*Florida stunt lobster -- not actually Aliso Creek. Photo by Flickr user baxterclaus

This story also ran in today’s OC Weekly

Shellfish lovers: the commercial season for local, spiny lobster opens today! Recreational divers and sport fishermen got a head start, literally grabbing bugs by hand from our local waters since last Saturday.  Those of us less inclined to make like Steve Irwin and dive for our own catch can buy them from some of our waterfront fish markets until the season ends on March 16, 2011.

There’s a few differences between Pacific spiny lobsters and Atlantic lobsters. They have no claws, but bigger tails. The meat can be a little firmer, but also sweeter in flavor, depending on who you ask. As with any shellfish, the key is to not overcook the meat. The myth that bigger lobsters are tougher than smaller ones is a lie to cover up poor cooking technique.

Prices will fluctuate during the first few weeks until the market settles on a fair price. In past years,they’ve sold at $25 / pound or so, with the smallest legal lobsters weighing in around 1 1/4 pounds. As a reference point, Maine lobsters were selling for $7.99 / pound at Irvine’s 99 Ranch Market this weekend.

What’s that? You just want to be the judge and not the executioner? Some fish markets will also cook your lobsters for you. Seafood this fresh should be enjoyed simply – steamed, boiled, grilled, perhaps even raw as sashimi. The following waterfront fish markets will sell you truly local lobsters that were caught just hours before, and a few will also cook them for you.

In Dana Point Harbor, Jon’s Fish Market will sell you live lobsters to take home for $23.95 / pound, or boil / grill them for you to eat on site. General Manager Megan Fitzgerald says that their lobstermen work the waters from San Clemente to Laguna Beach.

Jon’s Fish Market 34665 Golden Lantern St Dana Point, CA; (949) 496-2807 www.danapointharbor.com

Set back on a side street off of Coast Highway, Pearson’s Port Fish Market sits on a floating dock on Newport’s Back Bay.  They do not cook seafood on site. They sell local shellfish in live tanks holding local shellfish. Chuck Pearson says that their spiny lobsters are caught in local waters around Newport and Laguna Beach, and the price, today anyway, is $19.99 a pound.

Pearson’s Port 100 E Coast Hwy, Newport Beach; (949) 675-6771

Skunked at the Newport Beach Dory Fleet

I only saw only one fisherman working this rainy morning at Newport Beach Dory Fleet fish market. It’s a co-operative of independent fishermen based at the Newport Beach Pier, and each boat specializes in different catches. Ara Kara of Live Fish Company shrugged at today’s poor weather and water conditions and prepared his gear for this weekend. He expects the two guys in the co-op who specialize in crab and lobsters to be selling later in the week.

The fishermen return with their early morning catch between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m., and sell directly to the public as weather allows. They do not cook anything on site either. Weekends are the best days because the entire fleet should be working. Sometimes, like today, they don’t go fishing at all. But if you wanted a sure thing, you’d be buying frozen jumbo prawns raised on a farm in the Philippines and not wild, local sea creatures.

Newport Dory Fleet 2111 W. Oceanfront, Newport Beach; www.doryfleet.com

In Long Beach, Berth 55 Fish Market will sell you live bugs, and serve them steamed or grilled. Their fishermen didn’t bring back any today either, but they plan on selling starting tomorrow.

Berth 55 Fish Market 555 Pico Avenue, Long Beach, (562) 435- 8366; www.berth55fishmarket.com

That’s a list of waterfront fish markets in Orange County confirmed to sell local lobsters, and there might be others as you move inland. In past years, I’ve seen spiny lobsters for sale in Little Saigon live seafood markets (such as T&K Food Warehouse) but I haven’t been able to verify any that intend to carry this year. If you spot any clawless spiny lobsters, let’s hear about it in the comments section!

Asian pears at UC Irvine farmer's market

This story also appears on the OC Weekly food blog.

If you’ve been to our local farmer’s markets in the past three weeks, you’ll have noticed that Asian pears have arrived. As with the apples they closely resemble, the new crop is packed with lightly sweet nectar. Their firm crunch adds a great texture to a cheese sandwich, and the sweetness is a nice counter to the lightly salty, slightly lactic tang of an aged cheese. This week, here’s a few ideas for making killer grilled cheese sandwiches.

Grilled cheese is easy enough that a child can make it, yet sophisticated enough that high end restaurants like Campanile dedicate one dinner a week to them, and a food truck built its entire business around it.  You already know how to make grilled cheese, so today’s post is not so much a recipe, but a few ideas to consider.

1. Shred semi-soft cheeses yourself so they melt quickly. Avoid pre-shredded cheeses. While convenient, pre-shredded cheeses contain anti-clumping agents. For the same reason they keep shreds from sticking together in the package, they also don’t melt as well when you want them to. Use a box grater and shred your own cheeses.

2. Try a sandwich with a crispy Parmigiano-Reggiano crust on the outside. Mario Batali correctly calls Parmigiano the king of all cheeses.  The  imported stuff definitely tastes more distinctive than domestic Parmesan. The real deal will have the words Parmiggiano-Reggiano hot stamped into the wax shell of the cheese wheel.

3. Use whatever bread you prefer, but I like a white bread with pull and texture for this gig. Instead of regular, squishy white  bread, I use a Pullman loaf white bread, that perfectly square loaf that used to be popular before the 1950′s and the advent of Wonder bread. It’s still found at Japanese, Taiwanese, Chinese and Korean bakeries. You might also see it called by its French name, pain de mie. Buy yours at Cream Pan, Diho Bakery, 99 Ranch, JJ Bakery, 85C Bakery, J Sweet Bakery, Mitsuwa, Marukai, Ebisu, Freshia, or other Asian bakeries and supermarkets.

Ingredients:
One Asian pear, peeled and sliced into 1/8″ thick slices
Bread, such as a pullman style white bread
Easy melting semi-soft cheese, like Brie, Muenster, Jack or Fontina. If using a mildly flavored melty cheese, consider adding a second, more sharply flavored soft cheese like chevre, blue cheese, Raclette or Morbier for a deeper cheese funk.
Parmigiano-Reggiano, for crusting on the outside of the sandwich
Butter

1. Peel the Asian pear with a vegetable peeler – the skins are thicker and more fibrous than apple skins. Cut into 1/8″ thick round slices, cutting north pole to south pole.
2. Preheat a nonstick pan over medium-low heat.  It’s much easier to make the Parmigiano crust with a non-stick pan. A too-low heat is better than too-high heat.
3. Lightly spread some butter on the outside of the bread and lay it on the pan. Sprinkle melting cheese inside the bread,  a slice of Asian pear, more cheese, and another slice of bread.
4. After four of five minutes, the soft cheese should start melting. Lift the sandwich up, and sprinkle some Parmigiano in a thin layer in the middle of the pan. Flip your sandwich over, then lay the uncooked side on top of the Parmigiano.
5. After another four minutes, the Parmigiano should be toasty and crisp. Scrape under the cheese crust with a spatula, lift the sandwich, then repeat the Parmigiano step on the other side.

This story also appears in the OC Weekly.
Unless you’ve built a chicken run in your yard, you probably haven’t tasted an egg raised right here in Orange County. Locally raised beef and pork is even harder to find unless you know where to look.
At Buena Park High School, students of the Agricultural Sciences program produce all that. They raise Black Angus cattle, Yorkshire hogs, grow fruits and vegetables, raise chickens and sell all their produce at the school’s farm store.

Jessica Fernandes is the faculty instructor of the Agricultural Sciences program, now in its fifty-second year. Its long history is a reminder that Orange County was largely productive farmland past World War II. In more recent decades, the school’s farm program went to seed. “This is my fifth year,” Fernandes says. “When I started, the farm was knee-high with weeds, and had only 85 to 100 students.”

Since then, grant money was raised, land cleared, and new animal pens and a greenhouse were built. The students own their animals and tend to them every day. They show their animals at county fairs, hold leadership positions, and learn life skills they couldn’t get in any other educational class. Fernandes notes with obvious pride that “now we have 335 students, two teachers, fully usable classrooms, animals everywhere and a farm store.”

The student-run farm store is open to the public every Wednesday from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. during the school year. Vegetables are sold at bargain prices. On a recent visit, only a few dozen eggs were available and had sold out long before I arrived. So I went home with pork shoulder steaks and chorizo, carefully packed in butcher paper and flash-frozen by the butcher that processed them.

The pork shoulder steaks looked darker than the usual bland-white-meat from industrial farms, and had a noticeably more prominent dark meat flavor. Fernandes attributes that to the way the animals are raised. “It is not the breed of hog that makes the difference,” she says. “The difference is in the high quality feed, the care by the students and the exercise…. we are a much smaller scale farm and care a great deal about quality over quantity.”

The insistence on quality is the reason their eggs sell out so quickly. The flock of chickens is deliberately kept small as not to overcrowd the hen houses; thus egg supply is limited. The availability of their beef and pork will vary throughout the year as animals are bred, raised, shown and sold. Regarding that fluctuating supply, Fernandes says, “If people tell us what they’re interested in, we’ll hook them up with a student to meet their needs.”

Mrs. Fernandes concludes, “I would like the public to know this is a student-run program. It’s the best way to get local fresh produce and meat, and also a great way to support the kids in your community who need it the most.”

The Buena Park High School Farm Store is located in a classroom on the northeast corner of the school’s large campus. Set your car’s GPS to this virtual address (the building is not labeled as such)

527 Magnolia Ave., Fullerton, (714) 992-8778; www.buenaparkffa.com

Don't go changin'...

This story also ran in today’s OC Weekly

Sorry to break this news to you on the first day of autumn, but The Filling Station in Orange–known for their mile high, shortbread-crusted pumpkin pie–is about to change hands. The legal notice has come down, and the place is in its 30 day escrow.

Current owner Hyun Sook Chung is training the new owner on all the recipes for the baked goods the place is known for. According to management, the new owner, nicknamed “Tippy,” is intent on keeping everything exactly the same–the staff, the menu, everything. I actually want Tippy to improve the savory menu, which I think is meh-at-best, but the pies are holy-shit-amazing.

Hyun’s tired of running a one-woman bake shop, and wants to hand over the keys to someone with more energy for it. During the peak holiday season, Hyun bakes hundreds of pies a day solo, and who can blame her for wanting to stop?

But what about me, dammit? And my holiday pies? Everyone’s been asking the staff about that, and only time will tell if the new owner can really fill in at the Filling Station.

The Filling Station Cafe
201 N. Glassell St., Orange, (714) 289-3714
www.fillingstationcafe.com