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Good Food to Go with Wines from Lodi

Pizza goes great with red wine, and there was plenty of both the other night at the La Brea Bakery Cafe.

The pizzas came from the bakery's wood-fired oven. The red wine was poured at LoCA for Lodi 2017, a tasting of wines from Lodi arranged by WineLA.

The wine with the mushroom pizza in the photo at the top is the 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon from d'Art Wines, owned by Dave and Helen Dart, who started as home winemakers. It's a nice, fruity Cab for $38.

The leading red wine grape in Lodi isn't Cab but Zinfandel. A premium example of this was the 2011 Centennial Zinfandel from Langetwins Family Winery and Vineyards. This was the 105th vintage from a 114-year-old vineyard. The wine spent 24 months in American oak and has a high alcohol content, 15.6%, and a high price, $60. Only 400 cases were made.

For a dollar less you can have the 2014 Select Block Old Vine Zinfandel from m2 Wines, which specializes in small-lot wines. It's a lovely, fruity Zinfandel for $59. 

The 2003 Marian's Vineyard Old Vine Zinfandel from St. Amant Winery is priceless, meaning it's no longer available at any price. Fruit, viscosity and alcohol made it taste almost syrupy sweet. You can get the 2015 vintage of the wine at the winery, for $24.

Klinker Brick Winery substituted a reserve Zinfandel 2014 for the Old Ghost Old Vine Zinfandel listed in the tasting catalog. The reserve tasted almost sweet, the result of spending time in medium toast oak. There wasn't a price for this wine, but Old Ghost is $37.

Another pricey wine was Peltier Winery's 2010 Teroldego Reserve, a very dry red for $60. Peltier has been working with this hard-to-grow grape for 12 years.

Oak Farm Vineyards poured its 2014 Petit Verdot, which is only available through its wine club or at the winery. It's $34.

Want a red that's good with spicy food and light summer meals? That would be the 2013 Abba Vineyard Grenache from McCay Cellars. It's $35.

Michael David Winery offered its 2014 Inkblot Cabernet Franc, which is $35. This winery goes for cutesy names such as 7 Deadly Zins, Freakshow Red Wine Blend and Petite Petit. It has a wine club for red wine lovers only. Others can join its mixed wines club. There's also a reserve club, but that has a waiting list.

Red blends poured at the tasting included the 2014 Trencadis Red Blend from Bokisch Vineyards, which combines Graciano, Petit Verdot and Mourvedre. The price is $26.

Jeremy Wine Co.'s 2013 The Choral Blend contains five wines--Sangiovese, Barbera, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petite Sirah and Teroldego. This wine chorus is named for Jeremy Trettevik's wife, Choral. Three hundred cases were made. The price is $35.

Chardonnay is the leading white wine grape in Lodi, but only one came to the tasting, the 2014 from Jessie's Grove Winery. It's $22.

On the other hand, there were two Albariños. One was the 2015 Albariño, Terra Alta Vineyard, from Bokisch Vineyards, whose owners, Markus and Liz Bokisch, are dedicated to Spanish wines. It's $18. The other was Klinker Brick's 2016 Albariño, for $15.

D'Art Wines poured a white Barbera, which would make a great summer wine, with nice acidity and a little sweetness. Bokisch makes this from the first two tons of red Barbera grapes, eliminating skin contact so that the juice has no color. The price is $22.

For a real bargain, there was RedHaus Wines' 2011 red blend, composed of old vine Zinfandel, Merlot and Cabernet and pretty nice for $10. Another was Van Ruiten Family Winery's 2015 Pinot Grigio, for $9.99.

The fourteen wineries that took part poured enough wine to keep tasters busy. So did the constant supply of food from La Brea Bakery.

Two types of pizza, margherita (above) and mushroom, emerged nonstop from the oven. 

Crab-stuffed mushrooms were sumptuous.

So were these stuffed dates, although a little sweet for dry wines.

Trendy avocado toast was on hand.

As well as bruschetta with burrata and tomatoes.

This cheese platter, accompanied by a basket of bread, was quickly demolished. 

Good as the food was, the point of the tasting was to acquaint those who came with the wide range of Lodi wines, and how good they can be. If you're not familiar with the area, it's east of San Francisco and below Sacramento. For more information, go to lodiwine.com. 

One Pan, Two Plates--and Freekeh

How many cookbooks do you have that contain recipes for freekeh? Probably not many. More likely none. 

Freekeh is roasted green wheat, which you can find in markets that stock Middle Eastern products. I recently bought a box, needed a recipe and found a terrific one in Carla Snyder's latest book, "One Pan, Two Plates: Vegetarian Suppers" (Chronicle Books: $24.95).  

While Snyder (above) was speaking at Melissa's Produce, I leafed through the book and spotted Moroccan Freekeh with Butternut Squash and Kohlrabi. As soon as I got home I made it.

I didn't have all the ingredients, so I substituted cabbage for kohlrabi and a mild onion for a leek. I'm sure Snyder wouldn't mind, because she said it was OK to use other spices than the ras el hanout called for in the recipe.  

How did the freekeh turn out? Fantastic. Snyder has a magic touch with seasonings. What could have been a dull vegetarian dish was alive with flavor, thanks to cumin, cinnamon, lemon zest and lemon juice, raisins and almonds. It was sweet and savory, crunchy and tingly with lemon.

In place of ras el hanout, I added garam masala and an Asian spice blend. The photo above shows what I made. 

This is Jody Horton's photo of the dish in "One Pan,Two Plates." 

The freekeh I used was imported from Jordan. I bought it at Fresh Choice Marketplace in Garden Grove, which had several brands. This is what the grains look like. 

At Melissa's, Snyder did not mention freekeh--after all, it's not an everyday ingredient--but demonstrated black bean tacos and blackberry scones (the scones are in another of her books, not the vegetarian one).

The Melissa's team prepared a superfood salad (above) with quinoa and kale, blueberries, mango and almonds. Golden brown latkes were made with rutabaga as well as potatoes.  After roasting Brussels sprouts with butternut squash, apple, shallots and rosemary, the chefs mixed in walnuts, butter beans and dried cranberries. 

From the pasta section of the book came bow ties with Brussels sprouts, gorgonzola and hazelnuts (above). 

These are Snyder's crunchy black bean tacos, which contain corn as well as beans.

It was all delicious, but I was more interested in ethnic recipes in the book such as Persian zucchini frittata, bibimbap and dal makhani with crispy leek. Next on my list to make is fried quinoa with kale and kimchi, which comes right before the freekeh recipe.  

This is Snyder's second "One Pan, Two Plates" book. The previous book has meat recipes. As the title says, each recipe requires only one pan. And each makes two servings.

The freekeh recipe produces a large quantity, but it is so light that you can eat a lot of it. And you will want to, because it is so delicious.  

MOROCCAN FREEKEH WITH BUTTERNUT SQUASH AND KOHLRABI
From "One Pan, Two Plates: Vegetarian Suppers" by Carla Snyder

2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for drizzling
1 leek, white part only, cleaned and sliced
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ras el hanout or other Moroccan spice blend
1 cup cracked freekeh
2 cups vegetable broth
2 cups diced butternut squash
2 cups diced kohlrabi
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup slivered almonds
1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
Zest and juice of 1/2 lemon plus more juice as needed
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat a 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat, and add the olive oil. When the oil shimmers, add the leek and cook until it begins to soften, about 1 minute. Add the cumin, cinnamon, ras el hanout and freekeh, and cook, stirring, until the grain is lightly toasted, about 1 minute.

Add the vegetable broth, butternut squash, kohlrabi and raisins and bring to a simmer. Turn the heat to low, cover and simmer until the freekeh and vegetables are tender, about 20 minutes. Turn off the heat.

Stir the almonds, parsley, lemon zest and lemon juice into the pan and drizzle with more olive oil. Taste and season with salt, pepper and more lemon juice, if it needs it.

Spoon the freekeh into shallow bowls. Serve hot or at room temperature.

Makes 2 main dish servings.

Pairing Lunch with Loveblock Wines

Wine tastings  are great. They're even better when wines are paired with food so well that each shows at its best.

This happened when Erica Crawford of Loveblock Wines in New Zealand (at the top) presented her wines at a lunch at Wolf restaurant in Los Angeles. Marcel Vigneron, Wolf's chef/owner, came up with the matches.

It's nervy to pair spicy Asian food with wine, but Vigneron could handle the challenge. For the Loveblock 2016 Sauvignon Blanc, he chose hamachi crudo--raw fish with radish, herbs, puffed rice and nuoc cham--the acidic, sweet and spicy Vietnamese sauce that is not wine's best friend (above).

And it worked. The Loveblock Sauvignon Blanc (above) is crisp, dry and more "constrained" than the typical New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, Crawford pointed out. She also noted elements of peach, passion fruit and lemon, flavors friendly to Asian food. This is the only Sauvignon Blanc on Wolf's wine list, and a favorite with Vigneron. 

It also stood up to the Castelvetrano olives set out for nibbling before lunch (above). These were prepared Moroccan style with harissa, preserved lemon, orange peel, árbol chiles and rosemary.

To backtrack, Loveblock, in the Marlborough region of New Zealand, is the successor to Kim Crawford, which Crawford and winemaker husband Kim founded in 1996, developed and sold. Kim Crawford was the third New Zealand winery to enter the United States and a challenge to market here. "We had to show New Zealand on the map," Crawford said.

Loveblock's 250 acres are at both high and low elevations, with 90 of them planted to grapes. The focus is on organic farming and sustainable practices. The Crawfords have a vegetable farm, maintain an extensive composting program and do not use commercial fertilizers. "Whatever comes off the farm goes back into it," Crawford said.

Vigneron (above) deals the same way with food. His philosophy is zero waste. He composts, forages, works with underused cuts of meat, uses vegetable trimmings that might be thrown away elsewhere and sends scraps to a neighbor's pig. "You get a more rounded flavor when you are using every single aspect of the product," he said.

The next wine was Loveblock's 2014 Pinot Gris, accompanied by mushroom risotto with wood sorrel that Vigneron had foraged, pine nuts, peas and pancetta (above).  The risotto brought out the sweetness and creaminess of the wine. The Sauvignon Blanc would not have worked as well.

In making the wine, "we started to add some Gewürztraminer," Crawford said. "There is a touch of this, and a little malolactic." She admitted she prefers a bone-dry Pinot Gris, like the 2013 that is now in circulation. (The varietal name is on the blue band at the bottom of the label.)

Vigneron used mushroom stems in the broth for the risotto rather than sending them to the garbage. Instead of Arborio or carnaroli rice, he used sushi rice. It cooks faster, he said, is less starchy and slightly more forgiving. 

Next came the 2013 Loveblock Pinot Noir (above), the third vintage from young vines, aged in French oak and showing raspberry and floral notes. Crawford said she would have preferred to hold it another year. Nevertheless, it is out now, to be followed by the 2014, which is "quite masculine," and the 2015, which is "more Burgundian."

Vigneron paired it with braised, seared beef cheeks with Belgian endive, watercress and sunchoke puree (above). The meat had been cooked for 10 hours at 180 degrees, which made it very soft. Vigneron added a honey-soy glaze and peppercorn-turmeric sauce, which gave rich flavor but not enough to overpower the wine.

Dessert had no wine-pairing, except for the residue in the glasses on the table. It was a gluten-free flourless souffle based on blueberry vodka. Loveblock does make a sweet Moscato and a sweet Riesling, one of which could have been a good match for the souffle, but they didn't come on the trip to Los Angeles.

To learn more about the wines, go to the Loveblock website.  For more about Wolf restaurant, click here. 

Japanese Tacos and Tapas at Necco

Ever seen a taco that looked like this? Probably not, that is, if you haven't been to Necco, a Japanese tapas restaurant on Westwood Boulevard in Los Angeles.

Instead of corn masa, the "tortillas" are made of brown rice and potato starch. The filling is avocado and spicy tuna, as in the rolls you get in sushi restaurants.  

This stack is three servings. You lift off your share, fold and eat for a seductive blend of flavors and textures--spicy, silky, smooth, crunchy and earthy.  

Open a little more than two years, Necco combines traditional Japanese with California healthy. When I was there, Japanese filled the other tables, including L.A. Dodgers pitcher Kenta Maeda and his family.

No wonder they like the restaurant. The food is light, healthy and put together creatively. For example, miso soup (above) is not the standard miso soup that tastes the same no matter where you eat. It's pale, delicately flavored and made with mushroom broth, not dashi. And it's vegan.  

The thick savory cake okonomiyaki (above) is full of healthy ingredients such as potatoes, taro, brown rice, tempeh, green onion and edamame. On top are mayonnaise and tonkatsu sauce. 

Lunch specials range from $13 (a tapas plate) to $30 (a bento box). The five cards attached to the menu (above) show the choice of tapas to go with the main dishes. 

A $20 plate (above) offers a panoramic survey of the lunch menu. On this one are poke, fried chicken in a cone of sasa leaf, salmon topped with shredded daikon and ponzu, edamame, tofu, crisp kale and slices of burdock and lotus root with sesame dressing. The yellow mound is kabocha squash, made even sweeter with maple syrup and raisins. 

For the same price, you can tuck into a plate of Australian wagyu beef seasoned with balsamic and soy sauce, some of which flavors the rice beside it (above). There's also a bit of wasabi to pick up the flavor of the beef. The salad greens have ginger-carrot dressing. Pickles on the plates are made at the restaurant.

The name Necco means roots, so root vegetables get special attention. So do traditional and healthy Japanese ingredients. A card on the table (above) explains what some of these are.  

This beauty of a dessert is a matcha ice cream sandwich with fresh fruit. The sandwich is gluten-free, and the ice cream is soy, an example of the healthy ideas prevalent at Necco.

Necco, a Japanese tapas restaurant, 1929 Westwood Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90025. Tel: (310) 446-5241.

Here's Where to Try Indo-Chinese Food

My favorite place for Chinese food right now is Little India in Artesia, not the San Gabriel Valley, Hong Kong or Taipei.  

The food isn't classic Chinese but Indo-Chinese, what people in India like to eat. I love Hakka noodles, vegetables Manchurian, chilli chicken, Szechuan fried rice and whatever else turns up on the lunch buffet at Wok N Tandoor. 

The buffet offers a tremendous variety of food for $12.95, not just Chinese, but Indian vegetarian and meats such as chicken tikka masala, tandoori chicken and goat curry.

Dishes change from time to time, but the selection is always big and includes soups such as hot and sour and sweet corn.

It's a novelty to accompany Chinese dishes with naan bread and vegetable biryani instead of the usual white rice. Even better, compose a series of plates, first Chinese, then Indian. Or try Chinese chill chicken and scallion chicken along with tandoori chicken for a cross-cultural experience. 

You could compose a fusion appetizer plate of corn chaat, khadi pakoras (in yellow sauce, above) and Chinese bhel, which is composed of crisp thin noodles in spicy sauce.

Papdi chat with garbanzo beans (the white dish in the photo) was in the lineup the other day, the sauce creamy, slightly sweet and cooling alongside the spicy dishes.

The food is promptly replaced as it disappears. Hakka noodles (Bombay style flat lo mein noodles, above) ran out because of customers like me, who scooped them up liberally, but the tray was quickly refilled. 

Vegetable balls in Manchurian sauce (above) were in demand too. 

The buffet ends with salad makings and a heavenly assortment of desserts, all the golden, syrup-soaked jalebis  you could ever want, carrot halwa, green dudhi halwa, which is made with bottle gourd; mango pudding and others, changing from day to day. 

Wok N Tandoor is very popular--every table was taken for lunch when I was last there, on a Sunday. Service is excellent. Water glasses are refilled constantly, and a waiter offered to bring naan when we didn't know it was included.  Plates were removed as soon as they were finished. And you can go back to the buffet as many times as you like. 

Names of the dishes are written on the glass sneeze guards, so it's easy to find out what they are.  

The restaurant is in a mall at the corner of Pioneer and Artesia Boulevards. Years ago, the same site was occupied by a Woodlands vegetarian restaurant. After that it had Parsi owners who occasionally put Parsi dishes on the buffet. 

Now it's a restaurant and bar. On weekends, get there early to avoid the crowds. Buffet days are Friday through Sunday, when Little India is crowded with shoppers. Tuesday through Thursday, the restaurant offers combo lunches instead. There's also a long a la carte menu of both Chinese and Indian dishes. 

Wok N Tandoor, 11833 Artesia Blvd. (corner Pioneer Blvd.), Artesia, CA 90701. Tel: (562) 424-4567. Lunch buffet Friday through Sunday, combo lunches Tuesday through Thursday. Closed Monday. 

A Chance to Learn About Afghan Food

Imagine a magic carpet of food, sumptuous dishes scented with cardamom, cumin, saffron, mint and turmeric, plates of succulent meats, fish and vegetables, handmade breads and stuffed dumplings, followed by sweets and heaps of fruit. 

This is the food of Afghanistan, which flies far under the radar in Los Angeles. There may be a handful of Afghan restaurants in and around the city, but these are drops in a very large bucket.

If you are lucky enough to have an Afghan friend, though, you may be treated to a feast at home, prepared with no regard for expense, effort and time.  

Nargis Ghyasi of Garden Grove was up at 4 a.m. to cook so much food that she would struggle to find room for all of it on her table, and that's not counting a separate display of desserts, fruits and drinks.

It's not unfair to describe a meal that only her friends could eat, because this may change. Ghyasi says she's serious about catering, and this could have been a practice run.

Afghan food is new to me, but some things were familiar, although prepared differently from what I have seen. One is do piaza, which In India describes a dish with two styles of onion. For the Afghan version, Ghyasi paired beef with raw onions marinated in vinegar and sautéed onions with tomato. In the center she placed boiled beans. 

Turkey's tiny manti became bigger mantu (above) that Ghyasi filled with chicken and vegetables. Turkish manti are boiled. Ghyasi steamed hers, then dressed them with yogurt, tomato, black pepper and mint.

Ground chicken appeared in another dish, juicy kofta patties that were richly flavored with vegetables--carrots, onion, green onion, bell pepper and garlic. 

Nothing was spicy hot with chiles or so strongly seasoned that spices dominated the dish. But there was a hot sauce to go with bolani, a potato- and green onion-stuffed flat bread (above). 

Lemon slices and mint accompanied fried fish (above). Turmeric seasoned the coating. 

Because turmeric is considered healthy, Ghyasi had put it in almost every dish. You can tell when turmeric is present even if you don't taste or see it. The telltale sign is a trace of yellow in the juices left on the plate. This is what revealed the turmeric in Ghyasi's spinach with mushrooms.  Can you see it at the edge of the plate?

Another vegetable was borani banjan, eggplant so rich it seemed buttery, although butter was not part of the dish. Ghyasi said all she did was slice the eggplant and bake it with tomato sauce and garlic. It's in the foreground in the photo above.

Instead of plain rice, she had made Afghanistan's spectacular qabuli pulao (above). Starting with a layer of lamb on the platter, she added a generous mound of basmati rice and then carrot strands, raisins and nuts, which she had sautéed in oil and sprinkled with sugar and cardamom. Saffron and cumin added their fragrances too. Sweet and savory, the pulao was stunning.

There were also salads, including one that Ghyasi had made and an orzo salad brought by a friend.  

For dessert, she set out firni, a milk pudding flavored with cardamom and thickened with cornstarch (above). 

Because Valentine's Day is coming up, she had traced hearts onto this saffron-flavored rice pudding. There were also a fruit platter and a cake. And a guest had brought a Lebanese rice pudding called mowgli, topped with nuts and flavored with ground caraway and cinnamon. 

It took hours to eat so much, and the conversation went on until midnight, fueled by tea served Middle Eastern style in glass cups. Ghyasi had prepared all this without help and was planning another dinner for friends in a couple of days. That's how inexhaustible Afghan hospitality can be. 

Try Turkish Food at The Kitchen

Want to go out for Thai food? Tacos?  Pizza?  Sure. For Turkish food? What's that?

Turkish cuisine is just not known in Los Angeles, even though Turkish ingredients are easy to get--I even found pomegranate vinegar from Izmir at my neighborhood 99 Cents Only Store. Izmir is Turkey's third largest city. 

To put customers at ease, The Kitchen @ Westwood calls its food Mediterranean.  And Turkey does have a long Mediterranean coast. There is, however, a sign outside that says it  offers Turkish cuisine--along with pastas and pizza.     

In September, 2015, Huseyin Ilhan and his wife Havva (above) opened The Kitchen on Westwood Boulevard, which is lined with Persian, Lebanese and other international restaurants. They're from Denizli in southwestern Turkey, about 115 miles from Izmir. The food is what they grew up with.

Hava Ilhan says Denizli is known for vegetable dishes and plans to introduce some of those. For now the emphasis is on meat--doner and kebabs.  Doner is meat cooked on a vertical spit, the same as shawarma. A photo of doner posted in the restaurant (above) makes clear what it is.

The working spits are in an upstairs kitchen, one for beef and one for chicken (above). Lamb fat set on top of the beef drizzles down, giving the meat a touch of lamb flavor.   

Doner is served plain as on the pita-lined plate above, accompanied by a choice of sides, or in tacos, sandwiches, pizza and a doner burger with fries for kids. 

Here, it is paired with cheese in pide, a folded Turkish flat bread.

This platter holds another signature Turkish dish, kebabs. The meats are chicken and beef in chunks and ground beef formed into long rolls. They're appetizingly seasoned with Huseyin's secret blend of spices. The bread on the platter is focaccia, which he makes himself.

Underneath the kebabs is one of Turkey's most important products, bulgur wheat, which is produced mostly in the southeast around the city of Gaziantep, where a bulgur festival took place in May, 2016. Click here for a story about that.

Havva Ilhan cooked the bulgur with fine strands of caramelized pasta, vegetables and such tasty seasoning that it's delicious on its own, as a side dish.  Here, she's bringing in a tray of hummus and other dips and the salad chobani, a fresh mix of tomatoes, cucumber, bell pepper, parsley and onion. 

I was thrilled to meet up again with iskender kebab, which I had tasted only once, at a cafe in Istanbul. It's chicken or beef doner smothered with a tomatoey sauce, with croutons underneath and yogurt on the side. This is how it looked at that cafe.

And this is how it looks at The Kitchen. The sauce blends Turkish pepper and tomato pastes, crushed tomato, black pepper, cumin and mint. Underneath are toasted bits of pita bread. Yogurt and pickles are on the side.

I was impressed to find that Huseyin Ilhan makes the tiny meat-filled dumplings known as manti in Turkey and as ravioli at The Kitchen (above). The creamy sauce is yogurt, butter, garlic, paprika and mint. 

The pepperoni in another pide is also a renamed Turkish product. It's really the sausage sucuk (also spelled sujuk). All ingredients are halal.

Desserts, which come from outside, include Turkish style ice cream, Turkish delight and baklava (above). The baklava is filled with the famous pistachios of Gaziantep, which Turks consider the finest in the world. 

The Ilhans came to the United States in 2003. A businessman in Turkey, Huseyin Ilhan turned himself into a chef and restaurateur here. For seven years, he owned the Jerusalem Pita Grill inside Valley Produce Market in Reseda. The name came from a previous owner.

Is his food as good as that in Turkey? "No," he says vehemently. He's not talking about how it's cooked, but about the meat. In Turkey, meat is tougher and more flavorful, he said. Here it is tender and bland.     

I ate plenty of kebabs and other meats in Turkey, though, and I found nothing lacking in the kebabs and doner at The Kitchen.

The Kitchen @ Westwood, 1510 Westwood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90024. (310) 474-8444.