Societe Brewing Company - A Tasting Room Visit

Last Friday, after a nice bowl of ramen at Yakyudori, we headed a few blocks down Clairemont Mesa Boulevard to stop in at Societe Brewing Company. They haven't officially opened yet (the grand opening is this weekend), but their tasting room is open Wednesday-Sunday and their beers have started popping up in the more respectable drinking establishments around town.

As soon as you step in the door, you can see that these guys aren't messing around - it is an impressive operation for a brand new brewery:



We bellied up to the nice wood bar and tasted a flight of the beers they currently have available. On the right are their three IPAs - The Dandy, The Apprentice and The Pupil. On the left are their Belgians - The Harlot and The Widow.



Societe's IPAs are solidly in the version of the west coast style I love - light in color and body and very hoppy, but emphasizing aroma over straight bitterness. They remind me of Alpine and Russian River. And that is a very good thing.

The Dandy, at 6.4%, has the lowest ABV of the three IPAs, but it still packs a nice flavor punch. The Apprentice is targeted at the center ABV spot, but it apparently came out stronger than expected. When we first had it at the Tap Room, I believe it was listed at 8.8%. They are gradually bringing the alcohol level down to where they want it.

The Pupil is the hoppiest of the IPAs - so much so that it has a bit of a green tinge and a touch of astringency. Very good beer, but I think I prefer the Apprentice.



On the Belgian side, The Harlot is a nice, drinkable Belgian Pale. We first had it at Cali Kebab's new Pacific Beach location and it was a perfect match for a sunny evening sitting outside.

The Widow, a Belgian Dark Strong Ale, is a very nice version of that style - nutty and raisiny without being too sweet or boozy.

We brought a growler of The Apprentice home with us:



We're looking forward to getting this guy refilled on a regular basis.

Societe Brewing Company
8262 Clairemont Mesa Blvd
San Diego, CA
858-495-5409

Breaking In Our New Weber Genesis Grill

We finally decided a few months ago that our old Charbroil grill's life was at an end. It wasn't a bad grill - it lasted us for almost ten years - but it was falling apart, and trying to fix it would cost as much as replacing it.

So, a new grill it was. After some shopping around, we decided on the Weber Genesis E330. We wanted something that would last a long time and be easy to get parts/accessories for. The great reviews for the Genesis, along with how happy we've been with our Weber Smokey Mountain, made it a pretty easy decision.

Sicilian Sausage with Onions and Peppers


We had the new grill assembled and in use a few hours after it arrived. The inaugural grilling event was sausage and peppers. The sausages were Sicilian Sausages, from Rytek Kutas' "Great Sausage Recipes" - one of our favorites of the sausages we have made.

BBQ Chicken


This grilled chicken with barbecue sauce is something I grew up with. I need to have it at least once a year.

Fire-Roasted Artichokes


We weren't sure what to expect when we tried this recipe from Mario Batali's "Molto Italiano", but it has quickly become one of our favorite ways of cooking artichokes. The outside gets completely charred, but you don't eat that anyway. The bits of garlic and lemon that get pushed in between the petals get condensed down into bright, tangy bits of flavor.

Thai Steak Salad


A simple staple in our house when the weather is warm. I never get tired of the blend of flavors and textures of grilled meat, chiles, fish sauce and crisp salad.

Kalbi with Cab Cooks' Korean Cucumber Salad


We wanted to make Cab Cooks' recipe for Korean Cucumber Salad (it is very good - you should try it), so we complemented it with some pre-marinated meat (boneless beef short rib and marinated pork collar) from Zion Market.

Roast Pork Belly with Lentils and Chard


Roast pork belly isn't a typical dish to do on the grill, but we had some already brined (using the recipe from Fergus Henderson's "Nose To Tail") and our oven was on the fritz. We put the belly on a small sheet pan and used the grill like an oven. It worked great.

In the short time we've had it, our new Weber grill has seen a lot of use and we couldn't be happier with it. We look forward to getting a lot of good years of grilling out of it.

La Playita Seafood

The first time I ate at La Playita Seafood was almost 15 years ago now - it was my first Mexican mariscos experience in San Diego. I fondly remember chowing through a "Tostada Loca" on my first visit.

It had been a long time since I last ate there, but it has  remained in the back of my mind as a place I needed to return to. A friend of ours now lives within walking distance, so one day we decided that it was time for a visit.



Tucked back away from the street in a mini-mall on Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, La Playita is a tiny place, with a few tables inside and one outside.

The menu is pretty much as I remember it - including the aforementioned "Tostada Loca":



Our lunch was comprised of selections from the Tostada and Taco sections of the menu.

The "La Playita House" tostada comes heaped with a mixture of shrimp and bay scallops, with a few strands of surimi and a chunk of avocado on top:



The shrimp were good, but the scallops, while fresh and nicely textured, didn't have much flavor. Some hot sauce helped a lot.

The "Fish Mixta" was shrimp and fish, again with some surimi and avocado:



We also had a couple of tacos. The Gobernador had grilled shrimp with peppers and cheese. It didn't look like much (unless you find pepto-bismol colored sauce more appetizing than I do), but it was actually very good.



Their shrimp taco comes battered and fried, with a bit of savory rice hidden underneath. Again, very tasty.



La Playita is definitely worth a visit - there aren't many places like it in the area (are there any others?). We're planning on not taking so long to revisit again next time!

La Playita Seafood
5185 Clairemont Mesa Blvd.
San Diego, CA
858-565-2300

Lunch and an Avocado Grove Tour at Fairfield Farms

After our tour of West Pak Avocado, we headed out South-East of Temecula to  the Pauma Valley for an avocado-centric lunch and a grove tour at Fairfield Farms.

Fairfield Farms is owned by Bill and Carol Steed, who hosted us in the backyard of their home on the property.

Lunch began with some hand-held snacks, the first of which was a toast of avocado bread topped with hummus, a jam (made from what, I can't recall) and a slice of avocado on top for good measure. Very tasty.



Next up was a panko crusted fried shrimp skewer drizzled with a lemon avocado-oil vinaigrette:



Taking a bite revealed some avocado tucked inside along with the shrimp:



The final appetizer was a smoked avocado gazpacho, which was the only dish of the lunch that we didn't really enjoy. An interesting idea, though.



Lunch proper included some very nice salad preparations. This one, with watermelon and avocado and a balsamic dressing made for a surprisingly good combination:



A simple, but very well seasoned salad of greens, avocados, orange segments and pumpkin seeds:



and finally a quinoa avocado salad:



I'm often not a big fan of quinoa, but I really enjoyed it here.

The main part of lunch was rounded out with a piece of steelhead topped with an avocado and corn salsa:



Dessert was an avocado frozen yoghurt topped with granola and fruit. It was rich and creamy, with just the right amount of avocado flavor.



Overall, it was a lovely lunch. The food was catered by Sorrel Restaurant / Bistro in Temecula. If you are in the area, you should check them out.

After lunch, we piled onto a tractor-pulled wagon and headed up into the avocado groves.



We wound our way through the groves, ducking avocado branches as they passed overhead, and arrived at one of the sections currently being picked.

The pickers use a simple, but effective tool - a long pole with a basket on the end. A rope along the pole controls cutting blades in the mouth of the basket.



Once a few avocados are in the basket, the picker pulls them down, snips off excess bits of stem, pops them in his bag and then goes up for some more.



In addition to avocados, Fairfield Farms also grows blueberries and several kinds of citrus.



But today, the focus was squarely on the avocado.

Homegrown Popcorn

We're just about out of popcorn, and being out of popcorn is not acceptable. Fortunately, Sherry just planted this year's crop.

What? You don't grow your own popcorn? You should - it is easy to do, and tastes great. We grew it for the first time last year, and now it is firmly planted on the list of items we no longer need to buy.



Growing popcorn is a lot like growing regular corn - only easier, since you only need a tiny patch. Well, I guess that depends on how often you eat popcorn... For us, though, a 3 by 4 foot square area was plenty.

We chose Dakota Black Popcorn, from Seeds of Change as our starter seed. It germinated well and grew quickly into six foot stalks with two small ears each.

In mid-summer came the hard part - waiting for the corn cobs to completely dry out. You need to leave it on the the stalk until the husks, cobs and kernels are nice and dry before harvesting the ears.

The reddish black kernels are small, somewhat pointy, shiny and beautiful:



Once off the plant, we set the ears aside for another couple of weeks to fully dry the cob. Then all that remained was to pop the kernels off the cob, discarding any damaged ones.

This task is a bit tedious, but was easily accomplished over several evenings while watching TV or a movie, using a large paper bag to catch the seeds.



For this year's planting we used select seeds from last year's batch. Gourmet popcorn on the cheap!

Here is what it looks like popped:



The dark bits you see aren't burned - the dark kernels just make it look that way. We find that this popcorn has a more interesting texture and flavor that your typical store-bought variety.

If you don't have a garden, or just aren't interested in growing your own, we still recommend trying this kind of popcorn. Before we started growing our own, we used Boulder Popcorn - you can buy from them online.

A Tour of West Pak Avocado in Temecula

As if sensing our love of avocados, the nice folks at the California Avocado Commission invited us, along with a group of other SoCal food bloggers, to the Temecula area for an interesting, fun and tasty avocado-filled day-trip.



The first part of the day was held at the West Pak avacado packing facility in Temecula.

Talk about a building full of avacados - from the moment we stepped inside, we were completely surrounded by them!

The avocados arrive at the facility from the growers in large bins:



After being dumped out of the bins, they go through a hand-grading process to classify them as "Ones" or "Twos", based largely on their outward appearance.



The control room has monitors that can view all parts of the facility. Some of these feeds are available online to growers so that they can remotely watch their crop being processed.



After grading, a machine sorts the avocados by weight:



We saw two packaging methods - there is a bagging line where avocados are fed onto a conveyor (shown in the photo at the top of this post) leading to a packaging machine. Here are a bunch of avocados being fed onto the conveyor:



and here is a short video of the avocados bouncing along their path to the bagging machine:



The other packaging method is boxing:



Despite all the machines moving the avocados from here to there, it was interesting to see just how much of the entire process was done by hand. The workers hand-sorted initially, hand-packed the bagged fruit into boxes, and with lightning speed, hand-packed individual fruit into trays in boxes.

The lower-grade avocados are sold under the "Dos Amigos" brand - destined primarily for the food service industry where outward appearance is not important:



And here are their more shiny, attractive siblings, destined for a grocery store near you:



We are fascinated by operations like this - seeing the step-by-step process in which a farm crop is transformed into a consumer-facing product.

Thanks to West Pak for having us as guests for the morning, and thanks to all of the West Pak employees who tolerated a bunch of annoying, camera-toting food bloggers in their midst!

Lunch at Mercado Hidalgo - Tacos Fitos and Carnitas El Jerezano

Having worked up an appetite exploring Tijuana's Mercado Hidalgo, we headed outside to the North corner, where there were a number of places selling tacos de birria de res - tacos made with stewed beef.

We stopped at Tacos Fitos, which I had read about on the Masa Assasin blog.



We tried both the birria de res taco and the taco campechano (shown on the left, below), which was made with a combination of birria and tripe.



Here is a closer shot of the birria taco:



Both tacos were fantastic. Super flavorful.

After wandering around the market some more, we stopped at one of restaurants in the interior - Carnitas El Jerezano:



The carnitas was just ok, but the place was comfortable, the staff was friendly and the freshly made corn tortillas were great



Tacos Fitos and Carnitas El Jerezano were but two of many dining options in and around Mercado Hidalgo. Rest assured that if you come to visit the market, you will not go hungry.