Saturday, September 29, 2012
WEEK FOUR BLOG ENTRY
WEEK FOUR READING
Jackie Robinson
-- crossing the line
The man who broke Major League Baseball's color barrier never forgot the indignities of his first trip to spring training.
The man who broke Major League Baseball's color barrier never forgot the indignities of his first trip to spring training.
By Chris Lamb
February 27, 2012
On Feb. 28,
1946, Jackie
Robinson and his wife, Rachel, boarded an
American
Airlines flight in Los Angeles bound for
Daytona Beach, Fla., for spring
training. There he would try to prove
that he was good enough to join the Montreal Royals, the top minor league team in the Brooklyn Dodgers' organization, and integrate professional baseball.
It would be more than a year before Robinson played his first game with Brooklyn, on April 15, 1947, breaking Major League Baseball's color line and forever changing baseball and society.
The story of the integration of baseball was perhaps the most important story involving racial equality in the years immediately following World War II. "Back in the days when integration wasn't fashionable," the Rev.Martin Luther King Jr. said of Robinson, "he underwent the trauma and humiliation and the loneliness which comes with being a pilgrim walking the lonesome byways toward the high road of freedom."
Never before — or since — had so much been riding on an athlete in surroundings so hostile as the Deep South in 1946, where racial discrimination was legal and brutally enforced, and where blacks who challenged it were jailed, beaten or lynched.
Robinson grew up in Pasadena and attended Pasadena Junior College before he transferred to UCLA. The former four-sport athlete at UCLA was keenly aware of the risks involved with challenging Jim Crow on its own soil. He also knew he was putting his wife's life in jeopardy by taking her on the trip to Florida. The couple had been married less than three weeks.
Unlike Rachel, who had never been in the South, Jackie had searing memories of what had happened to him a year and a half earlier at Ft. Hood, Texas. In July 1944, Robinson, then a lieutenant in the Army, was ordered to the back of a city bus, and refused. He didn't back down and when the bus returned to the military base, he was arrested and subsequently court-martialed for insubordination. Robinson was exonerated and then discharged from the Army in late 1944.
If Robinson had not been court-martialed, he probably would have remained with his battalion and been shipped to Europe, and Dodgers President Branch Rickey would have signed someone else. Instead, Robinson was playing for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Leagues when Rickey was searching for the right player to integrate baseball. Rickey secretly signed Robinson to a contract in August 1945, after receiving the ballplayer's assurances that he would have "guts enough not to fight back" against racial epithets, spikings by cleats and worse, that no matter what came Robinson's way, he would restrain himself.
Two months later, the Montreal Royals announced it had signed Robinson. When black America learned about the signing, the things denied for so long suddenly seemed possible. Ludlow Werner, editor of the New York Age, a black weekly, wrote that Robinson "would be haunted by the expectations of his race.... White America will judge the Negro race by everything he does. And Lord help him with his fellow Negroes if he should fail them."
The racial climate in the United States at that time — especially in the South — was tense, unpredictable and violent. In return for fighting for their country in World War II, black veterans wanted racial equality when they returned home. Instead, many were killed to teach them their place.
A few days before the Robinsons left Los Angeles, racial tensions erupted in Columbia, Tenn. A black woman and her son, who had recently been discharged from the Navy, complained to a white merchant about a radio he was supposed to have repaired. The merchant slapped the woman. Her son then shoved the merchant through the store's plate-glass window. The next morning, hundreds of law enforcement officers and white townspeople converged on the town's black section, destroying homes, businesses and churches, and beating up and arresting black citizens. More than 100 blacks were jailed and two were shot to death while in custody.
The Robinsons flew through the night that February and landed in New Orleans. After a layover they were scheduled to fly to Pensacola, Fla., before going on to Daytona Beach. When the Robinsons lined up to board the plane for Pensacola, they were told they had been bumped. When they tried to get something to eat at a segregated restaurant in the airport, they were prohibited from entering.
Twelve hours after they had landed in New Orleans, the Robinsons boarded a flight to Pensacola. When they landed to refuel, a flight attendant asked them to exit the plane. Once the Robinsons were on the tarmac, they were told that bad weather was expected so the plane needed to add more fuel. To counter the weight of the additional fuel, three passengers — the Robinsons and a Mexican woman — had to be removed. As Robinson listened to the explanation, he saw white passengers board the plane. Robinson felt a growing sense of rage, but remembering Rickey's words, he choked back the anger.
Instead of waiting for the next plane, the Robinson took a Greyhound bus across the state to Daytona Beach. They relaxed in reclining seats at the front of the bus. When white passengers boarded the bus at the next stop, the driver pointed a finger at the Robinsons and ordered them to the back of the bus. He called Jackie "boy." Robinson, knowing that an incident of any kind might jeopardize what was called "baseball's great experiment," did as he was told.
Nearly 36 hours after the Robinsons left Los Angeles, the couple — hungry, tired and angry — arrived at the Daytona Beach bus station. They were met by Wendell Smith and Billy Rowe, journalists with the influential black weekly the Pittsburgh Courier.
"Well, I finally made it," Robinson snapped, "but I never want another trip like this one."
Robinson stayed up into the early hours of the morning bitterly recounting what he and his wife had been through, seething over what the Greyhound bus driver had called him. "He was very annoyed and hurt," Rowe later remembered. "He had been called a 'boy.' This man had become a 'boy.'"
Robinson told Smith and Rowe he did not think he could get a fair tryout in Florida and said he wanted to quit and return to the Negro Leagues. Smith and Rowe talked with him, explaining — as Rickey had — that it was important for him to suffer certain indignities so other blacks could follow him. "We tried to tell him what the whole thing meant, that it was something he had to do," Rowe said.
Chris Lamb, a professor of communication at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, is the author of the forthcoming book, "Conspiracy of Silence: Sportswriters and the Long Campaign to Desegregate Baseball." Email: lambc@cofc.edu
It would be more than a year before Robinson played his first game with Brooklyn, on April 15, 1947, breaking Major League Baseball's color line and forever changing baseball and society.
The story of the integration of baseball was perhaps the most important story involving racial equality in the years immediately following World War II. "Back in the days when integration wasn't fashionable," the Rev.Martin Luther King Jr. said of Robinson, "he underwent the trauma and humiliation and the loneliness which comes with being a pilgrim walking the lonesome byways toward the high road of freedom."
Never before — or since — had so much been riding on an athlete in surroundings so hostile as the Deep South in 1946, where racial discrimination was legal and brutally enforced, and where blacks who challenged it were jailed, beaten or lynched.
Robinson grew up in Pasadena and attended Pasadena Junior College before he transferred to UCLA. The former four-sport athlete at UCLA was keenly aware of the risks involved with challenging Jim Crow on its own soil. He also knew he was putting his wife's life in jeopardy by taking her on the trip to Florida. The couple had been married less than three weeks.
Unlike Rachel, who had never been in the South, Jackie had searing memories of what had happened to him a year and a half earlier at Ft. Hood, Texas. In July 1944, Robinson, then a lieutenant in the Army, was ordered to the back of a city bus, and refused. He didn't back down and when the bus returned to the military base, he was arrested and subsequently court-martialed for insubordination. Robinson was exonerated and then discharged from the Army in late 1944.
If Robinson had not been court-martialed, he probably would have remained with his battalion and been shipped to Europe, and Dodgers President Branch Rickey would have signed someone else. Instead, Robinson was playing for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Leagues when Rickey was searching for the right player to integrate baseball. Rickey secretly signed Robinson to a contract in August 1945, after receiving the ballplayer's assurances that he would have "guts enough not to fight back" against racial epithets, spikings by cleats and worse, that no matter what came Robinson's way, he would restrain himself.
Two months later, the Montreal Royals announced it had signed Robinson. When black America learned about the signing, the things denied for so long suddenly seemed possible. Ludlow Werner, editor of the New York Age, a black weekly, wrote that Robinson "would be haunted by the expectations of his race.... White America will judge the Negro race by everything he does. And Lord help him with his fellow Negroes if he should fail them."
The racial climate in the United States at that time — especially in the South — was tense, unpredictable and violent. In return for fighting for their country in World War II, black veterans wanted racial equality when they returned home. Instead, many were killed to teach them their place.
A few days before the Robinsons left Los Angeles, racial tensions erupted in Columbia, Tenn. A black woman and her son, who had recently been discharged from the Navy, complained to a white merchant about a radio he was supposed to have repaired. The merchant slapped the woman. Her son then shoved the merchant through the store's plate-glass window. The next morning, hundreds of law enforcement officers and white townspeople converged on the town's black section, destroying homes, businesses and churches, and beating up and arresting black citizens. More than 100 blacks were jailed and two were shot to death while in custody.
The Robinsons flew through the night that February and landed in New Orleans. After a layover they were scheduled to fly to Pensacola, Fla., before going on to Daytona Beach. When the Robinsons lined up to board the plane for Pensacola, they were told they had been bumped. When they tried to get something to eat at a segregated restaurant in the airport, they were prohibited from entering.
Twelve hours after they had landed in New Orleans, the Robinsons boarded a flight to Pensacola. When they landed to refuel, a flight attendant asked them to exit the plane. Once the Robinsons were on the tarmac, they were told that bad weather was expected so the plane needed to add more fuel. To counter the weight of the additional fuel, three passengers — the Robinsons and a Mexican woman — had to be removed. As Robinson listened to the explanation, he saw white passengers board the plane. Robinson felt a growing sense of rage, but remembering Rickey's words, he choked back the anger.
Instead of waiting for the next plane, the Robinson took a Greyhound bus across the state to Daytona Beach. They relaxed in reclining seats at the front of the bus. When white passengers boarded the bus at the next stop, the driver pointed a finger at the Robinsons and ordered them to the back of the bus. He called Jackie "boy." Robinson, knowing that an incident of any kind might jeopardize what was called "baseball's great experiment," did as he was told.
Nearly 36 hours after the Robinsons left Los Angeles, the couple — hungry, tired and angry — arrived at the Daytona Beach bus station. They were met by Wendell Smith and Billy Rowe, journalists with the influential black weekly the Pittsburgh Courier.
"Well, I finally made it," Robinson snapped, "but I never want another trip like this one."
Robinson stayed up into the early hours of the morning bitterly recounting what he and his wife had been through, seething over what the Greyhound bus driver had called him. "He was very annoyed and hurt," Rowe later remembered. "He had been called a 'boy.' This man had become a 'boy.'"
Robinson told Smith and Rowe he did not think he could get a fair tryout in Florida and said he wanted to quit and return to the Negro Leagues. Smith and Rowe talked with him, explaining — as Rickey had — that it was important for him to suffer certain indignities so other blacks could follow him. "We tried to tell him what the whole thing meant, that it was something he had to do," Rowe said.
Chris Lamb, a professor of communication at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, is the author of the forthcoming book, "Conspiracy of Silence: Sportswriters and the Long Campaign to Desegregate Baseball." Email: lambc@cofc.edu
WEEK FOUR WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ
Is
there someone today who seems similar to Robinson? What is the importance of
Robinson's story?
Saturday, September 22, 2012
WEEK THREE READING
Just to keep you reading about food while you write your restaurant review, here's a delicious article from the LA Times:
Counter Intelligence: Hannosuke and Ramen Iroha arrive in U.S.
In Los Angeles, your next great meal could be anywhere, from a pop-up installed in an art gallery to the truck parked outside the place where you get coffee in the morning. If you've been here awhile, you almost expect your bliss to come from that place in the mini-mall next to the dry cleaners.
But in the rush to quantify banh mi specialists and loncheros, the Japanese supermarket food court — that bastion of quick-service sushi and reliable fried pork, omelet rice with ketchup and octopus fritters squirted with Kewpie mayonnaise and sprinkled with dried bonito shavings — is often overlooked.
The food courts are short on amenities but are frequented by customers who know how Japanese food is supposed to taste. Unless you venture into the belly of the supermarket for supplies, what you are likely to be drinking is cool water in a foam cup. You stand in line to order and pick up your lunch when your number is bellowed into a microphone. Most of the time, your decisions will be influenced by a display case of plastic food
Marukai, one of the supermarket chains here, flies in celebrity noodle shop chefs every now and then, and if you pay attention to the schedules, you can experience regional bowls from all over Japan. Tampopo, the first high-quality ramen shop in the area, operated for years in Mitsuwa food courts, and Santouka, perhaps the first Japanese ramen chain to open widely here, still does. (Santouka's porky shio ramen — salt-broth ramen — is still considered among the best of its kind, and grief washed over me this month when I discovered that the shop had discontinued its cold ramen. Surely its owners realize that California summers are longer than those in Kyushu!)
So it was not surprising that when the well-liked Tokyo ramen chain Ramen Iroha and the revered tempura bowl restaurant Hannosuke decided to open in the United States, they gravitated toward supermarkets.
I don't want to overstate things here. What we're talking about are basically the Japanese equivalents of hot dog stands and burger shacks, places to gather a quick lunch rather than citadels of Japanese civilization. There is a tradition of high-end tempura, meted out piece by piece like sushi and served so hot that the fried batter sizzles on your tongue, but what Hannosuke — located in the Mitsuwa market on Centinela Avenue in Mar Vista — does is a different thing, closer to big bowls of delicious chirashi sushi than to the exquisite succession of fish at a sushi bar. You will wait in line a half-hour, then devour your meal in 90 seconds. The tempura bowl, tendon, is about immediate satiation, not exquisitely calibrated levels of desire.
And, in fact, the tendon at Hannosuke is a less than overwhelming sight, a mass of tawny fried food heaped on a bowl of rice. If you have been lucky enough to have tasted tempura at a specialist, you may be nonplused at first by the stuff, which is moistened with a sticky sauce as it is snatched from the fryer. It tends to lack the crispness, the featherweight crunch that it might have if it were served piece by piece at a tempura bar.
But Hannosuke's aesthetic takes hold in an instant. It's still really crunchy, and when you bite into a slice of sweet potato or a mass of baby shrimp, the roasty, nutty flavors of the sesame oil used for frying and the inner sweetness of the food really come through, whether it is the big Japanese prawn or the steamy slab of whitefish. (For an extra couple of bucks, they'll swap out the whitefish for Tokyo eel, which may take to this treatment better than any other fish.)
There will be a crunchy sheet of nori, pure umami fried, and a bit of spicy pickled ginger to refresh your palate. Even more impressive, a gooey poached egg is given a quick bath through the oil, which renders its surface crisp without affecting its oozing, orangy yolk. The tendon is perfect in its way.
So too is the black ramen at Ramen Iroha, a stand that won the ramen equivalent of the People's Choice Awards in Tokyo three years running. It just settled into a massive Marukai complex in Gardena, more or less the Price Club of Japanese supermarkets, that vaguely resembles an oversize fortress from a big-budget samurai movie.
The black ramen, dense, chewy noodles, come in a chicken broth that gets its tar-like hue from soy sauce, fermented black beans and a slug of black pepper. You might expect the black broth to be intensely salty, like shoyu, or as sludgy as a bowl of Chinese cha chiang mian, but it is much subtler than it looks, edged with a slight bitterness that you realize is probably one of the dominant flavors in soy sauce. It shifts flavors as you eat, one moment picking up richness from the roast pork bobbing in the broth, the next a kind of marine flavor from the bits of seaweed.
You can get white ramen at Iroha, herb-fragrant, the chicken broth nearly as heavy as pure tonkotsu-style pork ramen. You can get red ramen, which is, I think, the white ramen flavor bombed with pork, chile and a numbing wallop of what tastes like Sichuan peppercorns. But the black ramen may be too compelling: You keep trying to fix the flavor in your mind, sipping spoonful after spoonful. Before you know it, the ramen is done; the bottom of the bowl shining white through the dregs.
Counter Intelligence: Hannosuke and Ramen Iroha arrive in U.S.
Hannosuke
and Ramen Iroha, popular populist restaurants from Japan, open locations in
Mitsuwa and Marukai supermarket food courts.
By Jonathan Gold
Los Angeles Times Restaurant Critic/September
22, 2012
In Los Angeles, your next great meal could be anywhere, from a pop-up installed in an art gallery to the truck parked outside the place where you get coffee in the morning. If you've been here awhile, you almost expect your bliss to come from that place in the mini-mall next to the dry cleaners.
But in the rush to quantify banh mi specialists and loncheros, the Japanese supermarket food court — that bastion of quick-service sushi and reliable fried pork, omelet rice with ketchup and octopus fritters squirted with Kewpie mayonnaise and sprinkled with dried bonito shavings — is often overlooked.
The food courts are short on amenities but are frequented by customers who know how Japanese food is supposed to taste. Unless you venture into the belly of the supermarket for supplies, what you are likely to be drinking is cool water in a foam cup. You stand in line to order and pick up your lunch when your number is bellowed into a microphone. Most of the time, your decisions will be influenced by a display case of plastic food
Marukai, one of the supermarket chains here, flies in celebrity noodle shop chefs every now and then, and if you pay attention to the schedules, you can experience regional bowls from all over Japan. Tampopo, the first high-quality ramen shop in the area, operated for years in Mitsuwa food courts, and Santouka, perhaps the first Japanese ramen chain to open widely here, still does. (Santouka's porky shio ramen — salt-broth ramen — is still considered among the best of its kind, and grief washed over me this month when I discovered that the shop had discontinued its cold ramen. Surely its owners realize that California summers are longer than those in Kyushu!)
So it was not surprising that when the well-liked Tokyo ramen chain Ramen Iroha and the revered tempura bowl restaurant Hannosuke decided to open in the United States, they gravitated toward supermarkets.
I don't want to overstate things here. What we're talking about are basically the Japanese equivalents of hot dog stands and burger shacks, places to gather a quick lunch rather than citadels of Japanese civilization. There is a tradition of high-end tempura, meted out piece by piece like sushi and served so hot that the fried batter sizzles on your tongue, but what Hannosuke — located in the Mitsuwa market on Centinela Avenue in Mar Vista — does is a different thing, closer to big bowls of delicious chirashi sushi than to the exquisite succession of fish at a sushi bar. You will wait in line a half-hour, then devour your meal in 90 seconds. The tempura bowl, tendon, is about immediate satiation, not exquisitely calibrated levels of desire.
And, in fact, the tendon at Hannosuke is a less than overwhelming sight, a mass of tawny fried food heaped on a bowl of rice. If you have been lucky enough to have tasted tempura at a specialist, you may be nonplused at first by the stuff, which is moistened with a sticky sauce as it is snatched from the fryer. It tends to lack the crispness, the featherweight crunch that it might have if it were served piece by piece at a tempura bar.
But Hannosuke's aesthetic takes hold in an instant. It's still really crunchy, and when you bite into a slice of sweet potato or a mass of baby shrimp, the roasty, nutty flavors of the sesame oil used for frying and the inner sweetness of the food really come through, whether it is the big Japanese prawn or the steamy slab of whitefish. (For an extra couple of bucks, they'll swap out the whitefish for Tokyo eel, which may take to this treatment better than any other fish.)
There will be a crunchy sheet of nori, pure umami fried, and a bit of spicy pickled ginger to refresh your palate. Even more impressive, a gooey poached egg is given a quick bath through the oil, which renders its surface crisp without affecting its oozing, orangy yolk. The tendon is perfect in its way.
So too is the black ramen at Ramen Iroha, a stand that won the ramen equivalent of the People's Choice Awards in Tokyo three years running. It just settled into a massive Marukai complex in Gardena, more or less the Price Club of Japanese supermarkets, that vaguely resembles an oversize fortress from a big-budget samurai movie.
The black ramen, dense, chewy noodles, come in a chicken broth that gets its tar-like hue from soy sauce, fermented black beans and a slug of black pepper. You might expect the black broth to be intensely salty, like shoyu, or as sludgy as a bowl of Chinese cha chiang mian, but it is much subtler than it looks, edged with a slight bitterness that you realize is probably one of the dominant flavors in soy sauce. It shifts flavors as you eat, one moment picking up richness from the roast pork bobbing in the broth, the next a kind of marine flavor from the bits of seaweed.
You can get white ramen at Iroha, herb-fragrant, the chicken broth nearly as heavy as pure tonkotsu-style pork ramen. You can get red ramen, which is, I think, the white ramen flavor bombed with pork, chile and a numbing wallop of what tastes like Sichuan peppercorns. But the black ramen may be too compelling: You keep trying to fix the flavor in your mind, sipping spoonful after spoonful. Before you know it, the ramen is done; the bottom of the bowl shining white through the dregs.
WEEK THREE WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ
There is no "writing about what you read" this week. Just write your restaurant review...and make it tasty!
RESTAURANT REVIEW REMINDER
REMEMBER, THE RESTAURANT REVIEW IS DUE THIS WEEK. HERE'S THE BLURB FROM THE SYLLABUS:
RESTAURANT REVIEW: (20%) Go to any restaurant in town. As you eat, take notes on the ambiance, the food, and the service. You may choose any restaurant (from Taco Bell to Café Med), but you should use this writing assignment to explore your descriptive capabilities. Use sound, touch, taste, smell, and the look of the food and surroundings. The review should be approximately two pages in length. You may use the first-person in this review.
Basically, you should go to a restaurant and capture the experience on paper. You may use first person and may write in a fairly informal tone. This is due on Wednesday, by midnight.
HERE'S HOW YOU TURN THIS PAPER IN:
Once your essay is finished, you will upload the final draft at any time on Wednesday to turnitin.com
If you have not used this site before, you will go to turnitin.com and sign in using your own information. To enroll in the class, you will need the CLASS ID and password. They are below:
CLASS ID: 5446751
PASSWORD: english
Once you are signed in, you will click on Restaurant Review, which is the only available assignment right now. You will submit your paper there. That is it. If you have trouble with this, let me know.
Again, that assignment is due on Wednesday and will be turned in only at turnitin.com.
Best,
dr. s
RESTAURANT REVIEW: (20%) Go to any restaurant in town. As you eat, take notes on the ambiance, the food, and the service. You may choose any restaurant (from Taco Bell to Café Med), but you should use this writing assignment to explore your descriptive capabilities. Use sound, touch, taste, smell, and the look of the food and surroundings. The review should be approximately two pages in length. You may use the first-person in this review.
Basically, you should go to a restaurant and capture the experience on paper. You may use first person and may write in a fairly informal tone. This is due on Wednesday, by midnight.
HERE'S HOW YOU TURN THIS PAPER IN:
Once your essay is finished, you will upload the final draft at any time on Wednesday to turnitin.com
If you have not used this site before, you will go to turnitin.com and sign in using your own information. To enroll in the class, you will need the CLASS ID and password. They are below:
CLASS ID: 5446751
PASSWORD: english
Once you are signed in, you will click on Restaurant Review, which is the only available assignment right now. You will submit your paper there. That is it. If you have trouble with this, let me know.
Again, that assignment is due on Wednesday and will be turned in only at turnitin.com.
Best,
dr. s
Saturday, September 15, 2012
WEEK TWO BLOG ENTRY
One bite...that's it, just one bite. You have the describe using deep description the best single bite of food you've tasted in your life.
For all of us, this is hard, nearly impossible. But think of those glorious food moments and capture one bite of the moment. For me, I might think about family reunions in North Carolina, and the one bite would be this. Real southern hushpuppies. As I bite into this recently fried, perfectly bready southern delight, the smells of frying catfish fill the air. I can hear my Aunt Muriel's deep southern drawl as she lets out, "I'll declare, them is some good hushpuppies."
Describe the bite and the scene.
Have fun...and prepare to be hungry. Writing and reading about food makes me want to eat...
For all of us, this is hard, nearly impossible. But think of those glorious food moments and capture one bite of the moment. For me, I might think about family reunions in North Carolina, and the one bite would be this. Real southern hushpuppies. As I bite into this recently fried, perfectly bready southern delight, the smells of frying catfish fill the air. I can hear my Aunt Muriel's deep southern drawl as she lets out, "I'll declare, them is some good hushpuppies."
Describe the bite and the scene.
Have fun...and prepare to be hungry. Writing and reading about food makes me want to eat...
WEEK TWO READING
The Find: Taco María truck survives the downturn
By Miles Clements Special to The Los Angeles Times
January 19, 2012
When food truck fatigue finally set in among the Twitter-equipped some time last year, the mobile movement all but stalled. Gone were the throngs that waited for hours, their attentions shifted instead to newly minted food artisans and itinerant pop-up restaurants. But in a Darwinian twist, only the strongest trucks have survived. And though the thrill of the chase may be gone for some, what remains are by and large the best meals on wheels.
Taco María is a product of that natural selection. The truck is helmed by Carlos Salgado, whose culinary pedigree instantly drove Taco María onto the radar screen of every serious Orange County eater. His has indeed an impressive résumé: Salgado served as pastry chef in some of the Bay Area's top restaurants, including Daniel Patterson's Coi and Oakland's Commis. He returned home to Orange County to help his parents transform the family's taquería. Taco María is what emerged from that reinvention, a truck that's constantly re-imagining lonchera traditions with the techniques and style of Mexican alta cocina.
"My parents' restaurant, La Siesta [in Orange], has been in business for over 25 years," Salgado says. "It was when they started talking about selling a few years ago that I began pointing myself back toward my hometown. Taco María was to be an extension of the restaurant and a flagship for our catering operations.
"Coming to work for a different audience, at a different price point, I've had to simplify my approach and distill the cooking ethics that are most important to me into a method that works within the food truck model. And while I may not have a kitchen full of highly trained, Michelin-quality cooks, a Pacojet, Cryovac machine or a dozen immersion circulators, I do have my family to support me and keep me grounded. My dad is the best sous-chef I could imagine having."
Those at the truck inevitably start with the aracherra taco, made with grilled hanger steak, a blistered shisito pepper, caramelized onion and bacon's smoky quintessence. The taco has both the humble charm of a backyard barbecue and the finesse of a fine steakhouse.
Yet even the most hard-core carnivores ultimately end up ordering the jardineros taco as well: knobs of roasted pumpkin, black beans, cotija cheese and a pumpkin seed salsa de semillas. There's no need for meat — this is a vegetarian taco built not on the artifice of mock meat or incongruous fusion but on the simple rhythms of the market.
If the aracherra doesn't sway you, there's always the carnitas. The slow-cooked pork shoulder is lashed with a bit of citrus and enlivened by the noticeable warmth of cinnamon. The mole de pollo is even more richly spiced — the mahogany mole is as complex as an Indian curry.
But Taco María's ever-changing specials are its signature. The truck's quesadilla de tuétano triggers Pavlovian devotion. It's a dish already cemented in food truck lore: crisp nuggets of bone marrow, stringy queso Oaxaca and a garlic-and-herb paste pulverized in a molcajete. It's predictably rich but powerfully addictive.
Salgado's rendition of esquites is similarly good, chile- and lime-laced corn sautéed with garlic, thyme and epazote in a butter flavored with blackened corncobs and toasty husks.
"I was telling [my] mom about some of my favorite foods and struggling to find a translation for bone marrow," Salgado explains. "She said something like, 'I think we used to make quesadillas [with that].' I was floored and immediately wrote it into our opening menu. What I assumed would be a fringe dish for the adventurous actually turned out to be incredibly popular. My whole staff has cuts and scrapes on their hands from pushing marrow every day just to meet demand."
It isn't brunch without the truck's excellent chilaquiles: freshly fried tortilla chips enrobed in a cascabel chile sauce and topped with pickled onions, queso fresco and a fried egg. Taco María isn't all about masa, either — any taco can be turned into a burrito. And you've really got to try the beet salad dressed with avocado, orange, almonds and charred scallion vinaigrette.
There may be a melon-lemon grass agua fresca to drink, or perhaps one flush with hibiscus and Concord grape. Salgado's almond horchata, however, is what you'll want a jug of, almond milk perfumed with coriander seeds. It's a brilliant addition: fragrant and floral, the coriander is at once unmistakable and ingeniously subtle.
Whether it's by an obsessive need for completion or sheer force of will, you will find room for dessert. Salgado's sweets are every bit as good as his pastry training portends, like the steamed chocolate bread pudding strewn with fried peanuts and glazed with milky caramel. When there isn't dense rice pudding scented with star anise and cinnamon, there's a glorious ricotta flan of homemade ricotta, caramel and a few sangria-soaked raspberries.
Witness the truck's crowds at Orange County's farmers markets and business parks and you begin to understand Taco María's growing cult, a purveyor of precisely the kind of modern Mexican cooking that's destined not for disposable cardboard containers but fine porcelain.
Salgado hints at that future. "It's still too early for us to share details, but we're excited about creating a unique type of Mexican restaurant here in Orange County, where Mexican food is such a large part of our shared experience. Exactly where and when depend on how far our truck, Frida, can take us. What I can say is that the restaurant will remain local, honest and accessible, with a menu that is recognizably Mexican in soul, in a space that is central, warm and inviting and will hopefully become a fixture in our own community."
source: http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-find-20120119,0,3934262.story
WEEK TWO WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ
If you were going to open a food truck, what type of food would you serve and where would it be?
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