Wow so I guess it's about time we updated this blog, right? Here's some upcoming posts I have in mind: ramen of NYC, Belgian brews, and the quest for the ultimate ham & cheese croissant. Liz has some great findings west of the Mississippi and across the Atlantic (as in, Italy of course!). In the meantime, watch The Future of Food. It's a documentary that tells the terrifying story of the United States' very flawed food system. If you have Netflix, you can check it out through the "Watch Instantly" feature.

Daily Rants

Aroma di Roma is filled with YUPPIES and CHILDREN.  Is nothing sacred?  

OH and how hard is it for a cafe that supposedly has good food to use decent tomatoes IN THE MIDDLE OF AUGUST?

God bless Viento for frequenting the farmer's market.  It makes me happy to hear Bela tell customers how great the tomatoes are that day.  

Let's all take a moment to wake up and smell the tomatoes.  This is the time!  Go to the Hollywood Farmer's Market this Sunday. . . .there's one guy in particular who has a fantastic selection.  He even has a fucking sign that says "Do Not Touch Unless Buying."  werd.    

A Summer Apart

To update you all on our whereabouts these days, Liz has spent the whole summer in Italy for an internship opportunity, and I have been working my ass off at two Long Beach restaurants.  My main gig was at Long Beach Pizza Co. and the other was at The Potholder.  While there were times when I could barely break a smile during a "double-shift weekend," it was great to get waitressing experience and to meet some great locals along the way.  The biggest downside for me was the weight gain that comes with eating pizza at one job and greasy diner food at the other.  The best part. . .making bank!  I've been taking the month off in preparation for moving to NY in about a week.  With all the extra time I've finally been able to cook for myself again.  Speaking of which, I'm trying out vegetarianism for a while to see if I can hang with it and lose my LB weight.  So far it's working out pretty well and I rarely seem to miss meat.  

I can't wait until Liz gets back to the states so that she can post all of her fabulous Italian food experiences!  The sad part is that Liz is coming back two days after I leave for NYC. . . . .

Long Beach digs

You know, we have complained a lot in the past (in conversation, not in this blog) that there is nothing to do in Long Beach, but we failed to mention that there are many cool places to go and do nothing.

Caffeination:

Viento y Agua: Abundant seating; wonderful organic bagels, muffins, and cookies; unusual and highly addictive drinks, friendly baristas, and an evolving collection of 3-dimensional art.
recommended: the killer tomato bagel sandwich and the oatmeal horchata. However the matte latte with soy is our favorite.

Portfolio: The original L.B. slacker coffee house. Once the main place to go, now one of many. Located on 4th street across from several vintage shops. The coffee is adequate, the pastries are fine, and the soups and sandwiches sound good on paper.
recommended: buy your coffee and get the fuck out to avoid being mistaken for a poser.

Aroma di Roma: The best coffee in town (if you're an Italophile), great gelato and panini offerings, and Italian futbol on satellite. For the coffee purist.
recommended: the chicken peperonato panini, anything coffee, and the pistachio gelato.

Creama: If you live downtown, this may be the only place to get a passable coffee and good wireless internet. The coffees are good, but their sweets are the best.
recommended: If you like your chocolate chip and white chocolate macadamia nut cookies chunky, theirs are hard to beat.

Hot Java: The denizens of this cafe are probably the most loyal of all of Long Beach. A large part of the gay and lesbian population frequents this cafe, being situated on broadway and junipero, just a couple blocks from Portfolio. The coffee is adequate, and the pastries are pretty good. The baristas are very nice, especially to the regulars. Once a month they have a comedy night that is pretty hilarious. And the couches are comfy, a nice place to study... and with none of the posers from Portfolio.

The Library: Another Broadway spot with friendly baristas, books, and nice fruit salads. Movie nights on Monday.
recommended: The iced latte is a perfect jolt before working one of my Broadway waitressing jobs. And I've always wanted to try one of those cake slices. . .

We need to apologize for being so MIA. Liz has been busy as shit with her new internship at the Italy/America Chamber of Commerce and I just finished a month of grad school auditions (I'm going to NYU in the fall, yay!). In addition to that, Ian and I just moved out of our apartment in the hood and will be in our sweet new apartment in a real neighbor"hood" in a little more than a week. Meanwhile we are staying with the other dirtyspoon who is making us feel right at home. I spend the daytime looking for a job (a third job) then Liz and I make dinner and drink wine. Ian will usually come back from work/rehearsal to be immediately sat down to a late night meal and libation.
Places I went for auditions: Boston, Boulder, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. Luckily, New York was my favorite :). Aside from having a crap-ass experience auditioning at Boston University, I ate some pretty dreadful things while I was there. While I must admit, that the clam chowder at Legal Seafoods (a restaurant chain in Boston) was quite good, their crab cakes were sickeningly mayonnaise-y and the orzo that came on the side was prepared without intention to thrill or much less hold anyones interest.
Now the thing that was truly awful was my introduction to dunkin' donuts. Somehow this:

is considered good on the east coast. Keep in mind that Dunkin' Donuts coffee is now available to buy at your local supermarket. People choose this over all the other great coffee out there! Over Lavazza, Peet's, and Illy! I would have actually rather had coffee from 7-Eleven or Starbucks than this piss-poor shit. The donuts are also a sad story. Never had I eaten a donut that was so much like a piece of wonderbread that had been deep fried and coated with some chocolate-like substance. Long Beach, which supposedly has the 2nd highest number of donut shops per capita behind Fort Worth (while not necessarily something to celebrate), has donut making down way better than this boring national chain.
Let's see. . . .Boulder was cold and windy, but I'm sure it's beautiful in spring and summer. I found a place that had 1/2 off oyster shooter Tuesdays after my audition. Chicago was actually pretty cool but just way too damn cold. San Francisco was a lot grungier than I remember, and I didn't have time to seek the perfect bakery or anything like that. I certain didn't have the budget for a feast at French Laundry or Chez Panisse.
What else has happened to me since the last post? I had an interview at Morry's of Naples which is a wine store in LB. In preparation I have been reading the Wine Bible which is a great book, but I had only gotten through the chapter on France by the time my interview rolled around. Basically, my interview consisted of me feeling like an idiot because I couldn't describe the flavor profile of a Syrah (although if they just let me try one of theirs as a reference point I might have been able to do it:)) nor could I list the wine regions of Italy (damnit, that was the next chapter!). My interviewer then asked, "So basically you know nothing about wine." Dammit. I gotta say that this personal failure has inspired me to learn more about wine!

Pupusa Mania on Long Beach Blvd

After a serendipitous encounter at a random farmer's market in the LA area, Sarah and I went on a pupusa craze- three places in one night. For those unfortunate souls who have not tried the El Salvadorian delight that is a pupusa, it is basically a fluffy, doughy, and thick corn tortilla stuffed with either soft salvadorian cheese (quesillo), fried pork rind (chicharrón), chicken, or refried beans. Normally Sarah and I order a pupusa revuelta, that is a pupusa with 2 or more of the ingredients. The cheese, chicharrón, and refried beans make for an incredible hodgepodge; it's not exactly the lightest of meals though...

Curtido is a traditional and delicious accompaniment to a pupusa, and is best compared to american coleslaw- although no mayo is involved. It is comprised of pickled cabbage, carrots, onions, and lemon juice, and can be very spicy if peppers are in the jumble. Not to mention the thick, habanero salsa that is obligatory on every pupusa! Time to up your spicy food tolerance people, california style; it'll make you a better person.

Archeological excavations of Joya de Cerén, a small native village preserved by a volcanic eruption, the Pompeii of El Salvador, shows evidence that natives were eating pupsas as far back as 2,000 years ago. But as a national dish, the pupusa didn't start to diffuse throughout all of El Salvador until the 1960s, when it spread to other Central American countries as well. During the 1980's the civil war spurred many Salvadorians to emmigrate, thus exporting the pupusa to other countries, including the US.

Our favorite pupusa haunt is a dinky little "cafe" on Long Beach Blvd. The surrounding area is a bit sketchy, but don't be alarmed- that's part of the charm. Hey, it's the risk you gotta take for pupusa authenticity. Sarah was speeding by on LB transit when she originally spied the flickering neon window sign advertising those bad ass puppies. So couple days later we walked in, a little unnerved by the desertion that was LB blvd after 9pm. We were greeted warmly by an aproned rolypoly Salvadorian woman who spoke about as much english as I farsi; she was seated at one of the 5 tables, enjoying some of her curtido. But then I said those magic words: dos pupusas por favor, and she mumbled something inaudible, wiggling the little piece of overlooked cabbage on her lip. And so she set to work, but not before dutifully washing her hands. We watched as she rolled the corn dough and the cheese into a a small circle, about 3 inches in diameter. She plopped the mixed dough onto the flat grill and lightly browned both sides, until just a drizzle of the quesillo oozed onto the hot surface and fused onto the side of the pupusa creating a crunchy cheese crust. These first pupusas were simple, the only ingredient besides the corn dough being the quesillo. She served them to us, along with a large bowl of the curtido and the salsa, and we devoured them in minutes...and then ordered seconds. This time, a pupusa revuelta- with all 3 components, as we now order them today. There are quite a few other things on the menu, soups, tacos, and some Mexican specialties, but we can never bring ourselves to try anything other than a pupusa. (By the way, they're only $2)

La Amiga Pupuseria y Taqueria- 1260 Long Beach Blvd on the eastern side, just south of Anaheim St.

Natto, America's most feared japanese culinary import

Growing up in northern California, I was very lucky to have been exposed to various cuisines and foods- of which my favorite was always Japanese. As I'd been going there since I was a wee tot, the sushi chef at our most frequented restaurant called me "sushi baby", and was always shouted as a greeting upon my entrance. It wasn't until my high school years that I started to branch out into Japanese cuisine outside of the American-Japanese restaurant staple of sushi and tempura. I was on break from boarding school staying at a friend's house in Michigan when one morning she started making us breakfast. Being half-Japanese, she often prepared the typical Japanese breakfast of miso soup, fish, rice, and what I now lovingly know as 'natto'. Natto is stinky ambrosia sent from the gods, but only if you can see, or smell, past its rather pungent scent- it is, after all fermented soy beans. Not that they're rotting, come on. We in the western cultures eat tons of things that are fermented: yogurt, sauerkraut, real (not processed) cheeses, pickles, beer, wine, etc.

Natto can be warmed up and served on top of Japanese rice (short grain sticky rice). You can choose to flavor it with the tsuyu (a yummy japanese dipping sauce often served with soba noodles) and karashi (hot mustard) packets that come in individually sized containers. Scallions or green onion add nice flavor and texture, as well as color to the dish. You can enjoy natto this way, or also in easy to make sushi- just lay sushi rice down atop a full size nori (seaweed) sheet and then dole out the natto in a line down the middle. Roll that baby up with a sushi mat and enjoy- no need to cut it into pieces- you can enjoy it handroll style. (That way you non dexterous chopstick users need not embarass yourselves. :D)

The taste of natto differs from person to person; to some, including me, the smell is wonderful, nutty, and maybe even a little cheesy. "Foreigners", or gaijin, notoriously find natto to be revolting. The smell might be intolerable- too pungent and smelling of fermentation- granted the aroma tends to diffuse a bit throughout the household. Sarah, the other dirtyspoon, is also half Japanese. She has told me that her dad, who is American, can't even be in the same room when the rest of the family is eating natto and refers to them as "stinkybeans". And I've also heard that some weirdos believe it to be bland, or have no flavor at all.

The consistency is quite unique; the beans look whole, but actually melt together at the slightest touch, and have a sticky consistency, and spiderweb-like strings appear when you pierce the glob of beans with chopsticks. It's a little tricky to eat, but eating it with rice helps, as the natto sticks and melds with it.

If you are daring enough to try Japan's most avoided dish, let us know and send us links to your pictures so we can publish them! Once you have mastered eating, and hopefully appreciating, this controversial fare, I guarantee you will earn the respect of any native Japanese person and will probably receive some looks, as I have, of pure amazement!

Chefs’ New Goal: Looking Dinner in the Eye - New York Times

Chefs’ New Goal: Looking Dinner in the Eye - New York Times

Japanese Soul Food by Sarah

I'd like to make a brief ode to my favorite cold weather meal ever, Japanese curry. This dish is almost embarrassingly easy to make and is a great choice for the poor college student because it is not only cheap, but is nutritious with the addition of meat and vegetables. Due to the conveniences available now in Japanese cuisine, this dish begins in most Japanese homes with a brick of condensed curry roux. Boxes of this instant curry can be found in supermarkets stateside in the "Asian foods" aisle. Likely brands that one will come across are S&W and House Foods Inc.
While following the directions on the back of the box provide favorable results, there are a few alterations/tweaks that will make this your own personal expression of curry:

• less water for a thicker stew and more concentrated flavor
• adding garam masala powder
  
• using local farmers market vegetables that reflect a different curry for every season! My favorite winter curry consists of entirely root vegetables.
• I usually find that the more onions I add, the more complex the curry tastes especially after several days. Slice them thinly so that most of the onion melts away. These days I use at least four onions.
  
• adding fruit such as apples or pineapple can add an unexpected twist (both are great paired with pork)
• experiment with different types of meat. possibilities include: pork cutlet dusted in panko & fried, stewing beef, chicken thighs, and shrimp. For vegetarians, fried tofu dusted lightly in flour is delicious (be sure to add the tofu on top at the end, otherwise the breading will get soggy).
  
• try serving with brown rice instead of the more traditional white. some Asian and gourmet markets (Wild Oats) sell sticky brown rice which works a little better than the usual dry brown rice out there.
  
• at curry restaurants, you will often have a small portion of Japanese pickles on the side. These can be found at Japanese markets such as Mitsuwa in great variety.
  
• most importantly: reduce, reduce, reduce! the longer the reduction time the more delicious your curry will be!

Tips:

• serve with milk or Japanese beer

• curry makes me sleepier than turkey does. . . .don't make this if you have studying to do afterwards!
• for dessert try a glass of Calpico (Japanese yogurt drink) and orange slices.
  

The Magnificent, Awe-inspiring, The One and Only, OUR Hole Mole

It only seems appropriate to have our first real entry all about our favorite Mexican place ever--Hole Mole. And Holy it is! Despite the fact that there are now several Hole Mole locations in the LBC (and one in Whittier), our favorite location is still "the original" located on 4th and Obispo. Liz was the instigator of our trips there and thank sweet baby jesus for that. She first introduced me to her burrito, THE Burrito, the raison d'etre for a good portion of my life. What you do is order the BRC (beans, rice, cheese) burrito and then you pay to add on sour cream and guacamole. It may sound boring to people who have to consume meat at every meal, but you simply have not experienced the sublime melt-in-your-mouth sensation when all ingredients are combined. The beans and rice themselves are the so-called meat and potatoes of this dish. Fluffy rice cooked in a tomato broth literally shines with just the right amount of oil. The creamy refried beans make you feel warm and satiated. The guacamole adds zest and color while the sour cream ups the sex, especially when it mixes with their house-made smokey red chile sauce (located at the salsa bar). The ingredients are dexterously wrapped in a large flour tortilla and toasted per request (sometimes when I forget to request for a toasted burrito, they would to my satisfaction, do it anyway) making the outside flaky and lightly browned. The initial mouth to tortilla greeting, accompanied with a saliva-y anticipation, can be broken down into a strata of collaborating flavors. After piercing the crunchy, flaky crust, your mouth sinks into the perfection that is THE burrito. And it is goooood.

Note that trying to order this burrito at other Mexican eateries will not produce the same results. . . . .I mean shit, we've tried! Believe me, when I was living in Eugene, Oregon for a year, I tried in vain to order a burrito in the same fashion, but it was a mealy, tasteless, lump of poo. Ok, ok, it wasn't poo, and granted we are talking about Oregon here, but come on! Eugene, having such great local produce, meat and dairy, should really look to improving their selection of world cuisine.
Alright now that I have given full homage to THE burrito, it is important to note other items on the menu. Tuesday is a big day for Long Beach, because it is the day of the 1 dollar tacos. Their dollar taco offerings include: fish (fried in the ensenada style and now grilled is available as well), chicken, al pastor, carne asada, and carnitas. Our personal favorites are the al pastor for its well seasoned and juicy bits, and of course, the original fish taco.

One of the most characteristic offerings at Hole Mole is their battered chiles. they are a medium sized yellow chile pepper broiled and then generously sprinkled with a tangy lemon seasoning that accentuates so well the true pepper flavor. Be careful though! They are extremely hot, and will burn your balls off, so don't eat the seeds. A cup of their sexy creamy horchata should help out your burning tastebuds, because even without the seeds the peppers are pretty hot. Liz always eats at least 7 of them, and then can't talk for 5 minutes; self-admittedly masochistic, ha. But at least that tells you how delicious they are.

Another good find at Hole Mole (and cheap!) are the crunchy carnitas tacos- only $1.50 for 2! They're loaded with pulled pork meat, drizzled with a creamy pink sauce best described as addicting and topped with loads of lettuce, tomatoes, and shredded cheese. Amazing!

There is no shortage of marvelous things to order at Hole Mole, but we've shared with you only our favorites- otherwise this blog would go on for days. So please, go forth and feast on the wonder that is Hole Mole. And let us know if our blog aided or inspired you to try our favorite neighborhood taco spot.

Welcome to Two Dirty Spoons: How they got dirty

Liz and I are two young blooded epicures who have been living in Long Beach going on 5 years. One day (today) we decided to start a blog based on the goings on of our everyday "food lives". Not only are we focusing on our passion for cooking, but we want to show you our local culinary discoveries, whether it be a Zagat rated restaurant or an El Savadorian joint that specializes in bad-ass pupusas.