New Foodie Destination: Lone Star Culinary

This self-proclaimed "spice market" is a great new resource for Houston's foodie culture.

Lone Star Culinary
2503 Link Rd. (at Airline, across from Canino's)
Houston, TX 77009

So I was walking back to my car at Canino Market this weekend and glancing across Airline Drive my eye caught the words "spice market." For a foodie, the words "spice market" are always a good sign. Visions of frankincense and myrrh, Marco Polo and the spice road, the Grand Bazaar in Instanbul, spice-laden camel caravans in Yemen all come to mind. OK, this wasn't quite so romantic, but Lone Star Culinary, as this spice market is called, is a great new destination for vicarious foodie travel.

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Once inside, one whole wall of the store is given over to powdered spices. It's an impressive lineup. The store has only been open for about a month so some of the containers have yet to be filled, but the breadth and depth of this spice collection is great.

The opposite wall of the store is home to an encyclopedic collection of dried herbs, spices and teas. What wall space that's left over is filled with a flat screen TV tuned to the Food Network. Nice touch.

The center of the store has shelves containing interesting foodie gewgaws and knickknacks, many of an Hispanic and Mexican-American variety.

I encourage all my fellow Houston Foodies to patronize Lone Star Culinary. This is a great addition to the Houston Foodie scene.

Whole Foods gets a bailout; Luby's doesn't - yet

Not unexpectedly, the economic tough times are taking a toll on high-end supermarkets like Whole Foods. But there's always someone willing to throw good money after bad.

Whole Foods had a bad quarter. No big surprise. Fortunately a sugar-daddy stepped in with a wad of cash to provide the "financial flexibility to manage through these difficult economic times." We'll see.

For a hilarious take on the Whole Foods phenomenon including the recent troubles, check out Tim Hayward at the Gaurdian. He actually called Whole Foods a "grotesquely overpriced bunny-food emporium." And I thought I was hard on Whole Foods!

Meanwhile, Luby's reported a 3.7 million dollar loss for the quarter. Ouch. I guess the price increase hasn't kicked in yet.

Link Feast: 11.7.08

Eat and Tell - Lengthy article about Yelp but nothing we didn't already know.

Regis Philbin as Gordon Ramsay? - One of the more bizarre foodie videos you will ever see. Hey Reg, you could at least use a British accent!

A waiter's tips to New York - Some things never change: Scarfing down a Bistro burger after a late night waiting tables in NY.

Presidential Polling Through Food and Drink - Rumor has it that these polls were more accurate than Fox News polls! Ha!

Campaign Cuisine: See Obama And McCain Eat... A Lot - Can you look presidential while eating porkchop-on-a-stick?

Foodie Movies: Big Night

Few movies speak to the inner-most passions of the true foodie like cult favorite Big Night.

In addition to being an insightful and entertaining film, Big Night, the story of Italian restaurateur brothers in 1950s New Jersey, is loaded with memorable quotes.

"Bite your teeth into the ass of life!"

"A guy works all day, he don't want to look at his plate and ask, 'What the f--- is this?' He wants to look at his plate, see a steak, and say 'I like steak!'"

"Give people what they want, then later you can give them what you want."

All of these quotes and many others help to define the many plot twists, themes and messages of this classic Foodie Movie.

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This movie does not reinvent the wheel when it comes to plot and story. It addresses the usual subjects: human relationships between siblings, lovers, husbands, wives, artists, businessmen. However its genius comes from the way it represents those relationships — always within the framework of food, cuisine, cooking, and by extension happiness, pleasure, and passion.

The eclectic but perfectly chosen cast includes the legendary Isabella Rossellini, a then-unknown Marc Anthony, pre-Monk Tony Shalhoub, and the incomparable Ian Holm.

Foodie Favorite: Yes

Honeycrisp season is here!

The perfect fruit, perhaps the perfect food, and certainly the perfect apple, is available for a couple of months in the fall.

Honeycrisp apples are now in season and available for a limited time at many local supermarkets. Although my opinions about Whole Foods are well documented, I have to recommend going to the Whole Foods on W. Alabama to get the best honeycrisp apples. Specifically it is the only location I know of that has organic honeycrisps. Central Market did not have any available today but the manager said they were on the way. Disco Kroger had a basket of apples with a honeycrisp sign in front of them, and they looked like honeycrisp, but they were individually labeled as Jonah Gold. Go figure. I'm going to try and make it out to Canino Market this week to see what kind of selection they have.

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So what's so great about honeycrisp apples? Basically, they are the perfect balance of sweetness and tartness, with a wonderfully crisp flesh. Extra juicy too. The most common description of these apples is that they "pop" when you bite into them. The skin is a mottled red and green, representing a symbolic combination of Red Delicious (sweet) and Granny Smith (tart) apples. But unlike Red Delicious, whose skin is often thick, waxy and chewy, the honeycrisp skin is thin and tender. All-in-all, just about the perfect snack food.

A Day In The Life Of The "World's Best Restaurant"

The grand guru of Foodie culture, Ferran Adria, is out with a new book containing 30 recipes from his landmark restaurant and food lab El Bulli. However there is one caveat: Do not try these recipes at home!

Several years ago, before the popularity of food blogging and food tourism, I came across a book called El Bulli 1998-2002. I had heard of El Bulli and Ferran Adria, but did not know the details of his "high-end gastronomy." Well I had to have that book. The only problem? It cost $300! Seriously. A book. One book. But I had to have it...

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So I recruited the only other foodie crazy enough to spend $300 on a book: Kenorwox, my NY correspondent for Houston Foodie. So we both ponied up the cash and a few weeks later a package arrived from Spain (at the time it wasn't even available on Amazon — you had to order it from the source). What an eye opener. Food wasn't just food. It was a "cinematic experience" created through "molecular gastronomy" etc. Sure, this kind of thing wasn't for everyone, but it was fascinating none-the-less. Kenorwox even took some classes on how to make the signature "foams" using all the wacky tools and gadgets.

So now a new Ferran Adria book is out (mercifully priced at less than $40) called A Day at elBulli. Ferran is making the rounds to promote the book and NPR has some great coverage.

• A Day In The Life Of The "World's Best Restaurant"
• Listen to Podcast

If there are any other Houston Foodies willing to make the pilgrimage to El Bulli, let me know. Reservations are taken at least one year in advance!

Pizza Napoletana: When in Naples...

Let's face it — Houston is not a city known for its pizza. At least not compared with the big boys like New York or Rome, and certainly not the holy of holies — Naples, Italy.

And neither should it be compared to these pizza capitals. But I have always felt that Houston is a bit underachieving in the average quality of its pizza joints. This can of course be attributed to the ubiquity of pizza chains like Cici's, Dominos, Papa Johns, Pizza Hut. And when it comes to pizza chains, there is good news and bad news. The good news is they are consistent. The bad news is they are consistently bad.

So what's a pizza lover like me to do? In situations like these I always follow the old adage "If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself." And that is how I came to make and bake my first pizza from scratch.

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What kind of pizza? Deep dish, thin crust, chewy, gooey, crispy — there are lots of choices. To help me with my decision I first considered my own past experience with pizza. Then I looked to those few shining stars of pizza craft that call Houston home.

Growing up in Southeast Texas, even before Dominos and Papa Johns, there was Pizza Inn. All-in-all a serviceable pizza experience for a young man who did not know any better (I was just a chowpup back then). But my real revelation came in my late teens backpacking through Europe. Arriving at Rome's Stazioni Termini after an overnight trip from Paris, my first goal was to find Roman fast food. After a week of baguettes, crepes, croissants and Burghy burgers, I was ready for a change. And Rome delivered in spades.

The typical Roman pizza joint offered pizza rustica with a kaleidoscope of toppings, sold by the rectangular "slice." But the pizza I always came back to had a thin, crispy crust, a restrained amount of tomato sauce and melted, gooey dollops of fresh mozzarella cheese. It was during this time in Rome that I was introduced to "real" pizza — Pizza Napoletana.

And I have been eating — worshipping — it ever since. Living in NY I split my time between the traditional (original) NY style pizza — floppy, foldy, gooey, drippy with grease — and the traditional Pizza Napoletana. Back in Houston I found both. Great NY style at Romano's Pizza. Pizza Napoletana-style at Dolce Vita (wood-fired) and Russo's (coal-fired), and Kenneally's (not brick oven but still good).

But even these local pizza havens somehow paled in comparison to my memories of Rome. And even though I wasn't in Rome, I decided to do as the Romans and Neapolitans do — make my own pizza.

Remembering an old Molto Mario episode for Pizza Napoletana, I pulled the DVD and grabbed the recipe from the Food Network website.

First up was the dough. Since I do not possess the Popeye-like forearms necessary for manually kneading pizza dough for 10-15 minutes nonstop, I enlisted Big Momma to do the heavy lifting kneading. The great thing about this dough recipe was its simplicity — a traditional yeast dough flavored white wine, olive oil, honey and salt. After kneading, the dough was allowed to proof for a good 45 minutes. And, voila!

It has risen! I cannot accurately describe the fragrance emanating from this ball of goodness — earthy, bready, yeasty. So far so good.

On to the sauce. Again, simplicity — olive oil, onions, garlic, fresh thyme, shredded carrot, and hand-crushed San Marzano tomatoes. Combine and simmer for 30 minutes.

Time for assembly. I cut the dough ball into 4 equal parts and individually wrapped 3 of them for freezing and later use. I flattened and kneaded the remaining dough into a thin platform for the sauce, oregano, fresh mozzerella, and fresh basil leaves:

This looked promising (if you hadn't noticed, these are the colors of the Italian flag — red, white and green). Now onto a pre-heated pizza stone for 10-12 minutes:

At this point it looked good and smelled good. And after digging in, it tasted...great. Absolutely fresh. The flavors married perfectly. The crust, essentially a structural support for the sauce and cheese, was crispy on the outside but soft and steamy once you but into it.

I can't say this pizza was better than the brick-oven Pizza Napoletana from the best Houston pizza joints. But it was somehow different. Fresher. More authentic maybe? Combined with a fresh green salad and a glass of Italian red wine, I thought I was back in Rome.