Rave 'n' Rant

This Pastry Queen is Rather sweet

Rebecca Rather cooks up chile rellenos
Photo by Laurie Smith © 2009
Layered salad in individual servings come in canning jars. Add salad dressing,shake and it's ready to eat.
Photo by Laurie Smith © 2009
Photo by Laurie Smith © 2009

With plenty of Texas charm, useful entertaining tips and clear concise recipes, former Houstonian Rebecca Rather’s third cookbook, Pastry Queen Parties: Entertaining Friends and Family, Texas Style, proves a great read. Each recipe has a little story, explaining the source, mentioning a dear friend, a noted Texan and a special occasion. In Pastry Queen Parties, she has mixed friends and recipes, notable Texans and iconic locations in into one big recipe for success.

But along the way, Rather remains down-to-earth, remembering that a cookbook is first and foremost about cooking. She ensures at-home success by rating the ease or difficulty of each recipe, with the important essentials in color-shaded boxes entitled "Do It Early." The nitty gritty includes how many days ahead the dish should be prepared, how to freeze and reheat, etc.

A home cook-turned-pro, Rather knows what’s important to people who cook and the kind of information they need. Tip boxes dot the pages, explaining what kinds of spoons work when serving Tuna Spoons, how to make skewers out of lemongrass stalks, and how to prepare fresh chile powder for the Chile Crinkle Cookies.

She likes food that looks homemade and touched by hands. Her philosophy is “It is homemade, why hide it?”

Rather is the real deal. She knows how to entertain because she loves to party. She knows how to cook because she helped her mom as a kid, worked as a caterer and did a lot of on-the-job training with Tony Vallone as pastry chef at Tony’s. She learned artisan bread-making from Daniel Leader and big-time bread production working with Schlotzsky’s.

In 1999 she opened Rather Sweet Bakery in Austin, moving it to Fredericksburg in 2001. She was among Saveur's 100 food favorites for 2003 and in 2008 Pastry Queen Christmas, her second cookbook, grabbed the prestigious ICAP award for best cookbook of the year, American category.

There are a few fun facts behind the photos. Wonder why Chapter 2: Gulf Coast Beach Bash has so many lovely food shots but no gathering of friends?

“The beach chapter was set to shoot in Bolivar a week after Ike hit—we had a great house and great people for the beach party," she explains. "When it was changed to Rockport it became a real challenge because I did not know anyone (there), so we could not find people for the party.”

She found the production of the West Texas Dinner Party in Marfa, one of her favorite chapters, to be “logistically challenging.” The San Antonio fiesta chapter was the easiest to produce.

The opening chapter, Hill Country Garden Party, photographed in her very own garden, turned out to be her number one fave.

“I work so hard on the garden and trying to grow all of the herbs and the heirloom tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, onions. It was nice to be able to use the garden for a great party with other chefs. It is really my haven, I love to be working in the garden, cannot wait for spring, and could do a whole book just around the garden and my farm animals,” Rather says.

I like the pictures the best and I cannot wait to bake the Giant Chocolate Cake with Cowboy Coffee Frosting. (Rather claims her favorite recipe might be the Kimmie Cookies but says she “loves them all”). A few of her most novel entertaining tips go unexplained, but if you check out the photos you can pick up some ideas for your next dinner party.

Blowy tablecloths at a beach side party are anchored to a cowboy boot loop at the loop; the boot is weighed down with a filling of shells. Salad for a picnic is packed in canning jars in individual servings. At the picnic, add the dressing and shake. She uses aluminum pie plates as dinner plates for a hearty meal of beer-braised short ribs. Bandanas for napkins, a galvanized bucket as a salad bowl and, most clever and effective, a kitchen grater as an luminary.

From time to time, Rather pops into Houston to promote her book and teach a cooking class or two. Sorry, her Feb. 11 class at Central Market is already waitlisted.

Pastry Queen Parties: Entertaining Friends and Family, Texas Style by Rebecca Rather with Alison Oresman, (Ten Speed Press, 2009) is available at Borders, Barnes & Noble, amazon.com.

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lighting up montrose

Aaron Bludorn's new hotel restaurant brings French flair to Montrose

Perseid restaurant Hotel Saint Augustine

Photo by Julie Soefer

French classics such as terrine and coq au vin are on the menu at Perseid.

Bludorn partners Aaron Bludorn and Cherif Mbodji are ready to unveil their latest project. Perseid, the duo’s first all-day concept, will open this Thursday, January 16.

Located on the campus of the Hotel Saint Augustine, the recently-opened boutique hotel in Montrose, Perseid, named for the annual meteor shower that takes place in August, aims to be a neighborhood bistro that actually draws Houstonians to dine — an almost impossible task for a Houston hotel restaurant. While the list of people who’ve tried without breaking through is long — Top Chef Masters winner Chris Cosentino’s Rosalie’s Italian Soul being among the more recent examples — Aaron Bludorn is confident that Houstonians will support Perseid just as enthusiastically as they have his three other restaurants, fine dining eatery Bludorn, seafood restaurant Navy Blue, and lively tavern Bar Bludorn.

“Being a local restaurant group gives us an advantage over other hotels that bring in chefs from out of town,” Bludorn tells CultureMap. “It’s hard to play an away game in the restaurant business. You need home field advantage.”

Also giving Perseid an advantage towards success is the strong relationship the Bludorn team has established with Bunkhouse, the Austin-based hotel group behind the Hotel Saint Augustine. As CultureMap reported in December, the 71-room property occupies five, two-story buildings that quietly blend into its neighborhood. Its location near the intersection of Richmond and Mandell is only a short walk to the Menil Collection and Rothko Chapel.

“Bludorn [the company] has never partnered with anyone in our young history,” the chef notes. “It’s a big deal to link our brand to them. We feel very comfortable with Bunkhouse. If we signed up with someone with less synergy, I wouldn’t be able to say that.”

The hotel’s proximity to the Menil Collection also inspired the direction of Perseid’s food. Building on the story of the de Menil family’s move from France to Houston, Bludorn and his team created a menu built around some of the classic French fare that diners might expect from a chef who spent 10 years leading the kitchen at New York’s celebrated Bar Boulud. That means French staples such as duck and foie gras terrine, escargot, and coq au vin will be available at lunch and dinner.

“I’ve wanted to do a French restaurant for a long time,” Bludorn says. “If you look at Gulf Coast cuisine, there are so many overlaps between French and Gulf Coast cuisine. I wanted something that really speaks to that. I wanted a place where we can have a terrine on the menu full time.”

Of course, simply pulling recipes out of Mastering the Art of French Cooking won’t do. Perseid adds some Gulf Coast flair to all of its creations, such as serving crawfish sausage as an appetizer or giving a Thai twist to its duck frites courtesy of mango, green pepper, and coriander.

Breakfast, served daily beginning at 7 am, draws liberally from the brunch menus of its three sibling restaurants. That means Bludorn’s celebrated pancakes, previously only available for Sunday brunch, are now more readily available. Pastry chef Marie Riddle has also created a full roster of viennoiserie, ensuring freshly-baked croissants and other pastries will be available every morning.

Bludorn, who began his culinary career as a breakfast cook, says he has deep respect for the morning meal. He hopes Houstonians will work the restaurant into their morning routines, such as University of St. Thomas faculty stopping by before their classes or parents coming for coffee after dropping their kids off at a nearby school such as Annunciation Orthodox.

Photo by Julie Soefer

French classics such as terrine and coq au vin are on the menu at Perseid.

“There are some restaurants that serve breakfast in Houston. I’d love for this restaurant to be a place where Houstonians have a breakfast meeting,” Bludorn says.

Perseid will also assist with the hotel’s bar, the Augustine Lounge, which is open for breakfast, light bites, and cocktails through the day. It will also prepare items for events at the Montrose Ballroom, an event space that’s located above the restaurant with a capacity of up to 250 standing (130 seated). Its menus will be available to hotel guests via room service during the restaurant’s operating hours.

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