I chose squid as my protein for this glass noodle dish as the Thai waitress said it was usual to eat this in Thailand with seafood. I ordered it with a spice level they called Thai, and ooh la la! It turned out to be one of the spiciest dishes I've eaten. In spite of that, it was delicious. There were large tender squid rings that smelled and tasted like ocean breeze, bok choy and ong choy (both still crunchy), the noodles were very thin and soft, and there were small pieces of scrambled egg throughout. The flavors were spicy (of course!), savory, and a little sweet and sour. Ong choy, by the way, is a member of the sweet potato family, and its leaves and shoots are a popular vegetable in the tropics.
Location: Uncle Chai Thailand Street Food, 69930 Highway 111, Ste 122, Rancho Mirage, California. Date: January 16, 2023.
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My sister and I went to an Armenian festival, and here is my first blog of Armenian food. Kufta is a spiced beef meatball that usually contains some bulgur wheat. The Armenian version came with a crust of bulgur wheat with the spiced ground beef inside. They used warm sweet spices, and it was very delicious. Equally delicious was the Lahmajoon, otherwise known as Armenian pizza. It's a flatbread topped with spiced ground lamb, though some versions use ground beef. Unlike pizza, there is no cheese, and that allows the meat to shine.
Location: Outdoors at Saint Garabad Armenian Church, 38905 Monterrey Avenue, Rancho Mirage, California. Date: November 12, 2022. This delectable taco is filled with beef birria, which is shredded beef cooked in a flavorful red tinged broth. More red color comes from oil colored with annatto seed that the corn tortillas are dipped in before going onto the flat top grill. I call this oil “taco lubricant”, and the red color drips as you eat the taco. When the tortilla was fried but still pliable, the chef added a generous portion of the beef and folded the taco. For garnish I chose picked red onion and sliced radish. For my sauces I chose the spicy orange habanero and the green jalapeño that was actually more sour than spicy. I also ordered a little bowl of beef broth dipping sauce that included some garbanzo beans, a tradition of this pop up restaurant. I garnished the broth, as they suggested, with chopped onion and cilantro and a squeeze of fresh lime. There was nice texture from the fried tortillas, and the garbanzo beans added texture to the dip. Dipping the tacos into the broth made them even juicier and tastier. There was a harmony of sour, savory, and spice, and somewhere on the plate I detected the welcome flavor of Mexican oregano.
Location: Tacon'Todo at Coachella Valley Brewing. Follow them on Instagram. Date: November 5, 2022. I've passed this food truck in various locations on my way home, but this evening I was inspired to pull over and get myself a take out dinner. Among other offerings, this truck had Salvadoran pupusas and Mexican tacos. I got a birria taco, which is goat, and a cabeza taco which is made with meat from the head of the cow. That meat is so moist, with a little gelatinous texture that makes your lips sticky, that is has become my current favorite meat taco. I also got a pupusa, which is a thick stuffed corn tortilla. It usually has melted cheese in it plus another ingredient, in my case refried beans. Pupusas are always served with pickled cabbage slaw for a dose of crunch and acid. My meal came with two hot sauces, a red one and a green one, and they were both very spicy. While the pupusa and the tacos were not the best that I've had, it was noteworthy that I could pick them up from a single food truck on my way home. My goal is to help support more food trucks.
Location: Birreria Doña Emma, Desert Lot on Indian Canyon and 19th, Desert Hot Springs, California. Date: July 13, 2022. Tamales, for those not in the know, are steamed corn dough with some type of filling. I've been a fan of the tamale festival in Indio, located in the desert valley I live in, but for the last few years I didn't get the chance to go. This year I did, and even though I didn't find John Sedlar with his chocolate tamales in caramel lime sauce garnished with gold leaf, I wasn't disappointed. What I did find, from a vendor with the simple name Tamales, was a mole poblano tamale, which is shredded chicken in that famous spicy chocolate sauce originally from Puebla in Mexico. From the same vendor, I had a guava with cream cheese dessert tamale which was sweet and buttery. The best one of all, though, was the nopal/queso from Brothers Tamales. This one was stuffed with cooked pieces of tart prickly pear cactus paddle and gooey stringy cheese.
Location: Indio Tamale Festival, Old Town, Indio, California. Date: December 7, 2019. This food is from a street stall at the Thursday night farmer's market in Redlands, California. I chose Baby Eggplant in Tamarind Sauce and Lima Beans in Spinach; this second dish gave me the protein as it was all served over rice (rice and beans making a complete protein). I also wanted the Cabbage Cashew, which would have helped to make a better picture, but they didn't have it. I didn't taste any tamarind in the eggplant (tamarind should be quite sour), but all the food was soft, succulent, and spicy. I love eggplant as long as it's well cooked (and this was cooked so well that even the eggplant peel was very tender), but with Indian food it's all about the spices, and this vegetarian street food came through with great spice. I spilled some drops of curry on my T-shirt, and it left the yellow stains of healthy turmeric. Because of my camera's flash, you can really see the yellow color in the picture. The food was a little oily, but the taste was delicious, and it was nice to eat it outside in the fresh evening air.
Location: Curry Leaf, Thursday Night Redlands Market, State Street, Redlands, California. Date: October 17, 2019. I've eaten in plenty of Ethiopian and Eritrean restaurants in the U.S., but the Thursday night street fair in Palm Springs is the first time I've had Eritrean food on the street. When I lived there, Ethiopia and Eritrea were one country, and their injera and wot cuisine is basically the same. Injera is a soft pliable sourdough pancake made with teff flour; teff is a type of grass native to East Africa, and the seeds, from which the flour is made, are very nutritious. Wots are spicy stews that vary in spiciness and sauciness. They can be made from just about anything, and many are vegetarian. Vegetarian is what I ordered from Asmarina Foods at the street fair. I chose three wots to go with the injera: lentils, okra, and spinach. The lentils contained onion and spices that tasted a bit like curry. The okra, which wasn't slimy, came with tomato in a spiced gravy. The chopped cooked spinach had carrot and mushrooms in it, along with spices and possibly lemon juice. Ginger and garlic are popular spices for these vegetarian dishes. The fresh sour injera and the flavors of the wots were the real deal; this was some good Eritrean home cooking.
Location: Palm Springs Street Fair, Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, California. Date: April 18, 2019. This delicious Vietnamese-style vegetarian sandwich consisted of fried tofu cubes flavored with sweet and salty hoisin sauce, pickled daikon radish and carrot, thinly sliced jalapeňo pepper, cilantro, and sriracha aioli (spicy mayo) on a toasted French roll. It was a very savory but also sweet and spicy sandwich. The tofu was chewy on the outside, soft on the inside, and very tasty. My only suggestion was to add a bit more acid, like a squeeze of lime. The radish and carrot were pickled in seasoned rice wine vinegar, the kind used for sushi rice, which probably added more salt than sour. Overall, though, this was a noteworthy sandwich which I came across at the Kuma food tent in a temporary food truck park in the desert town of Coachella.
Location: Kuma food tent, 1609 4th Street (an empty lot when not in use), Coachella, California. Date: March 10, 2019. I got these delicious morsels from a food truck parked, with three or four other trucks, at Smitty's workshop on Adams Avenue at Mansfield in San Diego. I ignored the long line at the lobster roll truck and was amply rewarded by my visit to the purple Pierogi Truck.
They offered various varieties of these filled Polish dumplings, including potato and cheese, spinach, and the one I chose: sauerkraut and mushroom. Six dumplings were garnished with caramelized onion and chives, and they were served with herbed sour cream and cabbage pickled in beet juice. They were moist, tasty, and comforting. I put them down on the parking lot to photograph them, and then I sat on the curb and thoroughly enjoyed them. Location: Pierogi Truck at Smittys, Adams Avenue at Mansfield, San Diego, California. Date: July 21, 2015. |
AuthorChef Roland has been a legal resident of seven countries and has travelled in over thirty, documenting food along the way. He currently resides in the desert in Southern California. Categories
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