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Eating at the Beach in Oxnard

What's not to love about cranberry bread pudding with vanilla bean ice cream (above), or a fruity Bellini with a raspberry floating on top?

These started and ended lunch at the new Coastal Grill at the Embassy Suites Mandalay Beach Hotel & Resort in Oxnard. 

Opened in April, the restaurant is part of the resort's two-year, $17 million renovation project. Along with fellow food, wine and travel writers, I went there to taste from the menu introduced by executive chef Tim Hulbert.

With the Bellinis, we sampled one of the grill's appetizers, skewered Spanish sausage with pineapple and Hawaiian bread cubes (above), then toured the premises before lunch. 

The resort gets many visitors from Japan, Germany and England, to whom typical California food must seem exotic. Take, for example, Baja spring rolls (above) stuffed with chicken, corn, black beans and pico de gallo and accompanied by tomatillo salsa and a Southwest dipping sauce.  

Hulbert's triple-stack quesadilla (above) layers chicken, cheeses and red and green bell peppers. On the side are guacamole, pico de gallo and sour cream.

Wines accompanied each course. The best pairing, in my opinion, was A to Z Wine Works' 2012 Oregon Pinot Gris with the first course, lobster bisque (above).

Gazpacho (above) arrives with chopped vegetables in the center of a large white bowl. Then a puree of the same vegetables is poured into the bowl at the table. 

Hulbert fries zucchini and bell pepper slices along with calamari rings (above)  to lighten this popular appetizer. 

His oven-roasted chicken (above)  and grilled California halibut are fine, but what really gets attention is what he puts underneath--crisp-tender green beans and tri-colored Israeli coucous seasoned with onion and garlic and mixed with dried cranberries.

The halibut (above) gets a typical California topping--pesto and lime sauce. And probably no Californian has missed out on an Asian chicken salad. At the Coastal Grill, the chicken is tossed with greens, tangerine segments and a soy and sesame dressing. 

The hotel is at the edge of a broad, uncrowded beach, a good place for a walk to work up an appetite. The lush landscaping (above) makes you think you have escaped to some tropical getaway, although you have driven only an hour from Los Angeles. 

A Turkish Feast at the Anatolian Festival

I'm sitting in Topkapi Palace. From there, I can hear the strains of a Turkish marching band outside and, later in the afternoon, the call to prayer from a mosque next door.

This isn't Turkey, though, it's the Orange County Fair and Event Center in Costa Mesa, transformed for the Anatolian Cultures & Food Festival. The four-day event was an opportunity to experience everything Turkish.

The entire site, including the food stands (at top), had been set up to recreate Turkish architecture and historic sites. The food wasn't simulated, though. It was the real thing, some of it straight from Turkey.

These women, rolling out the dough for flatbreads, could have been working and gossiping in some Turkish village.

You could find meat such as this, cooked on a vertical skewer, almost anywhere in Turkey.  

These huge containers hold a popular street food called tantuni. The spiced, diced meat is eaten wrapped in a flat bread called lavas. 

Gaziantep, considered the culinary center of Turkey, sent this man to make katmer, a package of sheer dough filled with pistachios, thick cream and sugar. It sold out so quickly that by the time I tried to buy some, it was gone. In Turkey, newlyweds eat this alluring pastry at their first breakfast to represent the sweetness they hope to find in their marriage. 

Gaziantep is renowned for baklava (above), some of it colored green with pistachios. The Gaziantep booth offered little boxes with individual bites of the famous baklava of Imam Cagdas, a restaurant in Gaziantep, and sold packages of intensely flavored local pistachios.

Komagene, a Turkish chain that as yet has no American outlet, served spicy, sweet chee kufta in a romaine leaf (above). This meatless tartare, composed of bulgur ground with walnuts, almonds and many seasonings, could be a big seller here. 

Another delicious bulgur dish was kisir, sometimes called Turkish tabbouleh. 

Food columnist and cookbook author Faye Levy (Feast from the Mideast) gave an overview of Anatolian cuisine in an area set aside for talks and cooking demonstrations.

Vegetables cooked in olive oil is a menu category in Turkey, she said, and a specialty of Izmir, where the cuisine is influenced by Greece. The Veggieland stall served only such vegetables, among them stuffed eggplants (above) and green beans with tomatoes.

Manti, or Turkish ravioli, showed off the fine handwork of Turkish cooks. The tiny morsels of meat-stuffed pasta were topped with tomato sauce and yogurt.  

Baklava wasn't the only sweet. Another was lokma (above), fried dough balls to munch on with tea.  

Coconut-coated carrot balls were composed of pureed carrots mixed with crushed cookies, sugar, cinnamon and walnuts. 

Other desserts included bread kataifi, small syrup-soaked semolina cakes called sekerpare and Noah's pudding, a mixture of barley, rice, beans, dried fruits, walnuts and coconut.

Cones of "sticky" ice cream from Maras attracted long lines of customers. Also popular were snow cones flavored with Turkish style syrups (above). 

Some 400 volunteers worked for two weeks to set up the festival, which included music performances, folk dances and displays of Turkish arts and crafts.  If you missed it, that's a shame. But you can still find information on Turkish cuisine and recipes on the festival website.

Wined Out but Eating Well at the L.A. International Wine Competition

Never have I eaten so well, and drunk so poorly, as at the Los Angeles International Wine Competition last week in Pomona.

The wines were fine. That wasn't the issue. I sat in as an observer on a panel (at top) judging 93 of them in a single day. Drinking that many would have been suicide. And if I liked a wine a lot, too bad. All of my tastes went into a spit bucket.

You can read the details of the judging and learn about related events you can attend in my story today in L.A. Weekly's Squid Ink.

Mercifully, at lunch the drink set out at each place was iced tea. During dinner, we could drink as much as we wanted from displays of last year's winners (above), and bottles were passed non-stop at the tables. The downside was, after dealing with so much wine during the day, I wasn't up for more.

The food was wonderful, though. The Squid Ink article describes what the judges ate for lunch. For dinner, we were almost overwhelmed by dish after dish prepared by Chef David Teig and his crew (above). Teig is in charge of McKinley's Grille at the Sheraton Fairplex Hotel & Conference Center, where the judging took place.

This salad combined gorgeous heirloom tomatoes with cheese and microgreens.

Spicy grilled octopus came with Anaheim chiles, fresh peaches and mint.

Here's a bowlful of asparagus, fresh morels and cheese.

Farm-raised squash and farm bacon accompanied king salmon (above), appropriate because we were eating outdoors in McKinley's Farm at Fairplex, site of the L.A. County Fair.

Meat eaters tucked into ostrich (above) and chicken.

Dinner ended with a choice of Moscato snow cones drizzled with port wine or hoja santa custard ice cream topped with saffron honey. Why choose? I had both--and caught the last trolley back to the hotel. 

Bargain Dim Sum at Ocean Star

If you're looking for a bargain, go to Ocean Star Restaurant in Monterey Park on a weekday.

Then you can take advantage of lower than usual prices for dim sum--40 to 50 cents a serving less than on weekends. My group of five ordered liberally and wound up paying only $9 each, including a substantial tip.

The dim sum is first rate, not bargain food, and it's sent around the room on rolling carts (above).

The servers are friendly, like this one, who posed while a co-worker egged her on.

This cart of sweets caught my eye (above). They're not all desserts. Some contain chicken or barbecued pork in buns with sweet yellow topping. 

These tender rice wrappers are filled with shrimp. 

These chewy buns contain shrimp too, but the shrimp are dried, and the flavor is intense.  

Here is our table when we were well into lunch.  Dishes that came later included fish paste in wedges of green pepper, crisp-skinned roast duck, steamed pork dumplings with ruffly edges, sesame balls filled with sweet bean paste and egg tarts. Those are chicken feet in the center container.  

On weekdays, the crowds that notoriously swamp dim sum restaurants on weekends are absent, and it's easy to get a table. Maybe it's always easy to get a table, because Ocean Star is a huge restaurant, with room for 800 or more customers. Even the reception area is big enough to house a small restaurant.

Ocean Star Restaurant, 145 N. Atlantic Blvd., #201-203, Monterey Park, CA 91754. Tel: (626) 308-2128. 

Spicy Rice Cakes in a Garden Setting

This isn't your usual pasta. As a matter of fact, it isn't pasta at all, but rice cakes in a red sauce with seafood and vegetables.

Like a picture, it has a frame, golden slices of kabocha squash. 

The place where you can eat this is Cafe Scent, a Korean coffee shop with a long menu of snacks, main dishes and sweets.

This dish is a fusion version of tteokbokki. a rice cake stir-fry that often is very spicy. At Cafe Scent, the sauce is lighter and less spicy. Along with shrimp, squid and a single mussel, the mix includes mushrooms and red and green bell peppers. On top is melted mozzarella, like a pizza.

Cafe Scent gets its name not just from aromatic dishes like this but from its other specialty, flowers. The shop deals in wedding bouquets, gift baskets, floral decorations for events, table centerpieces and the like. 

It's cute and cozy with two rooms, one rather dark. The other (above) is lighter and more gardenlike.

Cafe Scent, 3680 Wilshire Blvd., #PO3, Los Angeles, CA 90010. (The entrance is around the corner on Serrano Ave., south of Wilshire.) Tel: (213) 383-9440.

A Stinky Dish at Tasty Garden

Eat this if you dare. It's steamed ground pork with stinky salt fish on top.

One place you can get it is Tasty Garden in Alhambra. The pork mixture is mild. The fish is anything but mild. It's extremely salty and as pungent as the smelliest cheese. If you're sitting downwind, you'll be overpowered. 

But devotees, like my friend Billy, love it. When I eat Chinese food, I leave the ordering to him.

We started with a much more palatable dish, French style filet mignon (above). French here must mean from France by way of Indochina, because the steak is spicy enough to merit a red chile on the menu, and it's cooked with basil.  

Still another dish in the same vein, Vietnamese style shrimp (above) is also cooked with fresh basil. It's slightly sweet and spiced with black pepper. 

And look at these clams (above). The golden flecks aren't bread crumbs but dried garlic. 

Still more seafood--pan-fried fish fillet in black bean sauce (above).

We switched from seafood to chicken on fried noodles with Chinese broccoli (above).

But we wanted still more vegetables, so here are stir-fried green beans (above).

Tea doesn't come with lunch. Drinks are extra, which means you can try Hong Kong style ice coffee with milk tea. A couple of these, and you'll be wired for the rest of the day.

Tasty Garden has several outlets, with two more set to open in Rowland Heights and Irvine. However, Billy says the Alhambra location has the best chef.

Tasty Garden, 288 W. Valley Blvd., Alhambra, CA 91801. Tel: (626) 300-8262.

You Don't Need Basil for This Pesto

Don't throw away those carrot tops. Put them into pesto.

I got the idea when I bought tender young carrots at the Windrose Farm stall at the Hollywood Farmers Market.

"Do you want me to cut off the tops for our compost?" asked the girl who handled my purchase. I decided to keep the feathery greens and asked what she did with them. 

Her suggestion was to turn them into pesto, which I did, using the ingredients she suggested. There it is at the top, framed by Windrose carrots. 

Serve the pesto with pasta or on crackers or baguette slices as an appetizer.

CARROT TOP PESTO

Tops from 1 bunch baby carrots
1/3 cup walnut pieces
1 large clove garlic
Salt
1/4 cup olive oil

Remove the tops from the carrots, wash them and drain well.  Pluck the leaves, leaving only the tender stems at the top. There will be about 1 cup leaves.

Place the leaves, walnuts, garlic and a dash salt in a food processor. Process until the nuts are ground.  Add the olive oil and process again until well blended.

Makes about 1/2 cup.  

Disclaimer: Carrot leaves contain allergens that may affect some people, just as some are allergic to peanuts. They are high in nutrients, however, and not toxic. 

Tasting with a Legendary Vintner

Even vintner Bernard Portet (above) seemed surprised at how well his Pinot Noir dealt with spicy flavors.

Portet was eating ceviche seriously spiked with serrano chiles. The place was Duplex on Third, where he had brought wines for a dinner tasting.

A legend in the Napa Valley, Portet co-founded and was head winemaker at Clos du Val in the Stags Leap District. After retiring in 2009, he founded Polaris Wines with a former colleague, Don Chase. Under the label Heritance, they are focusing on Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc but have added Pinot Noir. Their 2011 Pinot, from Stanly Ranch vineyard in Carneros, was released this January. It's a limited production, only 217 cases.

This is the wine Portet turned to when even the cool, crisp Sauvignon Blanc that he is holding in the photo above couldn't alleviate the fire from the ceviche.

The success of this unlikely pairing illustrates Portet's approach to winemaking."Wine is to go with the food, compliment food, go well with the food," he said. For Heritance, he is making "wines that are enjoyable, yet complex," more palatable and less austere than what he made at Clos du Val.

And they're not high alcohol bombs. "I'm not trying to make explosive wines, but wines that come gently into the mouth," he said. The Pinot Noir is 14.2 % alcohol. "Acidity shows more when there is lower alcohol," he said. 

Portet has responded to changing tastes. "The taste of people has evolved in 25 years," he said. "Consumers have gone from not being afraid of aging a wine for three to five years to, they want to drink it now." 

Born in Cognac, France, Portet is the ninth generation in a wine family. His early lessons in grape-growing and wine-making came from his father, who was vineyard and winery manager of Château Lafite. In 1968, he arrived in the Napa Valley.  "I have the privilege of having 44 years of wine-making behind me," he said.

The Heritance label sums up his background: 1 (for one family), 9 (for the number of generations) and 4 for the number of continents where he has made wine. 

Heritance is what Portet calls a "winery without walls." The partners don't have their own vineyards. They buy grapes, but not from just anywhere. "I do believe very much in the idea of terroir," Portet said.

The grapes go to a custom crushing facility where he supervises every step in the production of the wine. 

The 2011 Sauvignon Blanc, which didn't quite extinguish the flames of the ceviche, is blended with 12% Roussanne from Paso Robles. The result is a wine more tropical and California-like than the usual Sauvignon Blanc-Semillon blend, he said.

But this was a one-time experiment. The 2012 Sauvignon Blanc, which will be bottled in May, is blended with 7 to 8% Semillon.

You might ask why a winemaker would order a spicy first course at a wine dinner rather than a mild option such as oysters, a caprese salad or Maryland crab cakes, all of which are on the menu at Duplex.

The answer is, Portet has loved ceviche since first tasting it in Chile (his wife is Chilean, from Valparaiso).

And he's closely linked to South American wine country. Polaris's other label, Ñandú is a Malbec from Mendoza, Argentina. Portet goes to Mendoza two or three times a year to supervise the making of this wine.

The 2010 Malbec, which he brought to the dinner, is blended with 2% Cabernet Sauvignon. Malbec is a small black grape with not much acidity. "Cabernet is necessary for the balance of the wine," he said. "Even 2% makes a difference. With the Cabernet the tannins of Malbec reappear." 

Portet chose a more reliable dish to go with the reds that followed the Pinot--pappardelle with lamb ragout, maitake mushrooms and cherry tomato-garlic bread crumbs.

This was an easy pairing with the 2008 and 2010 Heritance Cabernet Sauvignons, which, Portet said, reflect the difference between a normal year (2008) and a cold vintage that resulted in green tannins and spiciness (2010).

Up next for Polaris is a single vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon that will be bottled in June. And Portet is thinking about a white or red Rhone blend with grapes from Paso Robles. 

If he does this, it will clearly be a Paso wine. "I try to make sure you recognize the variety [of the grapes] and the terroir," he said.

Food and Fun with Bordeaux Merlots

Having lunch with French winemakers means lots of bottles going back and forth, lots of clowning and fun, like in the photo above. And good food too.

This happened at The Peninsula in Beverly Hills, when Le Circle Rive Droite (The Right Bank Club) held tastings arranged by Learn About Wine.

Founded in 2002, the Cercle represents the best vineyards from the right bank of the Gironde estuary in Bordeaux, where Merlot is the top grape. Thirty-two châteaux poured their wines throughout the day.

After a morning seminar for sommeliers, the wine people headed outdoors to the sunny Verandah Terrace for lunch. French accents dominated conversation, and bottles covered the tables (above). When these had been tasted, more appeared as tables exchanged their bounty.

The wines were older vintages, from 2005, 2008 and 2009, and one from 2000--Château Moulin Haut-Laroque (really nice, above). 

Lunch started with a mixed green salad (above) with shaved vegetables, tomatoes and pine nuts. The dressing was acidic and salty, which I thought it would kill the wines, only that didn't happen. The two poured at my table with this course not only stood up to the salad but became even more delicious with it.

These salad-loving wines were Château La Rose Perrière and Château La Vielle Cure (above), Merlot blends from 2008.

Next came a dish friendly to all the wines, chicken on a bed of mascarpone polenta with tomatoes, zucchini and sweet corn (above).

Sitting at my table was Yseult de Gaye, whose family has been in the wine business for a century (above and at the top). She brought Château Grand Corbin Manuel 2009, a good match for the chicken.

Lunch ended with cheeses, bread and crackers and then a platter of cookies (above). The chocolate cookies at the left went well with the wines. The others were just plain good, like the remaining wines I tasted.

They were Château Fontenil 2005, Château Boutisse 2005, Château Fayat 2009, Château Montviel 2006, Château Rol Valentin 2009 and Château Bonalgue 2009.

At the end came two young wines. The first, Château Magrez Fombrauge, represented an outstanding vintage, 2010. The baby was the 2012 Château Cassagne Haut-Canon.

The 2012 vintage will produce "some of the best Bordeaux we've seen," according to Dr. Alain Raynaud, president of Le Cercle Rive Droite. Even better news from Dr. Raynaud: "The prices will be reasonable when the vintage is finally released, making it a great year for consumers."

Celebrating Malbec Day at Lucques

What could be nicer than a glass of Malbec with a great lunch at Lucques?

The answer is, 14 glasses of Malbec with the same lunch. This happened at a master class presented by Wines of Argentina in honor of the third annual Malbec World Day April 17.

The "students"  were handed a glass of Finca Las Nubes Rosé of Malbec 2011 as they arrived. This dry rosé was made by José Luis Mounier at a high altitude winery in the Cafayate Valley in northern Argentina.

The rest of the wines came in three flights, poured into glasses that formed a cheery crowd behind the lunch plates. The first flight, at the top, included the 2012 Finca Flichman Reserva Malbec 2012, the 2011 Lagarde Malbec, the 2010 Alamos Winery Selección Malbec and the 2010 Ricardo Santos Malbec.

You wouldn't mind having any of these on your table, especially because the suggested retail prices are $20 or less, making them great buys.  At $12.99, the Finca Flichman was the lowest-priced wine at the tasting. Founded in 1890, this is one of Argentina's oldest wineries. 

You may see Alamos Malbec in markets for less than the Selección, which is $20, but don't get excited. It's a different wine at a lower price point.  

As Master Sommelier Tim Gaiser from San Franciso lectured on the wines, the class ate spiced lamb loin with roasted baby carrots, dandelion greens and black olives (above).

The hardest part of the session was pouring the wines into a dump bucket when it would have been nice to sit back and enjoy them. 

But they had to make way for the next round, composed of the 2010 Finca El Origen Gran Reserva Malbec (at right), the 2010 Don Miguel Gascón Reserva Malbec, the 2008 Navarro Correas Alegoría Malbec, and the 2011 Domingo Hermanos Domingo Molina M2 Malbec.

The Domingo wine represents the Cafayate Valley and the Rupestre Valley in Salta in the north.  The other wines at the tasting were from Mendoza, where the first grape cuttings were planted in 1853.

To go with these richer and more expensive wines (the Domingo Molina M2 is $35), lunch escalated into a hearty plate of chicken paillard with Swiss chard bread pudding, wild mushrooms and walnut butter (above).

The final round brought on the priciest of the wines, the 2008 Renacer Malbec ($70), which is a limited edition wine aged two years in new French oak and then 6 months in the bottle. At 15%, it was the highest in alcohol in this group.

The others were the 2009 Nieto Senetiner Nieto Reserva Malbec followed by three blends: the 2010 Salentein Numina Malbec Blend (61 % Malbec, 21% Cabernet Sauvignon and smaller amounts of Merlot, Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc); the 2009 Luca Wines Beso de Dante Malbec Blend (60% Malbec, the rest Cabernet Sauvignon), and the 2008 Familia Zuccardi Zeta Malbec Blend (73% Malbec and 27% Cabernet Sauvignon).

At $45, the Zuccardi Zeta was the second highest-priced wine at the tasting. The Nieto Reserva sneaked into this round at only $14.99.

To pair with this elegant group, Lucques sent out plates of braised beef short ribs with turnip greens, roasted cippolinis and horseradish cream (above).

Sated with wine and food and hardly able to touch the platter of cookies that served as dessert, the tasters had to sit back and agree with Sommelier Gaiser, who said of Malbec, "Whatever you do to it, you really can't change its soul."