This week's Culinary SOS: Mucho Ultima's fresas mojito

This week's Culinary SOS request comes from Diana Lecanda of Sherman Oaks: 

Mucho Ultima Mexicana Restaurant in Manhattan Beach makes the best strawberry mojito I have ever had. Can you please get the recipe from them so I can make and enjoy it at home? It's the perfect drink. Thank you.

Bright and lightly sweet, fresh strawberries are a perfect complement to the classic lime and mint in this mojito. Mucho Ultima changes its mojitos seasonally but was happy to share this recipe with us. Cheers!

Thanks, Diana! You can find the recipe here.

Click here for more Culinary SOS recipes. If you have a favorite restaurant recipe you'd like to request, feel free to email me at noelle.carter@latimes.com. I'll do my best to track it down.

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-- Noelle Carter
You can find me on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.

Photo: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times

From the L.A. Times recipe archive: Maple bacon biscuits

Recently, I received a very important recipe request from Brenda in Malibu:

"The bacon scones at the Huckleberry Cafe in Santa Monica are out of this world. Can you get them to part with the recipe for me?"

Huckleberry's own Zoe Nathan shared her recipe with us just a few years ago when she was pastry chef at Rustic Canyon. Our Restaurant Critic S. Irene Virbila called them "gloriously crumbly" at the time, and when she later reviewed Huckleberry after it opened, she wrote:

"A Santa Monica native who worked at the highly regarded bakery Tartine in San Francisco, Nathan is a talented baker who goes for the luscious over the austere, uses butter and cream with abandon and makes some of the best biscuits ever. Those would be the incredibly flaky maple bacon biscuits that have become a morning fix for many a customer."

I dug up the recipe (well, actually, this is one of those recipes that I keep close to me at all times, you know, just in case), which was so popular that we named it one of our Top 10 Recipes in 2008.

Enjoy, Brenda!  You can find the recipe here.

If you have a favorite restaurant recipe you'd like to request, feel free to email me at noelle.carter@latimes.com. I'll do my best to track it down.

ALSO:

Go behind the scenes at the Test Kitchen

134 recipes for your favorite restaurant dishes

Browse hundreds of recipes from the L.A. Times Test Kitchen

-- Noelle Carter
twitter/noellecarter

Photo credit: Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times

Nascar fans, meet the funnel bacakonator

Charlotte Motor speedway in North Carolina geared up for the Bank of America 500 Nascar Sprint Cup series this week with a new menu. To help amp up the crowd, they introduced some unique eats.

Nothing says fast cars and burning rubber like the funnel bacakonator. This bad boy belongs with the artery-clogging, greasy, gluttonous offerings you're likely to find at a county fair. The bacakonator consists of a large funnel cake drizzled with chocolate and strawberry sauces, topped with a hefty helping of bacon.

Also on the menu is the Charlotte pimento mac 'n' cheese burger. Yes, it's exactly what it sounds like (but more): an Angus beef burger topped with a scoop of pimento mac 'n' cheese, then covered in crumbled pork rinds. I can't tell if my heart is pounding from sheer excitement or fear.

For the health-conscious, the Danica Patrick "Fit Fuel" menu will debut at the speedway. It includes such options as a turkey burger, veggie burger and grilled chicken sandwich.

-- Jenn Harris

twitter.com/jenn_harris_

Photo: The funnel bacakonator. Credit: Charlottemotorspeedway.com.

Bacon-cheddar muffins as your Weekend Eats reminder

We like to start out each week out on a food lover's note: We gather online at Facebook and on Twitter to swap photos of our Weekend Eats in an effort to beat the Monday Morning blues. But in recent weeks, I also noticed another thread of activity: Muffin Monday.

Muffin Monday is a sweet and savory initiative launched by Anuradha at the India-based blog, Baker Street. It's exactly what it sounds like: Anuradha picks a muffin recipe each week, fellow bloggers join in the baking of it, and then share the results on line.

I jumped at the chance to join this week when the muffin pick was savory: Bacon-cheddar muffins. You can find the recipe at Baker Street. While I am not much of a baker, the recipe turned out swell. (I put my own spin on it by adding green onions and swapping out one cup of regular flour for a cup of whole wheat flour. You know. To make it healthy.) 

Consider this your invitation to join in, too, for Muffin Monday and help Anuradha make the start to the week just a little bit brighter. And then you can also submit that photo to Weekend Eats. See how this all comes full circle?

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--Rene Lynch
Twitter / renelynch

Photo: My take on bacon-cheddar muffins. (Ron Joseph / For The Times) 

An affront to the good name of 'bacon'

 
Bacon cannot speak for itself. So I will speak on its behalf. Who's with me? It has come to my attention that the term "bacon" is being sullied. It's now being used as a shorthand label for all the nonsense cluttering your email in-box, the stuff that falls somewhere between email from a Nigerian businessman and urgent notification that your credit limit has been ... exceeded. You know, all the coupons, recipes, newsletters, updates, tips, sales, tricks and alerts that you willingly signed up for at one point and now just delete, delete, delete when you see them stacking up:

"Bacon is all of your Facebook notifications or bank e-mails saying that a bill is due," says Tommy Vallier, a social media consultant and one of the people that coined the term at a Pittsburgh technology conference in 2007. "We came up with the word just as bacon really started to become a problem."

It's such a problem that now we have "How to manage e-mail in-box bacon" suggestions, and there's even a service ($20 a year) to help you unsubscribe to it all.

Don't get me wrong, such tips and services all sound swell. But do we have to sully the good name of bacon? Can't we come up with another name? Like, e-clutter? Or, I don't know, how about "unwanted e-mails?" Why call it bacon? Do you join me in my outrage?

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--Rene Lynch
Twitter / renelynch

Photo: Bacon Love. Credit: Not On Display via Flickr 

The Richard Sandoval show: Zengo, Raya and La Sandia

Richard Sandoval, the chef-restaurateur whose empire spans Washington, D.C., New York, San Francisco, Denver, Las Vegas, Chicago, Mexico City, Acapulco and Dubai, has opened three restaurants in Southern California since spring. 

Latin-Asian restaurant Zengo opened in Santa Monica Place. Think dim sum meets antojitos: Thai chicken empanadas, shrimp potstickers, charred tuna wonton tacos, Peking duck-daikon tacos, and chipotle-teriyaki chicken wings. Main dishes include: sea bass with pineapple salsa and saffron-dashi ponzu and steak churrasco with onion tempura and mustard chimichurri sauce. Also, Monday through Friday, Zengo happy hour offers $6 cocktails and wines, $3 beers and $5 small plates. 1453 3rd St., Santa Monica; (310)899-1000; richardsandoval.com.

Raya by Richard Sandoval opened in the Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel, serving "pan-Latin coastal cuisine" such as coconut shrimp ceviche, hamachi tiradito, pistachio-crusted tuna and chipotle miso-glazed black cod. One Ritz-Carlton Drive, Dana Point; 949-240-2000; richardsandoval.com.

At Sandoval’s La Sandia Mexican Kitchen & Tequila Bar, also at Santa Monica Place, tacos are prepared with handmade tortillas with fillings such as chicken tinga and adobo marinated pork. Among the other traditional Mexican dishes: carne asada with poblano and chile marita salsa. Latin cocktails are made with La Sandia’s tequila and mezcal collection, such as horchata blanco with tequila reposado and horchata, or fruit margaritas, mojitos and sangria.1453 3rd St., Santa Monica; (310)393-3300; richardsandoval.com.

-- Amanda Gottesman

Photo: Zengo's Tuna Won Ton Tacos. Credit: Zengo restaurant.

Help for Haiti: A growing list of local restaurants and food trucks chip in

This week we've posted TiGeorges' benefit dinner, chef Ludovic Lefebvre's work at the Hollywood Helping Haiti event and the Gourmandise baking classes to help with the relief effort in Haiti. Here are a few others on the local food scene that are helping us eat well and do good:

Eagle Rock Brewery: 20% of all Revolution Ale ($5/pint) sold in the taproom will go to victims of the earthquake in Haiti throughout the rest of the month. The brewery is currently considering which charity to contribute to and will post it on its blog as soon as it's  determined. 3056 Roswell Street, Los Angeles, (323) 257-7866.

ILoveFoodTrucks: The L.A. food truck community is mobilizing through social networking. Since fans are of the techno-savvy nature, the community has created a Facebook Causes page, where it's soliciting donations to Oxfam.

Sushi Roku, Katana, Boa Steakhouse and Robata Bar: On Tuesday, Jan. 19, the IDG restaurants will be donating 20% of all sales to the American Red Cross, Yéle Haiti and the Clinton Foundation.

The Edison: From Wednesday, Jan. 20, through Saturday, Jan. 23, there will be a $10-per-person suggested donation at the door, which will be donated to the Doctors Without Borders Haiti Relief Fund. The Edison will also be hosting an auction Friday, Jan. 22 from 5 to 7 p.m. of celebrity memorabilia for the organization. 108 W. 2nd St., Los Angeles, (213) 613-0000.

Kitchen 24: On Monday, Jan. 18, Kitchen 24 will be donating 10% of its sales to Doctors Without Borders, from 5 p.m. to midnight. 1608 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood, (323) 465-2424.

-- Krista Simmons

Photo: Revolution XPA beer logo. Credit: Eagle Rock Brewery

Opening the vault: The top recipes of 1989

As we count down to the L.A. Times Test Kitchen's favorite recipes of 2009, we're taking a look back at our best recipes of the past 25 years. (Unfortunately, our photo archives don't go back as far as our recipes.)

So what were we eating in 1989? We were dining on Lemon Squares, Baked Brie with Sundried Tomatoes, and the humbly-named World's Best Sugar Cookies. And I can imagine what those finished dishes look like. But I really, really, really wish I had a photo of this recipe with the intriguing title of Carolyn Capacillo's Molded Chick-A-Roni Coup.

Can anyone tell me what a Chick-A-Roni Coup is? Or, better yet, send me a picture of one? I'm sure it's tasty. (It has to be. It has a butter sauce, and involves bacon liners.)

Click here for the rest of 1989's lineup.

--Rene Lynch

File photo: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times

VIDEO: Alie & Georgia whip up a Bloody Bacon & Cheese cocktail (you read that right)

Remember the pair who brought you the Ham Daiquiri?

Alie (an L.A. Times writer) & Georgia are  perfecting this revolting cocktail routine with the Bloody Bacon & Cheese cocktail: In addition to starring in this video, they're also the subject of an article in today's New York Times. Time.com also gave them a shout out.

--Rene Lynch

Latest recipes from the L.A. Times Test Kitchen

All recipes that appear in the L.A. Times' Food section are tested and perfected in our Test Kitchen before they're deemed fit to print. (That means you don't have to worry about a trial run before serving one of our recipes to company.) Rest assured, they should work the first time out of the gate. Here's a look at this week's recipes:

Andouille smoked sausage dressing

Butter cookies

Corn bread dressing

Dirty rice

Finska pinnar

Frozen fruit slices

Grilled fresh mahi-mahi with jalapeno cilantro sauce

Jan hagel

Lebkuchen

Nut butter sandwiches

Nutmeg logs

Turducken

Want more? Check out our recipe collection at www.latimes.com/recipes -- and bookmark it. We're constantly adding new dishes.

-- Rene Lynch

Join us on Twitter @latimesfood and Facebook at facebook.com/latimesfood

Photo: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times