Houston Food Blog

​We had the pleasure of sampling the holiday goods on offer at Central Market this week, both those scattered in festive packaging throughout the store and those behind counters.

General Manager Phil Myers seemed most proud of the wares he ordered for the store during a culinary excursion to Italy last summer. Torrone, a nougat treat, might have been every third word out of his mouth. It's hard to blame him. Not only are Sorelle Nurzia's high-end candy bars making their first appearance in Texas, he says, but they're awfully good.

We tried two white-nougat varieties: one green-wrapped, with pistachios, the other red-wrapped, a chocolate-covered hazelnut-type that was particularly impressive. This isn't 3 Musketeers, canker-sore-inducing nougat. This filling is light on its feet. The hazelnuts have the right size and spacing, and the chocolate forms a nice, firm barrier that melts slowly with each bite.

The L'Aquila-based company has been family-run since the 1830s, and last April's powerful earthquake in the town didn't change that. If you need to justify a $10 torrone as charity for a rebuilding community, feel free.

In-house at Central Market, food services director Anette Grecchi Gray and staff make, among other grub, fruitcakes, German stollen bread, and pumpkin loaves (these strike the perfect balance between crispy top crust and moist interior).

​Let's start by saying that Pecan Pie in a Jar is not meant to be eaten directly from the jar. One spoonful and I was sure this taste test was over before it began, but upon further review of the fine print, it turned out you actually need eggs to make it remotely edible.

Was it better than my grandpa's pie made with pecans from the tree in his own backyard in Pasadena, or the Armadillo Palace pie that's so good it merits its own wooden carrying case? As if.

​When I can, I buy local ingredients. I feel like I'm doing my good deed for the day, and sometimes they just plain taste better. But when the price for local is almost double the competitor's price, I break my rule and forgo it.

Susan Holle started Cheesygirl in Sealy, Texas, after leaving her career as an executive for a large healthcare provider. She prides herself on making vegetarian cheese with vegetarian rennet, a necessary ingredient for cheese making. She makes classic goat cheeses, spreads and something called Satin Doll. So far, I've only found her goat cheese spreads.

Photos by Katharine Shilcutt

​Texas grocery chain H-E-B is set to open its newest Houston-area store tomorrow, November 11. The new H-E-B Spring Market on FM 2920 has taken cues from both the leviathan at Bunker Hill and I-10 and smaller, more intimate stores like the recently opened Buffalo Market. In fact, the square footage of the Spring Market is roughly the same as the Bunker Hill location -- 85,000 square feet -- but features a far better use of the space. Gone is the Cafe on the Run feature that is a carry-over from H-E-B-owned Central Market. In its place? Wider aisles and much more space. And that's only one of the new features at the Spring Market.

​We took a guided tour of the new store on Monday afternoon with store leader Rick Copeland. Copeland told us that because of the varying demographics of the area, H-E-B has made room in the store for both high-end features like the popular Sushiya station that serves fresh sushi, as well as more value-oriented features like a bulk-items section and endcaps with gifts under $10 and $20 for the upcoming holiday season. One of the centerpieces of the store is the Tortilleria, which is featured in many H-E-Bs. But unlike other Tortillerias, the Spring Market will have both corn and flour tortillas made fresh every day. Enormous paper sacks of maseca ring the large production area just off the bakery, which we're sure will be the heart of the store once it's open.

Near the front, we noticed a variety of T-shirts and caps being sold by the cash registers. UT's burnt orange and A&M's maroon immediately jumped out at us, but we weren't familiar with the navy blue or leaf green T-shirts. Upon closer inspection, we realized the T-shirts were for area high schools Klein Oak and Spring -- a nice touch for area residents.

​You can't miss the food court at the new 99 Market Asian Supermarket at Blalock and I-10. It's right inside the front door. And the sushi chefs are out on display -- you gotta love the combination of white paper face masks and old-fashioned French toques. The buffet line looks alluring, with a plate lunch selling for $5.99. There are all kinds of good-looking buns and well-dimpled dumplings.

​69¢ Gulf oysters and lobsters for under $9 a pound are among the grand-opening specials worth checking out at 99 Ranch Market, the new supermarket at I-10 and Blalock where the big Fiesta used to be. 99 Ranch Market is an Asian supermarket chain out of Los Angeles. The first store was called Tawa Supermarket; it opened in Westminster, the Little Saigon of L.A., in 1984. The chain now has 24 stores in California, two in Washington State and one in Las Vegas, along with the new Houston store.

​Acai berries, whole grain, probiotics and fiber are about to be usurped by flaxseed.

Once seen mostly in specialty health food stores and used as an additive to salads, breads and soups, flaxseed-infused products are making their way to the same store shelves that stock things like Cheez-Whiz and Captain Crunch.

Ever since Jamie Lee Curtis started putting the regular in bifidus regularis, America has had an obsession with healthy digestion. Flaxseed is attractive to health nuts because it contains omega-3 fatty acids, lignans which have antioxidant qualities and, of course, fiber. According to WebMD, there's evidence it can help reduce your risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes.

All this is great, but after seeing a friend choke down the stuff during weeks of Prevention magazine's Flat Belly Diet, it became clear an investigation was merited.

​Does the magic of a wee-hours rendezvous after a long night on 6th Street make the pancakes at Austin's Kerbey Lane so good, or can they be concentrated, boxed and shipped to places less eager to be weird?

The short answer is, yes they can.

Available for some time at Rice Epicurean market but promoted recently as a seasonal choice in their weekly Epicurean Enthusiast, Kerbey Lane pancake mixes will cure your nostalgia.

​Eating Our Words recently became acquainted with and enamored with Capital Sales, a "scratch-and-dent" grocery store on the corner of Almeda and Binz. The sign out front declares discounts to 30 to 60 percent on a wide variety of goods, and once inside, you discover it's no lie. We love to stock up on their 20-cent Jumex fruit nectars there. We mix it with Topo Chico mineral water, which, at 50 cents a bottle, can't be found any cheaper anywhere else.

Capital Sales is also strong in the coffee, jam, cereal, sauce/condiment, and canned goods departments, but it doesn't offer much in the way of meat or produce, and there is no alcohol, as near as we can tell. There are some interesting items in the frozen food department - we stocked up on pot-stickers and spring rolls at a ridiculously low price. (The only meat Capital Sales peddles is frozen.)

They also sell non-food products like shampoo, toilet paper, and feminine hygiene products, at the same discount you'll find on the food.

But if you look closely enough, you'll notice that a good portion of the items are past their sell-by dates, often by weeks or months. As a person who has been living off this stuff for weeks now, shouldn't I be dead by now?

Hardly, says City of Houston Health Department spokeswoman Cathy Barton.

Photos by J.C. Reid

​Natto is a traditional Japanese dish made of fermented soy beans. It is often eaten for breakfast as a topping on rice, and sometimes includes additional ingredients such as soy sauce, mustard, scallions or eggs. It is also known as one of the most disgusting foods in the world.

Of course, I had to try it. Natto isn't widely available in Houston, so I went to the source of all things related to Japanese food in Houston -- the wonderful Nippan Daido Japanese market at Westheimer and Wilcrest. Nippan Daido has two freezer cases full of colorfully wrapped natto packages.

There are many varieties of natto. The most common contains the natto beans and two plastic pouches filled with soy sauce (shoyu) and mustard (karashi). Another kind contains radish (daikon) sauce. The Hokkaido version apparently contains sugar. At first, a stocker at Nippan Daido was perplexed by a gaijin asking about natto, but he eventually explained that the variety you consume depends on personal preference, family tradition and geography.

Photos by Robb Walsh

​Grass-fed sirloin hamburger steak is downright delicious. No doubt grass-fed beef raised without antibiotics and hormones is better for you too. Grass-fed sirloins lack the marbling that makes for tender steaks. But grind it up, and you get all the bold herbaceous flavor without the tenderness and texture problems. My hamburger steak was a little dry -- after all, the meat is something like 95 percent lean. But if you ground up this grass-fed beef at home, and added a little bacon, you'd have one helluva burger.

Georgia's Grass-Fed Beef is produced by Georgia Bost in Waller County. A renaissance woman, Georgia Bost is an ethnobotanist and wetlands biologist, with multiple degrees from Rice. She is responsible for hybridizing hibiscus varieties from the swamps of East Texas and adapting them to landscape applications. After learning about the medicinal properties of the plant, she began making teas, culinary vinegars, and other products using hibiscus and selling them in local Houston venues. When she started an organic farm to grow hibiscus, she got into grass-fed beef as a sideline.

Photo by That Other Paper

​Irate progressives are calling for a boycott of Whole Foods after the health food store chain's founder John Mackey came out against Obama's efforts at reforming health care in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece last week. After stating his fears about socialized medicine, Mackey made a few suggestions of his own.

"Recent scientific and medical evidence shows that a diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most degenerative diseases that kill us and are expensive to treat. We should be able to live largely disease-free lives until we are well into our 90s and even past 100 years of age," he wrote.

In other words, if you shopped at Whole Foods, you wouldn't have any health problems.

Photos by Robb Walsh

​Viet Hoa supermarket is the place to get live blue crabs lately. I thought the 99-cents-a-pound price was a limited time special, but regulars tell me blue crab has been 99 cents/pound at Viet Hoa for awhile now. The thing is, when you walk up to the crab counter, most of the crabs are either tiny or dead. There is some strategy involved, especially on Saturday morning.

Photo by Robb Walsh

​You may recognize the heart-shaped leaves and weird aroma of this Vietnamese herb. It's called dap ca, or fish mint in English. You often get fish mint on the herb plate when you order bo nuong xa, the popular dish that comes with lemongrass-marinated beef, herbs, shredded carrots, cucumbers and rice paper sheets. The roll-your-own entrée is known by many Anglo Houstonians as "Vietnamese fajitas."

Crush a leaf of fish mint between your fingers and see what you think it smells like. Observers seem to experience the aroma differently. About half of the people quizzed say it smells like fish. The other half say it smells like a rusty cast iron skillet. I have to admit, I love the stuff mixed in with the chile peppers, cilantro and basil on my Vietnamese fajitas -- it gives the flavor another dimension.

Photos by Robb Walsh

​As we reported previously, there is a glut of cheap lobster on the market. Last Thursday, I took advantage of the weak market by picking up three sea monsters for a dinner party. The prices at Hong Kong Supermarket in Bellaire Chinatown were $8.99 a pound for big lobsters, and $6.99 for small one-clawed lobsters. (That's a long way down from the $12.99 we usually pay in Houston.) I bought a five-pounder and two three-pounders.

Eating whole lobsters gets pretty messy. And some diners who aren't veteran lobster eaters get intimidated by the claw-cracking and body-ripping thing. So I figured I needed to make a lobster dish that was easy to eat. Boulibasse was my first thought since I got a lot of top quality Spanish saffron a while back and I wanted to use it up before it dried out.

Photos by Katharine Shilcutt

Whimsical cakes take the stage at the Buffalo Market's bakery

​H-E-B is opening yet another new concept store in Houston, after finding success here with Central Market, H-E-B Pantry, Mi Tienda and the vast new 129,000-square-foot H-E-B at Bunker Hill and I-10. Buffalo Market, so called for its location along Buffalo Speedway at Bissonnet, will have its grand opening tomorrow -- August 5 -- at 6 a.m. after nearly five years in the making.

The wine section stocks 2,000 bottles of the good stuff

​Those five years were spent purchasing the parcels of land -- which once held a Luby's, a Molina's and the old Buffalo Pharmacy -- and consulting with members of the local community before building the store itself. H-E-B met with groups like area mom clubs, HISD, Rice University and even the residents of the retirement community (The Terrace) located directly behind the store when trying to discover the community's needs. The result is a community-integrated store unlike anything else in Houston: The original, longtime pharmacists from the Buffalo Pharmacy have been transplanted into the Buffalo Market, even going so far as to retain home delivery service. And the senior citizens at The Terrace have their own private, gated entrance to the store.

While the 68,000-square-foot store may seem small in comparison to its larger sisters, its size seems ideal when considering the concept: a mixture of Central Market's offerings (like the popular Cafe on the Run) with an emphasis on fresh, organic produce with a standard grocery store side that allows you to pick up regular old Cheetos and toilet paper in the same trip. The aisles are wide, and the selection is vast for such a petite store. And the broad, gleaming windows let in remarkable amounts of light for such an energy-efficient store.

Continue reading " The Stampede Towards Buffalo Market"...

Photo by Robb Walsh

Desperate lobster fisherman are selling cheap lobsters by the side of the road, undercutting an already weak market for the luxury seafood item, according to recent accounts. An Atlantic article, "The Mystery of Cheap Lobster Prices," explains that the crash of the Icelandic banking system and subsequent closing of Canadian packing plants is to blame for the flood of lobster that's currently hitting the market. With nowhere to unload their excess catch, lobstermen are putting too much lobster on the market, which is resulting in lower prices.

The H-E-B Store at Bunker Hill had a Father's Day special on lobster at $5.99 a pound. It's currently charging $11.99 a pound, but the lady answering the phone in the seafood department said to watch for another lobster special soon. You should also start seeing some sweet deals on lobster in Houston restaurants as the summer progresses. I plan to eat lots when the price is right.

As local grocery stores continue to fight over their share of your food dollars, H-E-B has started up My TexasLife, a monthly magazine to try to get more customers into its stores. The handsome publications (about 30 pages each and published by none other than Texas Monthly) offer bright food photographs, wholesome families and heads-up on such things as the rubber mulch H-E-B will start selling in the spring (it's made from recycled H-E-B truck tires).

In the May issue, what follows are health and cooking tips, recipes, a quick primer on how to plan a party, the cork vs. cap debate over how wine should be delivered, beauty tips and lots of coupons.

The June edition talks about the outstanding teacher awards H-E-B hands out every year, the power of vitamins, more recipes, more wine, cleaning tools and lots of coupons.

The monthly issues also tell you what items are on sale.   

It's a free publication (and here at the Press we're all in favor of free publications) that customers can pick up in the store. Since just ripping out a few back pages of coupons can save several dollars on a shopping trip, you might want to add it to your arsenal of survival skills while we're in recession mode.

Photo by Robb Walsh

Cucuzza is a Sicilian squash that's sometimes eaten young like summer squash and sometimes allowed to grow to three or four feet, when it's eaten like winter squash. (It's the one that looks like a green baseball bat.) Cucuzza squash blossoms are also considered a treat in Sicilian cooking.

Each female cucuzza squash blossom has to be pollinated to turn into a squash -- the problem is that the blooms only last for one night. So cucuzza growers put beehives in the squash field during the season. The bees take care of the nocturnal pollination duties, and in the process, they make the treasured cucuzza miele di fiori, as the squash blossom honey is known in Italian.

So when I found four bottles of cucuzza blossom honey for sale for $5.50 each at Canino's the other day, I couldn't resist. The pale-colored honey has a delicate flavor that's great for breakfast.

The pita bread at Droubi's Bakery & Deli at 2721 Hillcroft used to be my favorite because you could always find a package that was still warm. The Hillcroft location is where Droubi's does all its baking. But recently Phoenicia Specialty Foods at 12141 Westheimer one-upped Droubi's.

Not only is the pita there baked fresh -- it comes out of the second floor oven on a conveyor belt that transports it to the bread department downstairs in the middle of the store. The flatbread is so hot, it's still puffy. It has to be squashed down so it will fit in the bag. You can snag a sack of hot pita minutes after it comes out of the oven.

Then you can sit down at a table in Phoenicia's new outdoor dining area and eat it right out of the bag.

Photo by Robb Walsh

Where: Hubbell & Hudson Sandwich Counter, 24 Waterway Avenue, The Woodlands, 281-203-5600

What $7 will get you: Some of the best sandwiches in the greater Houston area. The Italian grinder, piled high with ham, salami and roasted red peppers, was $7. Most of the sandwiches at the made-to-order sandwich station are $6 or $7. The Cuban, made authentically in a sandwich press, is a little higher at $8. There are all kinds of exotic salads for sale by the pound in the prepared foods case if you're looking for a side dish. You can eat your sandwich at the tables upstairs overlooking the market or outside on the sidewalk. (And if you want to have an actual sit-down meal, there's also a fancy bistro with a bar.)

Photos by Robb Walsh

I used to think I was a beef jerky connoisseur because I pulled over at Woody's Smokehouse on I-45 halfway to Dallas and tried a different variety of jerky every time I took a trip north. I also thought turkey jerky was pretty adventurous. That was before I visited the store in Hong Kong City Mall called Kho Bo Houston. Kho bo means beef jerky in Vietnamese. I had no idea the Vietnamese were such jerky enthusiasts. Beyond dried meat and fish products, the store seems to sell all kinds of dried fruits, nuts and candies. I saw dried papaya, dried jackfruit and more than a dozen varieties of dried plums in various seasonings.

Last year, when Saveur editor James Oseland was in town, I took him to Hong Kong City Mall. Oseland lived in Indonesia for a long time, and he was thrilled to see ripe jackfruit on sale. Jackfruit have been cultivated in Asia for more than 6,000 years and are highly prized in Indonesia. Late spring and early summer is the usual season for jackfruit.

A whole jackfruit looks like a watermelon with goosebumps and costs around $50 ($3.50 a pound; they average around 15 pounds). Inside, there's a woody flesh that looks like honeycomb, with a series of chambers containing chunks of fruit. Each piece of fruit looks like a giant corn kernel and has a smooth, white seed inside. The fruit kernels tastes like a cross between mango and overripe pineapple, with a dense chewy texture.

Photo by Robb Walsh

Hudson & Hubbell had some "Wild Alaskan Copper River Salmon" on display in the fish case yesterday. It was selling for $30 a pound. "There is no such thing as Copper River salmon," Jon Rowley wrote back when I asked him how the season was going in Alaska. Instead, there is Copper River King salmon, and Copper River Sockeye salmon. And there's a big difference.

Rowley is a Seattle seafood marketing consultant and former fisherman who came up with the idea of adding the place name to the fish. He suggests that consumers need more details from retail fish counters and restaurants when they are paying these kinds of prices.

The season for Copper River King salmon, the highly prized fish that started the marketing trend, has been very spotty this year. It's been good for Copper River Sockeye salmon, but that fish sells for about half the price and tastes quite different. When somebody offers you Copper River salmon, ask them if it's King or Sockeye, Rowley advises, and make sure the price is right.

Photos by Nikki Metzgar

There's something luxurious about the banchan, or side dishes, that come with Korean meals. Before dinner has even begun, the table is already full of food -- ten different little dishes -- and everyone gets their own fried fish. Of course, the most recognizable dish is the kimchee.

If you thought there was only one type of kimchee (guilty), a trip to Super H Mart will prove you wrong. In the refrigerated section alone there are more than a half dozen types besides the cabbage kimchee you typically eat: leek, cucumber and turnip green among them. The jars range in size from 32 ounces all the way up to 128 ounces.