Lunch at Phoenicia Market in Houston

For lunch, I bought an assortment of tasty groceries from Phoenicia here in Houston. It's a bit of a drive, about 10 miles from my house, but it is the absolute best mix of strange ethnic food, exotic produce, good wine, and expensive groceries I've ever seen. Their prices are also far cheaper than your typical posh grocery store...I had serious difficulty dragging myself away from the $12 liters of unfiltered Greek and Italian olive oils.

I bought all kinds of great things (handmade pelmeni) and passed up others (vaccuum-packed lamajun, italian orecchiette). For lunch, I settled on freshly made whole-wheat pita with store-made hummus and sumac, some store-made vegetarian dolmades, a roasted head of garlic, and some preserved lemon, with a sparkling pomegranate-lemonade of French origin to drink.

The hummus was nice and garlicky, with a great, mostly smooth texture. I think it's the first hummus I've had that includes yogurt as an ingredient. I would not have known, although I suspect that's where the great texture and depth of flavor came from. The dolmades were likewise very nice. The filling is a little chunkier than I'm used to- pine nuts, raisins, spices, and rice. I've never liked raisins in my dolmades, but these were really good. The preserved lemon and roasted garlic came from their $5.99/lb cold bar full of the staples and a few strange items (stuffed mini eggplant??). I'd never had preserved lemons before, so I don't know how typical these are...they would probably work well in a tagine, but by themselves are scary vinegary and scary hot. The soda, however, was fabulous. Made by Rieme Boissons, it appears to contain only pomegranate flavoring, making me question the "limonade" label. Despite the false advertising, it's flavorful and sweetened with beet sugar.

For further rhapsodizing about this wonderful market, check out this blog I found (and borrowed the pic from...)