Flounder season has just started, and I have had it twice already. It's a wonderfully flavorful fish that's almost always cooked whole because it is nearly impossible to get all the meat off the bones in a filet. I had some simple fried flounder last weekend at Captain Benny's served with a pile of dirty rice and some garlic bread. It was pretty tasty, though maybe a little overcooked. The oysters at the Captain's boat-shaped restaurant were a better bet.
Machacada con huevo, the Northern Mexican dish of dried beef with scrambled eggs, makes a lovely Saturday morning breakfast. I ate a wonderful version last Saturday at of La Plaza restaurant on Bingle at Long Point. The interior of this place looks like an all-American diner.
I was confused when I first looked at the menu because, although La Plaza appears to be a Mexican restaurant, all the breakfasts were standard American fare like bacon and eggs and pancakes. When I asked the waitress about it, she looked at me like I was dolt, and turned the menu over. The Mexican breakfasts were on the other side.
Doh! I forgot to go to the Thursday spaghetti luncheon at Saint Basil the Great Greek Orthodox Church on Eldridge Parkway again. Every Thursday I wake up with the intention of going to the spaghetti luncheon, but then something happens or I just plain forget about it. I love the idea of a spaghetti fundraiser at a church named St. Basil. I never even knew there was a St. Basil. Turns out he was called St. Basil the Great to differentiate him from his father, Saint Basil the Elder. He was famous for a homily condemning usury, but there are no records of any food writing.
My brother Dave got me hooked on these hot and spicy saltines. He says they're the perfect oyster crackers. I haven't tried them with oysters yet, but I will soon. The home version of these has been around for a long time. You mix up a package of dry ranch dressing mix, some kind of dried chile peppers and salad oil and pour it over saltines in a container, then turn the container until the mixture is absorbed. Easy, but messy.
We sampled the banh cuon nhan thit nuong, or steamed rice rolls with chargrilled pork, at Huynh on Emanuel for lunch the other day. The cute little rolls came crowded in a soup bowl with a vinegar and fish sauce dip on the side. I thought of them as Vietmanese pigs in a blanket. When the waitress saw us dipping each roll, she suggested we just dump the dipping sauce over top of the rolls. I guess that's why they come in a bowl.
I tried my first chocolate raised doughnut at the Shipley's on Bingle just north of Long Point. The chocolate flavor was very faint, and while the doughnut was fresh, it wasn't warm anymore. The raised and glazed doughnuts, on the other hand, were piping hot. There weren't any in the bin -- they had to walk over and get them from the cooling rack in the bakery, which is always a good sign.
My first oysters on the half shell this season came from Captain Benny's in Austin. They were good-looking and reasonably tasty, considering we haven't had much cold weather yet. If I had to bet, I'd say these oysters were harvested in Louisiana a week or so ago. (The season opens in October over there.) I like to wait until November 1 to start eating oysters because that's the day the season opens in Texas. It was a little odd to be eating my first oysters of the year in Austin rather than say, San Leon, but there were extenuating circumstances.
I hardly ever get a fajita taco anymore. I am always looking for something more interesting, like lengua or barbacoa. But at the El Charro across from the Maxwell House plant, all of the tacos come hot off the griddle, rather than out of a steam table. So the fajita meat is actually crispy. I sat down at the window-side counter in the funky dining room decorated with horses and cowboys and ate my taco. ("Charro" means "cowboy" in Mexican Spanish.)
The Bavarian cream-filled Bismark is the thing to get at Daily Donut on Barker Cypress just north of 290. The cream-filled donut there was delicious, while the raised donut was stale and lame. Though Daily Donut calls this a Bismark, some would disagree with both the usage and the spelling. Exactly what is or isn't a Bismark is one of those pastry pilpuls that you could spend the rest of the week arguing about.
So long, anonymity -- it's been swell. For nearly ten years now, I have done my job incognito. Now I am joining the ranks of no-longer-anonymous restaurant critics. Last Friday, I gave a lecture to the students and faculty of the Texas A&M Meat Science Center without the usual hat and sunglasses. I didn't wear a disguise on Sunday when I appeared at the Texas Book Festival either. Soon you will be able to Google grainy photos of me to your heart's content. I also have given my publishers an author's photo to use for publicity.
Jason Sheehan, the critic for our sister paper, the Denver Westword, also appeared at the book festival in Austin on Sunday. Sheehan's photo appears on the back flap of his new book Cooking Dirty. For good measure, he also published his photo on Westword's food blog. "No one ever recognizes me anyway," Sheehan told me at the book fair. Since he shed his anonymity, Jonathan Gold, who reviews restaurants for our sister paper the LA Weekly, said he has "noticed absolutely no difference in being recognized in restaurants. None. Zero."
In an article by Regina Schrambling called "Restaurant Critics Are Blowing Their Own Covers," some media wags contended that the whole idea of anonymity is dated and faintly ridiculous in the Internet age. According to the article, any prominent reviewer who thinks he isn't already being recognized at high-end restaurants is fooling himself.
The Barbecue 101 class for freshman at Texas A&M is using my Legends of Texas Barbecue as a textbook, so I was invited to be the guest lecturer last Friday. The subject was brisket, and the theme was "To Wrap, or Not to Wrap." I talked about the history and methodology of brisket cooking, and then we tasted six briskets that had been cooked in a smoker parked on the sidewalk out in front of the building.
The meat was prepared according to six different recipes. Jim Goode's recipe for "plugged brisket" was a favorite of most tasters. The recipe appears in my book along with a recipe for Goode's elaborate mop sauce. The mop sauce contains four cups of beef broth and a pound of bacon along with a zillion spices - it's very tempting to eat the stuff like soup. Some of the unwrapped briskets came out dry, as you might expect. And some of the wrapped meat got pretty squishy.
When I wrote about mustard recently, I got so many interesting recommendations that I went out and bought a bunch. Some of the tastiest mustards I tried were imported. Here are my current top five imported mustards:
5. Maille Dijon Originale (Canada)
Good mustard seed, excellent vinegar, a touch of citrus and plenty of salt are the secret ingredients of the mustard that usually beats all comers in blind taste tests. There is a Maille store in Paris and one in Dijon. These boutiques sell top-quality vinegars and extremely potent fresh mustards that are never more then ten days old. The original French Maille mustard sells for something like $15 a jar. The Maille mustard we buy in the U.S. is a watered-down, shelf-stable version of the real thing. There is a little French flag on the label of the plastic squeeze bottle with the words: "France's Favourite Mustard." Which would lead you to believe that this mustard is imported from France -- but it's actually made in Canada.
I ate a brisket and sausage sandwich the other day at the new Brookstreet BBQ location on Westheimer west of Beltway 8. Ever since I ate the Bohemian Special at Mustang Creek BBQ in Louise, I have been trying to recreate the brisket and sausage sandwich at every barbecue joint I walk into. The counter man at Brookstreet had no problem with my request to make the sandwich with fatty end brisket instead of the lean flat he had out on the cutting board. And the sausage was excellent. Too bad Brookstreet uses Southern Pride barbecue ovens instead of a real pit, but what can you expect in a strip center?
The first guavas of the season are starting to appear in the stalls behind Canino's. Guayaba is the Spanish word for guava. The fruit is native to North America, and the word derives from the Arawak tribe of the Caribbean, who called a guava tree a "guayabo." The green-skinned, white-fleshed kind they are selling now at the produce stalls are called apple guavas. The more exotic red guavas and strawberry guavas are more highly prized.
I bought a dollar's worth, which amounted to six guavas. I got some nice soft ones so I could eat them out of hand. They taste sort of like seedy pears. Guavas are incredibly good for you; in fact, they are classified as a superfruits. One guava has four times the amount of vitamin C in an orange. They also contain vitamin A, omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, potassium, magnesium, and -- if you eat the seeds -- lots of fiber.
At El Bolillo on Airline you can buy the traditional skull-shaped loaves of pan de muertosalong with cool loaves that look like little bodies. (I assume from the crossed arms across the chest, they are meant to be dead bodies.) Pan de muertos is the traditional bread of Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican holiday celebrated on November 2. You put pan de muertos on your ofrenda (Day of the Dead altar) to nourish the souls of the departed who come to visit.
I am not sure the Polish food store beside Polonia actually has a name. The sign just says "Kielbasa, Golabki, Pierogi." The store is justly famous for its fabulous jelly-filled paczki doughnuts and outrageous kabonosy and kielbasa. (They fly in 600 pounds of sausage from Chicago each week.) But I am usually in such a hurry to get my doughnuts and sausage out to the parking lot that I ignore the rest of the store. Last week my housemate demanded a full tour, and we ended up at the cash register with a big pile of items that we couldn't live without.
David Landsel, the travel editor of the New York Post, stopped over in Houston on his way to Mexico City earlier this week. He asked me to take him to a regional Mexican restaurant. So we went to Tampico, where he took photos of his Vuelva a la Vida seafood cocktail for blog posterity. I also took Landsel to the market stalls behind Canino's, where he ate his first guayaba and admired the leafy green herbs. Then we checked out the pan muerto at El Bolillo and the spices at Texas Culinary Center.
It wasn't Landsel's first trip to Houston. He recounted his initial reactions about our city in a long travel piece published in the New York Post last month. My favorite quote in that piece was "the Menil is as Houston as it gets -- laid back, vaguely cuckoo, but always 100 percent serious about its mission."
I was singing "Kielbasa" by Tenacious D when the gorgeous blond waitresses delivered my hot sausage on a sizzling comal at Polonia restaurant on Blalock the other day. "I love ya baby, but all I can think about is Kielbasa sausage."
Next time I go to a flea market and see some those flat, oval-shaped Mexican comals set in a wooden frame, I am going to buy a couple. They became famous when sizzling fajitas were first served on them in the 1990s, but I have seen the little frying pans adapted to a lot of culinary presentations. Polonia's kielbasa and sauerkraut on a sizzling comal, for instance. Is this the ultimate in Tex-Pole cuisine, or what?
Chef Simon Moon is the owner of Korea Garden Grille, the subject of this week's Café review. If you have never eaten Korean barbecue before, this is a great place to try it, because chef Moon makes the experience really easy. When several people in our party confessed that they didn't know where to start, Moon took them through the entire buffet line, explaining it item by item.
My brother Dave is a restaurant purveyor, and he once specialized in Chinese restaurants. Dave memorized the funniest lines from portly stand-up comic John Pinette's hilarious bit about being banned from the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. Dave launches into the outraged Chinese restaurant-owner routine whenever the family gathers -- especially when somebody goes back for seconds on the Thanksgiving pumpkin pie.
For this week's Cafe review, I visited Korean Garden Grille with a dining companion who was more interested in the appetizers than the barbecue. I took the same dining companion to a little mom-and-pop eatery called Korean Diner because I figured the place would have her favorite Korean item -- seafood pancakes. Korean Diner is not the place to go for bulgogi, but the seafood pancake was top-notch and the soft tofu soup wasn't bad either. Korean Diner is located on Blalock just past H-Mart. It's only been open for six months, and it seems to be fairly popular at lunchtime.
The barbecued pork in the banh cuon thit nuong at Tay Ho 18 in Hong Kong City Mall isn't as charred and crispy as the barbecued pork in the banh cuon thit nuong at Thien Thanh on Bellaire, but it's still pretty tasty. At Tay Ho 18, you can watch through a glass wall while the woman who makes the banh cuon prepares each roll from a huge stack of rice paper sheets.
Banh cuon restaurants are a lot more common in Southern California than they are in Houston. Tay Ho 18 is the 18th franchise location of an Orange County restaurant chain. The tables, surrounded by partitions, are set out in the open part of the mall, just outside the door of Ocean Palace. I walk by the place every time I go to Ocean Palace for dim sum, and it always seems to be crowded. It wasn't until I started looking for banh cuon that I realized exactly what the attraction was.
A plate of churros and a mug of hot chocolate is the best dessert on the menu at Hugo's, the upscale Mexican restaurant on Westheimer. A churro is a Mexican donut made by pushing dough through a nozzle into a deep fryer. The nozzle gives the long, stick-shaped donut pronounced ridges, which trap the cinnamon and sugar topping.
At Hugo's, the kitchen doesn't fry the churros until they are ordered, so they're served piping hot. Hugo's fills the hollow tube inside the donut with dulce de leche and serves it on a plate with a little scoop of mocha ice cream. But I can't afford to pay ten dollars every time I want a Mexican donut. So I had to find some alternate suppliers.
The jalapeños I bought a couple of weeks ago turned red and started to shrivel, so I figured I might as well make a big batch of red and green jalapeño jelly and put it in little jars for Christmas gifts. Jalapeño jelly got its lowbrow reputation from the holiday tradition of pouring the stuff over cream cheese and serving it with crackers. I'm not very fond of that appetizer, but I love jalapeño jelly.
Pepper jelly is wonderful to have around when you're grilling. Thin it with a little white wine and keep it in a pan on your grill. Just before you take your meat or seafood off the grill, paint it with the jalapeño jelly glaze and flip it over the fire a couple of times until it bubbles and sets. The sweet and hot glaze is perfect for grilled pork chops, lamb chops, venison backstrap and shrimp.
Forget the dollar menu at Taco Bell, the tamale torta at Doña Tere on Bissonnet is a full meal for $1.79. I got the chile beef tamale and doused the bolillo with salsa to lubricate the rather dry-looking combo of starch on starch. It tasted better than it looked. But next time, I think I'll add lettuce, tomatoes, avocado and mayo. The chicken tamale with green sauce wouldn't be bad as a filling either.
Dip your you tiao(Chinese doughnuts) in your dou jiang (warm, sweetened soy milk) at Classic Kitchen in the 9888 Bellaire shopping center near Beltway 8. This is probably the most popular place in the city for a Taiwanese-style breakfast. It's also a great place to eat dumplings, tofu soup and an omelet with green onions. And the noodles are served in a wide variety of sizes and thicknesses.
Don't expect a lot of help from the waitstaff here -- they are notoriously grumpy. You'll find the you tiao listed as "fried long bread" in the English section of Classic Kitchen's menu. It sells for $1.20 an order. While these Chinese crullers are usually eaten for breakfast with the rice porridge called congee or with hot soy milk, they are made from a dough that isn't sweetened, so don't be surprised if your doughnuts taste salty.
The Houston Health Department requires that every taco truck must visit a commissary to dump waste, refill the tanks with potable water and sanitize the kitchen every 24 hours. Each truck has to carry receipts for these daily services and display a current Health Department inspection sticker. There are 12 of these taco truck commissaries around the city, and I always wondered what one looked like.
Go to the Polish food store next door to Polonia restaurant on Blalock and Campbell on Saturday morning at around 10 a.m., and you can get your paczki hot out of the fryer. Polish paczki are jelly donuts made with an extremely rich pastry and a fruit filling -- this week the paczki at Polonia are filled with rose hip jam. They sell for $1.49 each at the store. Paczki are also served for dessert on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Polonia restaurant for $2 a piece.
If you love artichokes, but want to cut down on the nutritional benefits, you can dip them in mayonnaise or melted butter. That's what I used to do -- until I encountered the artichokes at Mint Café, a hip little Lebanese restaurant that went out of business last summer. The artichokes there were covered with an olive oil, garlic, parsley and lemon juice dressing that made the vegetable taste spectacular. I reluctantly abandoned my beloved mayo and started using the olive oil garlic dressing at home.
The concept went a little further when I discovered Lebanese stuffed artichokes, or ardishawki bi zayt. The more elaborate recipes for this dish call for several varieties of beans to be added to the ingredients used here, but I wanted to keep it simple. You use the leaves of the artichoke to scoop up the stuffing. This recipe turns a couple of artichokes into a very cool appetizer, and it's extremely easy.
The glazed old-fashioned at Best Donuts on Braeswood at Hillcroft in Meyerland was excellent. It was also much bigger than the sad, stale little raised and glazed donut I sampled there. While I stood at the counter, I could see hot donuts cooling on a rack in the back, but I couldn't convince any of the non-English speaking employees to get me one. Whether they truly didn't understand me--or they just didn't want to go get me a hot donut -- I am not really sure.
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