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Get Your Doner, Shawarma at Ikram

Doner, shawarma--don't bother choosing. They're the same, meat grilled on a vertical spit and sliced off in thin pieces.

The difference is, doner is the Turkish name and shawarma is Arabic, says Yilmaz Esen (at top), who oversees the cooking at Ikram Bakery in Fountain Valley. There, you can have the meats Turkish style, sandwiched into housemade pide bread along with lettuce, tomato, red onion and house special doner sauce.  For Arabic flavor, Esen will put in hummus.

The two meats are beef or chicken, but you don't have to choose. Esen will put them side by side in the same sandwich.

Then he drizzles creamy sauce over the generous pile of meat. 

Next, the thick sandwich is s flattened in a press (above). 

Then it's ready to eat, along with a chilled yogurt drink and perhaps a snack or dessert from the counter of baked goods.

One possibility is stuffed simit (above), a sesame-coated bread filled with feta, mozzarella or olives. The bread is dipped into a blend of pekmez (grape molasses) and water to color it deep brown and add a hint of sweetness.

For dessert, Ikram's baklava (above) is one of the best around. It's filled with Turkish pistachios, and this makes a difference. Taste the Turkish nuts side by side with those grown in California, and you will notice that Turkish pistachios are a deeper green and richer in flavor.

Here they are, so you can see for yourself.

If you'd like Turkish pistachios to take home, Hamle, a Turkish market, is in the same strip mall as Ikram. But for sure you'll want to take away some Ikram baklava or kadaif. Here, Esen has just flipped a panful of kadaif (above), which he'll put back in the oven until the top is golden brown. Other good choices are simit rings and round pide loaves. However, the baked goods sell out quickly, so go early for the best selection. 

 Ikram Bakery, 9895 Warner Ave, Fountain Valley, CA 92708. Tel: (714) 964-5726.

Dish of the Week: Parsi Sev and Yogurt

This may be the most unusual pasta you've tasted. It's sev (top left), which is fine vermicelli cooked with sugar to make it slightly sweet. In front is yogurt prepared so that it too is slightly sweet. Parsi custom is to eat them together, a delightful creamy, shreddy blend.

This dish was part of a buffet honoring Parsi new year at Woodlands restaurant in Artesia. Read more about the restaurant and its Parsi food in my article for LA Weekly's Squid Ink. (Parsis are Zoroastrians who emigrated from Persia to India.)

To make it brown, the sev is fried in butter and oil, explains Bhicoo J. Manekshaw in her book "Parsi Food and Customs" (Penguin Books India, 1996). Next it is added to a syrup of sugar, water and milk and cooked until dry. Then it is mixed with cream and rosewater and served garnished with almonds, raisins, nutmeg and cardamom. 

Milk for the yogurt is boiled with sugar and allowed to set until firm enough to cut with a knife, giving it a custard-like texture. Another dish at the buffet was real custard, seasoned with cardamom and nutmeg and garnished with almonds.  This dessert is always served at Parsi weddings.

At the right in the photo at top is a Parsi rice pulao, one of many Parsi dishes that will appear from time to time at the Woodlands, which is located in Little India.

Woodlands restaurant, 11833 Artesia Blvd., Artesia, CA 90701. Tel: (562) 860-4000.

 

Natural Products Expo Gets The Pope

The Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim had a really special guest--Pope Francis. You can see him mingling with the crowd (above).

This was, of course, a cardboard cut-out, but so real that people stopped, surprised to see him there. The Pope was holding a yerba mate gourd with bombilla (straw). This was not out of the ordinary, because Pope Francis is from Buenos Aires, where sipping mate is a way of life.

His appearance was arranged by Guyaki Yerba Mate, which poured hot and cold mate drinks from a colorful stand (above). Too bad the Pope couldn't taste the mate latte. It was great.

The three-day trade show at the Anaheim Convention Center had not only food but health and beauty products, supplements, cleaning supplies, pet-care items and more. 

Scoping out interesting products was a challenge, because there was no order to the displays. It was necessary to scout every aisle, a challenge at what may be the world's largest trade show.

The buzzwords for food were gluten-free, organic, vegan, non-GMO, artificial hormone-free, all natural, dairy-free, no-soy, vegetarian and vegan. Attendees were besieged with gluten-free foods. Even a Bigelow teabag was labeled "tea is a gluten free beverage." That's how silly this fad has become.

"Healthy" ingredients included quinoa, which was at its most tempting in a quinoa salad (above) prepared for Peru's display by the Peruvian restaurant Mo-Chica. In addition to red, black and white quinoa, the display included quinoa flakes to eat like cereal.

Energy bars and chocolates contained chia seeds, hemp seeds and buckwheat groats. The most unusual were Chapul's cricket energy bars (above), made with cricket flour. The flavors were peanut butter and chocolate, dark chocolate with coffee and cayenne and a Thai bar with coconut, ginger and lime. According to Chapul, crickets contain twice as much protein as beef and 15% more iron than spinach. 

Ethnic foods represented India, Afghanistan, Korea, Mexico, the Middle East, Africa, Japan, the Philippines and more. Curries by Nature (above) is a new line of Indian sauces from Texas, introduced last fall. Each jar holds enough for 1 1/2 pounds of meat.

IndianLife, from Canada, showed masala and samosa chips (above). Other Indian style products in the photo include Ziggy Marley's Coco'Mon curry-flavored cold-pressed coconut oil and meat-free "bouillon" cubes flavored with red or yellow curry from Edward & Sons Trading Co. They're made in Switzerland. 

Not shown is That Indian Drink's chef-crafted lassi, the most opulent of which was flavored with mangoes from India and rosewater. 

 Mexico displayed natural vanilla, dried coconut and Dulsweet's organic agave syrup (above) in two styles, dark and light. Japanese miso soup mix was suggested as an ingredient for dips, salad dressings and sauces, an attempt to move a traditional product into fusion fields. Mishima Foods exhibited gluten-free crumbs made from brown rice and from rice, tapioca and salt, handy for breading instead of flour.

For health drinks, there were Numi Organic Tea's chocolate rooibus, Mamma Chia's Chia Squeeze and Organic India's caffeine-free tulsi teas (above)--tulsi is India's holy basil. Growing Naturals exhibited chocolate-flavored rice protein powder to shake with water or non-dairy milk for a dairy-free drink. 

The Expo offered something for everyone. The biggest hit in my household was Feline Caviar holistic grain-free range chicken, moist food with sweet potato and spinach but none of the grains that bulk up so much cat food. This premium treat made my cats forget how angry they were because Mom came home so late from the show that they missed their dinner. 

 

Here's the Burger of the Year

This isn't the best of all burgers, it's simply the only one I've eaten this year.

It's the prime burger at Hook Burger in Burbank. "Prime" sounds special, but this is the cheapest burger on the menu ($5.25). The contents are: lean beef, caramelized bourbon onions, lettuce, tomato and honey dijon mayo. No cheese--that's an extra.

I'm not against burgers. I don't eat them because I don't hang out in fast food places. But when a good friend has a birthday party in a burger joint, I'm there.

The prime burger is pretty light. You definitely need fries if you're making it a meal. And it has a strong char flavor that you may taste for a long time afterwards. 

One caution: If you don't know Burbank, you may have a hard time finding Hook Burger.  Even when I got to the correct mall, I couldn't spot it.  Some guys I asked for help didn't know where it was, but when they saw it, they came after me as I headed in the wrong direction.

Nice guys, and a nice party. And I got there in time for the birthday cake. 

Hook Burger Bistro, The Empire Center, 1731 N. Victory Place, Burbank, CA 91506. Tel: (818) 847.2100.