Orange County Food Blog

Dave Lieberman

​Thanksgiving is the single biggest cooking juggernaut in the calendar here in America. People all over the country throw themselves into cooking an impossibly huge feast. Cooks who normally feed four people suddenly have to feed twenty or more. The setup, prep, cooking and carving take hours and hours, only to have the eating be done in two hours.

Nobody really wants to cook on Thanksgiving weekend. Well, we don't blame you.

Fortunately, here in OC we have Mangi con Amore, a staple at our local farmers' markets. They started out making cookies and sweets, but now make homemade pastas and sauces. I personally can vouch for the butternut squash ravioli, the spinach and cheese tortelloni (the latter is nearly always in my freezer) and the tagliolini, as well as the trofie, little twists of pasta that can be dressed up with pesto.

cobalt @ flickr.com CC BY-NC 2.0

​There are two kinds of people in the world: people who serve cranberry sauce slipped out of the can and sliced with the ridges still in evidence, and people who serve cranberry relish. If you're a fan of the former, it's the easiest dish to prepare for Thanksgiving. The hardest part is getting the cylinder out of the can with the ridges intact.

For those of you who would like to be in the other camp but have been burned by puckeringly tart relishes (naming no names, I've seen people on TV buzz cranberries, a whole orange and a tiny spoonful of sugar in a blender), here's a middle-of-the-road recipe for cranberry-orange relish that is nearly as quick as opening the can.

juverna @ flickr.com CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Innocent snack, or political shibboleth?

​Quick, what's your favorite Girl Scout cookie? Okay, now what's your favorite Girl Scout cookie besides Thin Mints? Is it Samoas (or Caramel De-Lites)?

You pinko.

According to a survey done by hunch.com, what you like to eat may be correlated to your political feelings. According to their survey, people who identify themselves as "liberal" tend to prefer Samoas; conservatives prefer Trefoils.

eliya @ flickr.com CC BY-NC 2.0

​This week contains one of the most ancient and cherished traditions in America, where families get up at shockingly early hours to fight traffic just to be together for a day. Thanksgiving, you say? No, Black Friday, the day by which all retail business for the entire year is judged.

If you're headed out into the scrum of Orange County's shopping centers, you are going to need a bite to eat at some point (unless you're one of those people pressing your face on the glass of the door at Wal-Mart at 3:59 AM, in which case there is no helping you). Here are some ideas for ways to avoid the food court:

strata @ flickr.com CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

​By now it should not be news that the U.S. is facing a severe shortage of canned pumpkin. News sites and blogs everywhere are talking about the effect on our Thanksgiving pumpkin pies.

If you're depending on canned pumpkin to make your holiday pumpkin pie and you find you can't get any, never fear! Kabocha squash (also known as Japanese pumpkins) are plentiful at Southern California farmers markets. Knobbly and dark green on the outside, they're the same yellow-orange color on the inside, a very similar flavor and quite cheap; you can usually get a large pumpkin, about the size of an adult's head, for under $5.

Dave Lieberman

​Remember two weeks ago, when I posted mockingly about 7-Eleven's move into the ultra-budget wine world? I made a snarky comment about not doing one's research about specialty retailers that might also have a decent chunk of the market share for really, really cheap wine, and I threw in some gratuitous French-Canadian slang, namely, cuvée dépanneur ("convenience store blend").

Well, it's time to put my money, or rather the Weekly's money, where my mouth is. For this week's Dueling Dishes segment, I went out and bought two bottles of 7-Eleven's new Yosemite Road wine ($3.99 each) and two bottles of Trader Joe's Charles Shaw wine, better known as "Two Buck Chuck" because it costs $2.00 a bottle.

Faced with a selection of various types of what the French would call vin de table or vin ordinaire, I picked Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon.

desserttruck.com

Please, please, PLEASE come to OC, Dessert Truck!

​Nancy Luna (the Fast Food Maven) is someone whose writing I admire, and she scoops absolutely everything about fast food in OC. I know that when the Buttermilk Truck or the Grilled Cheese Truck or any of the other, suddenly-fashionable higher-end food trucks come to OC, she will know about it before they even tweet it, and so I was glad to see a post about more food trucks coming to OC, because it probably means she has insider information.

I read through the post (and Nancy, you're a food truck tease) and am excited by what I read, but the comments! The comments made me cringe.

You'd think I'd have learned by now never, ever, ever to read comments on any story at all on the Register's website. There has to be some kind of OC corollary to Godwin's Law, whereby the chance of someone ranting, usually completely off-topic, about illegal immigrants increases exponentially with the length of the comment thread.

The comments on Nancy's post weren't as xenophobic as normal for the Register, but they still made me cringe. They contain nearly all the stereotypical, misinformed objections to food trucks. Read on, dear readers, as I tackle the big ones in turn:

Dave Lieberman

'Tis the last peach of summer left rip'ning alone...

​That's right, peaches--maybe.

Yes, it's mid-November. Yes, it's already snowing all over the purple mountains' majesty and the fruited plains east of here. People in New York are settling in for a long winter of imported Israeli produce, and even here in the fruit basket of the United States, the farmer's markets are full of hard squashes and fall fruits like pomegranate and quince.

But the Tenerellis, who own a farm in Littlerock that happens to be situated in the most perfect microclimate for peaches in all the Southland, still have peaches, or they did this past weekend. They are the last fresh local peaches available anywhere, a variety called Autumn Lady. While they're not "sink peaches" (the kind you get in August that are so juicy you have to eat them over the sink), these firm, yellow, freestone peaches would be perfect for pie or a beautiful galette, or just to have one more taste of summer before the long seven months' dry spell.

The sooner you can get to the market, the sooner you can partake, and the better your chances that they'll still have some.

Tenerelli Orchards sells at nearly every good-sized Southland farmer's market, including Costa Mesa (Thursdays 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the OC Fairgrounds), Laguna Hills (Fridays 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the parking lot of the Laguna Hills Mall) and Irvine (Saturdays 8 a.m. to noon at Campus Dr. and Bridge St.)

Jones Soda Co.

​Maybe you're trying to take those first steps into veganism.

Maybe you know a vegetarian who's just had dental surgery.

Or maybe you just want to play a really, really, cruel trick on someone.

It doesn't matter, because Jones Soda is here for you with this year's Thanksgiving offering: Tofurky™ and Gravy soda. That's right, the people who brought you the original Turkey and Gravy soda (in 2003), Mashed Potato and Butter soda (in 2004) and Brussels Sprout soda (in 2005) have teamed up to bring you a cruelty-free, sugar-free Thanksgiving quaff. If you're interested, it is only available online.

Now perhaps the PETA people will stand down from their vigil outside the Jones Soda offices in Seattle.

Xanh Bistro

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Haley Nguyen is a woman of many talents: She teaches at Saddleback Community College, she leads culinary tours of Little Saigon and her native Vietnam, and she even arranges cooking classes in her restaurant, Xanh Bistro, the most accessible-to-newcomers Viet place in the county, the best Vietnamese place to take a first date, and one of my favorite places to eat. (Xanh is pronounced "sahn", incidentally, and it means "green" in Vietnamese.)

Here, then, are Haley's good-natured responses to our survey.

1. Dish you cook that most represents you.

Cá kho tộ--fish in clay pot. I've made it ever since I can remember. I came from a humble background in Vietnam, so this is such comfort food to me, the rice and the caramel sauce. It was life, it was happiness. I still eat it every day.

2. What was the last meal you had at home?

Kimchi and rice. You know how sometimes a chef doesn't want to think about cooking after a long day and just wants a greasy hamburger? I just want a bowl of steamed rice and some plain soup. It's satisfying and I don't have to think about it.

3. Your favorite restaurant (other than yours):

Charlie Trotter's in Chicago. We got to go into the kitchen, and it was incredibly quiet, low lights, like a lab. I love exquisite food done right, and I had foie gras there for the first time. We had a tapioca with coconut milk that showed the Asian influence.

Locally, I think my favorite is Kappo Honda. But they're always so busy!

prettywarstl @ flickr.com CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

​Halloween is over, so it's time to deck the malls with boughs of holly and get ready for the season's eatings. It's also the season for work potlucks and parties with invitations containing the dreaded "please bring an appetizer to share" line.

Never fear, Stick A Fork In It is here to tell you what to buy and where to buy it, right behind the jump!

Dallas Observer

​Robert Wilonsky at our sister publication, the Dallas Observer, broke the news today that 7-Eleven will be selling private-label wine in their stores starting next week.

That's right, folks. No longer will you have to suffer the slings and arrows of shops run by true oenophiles, like Hi-Time or the Wine Exchange. Instead, you can hop over to your local 7-Eleven and pick up a bottle of Yosemite Road brand table wine for just $3.99.

(In Québec, wine purchased from a convenience store, or dépanneur, is ironically called "cuvée dépanneur." Now we've got "Château Sept-Onze.")

Funny, one wonders if any other chains of stores in the area sell house brand wine for cheap prices, say $2 a bottle.

While there are way more 7-Elevens than Trader Joe's, it's likely that 7-Eleven's wine sales will collapse with a big plonk... but this would make an intriguing Dueling Dishes post, wouldn't it?

Dave Lieberman

​A great fish taco is a thing of beauty: fried fish (yes, it must be fried!) topped with raw, shredded cabbage, crema (thin Mexican sour cream), chunky salsa and a squeeze of lime on corn tortillas. The first time I had them ("Fish tacos? Seriously?") was when I was working in the San Gabriel Valley, home to the wonderful chain called El Taco Nazo. I was hooked instantly, both by the tacos and to the amazing fried yellow chiles kept covered on a foil-wrapped platter.

Back then, all the stores, which are mostly located in the SGV and the Gateway Cities of southern LA County, were called El Taco Nazo; differences of opinion and some infighting resulted in part of the family splitting off and converting some of the stores to the name Señor Baja. The recipes have diverged in the intervening years, enough so that it's time to settle the matter of which taco reigns supreme by ordering a fish taco, a shrimp taco, and chiles güeritos from each place.

The whole point of a farmer's market is to bring fresh, local food to people with as few intermediate steps as possible. While it's always fresh, sometimes the bounds of "local" get stretched. (Don't get me wrong--I am not about to give up my San Joaquin Delta asparagus--but calling that local to Irvine is stretching the bounds of reason.)

And then there's Rui, the smiling, gracious woman behind the table of R Farms, near the center of the Irvine market, across from the giant hummus booth.

Dave Lieberman

​
Rui is one of a network of small-time OC growers who produce food out of their suburban backyards. Sometimes the produce is plentiful, sometimes it isn't. Some of the growers sell to restaurants, either directly or through a cooperative, and some just sell at farmer's markets or farm stands, directly to the public. R Farms is a one-stop operation; she grows them and she sells them.

The Travel Channel

Pass the Nexium, please.

​Adam Richman, the host of the Travel Channel's Man Vs. Food, is bringing his live show, Eat Your Heart Out, to the Wiltern on Dec. 16 at 7 p.m. He'll be talking about the making of Man Vs. Food, handicapping the Los Angeles food scene and there will be audience participation.

This is the guy who, in his trip to the City of Angels, ate one of those 8-zillion-calorie El Tepeyac platters, a French dip at Philippe's and then the spicy ramen challenge at Orochon. His picture is on the wall at Orochon, as well as in the dictionary next to "cast-iron stomach".

Tickets go on sale Saturday at 10 a.m. at Live Nation. If you're allergic to "convenience" fees, show up at the Hollywood Palladium (6215 Sunset Blvd., between Vine and Gower) for the 10 a.m. on-sale.

Bonus question for the readers: If Adam Richman came down here to OC to do a show, what would we feed him?

Anaheim Ducks

​
If you're a fan of RA Sushi (and who wouldn't be with a menu that features a section called "Getting Busy"?) then you probably already know that the limited-time Big Wisniewski roll, created by and named after Ducks defenseman James Wisniewski, will be unavailable after this Saturday, Nov. 6.

If you're just now hearing about this, you may want to go early in order to avoid the lines that will no doubt form for the roll filled with spicy yellowtail, crab mix, jalapeño and cilantro and topped with yellowtail, avocado, sriracha sauce and served with spicy ponzu sauce.

This capsaicin-laced masterpiece is only available in the Tustin, Huntington Beach, Chino Hills and Corona locations, and again, only until Saturday. RA will donate $2 for each roll purchased to the Anaheim Ducks Foundation.

RA Sushi:
2401 Park Ave., Tustin. (714) 566-1700
155 5th St. #183, Huntington Beach. (714) 536-6390
13925 City Center Dr., Chino Hills. (909) 902-0044
2785 Cabot Dr. #101, Corona. (951) 277-7491

ingernet @ flickr.com CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Truly a woman after my own heart.

​You bought the pumpkin, you carved it, the doorbell rang a hundred million times, and you gave out enough candy to fund an army of dentists for the next year.

Now it's the day after Halloween and the jack o' lantern is headed for the trash--or is it?

While it's true that most pumpkins of a size suitable for jack o' lanterns (jacks o' lantern?) are not bred for their flavor, all pumpkins are edible. Roasting the pumpkin usually helps concentrate whatever sugars are present and makes it tastier. Just please make sure you cut off any dripped wax from the candle, okay?

A bonus "Five Great..." list awaits you behind the jump:

Lucille's Rib Shack

​Lucille's Rib Shack in the city of Orange will open Nov. 2, according to their Facebook page and an employee who answered the telephone.

The restaurant, formerly a Hof's Hut, is located across the street from the Crystal Cathedral and a couple of blocks from the Block at Orange. It will be a counter-service version of the familiar Lucille's Bar-B-Que restaurants, with lower prices.

As with any restaurant opening, inspections and permit problems can change an opening date, so watch this space for updates.

Lucille's Rib Shack, 4050 W. Chapman Ave., Orange. (714) 634-1227

Dave Lieberman

​It's fall, which means it's apple season here in Southern California.

Tilden Farms from Riverside has Sekai Ichi apples, which are thought to be a cross between Red Delicious and Golden Delicious. They're great for eating out of hand, with a lot of juice and none of the mealiness that tends to plague Red Delicious.

Many vendors have Pink Lady apples this year, which are a cross between Golden Delicious and Lady Williams that originated in Australia. These are chameleon apples: You can eat them raw, you can cook them and you can bake them.

Dave Lieberman

​Quick, what's better than crème brûlée?

How about crème brûlée in an edible bowl?

The Catalans, those famously free-thinking denizens of northeastern Spain, Andorra and the adjacent part of France, claim to have pioneered crème brûlée. In a burst of national pride, they call it crema catalana, and some culinary savant in Catalunya decided to put the resulting custard in baked apples and then burn some sugar on top.

In-geeeeeee-nious! And so this week, just past the jump, we bring you the outstanding recipe from Colman Andrews' Catalan Cuisine, pomes farcides amb crema catalana. You might not be able to pronounce it, but your taste buds won't care.

Dave Lieberman

​King Harbor Seafood in Garden Grove is celebrating 10 years in business by offering 10 percent off the check at lunch or dinner, now through Nov. 30.

Right now, the house special lobster--by far the most memorable dish on the menu--is $8.99 a pound (actually $8.09 a pound after discount, nearly a third off the normal price). The lobsters are enormous Maine lobsters, usually weighing in at 3-5 pounds, so bring friends.

Make sure to get the yee mein noodles with the dish. They'll put the lobster on top of the yee mein and the sauce will soak into the noodles. Well worth the extra $4. If you need to round out your meal, ask what vegetables are the best that day. Tofu dishes are great too, especially family-style tofu.

King Harbor Seafood, 13018 Harbor Blvd., Garden Grove. (714) 636-9103

The Bruery

Mama always said for you to eat your vegetables. She didn't say they couldn't be in your beer.

​
Today is Black Tuesday at the Bruery, the craft beer mecca in Placentia. They'll be releasing this year's Black Tuesday Imperial Stout at a special event at the brewery.

Dave Lieberman

​Orange County is a surprisingly bike-friendly place, and the crown jewel of north OC has to be the Santa Ana River Trail, which goes from the ocean at the Huntington Beach/Newport Beach border to Prado Dam in Corona, completely separated from cars. (It will eventually, when Riverside County gets off the dime, continue further up the river, too.) Weekdays see a lot of commuters using the trail; weekends are a blur of Lycra-clad speed racers and recreational bicyclists whose pace is less Tour de France and more Tour de Better Homes and Gardens. Regardless of your bicycling prowess, here's a guide to five great places to replenish those energy reserves, just off the 32-mile path:

Flight Bistro

​Susan Feniger, what hast thou wrought?

After one-half of the Too Hot Tamales, of Border Grill fame, opened the nearly un-Googleable Street in Hollywood as a restaurant specializing in street foods from around the world, it seems like everyone has started jumping on the bandwagon.

Edwin reported six weeks ago that K'Ya in Anaheim had changed from a normal restaurant to a global street-food place, with a lot of small plates arranged by country.

Now Flight Bistro in Huntington Beach, under the direction of new executive chef Derrick Hamilton, has revamped its menu to include a long list of "Global Tapas." The ethnic origins of some of the small plates are unclear (scallops and oxtail with orange segments?), which leads us to the dreaded F word--fusion.

Hannes_2 @ wikimedia.org CC-BY-SA

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One of my beefs (sorry) with the Irvine farmer's market is that while you can get amazing produce, baked goods, fish, even olive oil, there's not much in the way of meat available. So when I took a Friday off to go have breakfast at Break of Dawn and go to the Laguna Hills market, I was stunned to find a big sign saying "GRASS-FED BEEF AVAILABLE HERE TODAY," with a big guy in a Stetson sitting next to it.

It turns out the guy in the Stetson is named Frank Fitzpatrick, and he raises Barzona cattle on Irvine Company land up in Trabuco Canyon, as well as out in the Mojave Desert, and sells the resulting beef under the brand 5 Bar Beef. We had a discussion about the foot traffic at the Irvine market, and a couple of Saturday mornings later, Frank set up shop in Irvine, across the aisle from Dry Dock Fish.

Orange County Health Care Agency

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After the OC Register's exposé of the sanitation in OC's restaurants in 2008, the County Board of Supervisors empaneled a grand jury to examine how to improve food safety in OC eateries.

The grand jury did its research and decided that the best way to avoid these "dining dangers" (ninjas at table 3!) was for OC to adopt the A-B-C letter grade system used in all of our surrounding counties.

The Board of Supervisors decided in December not to move to a letter grade or color-based system, but instead passed a proposal to change the existing inspection seals to show whether the restaurant passed, conditionally passed or failed the inspection.

​The picture at left is a mango shake with chamoy, the most mindbending non-alcoholic drink in all of OC. Never heard of chamoy?  Neither have most people in Orange County.

Chamoy (accent on the first syllable) starts as apricots that have been soaked in brine. The sweet liquid is mixed with salt and chile powder, then cooked down to a syrup. The dried fruit leather that's left over is called saladitos and is eaten on its own as a snack.

Natural, a Mexican fruit shop next to a Carl's Jr. on State College Boulevard in Anaheim, sells a shake called a chamoyada. A fresh mango shake is put into a cup drizzled with chamoy. A straw covered with saladitos is inserted into the drink.

The result will mess with your mind--sweet, sour, tangy, salty and spicy all at once. Once you've finished one, you'll find yourself craving it. Just remember, Natural closes at 9 p.m. And if chamoy doesn't sound like your thing, you can go for one of the bionicos (cups of cut fruit with yogurt, coconut and granola).

Natural, 1177 S. State College Blvd., Anaheim.  (714) 563-1343