San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Haiti meets Asia in New Braunfels
Menu reflects chef ’s life as missionary
NEW BRAUNFELS — In the parking lot of Ducky’s Swimwear & T-Shirts in New Braunfels, chef Christelle Chalmers looks out the window of a green-andwhite trailer the size of a walk-in closet, just big enough for her Haitian-Asian fusion operation called Christelle’s Culinary Corner.
On alternating days, the trailer for rent hosts the Cajun Cookery and a sandwich vendor called Jack’s Italian Beef. But on Mondays and Tuesdays, it belongs to Christelle’s, with food prepared by a chef who was born in New York, brought up in Haiti and traveled as a Christian missionary to Ethiopia, Puerto Rico, Thailand and back to Haiti.
Chalmers also peppers in a liberal helping of food inspired by the Filipino congregants of the Harvest City Church she attends, and the result is a trailer proud to feature HaitianKorean barbecue, Philippine lumpia and cinnamon rolls made from her great-grandmother’s recipe together on the same menu.
Best dish: Lumpia, fried eggrolls, at Christelle’s are about the size of a harmonica, and their music comes from a gossamer wrapper fried to an amber crunch, wrapped around finely ground beef with pork thrown in for juiciness (12 for $9). The high notes come from Haitian spicing, dominated by herbs with bursts of garlic, ginger and chives.
Other dishes: Chalmers said
her interest in lumpia and the noodle dish called pancit arose from seeing her fellow parishioners bring them to church functions.
“It’s the staple for any occasion,” she said, and her pancit is a faithful, homestyle rendition, with thin, bouncy rice noodles punctuated by cabbage, chicken, celery and carrots in a stirfry that radiates warmth and comfort ($12).
The big herbal flavors of Haitian cooking and the sweet smokiness of Korean barbecue sauce find solid balance in Christelle’s Haitian-Korean BBQ Chicken ($10), cooked to order on the flat-top grill with celery, carrots and finger-size bites of a biscuit-style bread that Chalmers
calls Grandma Sharp’s Rolls in honor of her greatgrandmother.
The menu changes on a regular basis, but a recent visit brought the green-and-orange glow of a fresh kale and mango salad ($12) and a refreshing strawberry-watermelon lemonade ($6) that I’d put up against my favorite fruit-stand aguas frescas. It paired nicely with a fist-size cinnamon roll with no interest in perfect spirals, making up for its lack of discipline with uninhibited flavor and more icing than you could possibly need and just about the amount that you secretly want ($5).
Catch Chalmers at her stand Saturdays at the New Braunfels Farmers Market, and you might catch a taste of her kolaches and pick up a bottle of zesty Island Green Sauce she makes through her sister business, Golden Pineapple. Chalmers also offers portrait photography, a fitting side venture for a kitchen where the food creates a complete picture of the person cooking it.
Snow angels, stickarmed snowmen, frosty dog paw prints — the arctic blast filled many of our social-media feeds with images of San Antonio reveling in the historic weather.
There were just as many heartbreaking photos of busted water pipes, people cooking by flashlight and spoiled food that had to be tossed because of the power outages. It was a truly trying crisis that pitted San Antonians against inclement weather unlike many of us have seen in our lifetimes.
It was also one heck of a learning experience, bringing out the survivalist in all of us as we tried to figure out ways to save our food and to forage for drinking water, though not always through the safest means. So if we ever have to face such a situation again, here are ways to do so a bit more safely.
I saw photos of stockpots full of snow as a lastditch effort to collect water from the only available source since so many of us had to struggle with frozen water pipes (myself included) for days on end. A revelation after I did a little homework on the subject: Though melted snow water is fine for flushing toilets, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises boiling snow water first to kill bacteria if intended for drinking, although that won’t eliminate other pollutants present.
Scientists who’ve studied snow pollutants have found soot from coal- and wood-burning furnaces, pesticides and soil, among other things, that mix with the snow as it swirls near the ground. Fortunately, there are a number of filtration devices that can remove most of those pollutants. I keep a few LifeStraws on hand, but many other similar emergency filtering products are available in stores and online.
Power outages also led some to try storing food items such as milk outside after the refrigerators died. Tempting as that may be, foodsafety.gov advises against it. Even with the overall temperatures below the 40-degree mark considered safe, specific spots in your yard can get warmer, especially if they’re in the sun, for example. And that can change throughout the day.
That doesn’t mean you have to toss everything if the power goes out. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says if you keep the doors shut as much as possible, the refrigerator will keep food safe for four hours, and a freezer will stay cold enough for 48 hours if it’s full and 24 hours if half full. If power is out longer than that, the American Red Cross recommends packing food into coolers with snow or ice inside to maintain temperatures below 40 degrees. Keep adding snow or ice as needed to keep it below 40 degrees.
That means it’s a good idea to invest in some simple kitchen thermometers that don’t require batteries. You could use the ones that have a probe for roasting meat or the ones meant for the refrigerator or freezer that you can hang.
Of course, one perfectly safe and downright brilliant use of snow was well documented by so many across the city: as a makeshift ice bucket to chill wine and beer. San Antonio graphic artist Christine Sykes posted on Facebook a photo of a bottle of Ben Milam Small Batch Rye Whiskey in the snow with the caption, “instead of highballs, we’re having snowballs!”
Way to keep cool, San Antonio.
Now that we’re starting to thaw out, we’re getting back to crawfish season. Celebrate the season of the live mudbug with these classic Louisiana recipes.