Showing posts with label mary sue milliken. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mary sue milliken. Show all posts

Friday, February 28, 2020

GIVEAWAY: Santa Barbara Culinary Experience (March 13-15)

If you've been thinking about heading up to Santa Barbara (or perhaps you live there already), March 13 weekend is the perfect time. The 3-day food festival in Central California, the Santa Barbara Culinary Experience, is coming on March 13-15, and I have a GIVEAWAY for you all!

The weekend will be filled with special dinners, workshops and seminars, cocktail crawls, farm tours and much more. There are also a number of events paying ode to Julia Child, given that The Santa Barbara Culinary Experience benefits the The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and Culinary Arts. The events will feature chefs and restaurants from Santa Barbara down to Los Angeles, including Chef Ludo Lefebvre from Trois Mec and Chefs Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken from Border Grill. 
Photo credit: SBCE
Speaking of Border Grill ... I'm giving away 2 pairs of tickets to Border Grill on the Beach, valued at $125 each!
Photo credit: SBCE

Sunday, January 4, 2015

Let's Talk About Sustainable Seafood

Last year I attended a Sustainable Seafood panel in LA presented by The Los Angeles Food Policy Council & Sustainable Seafood LA, and I learned a lot about seafood consumption in the US and the world.

Here are some facts about seafood you may not know:
  1. America is the 2nd largest consumer of seafood in the world (the first is China).
  2. We take half a billion pounds of seafood out of ocean each day.
  3. 90% of US seafood is imported.
  4. Shrimp is the #1 consumed seafood in US. Most of these are imported from Thailand. The 2nd most consumed is tuna. Pacific blue fin tuna, as you may already know, is depleted. But you can still eat skipjack tuna (which makes up 60% of canned tuna these days), albacore, and yellowfin.
  5. 50% of the world's seafood is from aquaculture (mostly from China).
  6. 70% of the fish in US is consumed in restaurants. That means chefs play a very important part in seafood sustainability!
  7. 2% of all research and development dollars go to USDA. Only 0.4% of that goes to aquaculture research.
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Monday, May 30, 2011

Munching Around Santa Monica with Six Taste Tours

What better way to explore one area's food than a walking tour with an expert, tasting 4-5 places all in one go? Six Taste Tours, started by two USC alums, aim to do just that with their tours in various regions in LA, including Thai Town, Little Tokyo, Arcadia, and more. Each area's tour is guided by an expert in that particular area/cuisine. I was invited to go on the Santa Monica tour recently with their guide, Therese.

Godmother Sandwich
Godmother sandwich, with on ocean view.
I don't want to spoil all the fun of the tour for you, so I will just go through some of the things we ate and leave you with some surprises if you ever take the tour!

They said they consider the Santa Monica tour to be their international tour, and you will see why. Our first stop was Rockenwagner Bakery.
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Rockenwagner Bakery
12835 W Washington Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90066
(310) 578-8171
www.rockenwagner.com
Röckenwagner Bakery on Urbanspoon

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Our guide, Therese

PhotobucketOther than the baked goods, Therese told us that Rockenwagner has a great Austrian coffee. We tasted some and it was indeed pretty smooth.

Apparently Hans Rockenwagner and his pastry chef invented the pretzel croissant by dipping a croissant in caustic acid, so of course we had to try some! Because of the pretzel-like crust, the croissant doesn't leave as much of a buttery mess on your fingers. 
Pretzel Croissant

Monday, May 3, 2010

Feasting on California Avocado with the Too Hot Tamales

California Hass Avocados are now in season! Plus, it's almost Cinco de Mayo! Did you know that over 80 million pounds of avocados are consumed on Cinco de Mayo? That's a lot of guacamole!

The California Avocado Commission is working with the Too Hot Tamale chefs Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger to create avocado-centric recipes and share them for Cinco de Mayo. They held a media lunch and cooking demo at Ciudad last week and I was lucky to be invited.

Many familiar faces were there, including Food Marathon, who convinced me it's never too early for a mojito ....
So in the email they had mentioned a cooking demo and a guacamole contest, i.e. a "guac-off".

Little did I know the "guac-off" mentioned was for us, not the chefs! They divided us into teams of two though we ended up in a team of three with Food Marathon and Active Foodie.
We were given a few minutes to look over the available ingredients and come up with a guacamole recipe.

Onions, corn, ... pomegranate, fish paste, banana, etc? OK ...

And of course, ripe California avocados!

Many of them made some pretty impressive guacamole. Ravenous Couple even decorated their "Saigon Samba" guac and tied it in nicely to their Vietnamese cooking blog. We didn't really have time to think about that :P
Well, ours ended up being halfway of what Active Foodie had envisioned. We weren't gung-ho enough to get some of the ingredients before the others used it all up. Oh well ...

We put bananas, oranges, tequila , and salt in ours.
Whatever, it tasted good ...

Lindsay from LAist and her team ended up winning the guacamole taste contest. Congratulations!

We did at least win the naming contest and won this Ciudad baseball cap! Mainly thanks for Food Marathon for his Ciudadocado Relish name idea.

Now that we got that out of the way, we let the experts, i.e. Chefs Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger do the job. Eating at Border Grill or Ciudad is really nothing like eating the food created personally by these great chefs!

I was excited about our first course, crispy avocado tacos. These quinoa and sesame seed-crusted and deep fried avocado tacos were all the rage at Border Grill Truck.

Crispy California Avocado Tacos (recipe)
Pretty spectacular. The crunchiness of the quinoa and sesame seeds gave way to a deliciously creamy avocado. Add to that all the flavors from the refreshing corn relish. This taco is actually available exclusively at the Border Grill truck, and I highly recommend you get it.

California Avocado, Bacon, and Tomato Salad (recipe)
This simple salad has the delicious avocados as the main attraction, but the finishing touch is from the capers fried in bacon fat.

For our main entree, chefs Milliken and Feniger prepared chilaquiles for us. I haven't had chilaquiles since I last went to Tijuana and had it for breakfast (it's apparently a typical breakfast item)!
They told us that chilaquiles are an easy dish and a good way to finish up leftover salsa (and leftover tortillas too). Basically you simmer down tortillas in salsa until they soften up.

Chicken and California Avocado Skillet Chilaquiles (recipe)

Our first dessert is a simple garnishing of sliced fresh and ripe fruits:
California Avocado and Mango with Yogurt, Honey, and Lime (recipe)
With mangoes and avocados as good as these, you really don't need to do much! The yogurt and honey are such a good accent for the two fruits. Interestingly enough, because of the sprinkled Cayenne pepper, this ended up being the spiciest dish of the day!

To really finish off we had an Avocado Orange Licuado
Since they made this just for the event, the recipe isn't available on the CAC website, but it is basically avocados, orange juice, lemon, agave syrup, and milk blended. Oh and with a little bit of salt. The chefs said that they found salt to bring out that "avocado" flavor, so even though it may sound weird for a sweet drink, they put a bit of salt in it.

The drink is heavy yet refreshing due to the orange zest. It's a great drink for a warm summer day and a great way to end our meal!

I've heard Spring is the best season for avocados (though they're in season and available through Fall), and now that you have all these great avocado recipes on the CAC website, you can rush to get some ripe avocados and contribute to the 80 million pounds that will be eaten in 2 days.

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