Friday, January 25, 2013

Life's lemons can be preserved


Here’s what I did; it’s too early to tell you if it worked. I was blessed to be invited to pick lemons from a local bush and came home with something like 50 fruits to share. The grower said he thought I could figure out things to do with them, so I got busy with drinks, face scrubs and cleaners. I was wishing I could preserve them, and I recall that our Mediterranean friends to just that, in beautiful jars that display the bounty. It was a simple thing to wash and cut the lemons, rub them with kosher salt and stack them into a jar covered with their own juice and with bay leaves, peppercorns, cinnamon and cloves. In a few weeks they should mellow into a flavoring to be eaten, peel and all. I’ll cook them with chicken or fish and couscous.

Star Pizza
My friend has been bragging about Star Pizza for years, and Houstonions seem to have a cult following. I had my first taste and am now hooked. It seemed an other-worldly experience. The whole wheat Starburst featured the basics of ground beef, Italian sausage, etc. There’s no explanation for why it was so good. Just quality ingredients, I suppose. The cheese in the shakers didn’t seem like the normal powdered stuff. I tasted it alone and the super-white substance was creamy. I asked the waitress and she confirmed it was Romano. The two Star sites offer many options, reasonable prices and area craft beers (which I did NOT sample on this venture).
Squid and pineapple
Vietnam restaurant in The Heights in Houston had pineapple and squid on the menu, and I thought that was weird enough to work. It did, with sweet chunks of fruit, long green onions and highly-textured squid over brown rice. The reason my aunt and I wanted to find this place again is the fried eggplant. It’s impossibly sweet and crunchy. The two of us ordered it as our third entrée and took some of all our leftovers home for a second round.
ddoiron@panews.com

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