blue_dolphin

Wow, Carrol’s - that’s a blast from the past! There were two in my little Northern NY burg, well before McD’s came to town. I believe both locations are still Burger Kings. First food-adjacent job was really a babysitting gig for a couple who had a seasonal (summer) lakefront restaurant. When the kids were put to bed, I’d go help out in the kitchen with little stuff like salads and desserts. Other times, I’d get called over to be a spare pair of hands when the kitchen was in the weeds. I also worked as a dishwasher at the local golf course restaurant where I also helped out with plating, etc when they were catering for group lunches or dinners. Then I did my own fast food stint at McD’s. I continued to work there even when I was in college because they were happy to give me as many hours as I wanted and work around my schedule. They have corporate processes, training materials and templates for everything and we had a manager who wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the box and happy to turn tasks over to someone else so I volunteered and learned how to do the ordering, rotate stock, calculate waste & reject, man-hours and scheduling. I also did tours for school kids and scout troops, arranged birthday parties and donations to local nonprofits with insatiable thirsts for McD's orange drink. I also learned to do arithmetic in my head really fast so I could total things up while stuffing the bags, add the sales tax (I used to know 6.5% of anything without looking) and calculate the Canadian exchange for our guests who wanted to pay in CDN. Then I graduated, moved to California, and worked in labs where we weighed our ingredients but didn’t produce anything edible!

Did you try the gift link that @Smithy shared? In my experience, WaPo gift links require the reader to create an account by entering an email address. You may not wish to do that but there’s no charge.

I almost copied @Duvel with a pack of noodles but went with something even easier - poached eggs on toasted sourdough “buttered” with 'nduja

Another round of French toast sticks made from a brioche hot dog bun. Sausage, banana slices and maple syrup.

Judy Rogers was a huge proponent of salting early - her Zuni Cafe roast chicken salted 2-3 days before cooking is a case in point - but in her cookbook, she says, “Fish is a different case; freshness is imperative. When I preseason fish, it is for a few hours at most.” In Salt Fat Acid Heat, Samin Nosrat says, “Unlike meat, the delicate proteins of most fish will degrade when salted too early, yielding a tough, dry, or chewy result. A brief salting - about 15 min - is plenty to enhance flavor and maintain moisture in flaky fish. Inch-thick steaks of meatier fish, such as tuna and swordfish , can be salted up to 30 min ahead.”

Apparently you've nabbed a monster 1.36 kg piece of something brownish. Kudos!

I saw the $4.20 price when you posted but it clearly didn’t last long!

My kind of house guest! Was she willing to share any salsa verde seeds so you can grow your own? 🙃 I confess to eating various combinations of pears, Gorgonzola walnuts and toast on the daily. Sometimes for breakfast, sometimes later in the day with a glass of wine. The farmers market pears are so nice right now!

Pasta al limone with cream from Six Seasons of Pasta by Joshua McFadden p 114. This is another of the classics or “any season” recipes with a little lesson on working with cream-based sauces. I like that this version is all about the lemon. Other recipes in my books add other flavors - anchovy, nutmeg, basil, garlic, shallot, chile flakes - all good, but I appreciated the simplicity of this sauce. He adds a generous amount of lemon zest early on to infuse into the cream but holds the lemon juice to the very end where it’s added off the heat to avoid a cooked lemon flavor. I reduced the amount of pasta and added snap peas and yellow bell pepper so I could call it a meal.

I’m not recommending this method for cooking beans, the warnings above are wise, but am sharing this little tidbit on the length of time it would likely take. This past weekend, I enjoyed a meal at the Rancho Gordo Heirloom Bean Encuentro at Alta Baja Market in Santa Ana, CA. One of the participating chefs was Tony Esnault of the Michelin star restaurant Knife Pleat (and formerly Church & State and Spring in Los Angeles) who served a dish of RG Buckeye beans, forest mushrooms, allium crumble and fine herbs. It was delicious. When asked how the beans were cooked, he said they were soaked overnight in salted water, then cooked for 24 hrs at 202°. He did NOT specifically say they used sous vide and there are other ways to maintain that temp but it’s in the range where sous vide could work. The texture of the beans was more fudgy than creamy. They were tender, but not soft or mushy at all. Not a revelation, it was the flavors that made the dish special, not the texture of the beans but they contrasted very effectively with the texture of the mushrooms I'm sort of tempted to try it to compare more carefully with conventional cooked beans from the same bag.

I think they are quite different but I haven’t been to a Northgate, so I could be wrong. I've always thought Northgate was a supermarket, similar to Vallarta, which has more locations in my area. Alta Baja Market is more of a specialty shop than a supermarket. They carry some food items like heirloom beans, grains and flours, ground chiles, sauces and condiments, along with a selection of wines and spirits but no fresh produce, meat, frozen or refrigerated goods. They have a reach-in cooler stocked with beer and nonalcoholic beverages but it’s not a place you could do your weekly shopping. It’s possible they offer more than I saw as they had tables squeezed into every corner for this event. That said, I think it's worth a visit. Nice selection of La Chamba and other pottery, cookbooks and other books and gift items. I thought their prices for the wines and spirits were on the high side but they are specialty items and not as widely available. I’d like to try their cafe offerings. They host various events like cooking classes that sound appealing. If you go, you might pay a visit to Mr. Diablito, a fruit vendor across the street at 4th & Bush. He made the delicious agua fresca served at our meal.

That area of downtown Santa Ana is really charming. Next year, I’ll try to get tickets to more of the Encuentro events - it’s 3-day weekend of Peace, Love & Beans - and stay overnight. There was an art walk, movie screenings, panel discussions related to food and drag bingo, among other things.

Over here in the Lunch topic, I detailed the menu from the “Supper with Friends) meal at the Rancho Gordo Heirloom Bean Encuentro held this weekend at Alta Baja Market in Santa Ana, CA. I had a little time to shop at the market and picked up a few items: I got a La Chamba soup pot and comal, two bottles of cocktail bitters from Miracle Mile Bitters - toasted pecan and yuzu - and a jar of Taco Maria Chile morita and peanut salsa. Looking forward to trying out all of them.

Today’s lunch hasn’t started yet but I thought I’d tease you with the menu I’ll be back with the deets later. OK, I survived the LA traffic and made it home after a delightful meal at the 2025 Heirloom Bean Encuentro at Alta Baja Market in Santa Ana so I can report on our meal. The location is a specialty grocery market specializing in foods of Mexico and the southwest US. They also have a cafe and have been hosting this annual bean gathering for several years now. Their cafe is tiny so putting on this event is quite an undertaking. I did not partake of the wine pairing since I was driving but I bought a bottle of each of the wines to take home. They’re all from wineries in Baja California. At the moment, I’m sipping a glass of the rosé, a Grenache-Syrah blend that was served with the lentil salad. Very nice. We started off with a refreshing agua fresca dubbed Agua de SanTana. The glasses (paper cups 🙃) were rimmed with Rancho Gordo Stardust chile/lime powder and garnished with pomegranate arils. The first food course was a Puy lentil salad from chef Evan Kleiman, former restaurateur and current host of the Good Food podcast. In this photo, the lentils are in front with a crunchy breadstick and the paper cup of agua fresca is behind the plate. The next dish consisted of two scoops of warm rice porridge with pickled kohlrabi and smoked black garbanzo beans flanking a cool disk of alubia blanca mash with miso topped with apples and pickled Christmas lima beans, nasturtium flowers and herbs. My photo doesn’t do this justice, nor does the paper plate, but it was a delight to eat and the story behind it was even better. Chef Minh Phan works with culinary arts programs at local public high schools and this dish was her idea but was entirely prepared and plated by a group of her students. They all came out to join her on the stage so we could give them a big round of applause. Next up were buckeye beans and forest mushrooms from Chef Tony Ensault. The mushroom broth was deeply flavorful but also clear and not murky at all. The tiny (see my fork for scale) white beech mushrooms on top were pickled to add a bright note. Next up was a dish of Ayocote Negro beans cooked with habenero chiles and xoconostle for a fun mix of heat and tartness. The beans were topped with dumplings made from masa, potato and garlic. This was the only dish that some people found too spicy but I thought it was perfect. It was from chef Ray Garcia. The last dish, from Chef Eric Linares, was a macha custard with sweet Domingo Rojo beans. I wasn’t expecting a bean dessert! The bean component reminded me of Asian desserts with adzuki beans, except more flavorful. There was sweetness from the condensed milk but the beans themselves also had a savory note and the macha custard was rich and delicious. Again, the small paper bowls don’t show this one off, but it was delicious. In addition to the wine, I picked up a few other things in the market but I’ll post them elsewhere.

Inspired by @gulfporter's recent post and my weekly fish share delivery of fresh halibut, I made this blackened halibut sandwich with Creole mayo and a cabbage& snap pea slaw