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A Find at the Farmers Market

Something unexpected turned up at the Hollywood Farmers Market last Sunday.

They were eggs, not the kind you eat but brightly painted Ukrainian wooden eggs, copies of the traditional decorated Easter eggs that are called psyanky.

The eggs were in a basket set on an Ensure carton in front of an elderly woman. Plainly dressed, her head covered by a babushka, she quietly offered her wares from  the seat of a walker.

"No English," she said. Using sign language and pointing to myself and then to her, I found that her name might be Olga, but the heavy accent made it hard to be sure.

"Daughter paint," she explained, pointing to the eggs. That was the extent of her English, except for the words needed to make a sale. "Three dollars," she said. "Two for five."

I hadn't seen her before, and perhaps she won't be there again.  But two beautifully patterned eggs now sit on a cookbook shelf in my office. I wish I had bought more.

This Little Doggie Went to.....

 

....the Wednesday night farmers market in Whittier.

Her name is Darla, and her fluffy, multi-hued coat attracted more attention than the produce.

Does she like her splashy colors? She doesn't even know about them. "Dogs are color blind," said her owner.

Darla wasn't the only animal at the market. There were pony rides for kids and a petting zoo with goats.

The produce was nice too, although there wasn't much of it. The best buys were strawberries, cherry tomatoes and kumquats grown in Riverside.

The market continues for a couple of blocks in the center of Greenleaf Avenue. Shops and restaurants on either side are open too, so there is plenty to see and do.

But nothing drew a bigger crowd this past Wednesday than the doggie rainbow. 

Whittier Family Fair and Farmer's Market, 5:30 to 9 p.m.Wednesdays on Greenleaf Avenue between Hadley and Philadelphia.

Dessert of the Week: It's Chinese

What are these pretty things, petits fours from some exclusive French patisserie?

No,you're looking at a Chinese dessert, taken off a dim sum cart at the Golden Dragon in downtown Los Angeles.

The delicate tones are so springlike.  But the dark layer is something you're not likely to find at an exclusive French patisserie--black beans.

Not pastries, these are gelatin desserts set so firmly that, if you're not adept with chopsticks and dropped one, there'd be no embarrassing mess on the table. And not a crack or crumble to make it any less pretty.

Golden Dragon Restaurant,  960 North Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Tel: (213) 626-2039.

Fruit Salad: A Top Thai Dish

Why on earth would anyone order fruit salad in a Thai restaurant?

My lunch companions were not happy when this happened at Lanyamo on Western Avenue.  However, the person who asked for the salad was Thai, and she knew what she was doing.

Her fruit salad turned out to be the best dish we had that day. The other food was OK, but I can hardly remember it thinking about that glorious bowl heaped with fresh fruit, nothing canned. 

The combination included pineapple, mango, apple, cantaloupe, jicama, blueberries and even a few cherry tomatoes, sprinkled with crushed roasted peanuts. 

What made it stand out was the salty-sweet dressing. Thais season fruits with a blend of sugar, fish sauce, lime juice and garlic, and a dash of hot chile. 

Fish sauce with fruit may sound odd, but it works, more effective than salt by itself.

The fruit becomes even more sweet and refreshing, which is a good thing in Thailand's steamy climate, and in hot weather anywhere. 

Lanyamo Thai restaurant, 946 N. Western Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90029. Tel: (323) 466-2958.

Mexico City's Izote Reopens

The hottest restaurant news from Mexico City is that Izote has reopened.

The formal inauguration takes place this Thursday, but Izote actually opened last Tuesday, when chef/owner Patricia Quintana (right) returned from a trip through northern Mexico and Michoacan. 

That trip was a gastronomic tour de force called Aromas y Sabores de Mexico, which Quintana set up to show off Mexican cuisine to an international group of chefs and media people.

While on the road back to Mexico City, she got the news that the restaurant was set to open. After a quick change to an outfit from her extensive indigenous wardrobe, she arrived in time to greet the first diners.

Established in 2000, Izote was closed for a couple of months for renovation.  "We needed to have a new look," Quintana said.

The changes include addition of an upstairs terrace for smokers, a new, temperature-controlled wine closet (right), a banquette that runs the length of the room and a lighter, sleeker, more open look.

For Tuesday's soft opening, Quintana invited her travel companions to a dinner of small plates. The food was traditional, because she has a passion for ferreting out and preserving authentic flavors, but the presentation was up to date.

That night's camaron en chía (shrimp with chia seeds) was one example. Barely cooked in lime-seasoned liquid, as for aguachile, the shrimp came in a small tumbler hardly bigger than a shot glass, with chopsticks for fishing them out and a spoon for scooping up the liquid.

Chia seeds often show up in Mexican agua de limón (limeade). Perhaps this was the inspiration for sprinkling them into the shrimp liquid, where they added subtle nutty flavor.

Sweet, fresh red snapper and green chile strips were tucked into a cornhusk to resemble an open-faced tamal, but without any masa. 

Above the fish, a tiny banana leaf packet contained black beans sweetened with caramelized onion, a small taste that made one long for more.

Dinner started with sopecitos camineros, miniature salsa- and cheese-topped sopes.

These were flanked by a knotted strip of cornhusk on one side and an ornamental smear of sweet red chile salsa on the other.

A  cornhusk container of esquites (seasoned roasted corn kernels) came on a plate with a leafy salad. Sliced bread was stacked in a guaje (gourd).

A clay mug held only a small taste of sopa Tarasca (Quintana had just been in Tarascan country in Michoacan), but the soup was so dense and rich that a larger amount could have been cloying.

The components included pasilla chiles, black beans, diced avocado and strips of cheese.

The wine did a good job of matching such a wide range of flavors. It was Casa Grande Cabernet Sauvignon-Shiraz 2006 Gran Reserva from Casa Madero in Parras, Coahuila, which had been a stop on Quintana's tour.

The dessert was as traditional as they come--natillas, a soft custard to which Quintana added a slim chocolate bar and chocolate truffles.

Quintana says she has researched Mexican cuisine since the age of four and is still making discoveries. On her trip, for instance, she saw for the first time the source of escamoles, ant eggs that are in season in Mexico until July.

Author of 26 cookbooks, she is widely copied, but not always successfully. One restaurant purloined her stir-fried duck in tortillas with black mole but cooked the duck improperly and used storebought mole. A perfectionist, Quintana makes the mole herself.

She acknowledges the celebrity chef movement in Mexico City. "The boys want to stand out," she said. "It's a new interpretation of the cuisine. The chefs are creating their own styles with eclectic, European tendencies."

But Quintana is already at the top and intends to stick to her own style, which is to preserve authentic flavors and ingredients while presenting them in new and stylish ways.

"I'm not doing the foams and gels. I'm doing the food that tastes good, in beautiful presentations," she says. "Why do you have to reinvent, when it's all there, in our cuisine?"

Izote de Patricia Quintana, Presidente Masarik 513, Polanco, Mexico City, Mexico. Tel: 52 80 16 71.