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A Rosy Margarita for New Year's

Don't serve just any Margarita this New Year. Shake up the rosy drink that was the hit of a cocktail party staged by Sabores Auténticos de Mexico (Authentic Flavors of Mexico).

The party took place at Vibiana in downtown Los Angeles preceding a dinner and presentation of awards to the top Mexican restaurants in Los Angeles. (For the winners, check out my story in Squid Ink, the LA Weekly food blog.)

Guests chose from four cocktail stations manned by bartenders from The Liquid Chef. The station that got the most traffic handed out Rositas, so named because they were shaken and then decorated with red rose petals.

To make a Rosita, combine the standard Margarita components--white tequila, orange liqueur and lime juice--then add a dash of rose syrup and a couple of torn up petals and shake with ice. Strain into a glass and top with more rose petals.

Glasses at the party were rimmed with hibiscus and rose salt, which is produced by Dainzu, a company named for a Zapotec ruin in Oaxaca.  If you can't locate that, use an ordinary salt rim, mixing in some pink sugar granules if you have any left over from Christmas baking.

 

 

Champagne--Cheap to Pricey

It's almost New Year's Eve, and the only drink decision you have to make is which Champagne to pour. 

You could bring out anything from an $11 bottle that wouldn't embarrass you to, whew, a $299 pink Champagne in a fancy bottle.

The $11 wine is Marquis de la Tour Brut Rosé, a pretty pink, slightly sweet sparkler. This Loire Valley wine may not be memorable, but it's  ideal when the party is so much fun people don't notice what they're drinking.

You wouldn't say that about Perrier-Jouët 2002 Fleur De Champagne Rosé. You have to pay attention to a wine that costs almost $300.  Dry and a delicate salmon pink, it blends 55% Pinot Noir and 45 % Chardonnay. Fleur means flower, and a graceful spray of flowers decorates the bottle.

The Perrier-Jouët was the most expensive wine at a Rosé Champagne trade tasting set up by The Tasting Panel at Waterloo and City. The 30 wines were arranged according to price, from cheapest to those over $100.

If I had to choose something in between, I would go for the Frank Family Non Vintage Blanc de Noir, a white sparkler made from red grapes.

This is a Napa Valley product, so technically you can't call it Champagne, but whatever you call it, it's a delightful wine for $42.50.

And if I were willing to spend more than $100, my choice would be Rene Geoffroy Non Vintage Champagne Rosé de Saignée, Blanc de Rosé for $111. It's a nice, delicate pink with a pronounced, yeasty Champagne taste--just what you want to toast an auspicious new year.

 

Take a Break at Baciami

If you're doing last minute Christmas shopping on Larchmont Boulevard (or go there afterward for the sales), drop into Baciami. It's the newest eating place on the street, specializing in crepes and gelati.

You can lunch on a savory crepe, composing the filling from such ingredients as turkey bacon, tuna, chicken, avocado, mushrooms, tomatoes, spinach and cheeses. The price is $8.75 to $10.75, depending upon how many you choose.

The crepe in the photo was my choice--Gruyere, ham and caramelized onions.

Each is made to order--you can watch the procedure because the griddle is in full view--and each comes with a small salad.

After that, you ought to explore the sorbets and gelati. These are made at Il Cono, Baciami's sister restaurant in Beverly Hills. Ask for a taste before you choose. I thought red-streaked cheesecake gelato was wonderful, although cheesecake is not my favorite dessert.

The more than 30 flavors offered daily include cappuccino, mint, pistachio, Nutella, coffee, chocolate, Oreo and toasted almond.  Among the sorbets, limoncello ought to be good at a place that prides itself on its Italian recipes.  

If you need a last minute gift, you can pick it up here, from an assortment of luscious chocolates that Baciami will pack to order. 

Flavors include caramel sea salt, liquid caramel, hazelnut truffles, saffron marzipan and milk chocolate crowns filled with orange-flavored dark chocolate ganache. If you can get the box home without sneaking a sample, you're a stronger person than I am.   

Baciami Gelateria & Creperie, 139 1/2 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004. Tel: (323) 336-8110.  

Celebrating a Danish Christmas

Every Christmas, I turn Scandinavian. It's a return to my Danish roots and early years of eating my mother's butter cookies and listening to stories of julenissen, the Christmas elves who distribute gifts and consume the porridge you set by the fire.

Each year, I arrange a batallion of tiny julenissen on my mantel. Dressed like Santa Claus, these mischievous gnomes are as full of life as if they were real.

It's also important to fill the house with Scandinavian baked goods.

I'll make the cookies myself, but the breads come from Olsen's Danish Village Bakery in Solvang. Who could resist the tempting baked goods displayed in the counter there?

During the week, I'll have cardamom bread, which Olsen's bakes in a large braid.

And for Christmas morning I'll bring out pretzel-shaped  kringle, a large almond-sprinkled loaf that oozes with almond custard.

Solvang is dressed in its holiday gear now, and a day there will fill even the worst grouch with holiday spirit.

Just look at the horses and their red-trimmed cart  waiting to give tourists a ride.

If you plan to buy breads at Olsen's, order them before you go,   because they sell out rapidly.

There was plenty of kringle this trip, but I grabbed the last two loaves of cardamom bread from under the nose of a woman who took so long to make up her mind that I got waited on first. And it was only 11 in the morning.

Cardamom bread is $4.95 and kringle is $9.50 at Olsen's Danish Village Bakery, 1529 Mission Drive, Solvang, CA 93463. Tel: (805) 688-6314.

Durian Pastry--It's Not Stinky

I've eaten durian cake, durian pudding, durian ice cream, durian and sticky rice and fresh durian. But durian dim sum? That's new to me.

I came across it at Sea Harbour Seafood Restaurant in Rosemead, where deep-fried durian pastry is No. 57 on the menu.

The sunny yellow, flaky pastry filled with durian is slightly sweet but not sugary, although it's in the dessert section. 

As my lunch companions examined the pastries, I heard such words as "stench," "fermented,"  "smelly," "horrible," all referring to durian's notoriously stinky reputation.

Not deserved in my opinion. I would call the aroma and flavor tropical, ripe, sun-baked, concentrated, assertively fruity, exotically pleasant.  In other words, I like durian, and I thought the  pastries were great.

Sea Harbour Seafood Restaurant, 3939 N. Rosemead Blvd., Rosemead, CA 91770. Tel: (626) 288-3939.

Tainan: Food Worth the Trip

 
It's the perfect winter dish, a big stoneware casserole brim full of duck and cabbage in rich broth.

The casserole could be European--the shredded cabbage is like fresh sauerkraut. But other flavors indicate that it is not. You wouldn't find golden needles, black fungus and ginger root in such a dish in France or Germany.

Tasting the casserole requires a journey--to the city of Tainan in southern Taiwan.

It's a specialty of A-Sha restaurant there. A-Sha is famous, but not touristy. The food is homestyle and local, and you'll eat along with Chinese families.

If you are in Taipei,  you can get to Tainan in less than two hours on Taiwan's high speed railway. You could go there, have lunch and come back in a day.

A-sha is definitely worth the journey, and not just for the duck casserole but for an extensive menu of interesting food.

Its seafood dishes are superlative, among them a casserole of glutinous rice topped with crab, crab roe and mushrooms (in the photo below the diners), a sweet and sour eel casserole, a bowlful of beautiful shrimp, and sliced smoked fish to eat as an appetizer.  

A seafood soup that includes fish stomach, crab, fish, daikon and delicate mushrooms is good enough to rival the duck casserole.

Shrimp sausage (at the left in the photo at right) is another specialty. You dip it in Japanese mayo turned pink with seasonings that I couldn't deciper. That's liver sausage  on the right in the bowl.

A-sha isn't fancy. Bottled sour plum juice, cold tea and other drinks were set out on the table, but there was fragrant hot jasmine tea too

Dessert could be fruit. A plate of rose apples, guava, melon and pineapple to dip in salted sugar goes well with A-Sha's rich and varied cuisine.

Or you could have a big bowl of tender white almond jelly combined with  jujubes (Asian red dates), taro, beans and tapioca pearls that have been tinted pink,  a Chinese conglomeration foreign to western tastes, but delicious.

Outside, I noticed a motorcycle bristling with chopsticks. Were they from today's lunch, heading out for cleaning, or a new batch arriving?  I don't know, but the sight was startling.

It's only a short walk from the restaurant to Tian Gong Temple, which was Taiwan's first temple, constructed in 1854.

From there, you can meander along a shopping street to inspect the wares of Chinese bakeries and wonder what appetizing dishes people are eating as they sit at sidewalk tables and chairs so small they could have been designed for a nursery. 

Then back to the depot for the smooth ride to Taipei, with plenty of time left for shopping at the underground mall in the railway station and then dinner.

A-Sha restaurant (sometimes spelled A Xia or Asya), 7 Lane 84, Jhongyi Rd, Sec. 2,Tainan City, Taiwan. 

 

A Quesadilla Worth the Search

It was a great lunch, the sort of food you can find if you're willing to explore L.A.'s nooks and crannies.

La Guadalupana has only five small tables, two of them squeezed together to make a single table for four.

The sign in the window advertises squash flower quesadillas. This was promising, because the restaurant is in a Latino neighborhood.

Not just a promise, the quesadilla was excellent, a big, meaty flour tortilla stuffed with fresh squash flowers and Jack cheese and browned on the grill until the cheese melted.

The accompaniments were simple--squeeze bottles of mild green salsa and an orange salsa made explosively hot by chiles de arbol.

The drinks of the day were licuados of fresa and platano--strawberry and banana blender drinks.  If you order coffee, as I did, you make it yourself, with a bottle of Nescafe Clasico, a mug of milk and sugar.

A rerun of "La Fea Mas Bella," the Mexican predecessor of "Ugly Betty," was playing on the TV in the corner. 

The atmosphere was homey and pleasant. And a young guy working there spoke proudly of other quesadillas filled with huitlacoche or mushrooms, tinga (shredded meat) or chicharron to try on another visit.

Quesadillas are $4 at La Guadalupana, 1422 1/2 W. 6th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90017. Tel: (213) 483-2973.  

Getting a Real Taste of Taiwan

 
This was the most delicious German-style ham, crusty, juicy, and paired with zesty mustard and sauerkraut.

But it turned up in Taipei, not Germany. Yes, I did eat good Chinese food during a week's stay in Taiwan, but there were other tastes that I didn't expect.

The ham is one of the most popular dishes at Ba Köln, a restaurant on the way to Beitou, a hot springs resort that is known as the Hollywood of Taiwanese movies, because so many were filmed there.

That same restaurant passed around deep dish pizza, stringy with pale cheese.

The lunch buffet, which meandered from one room to another, included sushi and kimchi, along with a sturdy Russian meat stew with carrots and potatoes, beef with bok choy, tempura vegetables, onion rings and many other dishes designed to please anybody from anywhere. 

From the drink dispensers, you could pump out white gourd drink, which I've never seen in Los Angeles. The mellow flavor is similar to pandan.

The most unusual meat dish that I came across was curried ostrich to wrap in lettuce cups--an update of minced pigeon in lettuce cups, which is a Chinese classic.

The ostrich was part of a lunch at Jianshanpi Jiangnan Resort in Tainan County, a pretty place with a lake and gardens.   

And what is this? Mexican pan dulce spread out on a stand at a street market in Taipei? No, it's Chinese bread, but the resemblance is uncanny.

Some of the breads looked just like conchas. A big white bun, lightly glazed with chocolate, was light as air, more delicate than anything from a panadería.

Nearby, Lungshan Temple was full of food, but only for the gods. The offerings, which weighed down a long table, were placed there by the devout seeking help with their wordly issues. 

The scent of incense was strange, overpowering. The burning sticks perfumed prayers to Taoist deities.

Lungshan  is a stop on the MRT. From the temple, it's a short walk to the Hua Xi night market, where you can look at displays of fish heads, have a foot massage, give alms to Buddhist monks and nuns, drop into a seafood restaurant, buy ice cream, fresh medicinal herbs, a jacket or a purse.

Whatever you do, you'll have to dodge the motorcycles that drive right through the crowds.

Subtropical Taiwan produces a lush variety of fruits. Its dragon fruit is better than any I have tasted elsewhere.

I also ate supersweet pineapple, watermelon and  passion fruit on the half shell.

And what could be more tempting, and unusual, than tart-sweet fresh passion fruit seeds mixed with peach yogurt?

At the Taoyuan District Agricultural Improvement Station, I marveled over crisp, juicy, just-picked fuyu persimmons, Asian pears and green guava.

But if you're after seriously sugary sweets, try the chocolate truffles at the Grand Palace Hotel (the lobby is at right).

Or a cheesecake from 85C Bakery Cafe that is silky and light as a cloud.

The 85C chain of coffee shops and bakeries has hundreds of outlets in Taiwan (and one in Irvine, California). Its top drink is sea-salt coffee, sweetened coffee topped with cream whipped with a dash of sea salt.

I didn't taste that, but I did have delicious, foamy, caramel milk tea at the National Palace Museum in Taipei.

Thin strands of caramel crisscross the top of this steamy drink. It's nice to recuperate with after you've spent hours viewing the museum's imperial treasures.

Tea appears  in pastries too, like a green tea loaf cake with sweet whipped cream filling on the breakfast buffet at the Evergreen Plaza Hotel in Tainan.

And I couldn't stop eating  jasmine-flavored tea jelly (right) at Ba Köln, a golden dessert as fragrant as a garden filled with jasmine blossoms.   

Almost everywhere that a tourist might go, tea is set out for tasting, from the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to Taipei 101, which was the world's tallest building until overtaken by a skyscraper in Dubai.

Oolong, green tea and jasmine-flavored green tea seem to be the most popular, from the displays that I saw.

But I also tasted rose tea and brought home Ten Ren's coffee flavor tea, a black tea lightly flavored with cassia and vanilla.

The photo shows a tea ceremony at the Japanese pavilion at Taipei's Flora Expo, which continues into April. Shops at the expo sell teas produced in Taiwan, and you'll find a good supply in city markets too.

My last purchase, at The National History Museum shop at the airport, was a set of magnets modeled on Qinghua porcelain, which dates back to the 13th century.

These graceful miniature plates and vases now decorate my refrigerator door. It's like having a daily taste of China, even if I'm only eating pizza.   

Ba Köln Restaurant, No. 12, Daye Road, Beitou District, Taipei, Taiwan.

Jianshanpi Jiangnan Resort, 60, SyuShan Village, Liouying Township, Tainan County 735, Taiwan.