Cookbook shows off Houston’s food tapestry
Woven with the Texas staples of Mexican, barbecue and seafood, Houston’s culinary scene has exploded with delightful ethnic, yes, fusion fare.
During a too short five-day trip, a combination of fabulous food and friends offered the best of this foodie area. Yes, the fourth largest city has come a long way cuisine-wise.
While waiting for lunch at Helen Greek Food and Wine in Houston’s Rice University Village, I perused the wine racks and cookbook shelves. Yes, I am always on the lookout for new and different cookbooks, and did I find a goodie.
“Houston Cooks” by Francine Spiering is a cookbook reader’s and cook’s book. It features 40 top restaurants and their chefs, all as varied and interesting as their city. Women chefs also are on the rise in Houston. One of those chefs, Monica Pope, has been around since the 1990s. What she does with vegetables will be a taste sensation. She owns Sparrow Cookshop, where she teaches classes and hosts special events and monthly Sunday Suppers.
Yes, William Wright, chef at Helen Greek, is one of the chefs. I have had lamb gyros and lamb and beef gyros, but never Black Hill Ranch pork that was full of flavor and hummus with unusual spices and cilantro. His beet salad with avocado yogurt dressing is done with citrus fruits, marinated olives, roasted beets, beet puree, charred scallions and sesame seasoning. My picky granddaughter cleaned her plate of hummus and wanted more.
Along with the new, there remains the Original Ninfa’s on Navigation in Houston’s Second Ward, but Chef Alex Padilla takes Tex-Mex to a new level. His Queso Asado is like a cheese-vegetable charcuterie with charred panela cheese, curtido made with herbs, vinegar and oil plus vegetables and fruit, tomatillo salsa, pickled red onion, sliced avocados and jalapenos.
Ninfa’s, the old and the new, is a special place, where I have eaten many times. Its Ninfaritas cannot be beaten, always the best.
New chefs and cuisines produce delightful creations, but Houston has not forgotten the old staples, which I think is a good thing. Barbecue, Tex-Mex, Asian, Middle Eastern, vegetarian give the sprawling city its claim as a full-blown foodie city.
Author Spiering, a food writer, blogger and editor of Edible Houston, has captured the feel of the city and certainly what these new chefs have to offer.
In the late 1980s’ late Houston Chronicle food editor Ann Criswell penned “Fine Dining in Houston” featuring some of Houston’s best. Ninfa’s was included in that one, too. “Houston Cooks” contains 232 pages of food ideology and recipes. It is a hard-cover with color photos and sells for $32.99 plus free shipping on www.bn.com/ and www.amazon.com/ for $28.38 with free shipping for Prime members.
“Houston Cooks” is one in a series of 13 “Cooks” books, such as “Calgary Cooks”, “Montreal Cooks,” “Seattle Cooks,” “East Bay Cooks,” to name a few. Published by Figure 1 Publishing Inc., Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
Andrea Yeager is a freelance writer living in Gulfport.