine who would prepare each course and from there we would write our designated recipes and then I would type up the recipe making any needed adjustments and save it on my computer. On the day of class Jay and I would assemble and portion the ingredients, making one tray ready to go per recipe. While setting up our mis en place trays, we would mentally construct the recipe and review in our minds the how’s and whys we added the ingredients and mentally review the method of preparation.  In the wee hours of the morning of the class we would cook the 4-course meal for 20 to 30 people so that it would be ready and waiting upon the conclusion of the cooking school.  Then we would cook this same 4-course meal again during the cooking school but in reasonable small family portions.  Test and retest every level of the dish, this forced us to measure all ingredients and at the end of the day, it really cooked the book.  We talked about undertaking a cookbook for years, we talked so much about “what we ought to do” that the staff told us to put up or shut up. 

I eventually did an outline for the book and found the right people to do the book; Deborah Harter came aboard to be the ghost writer, Pun Nio was our page layout book designer, and Laurie Smith joined us as our food photographer.  I had a vision and knew what I wanted the book to look like, I wanted it to be a glossy hardback book with full color and I wanted it now.  If I shopped it around to different publishers it would take years and I would lose control and publishers did very little promotion so being the control freak I am off I went on my own.  I wanted the end result to be a restaurant chef inspired cookbook with colorful glossy pages with restaurant humor and flavorful recipes and it would be a vital tool in the kitchen and simultaneously look beautiful on the coffee table.  I began my research and as I collected cookbooks that had the presence and the feel that I wanted, 10 Speed Press kept appearing on the spine so clearly the owner of 10 Speed Press appreciated restaurant chef inspired cookbooks, it was not surprising that their books appealed to me.  When meeting with our team of cookbook developers, I would line up all of these books to view and explain to our team that this was the look I desired.

I added a lot of flavors that were unique to our cookbook, i.e. a musicologist or music to cook by, quote of the recipe (funny little quotes from funny little chefs), and some fantastical chef paintings.  Bobby Arnold was a friend of mine who taught and mixed music at Texas State University.  He joined the team of cookbook developers as my personal musicologist.

I had a ghost writer, Deborah Harter, who had never done a book before and was a self-confessed ignorant cook.  Pun Nio, my book layout designer, had designed high school books, but never a cookbook but she assured me she was “up” for the challenge.  Laurie Smith, the food photographer was the only one that came on board with experience and she had boundless experience, several cookbooks and lots of national magazines like Saveur.  She was a relaxed photographer and shot with natural light—preferably outside.  Laurie was perfect, fun and relaxed, not the type to obsess over a photo, she showed up with her dog in tow for our first meeting.  She would rather stick a spoon in a crème brûlée then spend hours adjusting.

Everything came together and off we flew to Roanoke to the printer.  I was a newbie to the printing game so Pun traveled with me and she was a great asset.  There is a thing called “over run” which allows you to adjust the color level before you save the copy.  The printing press was a huge Heidelberg, it was a monster, a block long and deafeningly loud.  Pun would yell “more red, I want it to pop”.  I couldn’t tell it needed more ink, it looked fine to me, thank God Pun was there.  The hardback glossy, colorful cookbook cost me less than $10.00 each.  We sold them at retail and made about $15.00 profit, if you went through a publishing house you would be lucky to earn a $1.00 profit for each book.  As exhausting as the making of the book was, the truly difficult facet was the selling, Amazon and small shops were our best wholesale outlets.  The online craze was in its infancy but it was already beginning to close bookstores so how to wholesale the book was foggy.

I would fly out to see Deborah Harter at her home in Half Moon Bay and we would develop the verbiage.

My routine was to take a Southwest plane to Las Vegas, change planes and arrive in San Francisco where I rented a car and drive to Half Moon Bay.  When changing planes in Vegas I always had 30 minutes waiting time for my flight on to San Fran so I did what one does while in Vegas, slip on over to the slot machines and lose a quick $100.00.  I never planned on winning big as airport slots were notorious for bad returns, but on one of these layovers, the lights and sirens went off, I was surprised to see I had won $1800.00.  I had to wait for an attendant to give me my money and I almost missed my connecting flight, but I did pay for several flights to Half Moon Bay with my winnings.

The local paper did a large feature article on the making of the book and came to our photoshoot.  It was unique watching a photographer taking pictures of another photographer at work.  Jay and I were extremely busy keeping up with the photographer preparing the plates that Laurie was taking pictures of, it was a dizzying day keeping up with her.

Through the years, Kitty Crider who was the food writer for our local paper, did many articles about Hudson’s on the Bend, food writers are always looking for fresh ideas to write about and we tried to keep it fresh. Hudson’s had many articles featuring us, to the point that the general public was convinced that we were sleeping with the right person or on the newspaper payroll.  All of this free press came back to bite us with the next generation of food writers.  We had our 5 minutes of fame.

Our famous picture with our chef hats on fire had its roots in Aspen.  I’ve always thought the chef hat was out dated or looked like the pope’s head gear.  Over the years I have heard the pleats represent the different ways you can cook eggs. What BS, it must be a European thing.  Gert used to wear one when he went into the dining room and I always thought it looked pretentious. I would stand behind him and give his “paper” hat a flic of my bic.  We were at the end of our photo shoot and I was feeling mischievous and the idea for a flaming toque was born.  Jay and I stood in front of the smoke house with wet kitchen towels on our heads followed by paper chef hats that I had dipped in citronella for added flames.  We were laughing hard, the entire event lasted a few seconds, but enough time for Laurie to snap a great shot.  Later that day we went down to our friendly banker, Eddie Safady at Prosperity Bank to get the money for the book production.  Eddie was passing the papers around the table when he said “do you smell burnt hair?”.

After the cookbook had been printed and delivered, I realized that marketing the book was the hard part, you know the money part.  Whenever I felt overwhelmed by the task of hawking this baby, I would look at the title, take a deep breath and resume the fearless approach.

I was one of the featured authors at the Texas Book Festival later that year and I think the cooking demonstration was truly why I got major billing and prime location.  The success of the book and the restaurant was due to the fact that I was the “yes” chef and I would cook anywhere—a parking lot to a grocery store, I was everywhere. 

Back to the cookbook and the Book Festival.  Dennis Hayes, a marketing expert and an employee of 10 Speed Press was in attendance at the Book Festival promoting their line.  He found me and said “This book looks like one of ours”, my reply was “Super, I used your books as my template, that was the design and look I was going for”.  It wasn’t long after that we had a distribution agreement with 10 Speed Press and the book was in their catalog. 

Laura Bush was the founder of the festival when George W. was Governor.  When George was elected as president, they were off to Washington and I got an invite to the White House.  Pretty lofty for a cook and his book.  The food was good!

I often wonder if I would have been as fearless if I didn’t have multiple outlets, we had a restaurant, a cooking school, a sauce line and cookbooks to promote no time to ponder, just do it. 

When the first book arrived the National Chicken Council was doing an expensive promotion and they invited food writers from all over the country to their seminar on chickens—how boring.  They needed to fill empty time with fun, food related activities, like our cooking school for 120 food writers—what a captive audience.  I agreed to do the cooking school and in chorus do my own cook book promotion.  I assured them we could accommodate their entire group, but how.  My home’s main room has very high ceilings so we removed all of the furniture and replaced it with rented bleachers.  But that only held 95 people and that is if they tightly squeezed in.  To accommodate the remaining 25 people, we rented closed circuit cameras and monitors and set up a remote area that was enhanced with the service of prickly pear margaritas.  I knew from doing indoor cooking schools on days that were extremely cold or rainy that sent us inside, with the stoves lit for cooking, we didn’t have enough AC to keep everyone comfortable, so I rented remote air conditioning units that came with whisper quiet generators (movie type).  Jay and I did an entertaining cooking school routine with Jay and his Foster Grants doing a Ray Charles imitation; it was outrageous doing a cooking school with a blind person and it was a great success that generated dozens of newspaper articles written about our book across the country.  A restaurant and its chef are raised to a higher standard once they are involved with a book, it gives a certain stamp of validity.

The second book followed the same template as the first one with one major difference, instead of Deborah Harter being the ghost writer I used Hudson’s general manager Sara Courington who would become Sara Blank years later.  Her unique writing style adds to the book and she had worked for me for 20 years and knew me well and was very conscious of writing in my voice.    We didn’t sell as many books but we didn’t spend nearly as much time with promotion.  We rode the coat tails of the first book.  The second cookbook was called “Fired Up”.  When it came time to do a fire shot for the cover, I had to be inventive because that burning hat was old hat, I had to do something new.  The burning hat had been reproduced on the cover of magazines etc. it was our identity so clearly there had to be something fiery and spectacular.  I put a goose on the end of a sword, filled my mouth with 151 rum and lit the rum as I sprayed it out of my mouth.  The fire enveloped the goose and Laurie snapped another iconic photo.  Again, it was reproduced in a grocery store ad and many other magazines and papers.  The joke around the restaurant was Jeff only has one more orifice to light on fire.

Jay had opened his version of Hudson’s in Rockport, Texas and was not involved in the second cookbook.  Robert Rhoades, chef at Hudson’s and Becky Barsch Fischer, chef at Hudson’s both helped enormously in the production of “Fired Up”.

Every well stocked kitchen should have a blend of spices that seasons everything you cook.  I like to store them in air tight containers, like mason jars.  The most common one is a blend of sea salt and ground black peppercorns.  75% sea salt (I use Maldon sea salt, it is harvested by the English very similar to the French fleur de sel, but the cost is much less).  Every cooking station at Hudson’s had a fresh supply labeled sabor.  Everything that was cooked on the grill or in the oven or in a sauté pan was dusted with seasoning, avoid premaking large amounts of this as the pepper has a different flavor when exposed to room air.  The bronze seasoning was created by Courtney Swenson and can be used on fish or really anything.  If you are on a restricted salt diet try the bronze rub.  It was not created for a low salt diet, but has low amounts of salt.  If your diet requires no salt leave the salt out.  Enjoy.

Bronze Rub

Ingredients

All ingredients are dried and well blended.

½ cup of toasted and ground coriander (grind using a food processor with the S blade or a spice grinder)

1 tablespoon ground onion

3 tablespoons lemon pepper

1 tablespoon oregano

1 teaspoon ground white pepper

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon sea saltTop fish or game or poultry, then grill.

Bless the cook who serves love and laughter…

Enter Hudson’s Chefs

The kitchen hierarchy at Hudson’s was based loosely on Escoffier; the French culinary artist, known as “the king of chefs and the chef of kings”, who earned a worldwide reputation as director of the kitchens at the Savoy Hotel.   Escoffier operated his kitchens implementing the system of the military’s chain of command, which he called the Kitchen Brigade System.  His was in a large hotel with a very large kitchen and an equally large staff which is quite different than the average size of the “run of the mill” restaurant.  The list below is my understanding of the chain of command at large hotels.

Chef de Cuisine –This chef is in charge of the entire kitchen.  He prepares menus, purchases foods and directs everything that goes on in his kitchen.

Sous Chef de Cuisine –Sous means under in French. The sous chef is the chef de cuisine’s deputy chef.  He takes his orders directly from the chef de cuisine and acts in his place if he is not present.

Chef de Partie –There is no one chef de partie.  A chef de partie is in charge of a particular station in the kitchen.  Each chef de partie might have one or more cuisiniers, commis or apprentices working directly under him and those stations would be Saucier (sauté cook and makes sauces), Grillardin (grill person), Friturier (fry cook), Poissonier (fish cook), Potager (soups), Legumier (vegetables), Garde Manger (all cold preparations, from salads to pates), Pâtissier (pastry chef), and Boulanger(baker).

Cuisinier –The cuisiniers are cooks.  They are responsible for preparing specific dishes at a specific station.

Commis -the commis, or junior cooks, also work a specific station, but they are generally responsible for taking care of the tools on that station.  They report directly to the chef de partie.

Apprentice – An apprentice might work a specific station, eventually.  They are usually gaining work experience and help with cleaning and prep work.  At the start of his apprenticeship, an apprentice might even find himself washing dishes.

As I said, at Hudson’s we implemented this system but with a payroll budget that resulted in a minimalized interpretation.  After chef and sous chef at Hudson’s the remaining kitchen employees were simply given the title of “line cooks”.  In large hotel size kitchens, it is much more important to have a chef responsible for each area.  At Hudson’s we cross trained, being a small mom and pop restaurant, we had to be a very labor cost-conscious kitchen, and it was very important that everyone could criss cross through the kitchen.  At Hudson’s the Executive Chef was very seldom simply an overseer in the kitchen they were a working chef, they might work the sauté station one night and the grill the next night, it all depended on the projected volume of the reservations. 

My official title was owner, operator, and chef, but it was imperative that I know how to work and proficiently cook in all stations.  In the early days I was the fireman on the line, putting out fires and helping where needed to unbury the buried, this is known as the “rounds cook” or chef tournant.  Being buried alive at any station is called being “in the weeds” and that could happen to anyone at any time because if the trend of the night was all sauté items and no grill items, well you guessed it, the sauté cook is “in the weeds”.  If you were a good fire fighter you had to jump into any station at any time and it takes a special talent to unbury a station and that my friends is what makes the restaurant adrenaline driven world exciting.  At a small volume restaurant like Hudson’s you never knew what was going to happen.  

In the early days of Hudson’s, Gert tried to implement Escoffier style in the kitchen but Hudson’s style was unique, we did not have a true Executive Chef and the chain of command was not followed primarily because we couldn’t yet clearly identify the positions, henceforth, we got through each day by the seat of our pants.  Jeff Courington was the most experienced but me being there as chef/owner threw a wrench in Escoffier’s order of operation. 

A German friend of Gert’s had several young German cooks who were coming to America to check it out and a job in the States for them would be a bonus, multi-tasking tourism with gainful employment.  So, the German invasion began at Hudson’s, we hired front of the house and back of the house, and they brought lots of fine dining service experience to our restaurant.  It was a win win for all parties concerned.  Enter Harold Katzenberger, Fredrick Bauer, Reiner Schmitt and Elizabeth Noeth, they were so busy perfecting there English that the Hudson’s chain of command was not top priority but they were a big influence in the unique style that was Hudson’s, plus they added an exotic international flair. 

Then Robert Hughes was hired at Hudson’s and as best I can recall, he was the first that I hired formally naming as my Executive Chef.  His passion earned him the name “Mama Hughes”.   Steve Warren, Hal Sapadin and John Cheatham were his line cooks who all brought not only their passion, but their favorite recipes.  We must have looked like lost outlaws trying to find the way, we were doing a daily menu and we would try any dish, within reason.  If that dish didn’t sell or get great comments, off the menu it came.

Most of the cooks I hired were retired drug dealers trying to rehabilitate into a new lifestyle with an IRS approved income.  I was in and out a lot during this time period, between binging and then entering rehab and then back to binging and then back into rehab, somehow Hudson’s flourished and continued to get rave reviews and national attention.  When I finally learned what I needed to learn and graduated from rehab it was 1990 and Gert had hired a new Executive Chef, a Culinary Institute of America graduate, John Jay Moore, JayMo or Jay.  This began my long respect for CIA graduates, Jay was a natural manager and a great cook and everyone loved him, from vendors to dishwashers to waiters to health department officials.  In prepping Jay for meeting me upon my return, in Gert’s broken English he told Jay he would like me because he told him that “he’s a real Gregorian”.  Jay was not sure if I would enter singing a chant. Gert meant to say gregarious.  He was often misunderstood.

Austin is full of high-tech folks who made a bunch of money, but they just didn’t feel fulfilled.  They thought their self-actualization would be found in the kitchen because it was so rewarding when they cooked at home for their friends, I mean, what a great job. I would introduce these eager prospects to Jay and he would proceed to tell them the real story, they would peel potatoes for 10 years at minimum wage, then if they were talented, they became line cooks and if they did that well they would then become sous chefs, not encouraging them at all.  Jay took pleasure exposing the truth about the kitchen as a career path. 

Jay taught me a lot.  Hudson’s offered cooking classes and we did many cooking schools together.  For each class, in preparation, our routine was he would write two recipes and I would write two recipes.  I would then type all of our recipes to get them ready for print, we gave our cooking school students the printed recipes to take home, and by the time I had typed his recipes and then observed him cooking the recipes, I realized I was the one going to school.  Jay worked at Hudson’s for 11 years, that’s a long time in the restaurant biz, restaurant years are probably close to dog years, so let’s say he was there nearly 70 years.  We wrote our first cookbook “Cooking Fearlessly” together, but that’s another story.  All the chefs had jokes or sayings that will remain forever in my memory and Jay was a witty guy and I have many of his silly little ditties in my recollection.  One night, it was 2:00am, we had been working a long catering job, we were doing our final cleanup, Jay was tired and worn out when he looked at me and said “We have done so much for so long with so little we can do damn near anything with nothing”.

Next comes Becky Barsch, another chef at Hudson’s that became a great friend and had a huge impact on my life both as a chef and as a person.  Also, she called Gert “sunshine” which I found amusing.  She was a CIA graduate and had worked for Gert at his other restaurant, The Courtyard, for years and had more than proven her worth, but Gert was having legal and financial problems and she was no longer in his budget so bringing her into the Hudson’s family was a no brainer. She worked in our kitchen as a Sous Chef before she became the Executive Chef.  Becky was really entertaining at our cooking schools, she loved a captive audience and she would tell her spicy jokes and embarrass yet thrill the crowd, you never knew what highly entertaining and inappropriate thing she would say.  One Thanksgiving we had done 685 meals and I was bitching because it wasn’t enough for me, I wanted to do 700.  Becky turned to me and said “You can only push so much shit thru a 1” tube”.  I later learned it was her husband’s saying, but it was very appropriate.  I shut up.

The CIA program is a trade school, Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY.  After the students complete their studies at the main campus in New York, the future chefs then seek internships with school approved chefs that had been former CIA students; then they return to school armed with lessons learned in the real world, it’s a great program.

I soon realized that you could get high quality employees for minimum cost and I kept CIA interns employed for that and a few other reasons.  Only once did we have an intern return after graduation and come aboard as a full timer, it was McCaily Cranna and she was a great chef.

There were several great chefs at Hudson’s that did not go to the CIA. Ron Brannon was the chef that I remember as having the best taste buds.  Many times, I’d be working on finding a specific taste and couldn’t nail it.  I would bring it to Ron and he would taste my creation and say, add more salt or a squeeze of lime or more pepper and under his advice, the dish would come alive.  Ron was hired as the sous chef working under Jay, but he returned as Executive Chef years later. Courtney Swenson was a great sous chef during Becky’s tenure as Executive Chef.  Being a spicy girl, Courtney created the Hot & Crunchy Trout which evolved into the Mighty Cone and will live on forever, it is her legacy and I owe her so much. 

Back to Becky Barsch, she fell in love with Jay’s roomie from the CIA and she became Becky Barsch Fischer literally at Hudson’s in the yard by the smoker.  Becky and Jim, the lucky guy, just recently moved to France and now have a restaurant in France, our little fearless adventurer.  When Becky gave her notice at Hudson’s, being the great gal she is, she found a very high-quality replacement for her job before she left us.  Enter Robert Rhoades.

Before I go any further, I must give Mexico it’s proper respect first.  The cooks at Hudson’s that hailed from Mexico were always reliably the backbone of our kitchen.  They have an eye for detail, they are hard workers, they take great pride in the quality of their work and one of the great attributes of Mexican cooks is that after they are secure in their jobs, they employ their family.  Blas Gonzales was one of the best sous chefs ever to grace the doors of our restaurant and along with Blas we acquired many great cooks from his home town, San Luis Potosí.  Blas now is a successful family man and restauranteur in Kerrville.  Hudson’s was always a springboard and training ground for chefs to do their own thing.

Robert Rhoades first restaurant job in Austin was with Ron and Peggy Weiss, Jeffrey’s Restaurant and when they opened a restaurant in the Watergate Building in Washington D.C., they hired him as their D.C. Executive Chef.  Becky worked with Robert somewhere along this time period and was very impressed with his talent and luckily for us, she successfully recruited him on her way out.   Robert was pre-med before he went to the CIA and graduated from CIA number one in his class.  During his tenure as executive chef at Hudson’s he was being considered as chef at the White House.  Luckily for us Robert landed the first runner up position and they hired the Asian girl, who is still there, probably making McDonald’s runs for the current administration.  Needless to say, Robert was a great asset, he was a master at creative plate presentation, but his best strength was his taste buds—like me he felt that sea salt took dishes to their highest flavor and he combined the most unexpected flavors for the “wow” factor.  Once, we were doing a packed cooking school when he described to the class a lesson he had learned in the Escoffier Kitchen at the CIA.  They had a big pot of puréed carrots wanting to be soup and the students circled the stove with their tasting spoons in hand.  The instructor added a little sea salt and all of the students tasted the bland purée.  The fifth time the salt was added the students tasted a scrumptious carrot soup.  It just needed salt to come alive.  A man after my taste buds!  Hudson’s reached its highest point during his reign.

Kelly Casey who had conquered every station in the kitchen, as well as Sous Chef, throughout her years and had observed Becky’s and Robert’s performance as Executive Chefs was more than ready to become the new Executive Chef when Robert retired his toque.  Her formal training had occurred at Disney World Culinary Program in Orlando, FL.  There were many restaurants on the property and as part of their culinary program she moved from restaurant to restaurant.  She told our cooking school that “her father called it a Mickey Mouse education and now she works for Goofy”.  I smiled proudly.  Kelly kept the iconic Hudson’s flavor and quality alive when I no longer could and I am eternally grateful.

The recipe below is a green tomato relish.  It is a Jay Moore family recipe that compliments fish as well as wild game.  It is a great way to utilize the green tomatoes of the Fall.  I have made it with tomatillos and napalitos for that South of the Border taste.  Man, those Okies can cook!

Green Tomato Relish, ok you can call it Chow Chow

Ingredients

1 large sweet onion, ¼ dice (Maui or a Texas 10/15)

2 pounds of green tomatoes, quartered

3 tablespoons of minced garlic

2 tablespoons of mustard seed

1 cup of rice wine vinegar

1 cup granulated sugar

1 tablespoon sea salt

½ teaspoon white pepper

1 tablespoon hot sauce

3 limes juiced & zested

3 tablespoons cornstarch slurry (mix cornstarch with 2 tablespoon of water)

1 poblano, diced

1 red bell pepper, diced

1 yellow bell pepper, diced

1 cup kernel corn

Method

Add all ingredients to sauce pan and bring to simmer for 10 minutes. 

Serve hot or cold.

Great for canning. 

Makes a great gift.

This adventure begins at the Backyard when Charlie Jones, one of the principals in C3, was about to graduate from UT and was doing his internship at the Backyard with the owner, Tim O’Connor.  He entered the scene about the time that I was in the process of exiting as I was selling my interest in the music scene back to Tim O’Connor so my recall is foggy.  I do remember Charlie Jones saying that his hopeful end game was that he would someday be doing what Tim was doing at the Backyard. 

I don’t have the details on how Charlie and Lance Armstrong met and developed their friendship, but Charlie had successfully begun his own path and was organizing events, celebrations, and concerts when Lance returned home to Austin following his Tour de France victories. Charlie’s first company was Capitol Sports & Entertainment (CSE) and he was managing sports figures and entertainers and the company was expanding at breakneck speed.  The Lance Armstrong machine was generating a great deal of money both personally and philanthropically and naturally Charlie and Lance found each other. 

My son Andrew was about to graduate from UT and was doing his internship with Tim O’Conner at the Backyard.  I was wondering where Andrew would begin his career after his internship and for this reason among others, I stayed in communication with Charlie Jones.  CSE was expanding and growing at a tremendously fast rate of speed and had begun to represent Lance who continued to win Tour de France victories, also at a tremendously fast rate of speed.

My attempts to get Charlie and Andrew together failed as Charlie was being honorable, CSE had already employed several of the Backyard employees and Charlie wanted to respect Tim.  CSE expanded to the point that they developed a second company called C3 with a friend of Charlie’s, Charles Attal at the head of the new company and Andrew now had his in as Charles Attal did not owe any allegiance to Tim.  It has probably been 15 years later and Andrew remains employed by C3 and still lovin’ his job.  As C3 took off, CSE eventually disappeared.

Austin City Limits Music Festival (ACLMF) which is run by C3 has a life of its own.  After the overwhelming response to their first festival, Charlie Jones called me to aid him in evolving the food vendors into a food court that was tasty and represented the Austin food scene. The first year of the festival was a musical phenomenon but a food vendor disaster as they were just not prepared for the huge turnout and the food lines were incredibly long and the vendors ran out of food every day very early in the day.  The secret to C3’s success is that they always learn from their mistakes and each and every event that they do improves upon the last. 

Charlie had several rules – no turkey legs or conventional festival foods like funnel cakes, he wanted the food to be modeled after the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival with an Austin twist.  Charlie wanted no chain restaurants, he only wanted local vendors and restaurants that had the keep Austin weird and tasty feel. 

My part in the festival was more than food vendor at ACLMF, I was the head hunter for the food court and I got the right vendors with well known and loved Austin food all in place.   The Austin pride took its proper place in the food court and there is a great deal of pride when you represent Austin; weird and wonder-filled was seen in the food at the food court.  Eight stages with 180 shows didn’t hurt the success of ACLMF either.

What should Hudson’s serve at a festival?  Our Hot & Crunchy Trout was our most requested item at the restaurant and the breading could go on anything.  Through the years, we had breaded everything from fish, shrimp, avocado🥑, snails; damn near everything tasted better if it was breaded in hot and crunchy and then fried.  C3 was skeptical when I announced we were going to serve Hot and Crunchy chicken cones but it became a wild hit.  You could hold your cone in one hand and your beverage in the other hand making it perfect festival food and it kept the food “Austin weird”.  It also helped that it could be mass produced and handed to the customer with absolutely no wait and on top of that it was ever so tasty.

We put a flour tortilla in an oversized paper cone and then we blended tubs of shredded cabbage with our Mango Jalapeño Sauce that was placed in the flour tortilla and then the Hot & Crunchy Chicken Tender was placed on top of the Mango Jalapeno Slaw and then topped with ancho aioli sauce.  In one little cone and in every bite, you got every possible flavor; spicy, sweet, crunchy, tender.  We got lots of media attention, nationwide press came from Bon Appetite Magazine who declared it was the tastiest new dish and it was featured in the Culinary Institute of America’s (CIA) text book accompanied with pictures.  Locally it was featured in the Food and Entertainment Section of the Austin American Statesman as the best festival food. 

We had lots of notables come to our booth for a taste, Mathew McConaughey came to the front counter to get a cone, Ben Harper came in through the kitchen to get his.  Ray Benson (Asleep at the Wheel), who I’ve known for more years than I want to admit, all 6’7” of him snuck up from behind and gave me a bear hug, getting all cozy with me in hopes of getting easy access out of the park as we vendors had up close parking in the early days.  Little did he know that he was hugging me and the $60,000 cash in my backpack.  I had asked the cooks to guard me so they all jumped to as he grabbed me, but I quickly told them that Ray was a friend just looking for a ride to his car.

I had lots of media attention for both the restaurant and the food booth at the festival and I was riding high with the image of a successful chef/owner so it was easy to convince other high-end restaurants to join the festival.  It didn’t hurt that the mighty cone was wildly successful and that the festival had a strong public relations department.

Becoming a vendor at ACLMF is to set up a fast paced highly functional mobile restaurant and as in a brick and mortar restaurant we had a front of house (FOH) and a back of house (BOH) and we had two people setting up the front and back respectively.  Abel Garcia set up the back which included the pre-breading, setting up the deep fryers, refrigerators, transfer of all equipment from Hudson’s to Zilker Park, and staffing the cooks.  Being a consummate list maker and planner, I gave Abel lists of equipment and utensils that were needed and happily they all appeared along with Abel’s own thoughts which were also needed. He was such an important gear in our machine, to put it mildly.

Sara Courington (now Sara Blank) as usual was the glue between the front and the back. I was always amazed how she was able to juggle the staff and was able to successfully let each employee go to the show of their dreams and still keep the booth fully staffed.  It was never written down, but it always worked.  Her ability to keep a fun attitude kept everything and everybody running smoothly on those really long stressful days.  One of our claims to fame at the food court was that we had the fastest moving customer lines and this was largely due to Sara’s skillful coordination of the front and back of the house and also her ability to put out fires before they became a problem was a large part of our success.

Austin City Limits Music Festival gave birth to our trailer the “Mighty Cone” which was a successful off shoot.  I never thought festival food would introduce us to a different market or that it would complement Hudson’s but it did indeed and I will blog more about that later.

It seems only natural that the recipe below be the “Hot & Crunchy Chicken Cone”.  Remember you can also do shrimp, avocado or the popular combination of chicken and avocado together in a cone.  I remember one festival goer proudly announcing that this was his 9^th cone of the day.  Yikes!

I’ll give 3 recipes that make up the cones. The Hot & Crunchy Breading. The Mango Jalapeño Sauce.  The Ancho Aioli Sauce.  They can be made days in advance so all you have to do is assemble and serve hot.  Put your spin on it. One year we did the Monster Cone — shrimp, avocado & chicken on the same cone!  You can also make Hudson’s famous trout dish with all of the following recipes.

Mango Jalapeño Sauce

Ingredients

1 pound of mango, ¼” dice

1&1/2 cups sugar, organic cane

3 ounces rice wine vinegar

3 tablespoons minced garlic

4 tablespoons minced red onion

3 tablespoons minced jalapeño

1 tablespoon sea salt

Method

Combine mangos, sugar, garlic, onion, vinegar and salt to sauce pan and bring to a simmer for 10 minutes.

Add jalapeño and cool.

Mango Jalapeno Slaw

Ingredients

2 limes, juiced

2 bunches of cilantro, chopped

3 cups mango jalapeno sauce

1 cup mayonnaise

4 cups sliced cabbage

Method

In a large bowl mix the cabbage with the lime juice, cilantro, cooled mango jalapeño sauce and mayo.

Toss. 

Spicy Ancho Sauce

Ingredients

1 cup mayonnaise

½ cup ancho purée, (5 ancho peppers roasted, seeded & puréed smooth with chicken stock).

2 tablespoons of minced garlic

2 tablespoons of minced jalapeño

¼ cup of minced red onion

3 tablespoons of lime juice

3 tablespoons honey

Method

Place all ingredients in the blender and purée until smooth.

Store in squirt bottles

Hot & Crunchy Breading

Ingredients

¼ cup slivered almonds

¼ cup sesame seeds

2 cups corn flakes

¼ cup cane sugar

1& ½ tablespoons red pepper flakes

1 tablespoon sea salt

Method

Combine sesame seeds and almonds on a cookie sheet.  Roast until light brown in 400-degree oven about 8 minutes.

Cool.

Combine all ingredients with the S blade in a food processor and pulse to incorporate. 

Don’t over process, it should be course.

Assembly

Set up a standard breading station; flour, egg wash and hot & crunchy breading.

Dust the chicken tender in the flour, pass it through the egg wash and then into the breading.  Using the heel of your hand press the breading into the tender. 

Then deep fry in non-trans fat oil (8 minutes).

Set aside. 

Place the warm flour tortilla in a paper drink cone.

Put mango jalapeño slaw in the tortilla in a linear spread.

Place the cooked and breaded chicken tender atop the cole slaw.

Squeeze a squiggly attractive line of the ancho sauce on top of the tender.

Use anything. Shrimp, avocado or any combination.

ENJOY