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.

A Day Trip to Tijuana's Mercado Hidalgo

A couple of Sundays ago, we had some friends visiting and we decided to take them down to Tijuana for the day. Within minutes of walking across the border, we had grabbed a cab and arrived at Mercado Hidalgo, Tijuana's central market.

Here is a map of the market's location - as you can see, it is not far from the border crossing:


View Mercado Hidalgo in a larger map

Taking up a whole city block, the market vendors are arranged around the edge, with the center being a large parking lot.

There was plenty of fruit on offer:



as well as sweets:



and of course, lots of chiles:



and mole pastes:



There was even a little cooking store:



and a few vendors selling Mexican cheese varieties:



Quite a few places had this purple corn for sale. I'd never seen it before, and don't know what it is typically used in:



There was a glass case that contained the largest amount of chicharrón I'd ever seen in one place:



Next to it was this interesting mass that was labelled "Chicharrón Prensado":



This was the first time I've encountered "pressed" chicharrón and I'm definitely curious to learn more about it.

We didn't do much real shopping on this trip - only buying some piloncillo (sugar cone) and tamarind - but the vendors and other shoppers were friendly and relaxed. It made for a very nice day trip.

Some Dishes with Fishes - Round Five

Posting these fish-dish roundups is becoming a habit with us. Hopefully there will be many more editions to come!

This round opens with a Seafood Fritto Misto - an Italian-inspired dish of lightly-coated and fried fish (in this case squid and black gill). Squid tentacles always look cool, and they tasted great, but the star of the show was the black gill. While the chunks of fish weren't much to look at, they were moist and full of flavor.

Cornflake-crusted White Sea Bass with Salsa Verde


This was our first time trying this take on a Rick Bayless recipe, and it was great - even though an initially too-hot pan caused the outside flakes to over-caramelize. The way the cornflakes went golden-orange was beautiful and also added structure and complexity of flavor to the fish. Combined with the salsa verde, it was very good indeed.

Middle Eastern Pargo Snapper with Bulgur and Garden Veg


We have a burgeoning love affair going on with Claudia Roden's New Book of Middle Eastern Food. It has spawned a number of great meals for us so far, including the fish marinade and flavor profile (lemon, garlic, cumin, paprika, marjoram, mint) for this dish.

Indonesian Fragrant Fish (Grouper) Stew


This dish, from James Oseland's Cradle of Flavor, is a rhizome-fest - using ginger, galangal and turmeric. We've used turmeric a lot as a dried spice, but this was our first use of fresh turmeric, and it made a big impact on us. Lovely flavor and color.

Smoked Scallop Savory Custard


This was a bit of a crazy idea, but it turned out really well. We've been loving the bay scallops we get from Catalina Offshore - particularly smoked. They went beautifully with the delicateness of the soft savory custard.

Prawn Pathia - Indian Takeaway Recipes

Our Chicken Pathia recipe is one of the most popular recipes on our blog, and we often get requests for additional recipes using our Curry Base Sauce.

This Prawn Pathia is almost the same recipe as our chicken version, but uses fish stock instead of chicken stock, omits the red coloring and, of course, uses shrimp instead of chicken. While the overall flavor profile remains, the shrimp take the dish in a quite different direction.

Some notes on the recipe, as questions have come up on our other curry recipe posts:

• We use the term "Indian chilli powder" as that is what is on the label of the powder we typically use. If you can't find that, use a hot, red powdered chile (cayenne works well). Be sure not to use a spice blend - you just want straight powdered chile.
• For the stock, you should use just the amount concentrated stock cube or granules that would be needed to make a cup of liquid - do not add the corresponding amount of water. The goal is to get the flavor of the stock without diluting the curry base.

Prawn Pathia

Serves four.

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons oil
1 medium onion, chopped small
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt (to taste)
1-2 teaspoons Indian chilli powder (or other hot, red powdered chile)
1 large bunch fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped (coriander)
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar
Approx. 1/3 recipe Ubiquitous Curry Base Sauce
1 pound large shrimp, peeled and deveined
Fish stock cube or granules (enough for 1 cup)


Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add cumin, ground coriander, garlic, ginger, and onion. Cook while stirring until onions are wilted.

Add "Base Sauce", fish stock, cinnamon, vinegar, and sugar. Stir to mix. Add salt to taste, and chilli powder to get the spice level you want.

Simmer for about 10 minutes to allow flavors to mix.

Add a large handful of the cilantro to the pot and mix it in. Simmer for another 10-15 minutes.

About 5 minutes before serving, add the shrimp and another small handful of cilantro. Simmer until the shrimp is opaque and just cooked through.

Serve with Pulao Rice and flat-bread.