In pursuit of its main mission, teaching kids how to eat healthier foods and resist the billions spent on marketing to convince them otherwise, the nonprofit known as Recipe for Success invites Houston area chefs to teach cooking classes and, on the first Monday of each month, serve up dinner with wine to raise money. It’s an under-the-radar thing mostly; but thanks to the quality of chefs like Killen, the rightness of the cause and the intimacy of the dining room, these Chef Surprise dinners sell out often as not.
As I discovered last night, there are a lot of excellent reasons to attend dinners upstairs at what’s come to be known as Recipe House. Of course some chefs are more talkative than others while they cook, but prime among these reasons has to be spending quality time with the chefs. Killen got to talk not only about what he was doing on each course but about what’s happening at his wildly popular Killen’s Steakhouse in Pearland, as well as update diners about Killen’s Barbecue. He’s hoping to get the place, scene of a weekend “pop-up” BBQ joint with long lines, open before the end of the year.
There’s no reason to think Chef Ronnie was nodding to my New Orleans roots, but he did follow up the wonderful ahi tuna-wonton tacos pictured at the top with a bowl of roux-dark gumbo that was both traditional and quirky. Since the guy has barbecue cooking most days of the week, using smoked pork as the “seasoning meat” made total sense. Still, I don’t believe I’ve ever tasted gumbo with blackeyed peas in it before. It may or may not have been good luck, but it sure was great taste.
As the chef explained, some of the dishes he served at Recipe House were inspired by things he’s working on for Killen’s Barbecue, and others were inspired by big hits at Killen’s Steakhouse. The Gulf blue crab cake with lemon butter was one of the latter. It was good enough for even me - who swore he’d eaten enough crab cakes to last a lifetime - to respectfully reconsider. From the crunch outside to the smoothness inside, it was God’s perfect crabcake.
Normal people don’t do ”tastings” the way chefs do, inviting 15-20 suppliers to bring in their wares for sampling side-by-side. The goal, naturally, is for the chef to pick (and purchase) the whatever-it-is he or she likes best. We got a little taste of such tastings at Recipe House, as Killen cooked up New York strip from two very different beef regions - so-called mishima from Strube Ranch in Pittsburg, Texas, and a USDA Prime wet-aged steak that’s corn-fed way up in Nebraska. Not surprisingly, both were great. But yes, they were quite different from each other.
The beef portions were such that no one in the dining room required more meat. But really, what do you expect of a chef with a steakhouse and a soon-to-open barbecue restaurant? Killen served up a satisfying pork belly with much of the fat rendered out by low-and-slow time in the smoker. Equally wonderful were the Bing cherry and port wine barbecue sauce, the sauteed Swiss chard and, best of all, the cayenne-kicked creamed corn.
To paraphrase those bankcard commercials, what’s in your dessert? As the meal at Recipe House wound down, Killen pulled out the course he personally was most excited about: pumpkin bread pudding drizzled with a very dark caramel, studded with cayenne-spiced candied pecans and finally ladled with those beloved “three milks” that give tres leches its name. All in all, dinner with Ronnie Killen (including charcuterie and coffee service by Revival Market) was a big success for a great cause. And since I had seconds on that creamed corn, nobody can say I didn’t eat my vegetables.
Looks great!