Passion fruit dilemma

Last year I bought three evergreen passion fruit (passiflora edulis) vines from Jimmy Williams of HayGround Organic Farming at the Hollywood Farmers Market. Williams, who sells organic herb and vegetable plants there every Sunday (and also on Saturdays at the Santa Monica Farmers Market), suggested the vines as a solution to covering 80 feet of chain link fence at the back of my garden. Three plants? I was skeptical, but he swore up and down that in six months I wouldn’t see the fence.
He was right. The ugly fence is now completely covered in hand-sized emerald green leaves with dozens, if not hundreds, of passion fruits dangling among the leaves. My neighbor tried one of the egg-shaped fruits and promptly ordered a vine. I’m sure the neighborhood wildlife has been chowing down on the bounty too.

I’ve been making vinaigrette with passion fruit instead of lemon. The fruit’s tartness and luscious perfume is fantastic on salad greens. I want to try making sorbet and soufflés too. But meanwhile, last night, my husband, Fred, had the idea to cook some gorgeous little carrots from the farmers market in passion fruit juice. He braised them in a little butter with the saffron-colored passion fruit juice (with the seeds sieved out), a spoonful of sugar and a couple of sprigs of thyme until done. Just before serving, he turned up the heat to thicken the juices and caramelize the carrots. Delicious!

However, I just picked another basket of fruit. Now what?

-- S. Irene Virbila

Photos by S. Irene Virbila

Tia Juana to close

Tia Juana, which has been in business since 1976, closes the doors of its Olympic Boulevard location this weekend. The last of 31 years of handmade tortillas will be patted out there Sunday.

When the restaurant opened (under its original name, La Choza), Olympic between Barrington Avenue and Bundy Drive was an obscure industrial neighborhood. Owner Enrique Haro remembers there was so little traffic at night that if they saw headlights, they could assume the driver was a customer. La Choza's first Times review recommended it as a good place to stop on your way back from a drive up the coast -- that's how remote West Olympic seemed in those far-off days.

The neighborhood grew rapidly, and Haro upgraded La Choza, replacing the name (which means "the shack") with the grander-sounding Tia Juana and adding calamari and other dishes to a menu known for carne asada, pork mole and nopalito salad. Today the Olympic Boulevard property is about to be developed for larger businesses, hence the closure.

Members of the Haro family own a number of restaurants around town, including Casablanca and La Cabana in Venice. Enrique Haro -- and his mother, who has been the cook throughout the history of La Choza/Tia Juana -- are relocating to Huntington Beach, where they have revived the La Choza name, complete with the Tia Juana menu and handmade tortillas.

Tia Juana, until Sunday, 11785 W. Olympic Blvd., (310) 473-9293. New location: 7402 Edinger Ave., Huntington Beach, (714) 842-7888.

-- Charles Perry

Wineglass husbandry

The tender feeding and care of wineglasses ... Recently, at Bin 8945, owner and general manager David Haskell served my table a Gruner Veltliner from Austria in gorgeous crystal glasses with incredibly slender green stems, part of a new Sommelier series from Riedel (pronounced to rhyme with needle) the famous Austrian glassworks. I was immediately smitten with glass lust. How much? I found myself asking.
    "Fifty dollars a stem -- wholesale," Haskell said. "We have just seven of them. I broke one when I was demonstrating how to wash them to the staff. And now I'm not allowed to touch them," he confessed.
    Not all the stemware at the West Hollywood wine bar is as fragile, but they're all good, thin-lipped crystal. When any of the staff gets a moment, he or she pulls on some white cotton butler's gloves kept in a drawer behind the bar and polishes and inspects the glasses for smudges.
    Serving wine in the perfect stemware enhances the experience,  especially when Haskell is pairing glasses of wine with one of chef Michael Bryant's tasting menus available in five-, seven- and 10-course lineups.
    At my house, I'm not allowed to go near the wineglasses, either -- I'm too clumsy. I leave the washing to my husband, Fred,  who has it down to a science. After dinner for six, we're sometimes left with a couple of dozen dirty glasses. After rinsing them out with water, he leaves them lined up on the counter overnight. The next day he puts some music on the stereo and gets to work washing them by hand. That's the easy part. It's drying them that's difficult.
    He tried all sorts of cloths, but they always left some lint until he found a waffle-weave microfiber cloth at Koontz Hardware that doesn't leave any lint nubs behind. (The brand is called MysticMaid and you can find it elsewhere too.) Another tip: Be careful not to put any torque on the stem of the glass while you're drying it.

Bin 8945, 8945 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 550-8945

-- S. Irene Virbila

Photo by S. Irene Virbila

Worst expensive restaurant experience

Foodies tend to keep records of the number of times they’ve eaten at a three-star Michelin restaurant or the most truffles they’ve ever consumed. Some will e-mail friends and strangers their constantly updated guide to favorite restaurants in the great capitals of the world -- whether or not the recipient is interested. It’s a form of bragging, yes. But what about the worst restaurant experiences? Those often go unmentioned when they can make for an entertaining story.

I’ll go first. Here’s one from my archives.

Years ago, traveling in Spain on a train from Andalucia to Madrid, I met a young woman who claimed her aunt was one of the best chefs in Spain and I just had to eat at her restaurant in Madrid. She was so persuasive, and I was such an easy mark for the idea of a woman chef in Spain, that I agreed.  It was in a tony section of the city -- I don’t remember where now, or even her name. The place had an ultramodern décor.  First, we were invited for an aperitif and subjected to a guitar player singing “Feelings” for what seemed like two hours directly in front of us so there was no escaping. Can I say that I loathe the song? And that this was sheer misery? Not only that, but having to keep a straight face in front of this hapless musician.

Nothing on the menu was very Spanish. It was international luxe cuisine all the way -- filet mignon, foie gras, lobster. A complete and utter snore. And it was excruciating sitting there knowing we’d just used up our splurge money on a meal I could have gotten at any pretentious restaurant anywhere in the world. I couldn’t relax, either, always on the lookout in case the guitar player was going to launch into “Feelings” again. We could not wait to leave. And as soon as we paid our incredibly expensive bill and got out the door, we started running through the streets, giddy at finally escaping.

Let’s hear from you re any regrettably painful restaurant experiences, especially the expensive ones.

-- S. Irene Virbila

Pepper roasting at the farmers market

Yesterday at the Santa Monica farmers market, market manager Laura Avery -- undeterred by the heat and the faint smoke blowing in from the north -- was roasting peppers.  "Don't worry, we got it approved by the Fire Department," she assured the folks who gathered around the giant roaster as the peppers began to char over the propane-fed flames. 

Avery, who picked up the roaster in Santa Fe, New Mexico --where outdoor pepper roasting is a kind of public sport -- has been roasting peppers since the beginning of September at the Saturday Pico market, but this was the first time she's done it on Wednesday. Today Laura (shown here with Ted Galvan, the Pico market manager) was roasting Tutti Frutti Farms' organic Anaheims and pasillas.  After five minutes of flame, the peppers came out, charred and unbelievably fragrant.  Laura's done roasting at the Pico market, but next Wednesday she'll have her roaster out again. 

Roasted peppers, $5 for a 2-pound bag.  Wednesday Santa Monica farmers market, 8:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m., Arizona Avenue and 2nd Street, Santa Monica. 

-- Amy Scattergood

Photo by Bill Johnson

Tablas Creek Vineyard

I stopped by Tablas Creek Vineyard last weekend to walk the Paso Robles property with founder Robert Haas. He and his Tablas Creek partner, Château de Beaucastel owner Jean-Pierre Perrin -- the fathers of the Rhône wine movement in California who've supplied fellow Rhône Rangers with vine material brought here from Beaucastel -- have a new project. They're introducing several Châteauneuf-du-Pape grape varieties to the United States that have never been available here before. (Well, at least not legally.) After years in U.S. Ag. Dept. limbo, Cinsaut, Picpoul, Terrat Noir, Muscardin, Vaccarese, Clairette and Bourboulenc vines could be available to plant this year.

I know those grape varieties don't trip off of the American tongue when wine lovers think of the Southern Rhône, but it's exciting to think that American vintners will have all 13 of the grapes approved to be used in Châteauneuf-du-Pape wines at their disposal. Let the experiments begin!

-- Corie Brown

Photo by Stephen Osman

Finding fragrant fruit

As citrus season starts kicking into full swing, check out Japanese groceries for some pretty rare fruit. Yuzu (on the right), which has attracted a cult following among chefs, is showing up and so is an even more obscure example called sudachi (left). Normally available only in bottled liquid or dried peel form, they are most familiar mixed with soy, mirin, rice vinegar and shaved bonito flakes in ponzu sauce. The fresh fruit, of course, offers much more nuance.

The two fruits are similar, though they are different colors (yuzu is green, turning to yellow when ripe; sudachi is green, turning to orange). Both are tiny, typically smaller than a ping-pong ball. Both are extremely tart and very seedy. As a result, both are appreciated more for their peel than for the fruit itself. It’s in the zest that the real complexity of their aromas comes through.

It’s hard to define those unique fragrances. They are similar in many respects -- tart and somewhat lemony, of course. There are also overtones of grapefruit or tangerine and even some floral notes.

Supplies of fresh yuzu and sudachi are very limited, so availability tends to be somewhat erratic. They are also expensive, costing up to $30 per pound, though a little does go a long way.

Fresh yuzu and sudachi are available at Mitsuwa and Marukai markets. Yuzu is also available at Peter Schaner's stand at the Wednesday Santa Monica farmers market.

-- Russ Parsons

A new online food magazine

Screenwriter Amy Ephron has just launched a web magazine, One for the Table, devoted to musings on "food, politics and love." The site offers food-centric stories by Ephron, her daughters Maia and Anna Harari, her novelist sister Delia and the site's contributing editor and Saturday Night Live alum Laraine Newman.

Also thrown into the highly literate mix are restaurant and book reviews, recipes (such as the Grill's creamed spinach or pot roast a la Newman) and links to sites for ingredients and cooking gear (including Plessisville maple sugar chips and Guerande fleur de sel).  The site, which will be updated daily, also has stories from guest writers and excerpts from stories published elsewhere (such as one on waffles by L.A. Times columnist Russ Parsons).

Today's issue features a review of Osteria Mozza and a cookie recipe from Arianna Huffington -- maybe that's where the politics comes in. Fun, eclectic and well-written, Ephron's magazine should be an entertaining addition to L.A.'s Internet food scene. And who knows? Maybe with the impending writers' strike, it'll be the start of a new trend for frustrated screenwriters. I wonder if Ethan Coen bakes pies ...

-- Amy Scattergood

Padma's new cookbook

Now that "Top Chef" season is over, viewers with Padma withdrawal can pick up a copy of her just-published second cookbook, "Tangy Tart Hot & Sweet."   (Maybe the title came from the same people who dressed her in halter tops for the cooking show.)  The beautifully shot book has plenty of pix of the former model too, along with those of the actual food -- an appealingly international mix of recipes heavy on the Indian spices.  We all know Colicchio can cook, but I've always been curious about his costar; so I took the book home over the weekend and tried it out.

This recipe -- spiced Cornish game hens stuffed with bread, oranges and kumquats -- sounded most intriguing.  Especially as among the catalog of spices going into it was asafetida, an esoteric medieval powder made from gum resin whose name means, literally, "stinking resin."  (We booby-trapped knife kits with it in cooking school.)  The dish looked good -- after I cooked it 35 minutes longer than the recipe's muddled directions called for. (If I had followed directions, it would have been pretty raw.)  But the flavors were haphazard and overwhelming, the spices jammed together without any subtlety or coherence.  My kids loved a recipe for orange blossom waffles, though, and the hot and sweet grilled tilapia was quite good. The chai tea, however, was surprisingly weak, and a fresh mint chutney was an inarticulate mess of greenery rather than an identifiable condiment. 

The book has range and some interesting flavor profiles, but the mechanics don't work as well as they should. Sure, Padma's been busy, what with her TV show and her divorce proceedings. But if she didn't have time to test the recipes, she could have hired professional testers. Or here's an idea for a Quick Fire Challenge: You have 30 minutes to test my new book's recipes! Your time begins NOW.

"Tangy Tart Hot & Sweet: A World of Recipes for Every Day," by Padma Lakshmi, Weinstein Books, $34.95.

-- Amy Scattergood

Photo by Amy Scattergood

Day of the Locust, evening of pot roast

This afternoon's the time for a noir novel reading at L.A.'s only surviving 1930s cafeteria. It will be from Nathanael West's black-humor (or noir-humor) view of Hollywood in the '30s, "Day of the Locust." It's put on by a group called L.A. Reads (formerly known as Nobody Reads in L.A.), which describes itself as "a loose-knit group of individuals striving to create a stronger cultural, literary and historical sense of downtown Los Angeles."

In this case, it can also give people a historical sense of downtown dining -- in Nathanael West's day, cafeterias were L.A.'s most characteristic eateries. And Clifton's Brookdale still serves a great panorama of the sort of Midwestern food Angelenos loved in those days. Don't pass up the pies and cakes.

Clifton's Brookdale, 648 S. Broadway, Los Angeles; (213) 627-1673. Reading takes place from 4 to 7 p.m. on the mezzanine floor -- look for the people with copies of the novel.

-- Charles Perry