©Glenn Koenig / LAT

19th century Los Angeles cattle ranchers knew how to party. They threw massive barbecue orgies that lasted for days. They dug huge pits deep into the ground, and slow smoked 65,000 pounds of beef at a time for thousands of guests.

Charles Perry of the L.A. Times dug through historical archives to unearth this style of cooking seldom seen in our paved-over City of Angels. It’s a great food anthropology story, and a fabulous-sounding meal recreated by modern day food adventurists. Read about it here.

Long before industrial snack foods and convenience stores were imagined, boiled peanuts fed the car driving public’s craving for salty snacks. Throughout the American South, roadside vendors set up high BTU propane burners and kettles at gas stations, fruit stands, and empty lots to serve locally grown peanuts in a style as old as the dirt they grew in.

Thanks to an influx of Southeast Asian farmers, Californians with a Dixie heritage can fill their cravings for an absent favorite. Peanuts feature prominently in cuisines influenced by the Chinese diaspora, so inquire among the Hmong, Vietnamese, and Thai specialty growers at your local L.A. area farmers market.

Raw, or “green” peanuts, still moist from the damp earth in which it grew, more closely resemble pod beans than tree nuts. Botanically speaking, they are legumes. As these freshly harvested peanuts dry, they harden and take on a more nut like character. Boiled peanuts don’t have the crunch you’d expect from the dry roasted variety, but a wet, briny, bean like texture, more like edamame’s country cousin.

The local season lasts through the end of December.

Basic Boiled Peanuts

1 pound green, or raw, peanuts
4 cups water
1 teaspoon salt

Combine all ingredients in a pot, and bring to a boil. You can adjust the brine strength to your preference, but a long boil will increase the salt concentration.
Reduce heat, and cover with a lid cracked opened slightly.
Gently simmer for an hour and a half, stirring occasionally so the peanuts don’t stick to the bottom and burn.

Get your Kyoho grapes before they disappear. The vendor at my local UC Irvine farmer’s market tells me this Saturday will close out her season, and they won’t be back until next July.

Kyohos are one of Asia’s most popular table grapes. With its high sugar content and distinctively strong flavor, they almost taste artificially enhanced by some flavor scientists’ mad experiments. They resemble Concord grapes in their large size and thick skin. Some describe them as tasting like Concord grape jelly, but to me, they taste more like Japanese grape flavored beverages or candy. To each his cultural reference, I guess.

Park’s Vineyard grows them on their Temecula property about two hours’ drive south of Los Angeles. If you miss out on local kyohos, you’ll see imported Chilean kyohos next spring.

Park’s Vineyard also sells them at the Santa Monica farmer’s market on Pico Blvd and Cloverfield. Both the Santa Monica market and the one at UC Irvine are held on Saturday mornings, and I suspect their booths will sell out by noon time. Look for this banner, and don’t show up late.

“That’ll be a hundred and twenty three dollars, please.” Someone ahead of us proudly receives three dozen cupcakes, and the queue lurches slowly forward.

Who drops $123 for cupcakes? Apparently, enough women to keep lines long at the recently opened Sprinkles Cupcakes in the upscale Orange County seaside burg of Corona del Mar. Fancified cupcake boutiques have grown in popularity in recent years, and why not? It’s America’s backlash against the low carb pogrom that purged sweet indulgences from our daily routine.

Still, foreknowledge of this devotion didn’t prepare me for the crush of cake junkies in line. Their cracked-out desperation is right out of New Jack City, except the fashionably dressed Newport Beach ladies are better behaved and more attractive. Every inch of this pale-wood-on-white space conveys urban chic, and the rigorously designed graphics, packaging and marketing materials go a long way in its upscale appeal to women. If Martha Stewart and West Elm decided to market cupcakes together, this is what their store might look like. In addition, the store sells doggie muffins for the canine devotee and logo apparel for the human ones.

Ragga muffin

Nice packaging. Disposable wood utensils add a unique touch

Lemon, Banana, Vanilla Milk Chocolate, Red Velvet

Wee cupcake, top heavy with frosting

Rubber, meet road

A cupcake minus frosting is just a muffin, and who’d wait in line for a muffin? These wee critters are positively overloaded with frosting, unbalanced and top heavy like a surgically augmented size 0 swimsuit model.

The chocolate frosting tastes like the fine Belgian Callebaut milk chocolate from which it’s made. A cream cheese tang shone in the frosting on the red velvet cake. Other quality ingredients like Nielsen-Massey vanilla demonstrate the store’s commitment to sophisticated palates.

I’m not a fan of oversweet desserts, and the heavy hand with sugar in all these frostings dulled my enthusiasm. I couldn’t taste the subtle floral vanilla notes because sugar dominated the flavor profile. Your mileage may vary, however.

The cakes themselves are well baked with a tender crumb, moist, and all mildly flavored. Of these, the banana cake’s rich aroma stood strongest, and this was my favorite of the bunch. Lemon cake is pleasant enough, but again overwhelmed by sugar. Red velvet cake, glistening with moisture (or more likely fat), also stood out thanks to its pairing with a tangy cream cheese frosting.

The cake flavors are muted. Not dull exactly - more fairly, simple. But cupcakes are suposed to be simple. They appeal to our inner child. These gussied-up kids’ treats shelter adults from a world of overwrought pastry towers plated with lilikoi curd. A cupcake transports us back to an embrace in mom’s kitchen apron, and memories of licking batter off the mixing bowl. Those wanting more dominant or exotic flavors in their desserts should look at a unabashedly grown-up patisserie like Let Them Eat Cake, or perhaps the powerfully flavored ice creams two doors down at Gelato Paradiso.

Though I admit passing judgment on someone who’d drop over a hundred dollars on cupcakes rather than bake her own, her recipients can rest assured that those cakes were baked with as much love and more skill than most moms and dads can manage at home. It’s a long way from Duncan Hines’ kitchen, but in many ways, exactly the same.

Sprinkles Cupcakes
In the Corona del Mar Plaza
944 Avocado Ave
Newport Beach, CA
949-760-0003

and

9635 Little Santa Monica
Beverly Hills, CA
310-274-8765