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June 29, 2009

south central farmers' CSA

Photo courtesy of jojomelons. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Today is my birthday. But I promise this post is not just a thinly-veiled attempt to get nice birthday wishes in the comments (HINT, HINT). It's also about vegetables.

You see, one of the gifts I received was a CSA box from the South Central Farmers' Cooperative, one of my favorite farmers market stands. I am always happy to support the group of people who fifteen years ago took a hopeless plot of land in South LA and transformed it into a huge community garden -- only to lose it all in 2006 to a developer now planning on using the land for a Forever 21 warehouse. (See the 2008 Academy-Award-nominated documentary The Garden for the full story.) But I never knew they had a CSA program.

All I had to do was show up at the Atwater Village Farmers Market on Sunday and tell the friendly SCFC volunteer my name, and I was handed a big box filled with organic vegetable goodness. It really did feel like a gift, opening up the box and pulling out my bounty:

Head of purple lettuce
Bunch of huge carrots
Bunch of spring onions, white and purple
One summer squash
One round zucchini
One scalloped squash
One bitter melon
About a pound of beans, green and purple
Bunch of beets
Bunch of purple amaranth
About a pound of new red potatoes
Handful of papalo (Bolivian coriander -- I am totally unfamiliar with this)
Handful of unidentified herb

They offer a few different pricing options on their website, the most flexible being the $15 weekly box -- only $15 for all of that! -- as well as 16 pick-up locations all over the city. At the market I bought a mixed bag of summer fruit to supplement the vegetables and now I am set for the week.

I will definitely be buying South Central Farmers' CSA boxes for myself in the future. It's an appealing option for those weeks when I don't have the time or energy to wander through the market on a Sunday morning or when I want to shake things up a bit with some ingredients I wouldn't necessarily choose on my own. Or just when I want to open up a box of surprise vegetables and pretend it's my birthday all over again.

I celebrated over the weekend with friends and family at an amazing outdoor meal catered by Freight. Highly recommended!

Posted by anjali at 11:56 AM | Comments (11) | Categories: Market

June 18, 2009

front page jamaican grille

Jerk goat and accompaniments.

People, there's no reason to ever eat crappy food on an airplane again. Front Page Jamaican Grille is less than 3 miles from LAX, so an extra 30 minutes and a short trip down Manchester is all that stands between you and a container full of curry goat or oxtails or jerk chicken with a side of rice and beans. Doesn't that sound better than a soggy $8 turkey sandwich wrapped in plastic? I thought so.

I was lucky enough to be invited to a lunch at Front Page Grille last weekend by an intrepid eater named Josie, whom I met the last time I visited Breed Street in Boyle Heights. She, Javier, Jessica and I met at the restaurant, just a counter and a few tables in a small space painted a dazzling green, tucked into a nondescript strip mall in Inglewood. It is, as Javier put it, like sitting inside a giant Jamaican flag.

Jamaican patties.

We started with a couple appetizers. Vegetable patties, which were like savory handpies stuffed with spinach, are not made on the premises but produced in some other magical Jamaican patty location where the crusts are always flaky and the fillings never soggy. Festival bread was like an unsweetened, slightly dense donut hole, proof that fried dough is the right way to start any meal.

Roasted perch. I swear it tastes a million times better than it looks.

I had been 30 minutes late (navigating tip: Manchester Avenue is not the same as Manchester Boulevard, although the two do eventually meet), so by the time I arrived the others had already put in an order for the roasted perch, which takes 30-40 minutes to prepare. It is well worth the wait, even if you do spend most of the time driving up and down an abandoned block of Manchester Avenue wondering if the restaurant is behind a car wash maybe. Our foil-wrapped fish was brought to the table by John, the chef and co-owner, who has a smile as bright as his green-painted walls. The steaming fish was buried under a pile of chopped cabbage and peppers, totally unphotogenic but so good, the whole mess fragrant with jerk spices and tender enough to cut with a plastic fork. John says the roasted fish is a favorite among the ladies, but he doesn't know why. Gentlemen, get on board. You're missing out.

Okra, plain and simple.

We loaded up our "plates" (actually opened-up takeout containers -- it's kind of awesome) with fish, rice and beans, sticky green okra pods and sweet slices of plantain. The jerk goat was coal-black with a wonderful chew and the oxtails fell apart with the tap of a plastic tine. Nothing was particularly spicy until topped with a little of the homemade hot sauce, a slurry of Scotch bonnet peppers that made my lips tingle. The plainness of the vegetables, boiled and only lightly seasoned, offered an occasional break from the complex spicing of the meats.

Sorrel drink!

The drinks at Front Page Grille are as intriguing and authentic as the food. Pine ginger beer's spicy bite was tempered by its subtle pineapple sweetness. Cran moss is a bizarre mix of cranberry juice and Irish moss, a.k.a. carrageen moss, a sort of seaweed that lends a slightly gelatinous texture that was certainly unique, but not exactly thirst-quenching. For that, I turned to my favorite of the day, the sorrel drink. Brewed from hibiscus flowers, it is basically like jamaica, but imagine the most perfect jamaica ever, one that is not tooth-achingly sweet but instead slightly tart, like a well-made lemonade. I could drink buckets of this.

Carrot pudding/cake.

We finished the meal with a couple slices of carrot cake -- really more of a carrot pudding, dense with shredded carrots and barely sweet. When we told Pam, the other owner, that we liked it, she seemed baffled but pleased to hear someone enjoyed her husband's latest creation. "He never tells me what he's going to make," she said. "He just tells me what it is when he's done."

Showing us the Irish moss.

The vibe is mellow, the music is good, the service is friendly and the whole place reminds you why LA is a great place to live -- because if you don't have time to pick up some cheap and authentic Jamaican food on the way out of town, you can always get it when you return. Just make sure your ride doesn't mind taking a little detour on the way home from the airport.

Front Page Jamaican Grille
1117 W. Manchester Blvd.
Inglewood, CA 90301
(310) 216-9521

Posted by anjali at 6:35 PM | Comments (8) | Categories: Restaurant

June 10, 2009

why i love scoops cups

There was a time when Scoops served all their ice cream in apparently disposable plastic cups. I say "apparently" because although I saw everyone else throw them away, I could never bring myself to do it. Instead, after polishing off my scoop of goat cheese-lavender or genmai cha gelato, I would take the empty cup into the bathroom. (That's right, the bathroom. Shut up.) In the bathroom, I'd rinse the cup in the sink, dry it out with paper towels, stick it in my purse and take it home to join the rest of my growing collection.

Why? That's exactly what Rob said the first time he saw them. (He also asks that about all the pasta sauce jars and juice bottles I save. Obviously, I need the former to store the beans and grains I buy in bulk and the latter to hold the liquor I'm brewing in the kitchen cabinet. Duh.)

The answer is simple: they're really useful!

Use #1: fruit caddy. There's nothing I like more than a piece of perfectly ripe, juicy summer fruit from the farmers market. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to transport said fruit in my lunch bag without it getting bruised or nicked. Nobody likes nicked fruit. Enter a Scoops cup, which fits snugly around a single piece of fruit, protecting it from all the other containers banging around in my lunch bag. I do the same with hard-cooked eggs.

Use #2: cat food scooper. There was a time when we didn't measure out the amount of food we put in Milhouse's bowl every day. Then he turned into a plump cat ball and we realized we needed to be better parents. A Scoops cup and Sharpie helps keep us from dishing out Macaroni-Grill-sized portions. To make it, I just measured out various amounts of food into the Scoops cup and labeled them with the Sharpie. Milhouse is now svelte and cuter than ever.

Use #3: mise en place holder. When I cook I like to have all the ingredients prepped and ready to throw in the pan, especially when I'm making a stir-fry, which comes together in a quick, hot burst of cooking. My go-to Thai stir-fry recipe involves vegetables cooked with a mixture of oyster sauce, sugar and fish sauce, and I always mix this sauce up in a Scoops cup before I start the cooking.

I also eat my morning serving of yogurt out of a Scoops cup and have been known to sub a Scoops cup covered in plastic wrap when I run out of small lidded containers. Thinking about all the uses there are for Scoops cups, it almost pains me to think about the hundreds -- thousands? -- that have been tossed out over the years, and still get tossed out when people take their ice cream to go. Is there anyone else out there stockpiling these? Or am I destined to die alone under an accidental avalanche of blue plastic cups, the newspaper headlines reading AREA WOMAN'S MYSTERIOUS ICE CREAM OBSESSION LEADS TO DEATH?

Come on, fess up. Are you a Scoops cup saver?

Posted by anjali at 9:38 PM | Comments (11) | Categories:

June 7, 2009

the annual crawfish boil

For about a year, when I was in elementary school, I had a pet crawfish. It lived in a small tank on my bathroom countertop, gobbled frozen shrimp with its whirring mouth and clacked its claws angrily at anyone who got too close. If it had a name, I no longer remember it. We never cuddled. I didn't tell it my 10-year-old woes. When it died, I don't think I was particularly sad.

All of this is to say: I have no problem eating piles of crawfish at the annual crawfish boil.

It helps that my friend Will boils them up in a giant pot of bubbling broth, chunks of corn, garlic heads and whole potatoes bobbing to the surface as he stirs the whole mess with a baseball bat. That broth is really good.

And the fact that we eat off a long table spread with newspaper helps too. There's something special about eating without a plate. And with your hands, that's always good.

After all, there's no other way to to tear off heads and suck out brains and peel away legs and shells to expose a tiny nubbin of meat that you can dip into a pile of Old Bay seasoning and pop into your mouth, along with a soft and mellow bulb of garlic.

And a little dessert helps build up the appetite while the next sack of crawfish awaits its steamy end. I went for a Coke cupcake topped with a crunchy peanut frosting that had the ideal sweet-sticky-saltiness, good enough to eat with a spoon.

Also -- what, you think I'd only eat one dessert? -- a big scoop of Rob's famous Dirt Pie, a diabetes-inducing mix of chocolate pudding, crushed Oreos, Cool Whip and an entire frosted chocolate sheet cake, crumbled and stirred in. The man does not mess around. He also serves it in a plastic flower pot, adorned with a real sunflower.

My contribution to the day was two types of cornbread, two batches each. Four pans of cornbread! The crowd was so insane, it all disappeared within 10 minutes of being set out. I managed to snag a piece of each, and concluded that while both were tasty, the chipotle-cheddar cornbread was a better match for the meal. (The other cornbread was sage and honey.) Its smoky heat slowly snuck up on the back of my throat, but it was a nice surprise, as were the chewy bits of roasted corn and pockets of still-soft cheddar. If there had been any left, I would have eaten a second piece.

Instead, I ate some more crawfish.

Chipotle-Cheddar Cornbread

Adapted from Bon Appetit

Makes 9 large or 16 small servings

1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese
1 cup fresh or frozen corn (I recommend Trader Joe's frozen roasted corn)
1 cup buttermilk
3 large eggs
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, cooled
2 tablespoons minced seeded canned chipotle chilies

Preheat oven to 375°F. Line an 8 x 8 square pan with foil and butter the foil. Mix first 6 ingredients in large bowl. Whisk buttermilk, eggs, melted butter, cheese, corn and chipotles in medium bowl. Add buttermilk mixture to dry ingredients; stir until blended. Spoon batter into prepared pan. Bake bread until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Cool in pan on rack 15 minutes. Lift bread out onto rack; cool completely.

Posted by anjali at 7:07 PM | Comments (8) | Categories: Recipe

June 3, 2009

my balcony vegetable garden: spring 2009 report

Marigolds and upside-down tomatoes.

One of the best things about my apartment is the tiny balcony off the living room, which is just big enough for a couple chairs and a handful of pots, and has a view of sparkling Downtown LA to the left and that huge, net-covered golfing cage near LACC to the right. On foggy nights, trucks barreling down the nearby 101 sound like waves rolling onto the shore. And that helicopter training its spotlight on the backyard next door? That's just -- wait, let's go inside now.

...Let me just lock the door. Okay, that's better.

So as I was saying: I love my balcony. Last year I experimented with growing tomato plants upside-down, using pots I modified on my own and which look way better than the ones you see on TV. (You can read about how I did it here.) Last year I planted Sunsugar, an orange, super-sweet cherry tomato variety, and Black Krim, a dark heirloom tomato originally from Eastern Europe. The Black Krim were freaking delicious, probably the most umami-filled tomatoes I've ever eaten, but in the end I only harvested a handful of cracked, rather ugly fruit. That's because, in the blazing heat of summer, the pot would dry out by midday, which wasn't a problem for the tiny Sunsugars, but would lead to crackled bands on the larger Black Krims. Tomatoes, especially non-cherry tomatoes, need lots and lots of water.

Lesson learned. This year I planted two types of cherry tomatoes: Sun Gold, another sweet orange variety, and Black Cherry, which I'm hoping will be like tiny Black Krims. Baby tomatoes, still green, are already swelling on the vine and I keep staring out the window at them hopefully, visions of Babbo's Sun Gold Tomato Pasta dancing in my head -- a dish which should be called Worth Its Weight in (Sun) Gold Pasta. The recipe couldn't be simpler: just warm a little olive oil in a pan, throw in some thinly sliced garlic until it sizzles, toss in ribbons of basil and whole tomatoes until the they crack, leaking juice which -- once you add the pasta -- transforms into a slick, sweet sauce that coats the noodles and tastes so good you'll want to lick your plate clean.

You can see why I'm impatient for these Sun Golds.

Exploding shiso plant.

I'm trying to grow only edibles on my balcony -- I like to eat my efforts -- so the rest of my plants are herbs or edible flowers: marigolds planted over the tomatoes, lavender, English thyme, Tuscan rosemary, Italian parsley and a giant, brilliantly green shiso plant. Shiso, also known as perilla or beefsteak plant (don't ask, I really don't know), has large serrated leaves that are most often used to decorate plates of sashimi. I like it thinly sliced and mixed with minced tuna over rice or strewn over agedashidofu or hiyayakko (cold tofu). Its distinctive taste, sort of a cross between mint and basil, reminds me of summer. I've been wanting to grow shiso for ages, but had trouble finding seedlings -- until one Sunday at the Hollywood Farmers Market, when I stumbled onto a cache of vibrant young shiso plants at the Hayward Organic Gardening stand. Three weeks later, my shiso has pretty much exploded, bigger and greener than any other plant on my balcony. I'm trying to think up ways to use it all. Shiso-sudachi cocktails perhaps? Shiso pesto? I'm taking suggestions in the comments.

In the meantime, I think the helicopter is gone. We can head back to the balcony now. And watch my garden grow.

Where I buy my plants:

Tomatomania: Heirloom tomatoes of all shapes and sizes. Check the website for sale schedule and locations.

Sunset Nursery: Family-owned nursery that has been around for over 50 years. They carry heirloom vegetable varieties as well as all kinds of flowers, succulents and indoor plants. The staff is incredibly helpful and friendly. 4368 W Sunset Blvd in Silver Lake. (323) 661-1642.

Hayward Organic Gardening: This father-son team offers a wide variety of organic vegetable and herb seedlings. At the Wednesday Santa Monica Farmers Market and Sunday Hollywood Farmers Market.

Posted by anjali at 6:33 PM | Comments (8) | Categories: Gardening