Passion Play

It's rare to find passion fruit in LA farmers' markets, but last Sunday I found a great batch of them at the Hollywood market. They are at the stand with yellow crates that sells mostly avocados, on Ivar, just north of the Selma intersection on the west side of the street.

Not only did they have that trademark, deep passion fruit flavor, but they actually had some sweetness to them (passion fruit tends to be quite tart). I have no idea if they will be around this Sunday, but if they are, I'm getting more.

The Farmer's Kitchen

The Farmer's Kitchen spent more time opening then most restaurants stay afloat. Rumors of its impending arrival began years ago (I recall a large "Coming Sprint 2007" sign on the door for a long while), but now it is finally open for breakfast and lunch. The Kitchen is located at the corner of Selma and Morning Side Court, at the edge of the Sunday Hollywood Farmer's Market and makes its food from the wares of the market vendors. A testament to slow food, the Kitchen is a project of Sustainable Economic Enterprises of Los Angeles (SEE-LA), the nonprofit organization that runs the Hollywood market. The Farmer's Kitchen has limited hours; it's only open from 11am to 3pm, Tuesday through Friday, but on Sunday, market day, it's open from 7:30am to 2:00pm.

The Market menu varies, presumably based on what they find at the market. The day I was there, I had a nice version of Chilaquiles, though it was more of a scramble (or a migas) than a traditional Mexican chilaquiles. Along with chips from the Market's excellent chip vendor, the plate was loaded with eggs, chicken, juicy, fresh bell peppers and onions and topped with a very nice guacamole. My only complaint, which was true of much of the food, was that it was a bit underseasoned, but a few shakes of salt made up for that. The accompanying beans, a medley of black beans and black eyed peas were both underseasoned and a bit undercooked. The serving was huge for a mere $7.

Strawberry waffles consisted of a huge serving of four waffle squares with strawberry sauce and whipped cream. A nice enough if unexciting dish, and the waffles were a bit soggy.

I like the idea of the Farmer's Kitchen, but I'd like to see a little better execution. Using farm-fresh produce is a wonderful thing, but it's not the only element of a great dish. If they tweak their seasoning a bit and put a bit more effort into preparation, they could have a real winner. I know I'll be rooting for them.

The Farmer's Kitchen
1555 N. Vine Street #19 (While the address is Vine, the Kitchen entrance is at the corner of Selma and Morning Side Court).
Los Angeles, CA 90028
(323) 467-7600

Vacation Journal: Honloulu Farmers Market

The Honolulu Saturday Farmers' Market at Kapiolani Community College is a thing to behold. Operating from 7:30 to 11:00am, the market is packed from the very start, making our own Hollywood Market seem sparsely attended.



The market has a wondrous selection of tropical fruit, including many varieties of mango and papaya, lychee, longan, dragonfruit, local pineapple and other produce. About 50% of the stalls are prepared food, including every sort of island delight from a lovely locally made butter to butterfish to spam musubi.



I was thrilled to see these fresh abalone on the grill at the Big Island Abalone stand. The size of large oysters, these plump beauties are farmed on the Big Island and explode with juice when you bite into them. At 2 for $5, you won't find a better deal on abalone.

Vacation Journal: North Shore Updates

On every trip to Oahu, I make a mandatory pilgrimage to the North Shore to partake of fresh shrimp and shave ice. Not much has changed since last year's sojourn, but I have a few updates:


Giovanni's Shrimp Truck

They now have hot dogs! The dogs are dipped in the garlic scampi sauce, and no, I didn't try one. I just couldn't resist the shrimp, but they looked good.


Shave Ice

A new shave ice vendor, Haleiwa Shave Ice, joins Matsumoto's and Aoki's, but doesn't bring much to the table. Haleiwa's flavors were weak and watery and they skimped on the azuki beans. I'm always looking for a North Shore alternative to the lines at Matsumoto's, but this wasn't it.


Pickled Mangos

This was the hit of the North Shore visit. I'd long seen the small sign advertising pickled mangos at the corner of Haleiwa Road and Kamehameha Highway but had never before acted on it. Just up the road on Haleiwa, across from the boat entrance to Ali'i Beach Park, there is another sign identifying the house where the mangos are. This isn't a fruit stand; it's just a house with a mango tree. The folks who live there make amazing pickles from their home grown mangos, pickling them in sugar and vinegar, with a li hing mui plum in the traditional style for home cured pickled mango. The mango slices are firm and crunchy with a perfect sweet/sour balance and a very slight mango inflection. They are sold in one pound bags for $9 and are highly addictive. Check it out!


Next Week: Farmers Markets, Hilo and More.

Quickies

Animal

I went back to Animal recently, just for more of the marvelous poutine, but also tried some other desserts, both of which were very nice. My favorite was the chocolate pudding, a rich, dark pudding topped with an inch of whipped cream in a glass jar (from appearances, we guessed an old yogurt jar). Great stuff. We also had the doughnuts with apple filling in an apple/caramel sauce. It's hard to beat piping, hot doughnuts.


Third & Fairfax Update

The Farmers Market now has a selection of real farmers selling goods. I've seen local Farmers Market stalwarts Ha's Apple Farm and Soledad Goat Cheese as well as a few others. There are just a few, but it's nice to see some real farmers at the original Farmers Market.

Breadworks is a new bakery at the Market which replaced The Bread Bin. It's just as mediocre as the old place.

The Left Behind

It's happened to me numerous times at my local farmers' market. I'm juggling my wallet, bags of produce and one to two children. I pick out some delectables, submit them for weighing, pay...and leave the bag sitting there. Only later, when I get home, unpack, and find I'm missing valuable items, do I notice.

I've done it so many times I can't even begin to count. Possibly the most disappointing was when I left a bag of two excellent balls of my favorite buffalo mozzarella which was to go into a sandwich that very night.

Somewhere, I imagine, there is a heavenly place for the produce that was left behind, a cozy little kitchen stuffed full of all of the forgotten items that have been left over the years. A place where you could make a really good sandwich.

Hawaii Journal Day 3: Pork and Coffee

Day 3: Tuesday

Breakfast: Diamond Head Market and Grill



Diamond Head Market & Grill has been around for a while, but I never got around to it on previous visits. It came highly recommended and lived up to they hype.

The Market and Grill are two adjacent but distinct establishments. The Market sells pastries, sandwiches and other such items, while the Grill cooks up hot food.

Still on our California schedule, we arrived at 6:30am, when the Market had just opened but a half hour before the Grill was up and running, all the better to try a bit of everything.

We started at the Market with a fluffy buttermilk biscuit and a blueberry cream cheese scone. The biscuit was great, fluffy and flaky with a nice buttery/salty flavor, but the scone was TO-DIE-FOR. Crisp on the outside, smooth, creamy and slightly tangy on the inside (courtesy, no doubt, of the cream cheese), it was almost a muffin/scone hybrid: muffin moistness (though not muffin denseness) with scone flavor. Had I not been waiting for the Grill, I would have ordered five or six of these and called it a morning.



At the Grill, I ordered that venerable island specialty, loco moco. Loco moco is a breakfast grease-fat bomb if there ever was one: a large serving of rice (the Grill offers white or brown) topped with a hamburger patty, a fried egg and oceans of the traditional, viscous brown sauce. The Grill's version, pictured above, was perfect. The home-ground hamburger had a nice char, the sauce was nicely salty and not too viscous and the whole thing came together perfectly.

The highlight of the Grill though was another dish: the pork hash patty. Made from slow roasted pork, the hash, mixed with potato, garlic and other spices, is formed into a patty and fried. It's served, a la loco moco, on rice with brown sauce. The combination of pork, salt, garlic and sauce put me into greasy breakfast heaven.

This place is definitely a keeper and will go on the permanent list.


Diamond Head Market and Grill
3158 Monsarrat Ave.
Honolulu, HI
(808)732-0077


Coffee Break: Honolulu Coffee Co.

Despite the fact that Hawaii is the only state in the US that actually grows coffee, for many years, the coffee culture of Hawaii consisted of little more than trying to fleece tourists into buying "Kona Coffee" for $30 per pound. Maybe it was Kona, maybe it wasn't, but even if it was, the Kona coffee reputation was always better than the actual coffee.

That changed in the '90s with the advent of the Honolulu Coffee Company, a real coffee bar for Hawaii. Yes, HCC will charge you $50 for a pound of their Kona Peaberry, but they will also brew up an exquisite espresso, dark and smoky, lacking acidity and thick with crema, just the way I like 'em.

They have various locations, including Ala Moana shopping center and a number of Waikiki hotels.


Lunch: Kua 'Aina Sandwich Shop

The Kua 'Aina Sandwich Shop is a North Shore institution which has been serving up burgers and fries to hungry big wave surfers for over 20 years. I've always been a fan of the North Shore branch, but it's near impossible to get in for lunch without a long wait, so I was thrilled when they opened a South Shore branch at the Ward Centre shopping district in the Kaka'ako neighborhood.

I've had good burgers at this branch, but today, my burger was lackluster, an overdone and limp patty. Perhaps it just paled in comparison to my breakfast patty at Diamond Head Grill, (Ah, Hawaii, a place where you can eat hamburger three meals a day), but I was disappointed. The skinny, crisp little fries, however, were as good as ever.

Kua 'Aina Sandwich Shop
Ward Village Shops
1116 Auahi Street
Honolulu, HI
(808) 591-9133


Dinner: Assorted Island Fruit

Okay, after two and one half days of gorging on pork and gravy, I'm feeling a bit bloated, so we're going to chill out this evening, warm up some left overs, and enjoy some of the Island's great produce.

I stopped by one of Honolulu's great farmers' markets and picked up mangoes, papayas, pineapple and Okinawan sweet potatoes, which have a beautiful and sweet dark blue flesh.

We also picked up some great fruit at the farmers' market-like stand, Island Fresh Produce, on 9th Street at Waialae (look for the sign for 9th Street Flowers). There we found amazing mangoes, apple-bananas (cute, little bananas with a bit more acid and flavor than the one's we are used to), papayas, pineapples and wide assortment of Asian vegetables.

Lastly, I picked up some Waimanalo grown Nalo Greens for a nice salad. Nalo Greens are available at many area natural and gourmet stores.

Tomorrow: Ono Hawaiian and Chinatown

Strawberry Fields

One of the signs of spring in California is the onset of beautiful, plump varietal strawberries at the local farmers' markets. Like bananas, there are hundreds of varieties of strawberries, but only one variety is widely available to American consumers: chandlers. They are big and fine tasting, but like most agribusiness products, they were bred more for durability than flavor.

Thankfully, with the onset of farmers' markets, we now have access to strawberries that make those old chandlers taste like cardboard. Strawberries that burst with flavor, sweetness and juice. Strawberries that you will gobble up by the basket because they are so good and that will forever ruin supermarket berries for you.

My farmers' market of choice is the big Hollywood Farmers' Market, every Sunday morning on Ivar Street between Sunset and Hollywood Boulevard. In the spring, the market has berries galore, but there are two purveyors who specialize in varietal strawberries: Harry's Berries, which is usually on the east side of Ivar in the north half of the market, and a second stand with no signage, which is across Ivar and usually a bit north of Harry's. Harrry's carries gaviotas and seascapes, and has just returned to the market, but be warned, they sometimes sell out early in the day. The other stand carries a greater variety but not necessarily all of them on any given day. They sometimes have gaviotas and seascapes, but also have 269s and camarosas. Below is a listing and description of some of these treats.

Gaviotas: Gaviotas are my favorite of all the strawberries. A ripe gaviota at the height of the season is one of the single greatest gastronomic experiences there is. Gaviotas are very sweet, heavy on the juice and have a great fruity taste with not much in the way of acid. They are about as close as fresh fruit gets to tasting like candy. Harry's Berries stocks them for $15 for a three-pack, and they are worth every penny. Harry's excels at gaviotas and when they have them, I always get a three-basket pack.

Seascapes: Seascapes are gaviotas' more sophisticated sibling. They are less sweet, more acidic, very juicy and in someways have more of a traditional strawberry taste. Their season is shorter and their yield is smaller than the gaviotas, so they can be a bit harder to find. There are good Seascapes at Harry's and the stand across the street.

Camarosas: Camarosas have a thicker skin than gaviotas and seascapes and tend to be available earlier in the season. They are a good teaser for what is to come, but not one I would spend much time on once the gavs and seascapes come in.

269s: This is a cross between a seascape and a common chandler. It has a bit more durability a la the chandler but has some of that seascape flavor and juice.


Buying and Storage Tips:

Bigger is not always better. I find that smaller berries are sometimes juicier.

Be cautious with your berries. They bruise very easily.

I store my berries on a counter out of direct sunlight and never in the refrigerator. As I noted before, farmers market varietal berries are not bred for durability. They last one to two days tops...so buy as many as you will eat within that time, and then wait until next week (or the next market you can get to).

As I mentioned above, you need to take caution. If you begin to eat these berries, you will never be satisfied with supermarket berries again. You will look askance at the strawberries served at restaurants to garnish your chocolate cake or omelet. Every time you eat a regular, old strawberry you will pause, sigh, and know that it is but a pale imitation of what a strawberry should taste like.

Quick Picks: Kyoho Grapes

Tis the season of Kyoho Grapes, the succulent Concord-like grapes from Japan. These, robust, perfectly spherical grapes are bursting with sweet grape flavor. They have a relatively short window so get them now at various farmers' markets. I get mine at the Sunday Hollywood farmers' market on Ivar between Sunset and Hollywood.