California Sea Lion

There are six species of sea lion: Steller's, Australian, South American, New Zealand, Galapagos and California (another, the Japanese sea lion, went extinct in the 1950s). Sea lions have external ear flaps, which distinguish them from true seals which are earless. Sea lions are also characterized by long fore-flippers, the ability to walk on all fours and short, thick hair. 

The California sea lion is found along the coast of North America from southeastern Alaska (from about Icy Bay - just south of where the western Yukon border is) down to about Acapulco, Mexico. The breeding range is much smaller, from the top of northern California south to about Mazatlan, including the Gulf of California. They breed from May to August and in non-breeding season the males migrate to the northern ends of the range to feed and the females stay nearer the breeding grounds. 

Sea lions basking on rocks in Yaquina Bay, Oregon.

Basking on docks and swimming. It seemed like the males had most of the choice dock spots and the females swam around in the water. 

Swimming females

Males are substantially longer and heavier than females, around 7.9 feet long compared to 5.9 feet, and 770 pounds compared to 220 pounds. Males also have manes and thicker necks, chests and shoulders and a protruding crest that gives them a domed forehead. 

Large male California sea lions. 

Female sea lions. Note the outer ear flaps.

They eat squid and fish and sometimes clams and they are eaten by killer whales and sharks, particularly great white sharks. 

A swimming female.

A sleeping male. Note what appear to be battle marks.

A barking male.

While we were in Newport, Oregon in January, in Yaquina Bay, we found a huge number of California sea lions on the docks and on the nearby breakwaters, with extremely loud barking and grunting. We could hear them from several miles away. 

Seals on a breakwater with Yaquina Bay Bridge in background. 

I have always associated the California sea lion with the female. It seems like that is what is always in zoos and what I have typically seen on rare occasions in Mexico and California. In Oregon, males seemed to predominate which is consistent with them being outside of the breeding range during non-breeding season. 

Peacock and Vegetable Pie

NPR's Planet Money recently had a podcast, "We Cooked a Peacock", where they made a peacock pie following a Dutch recipe from a cookbook published in 1612. The podcast opens with a phone call from David Kestenbaum, one of the Planet Money team, to Exotic Meat Market where he asks the owner, Anshu Pathak, if he has whole peacocks for sale. Anshu, in his very colorful way, responded that he did, head, legs and tail included. The rest of the podcast details the Planet Money team's cooking adventure. 

A 1618 painting by Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Senses of Hearing, Touch and Taste. Note just left of center the peacock pie to the left of the woman in the red dress. 

An enlargement of the peacock pie from the same painting. Note the actual head and tail of the peacock sticking out of the pie. 

I live in Southern California, not too far from Grand Terrace where the Exotic Meat Market warehouse is located. I have been buying different kinds of meat from Anshu for years and have gotten to know him. So I emailed Anshu and told him I would like to cook a peacock pie on President's Day and invited him and his wife over to our house to eat it, along with some other of my friends. Anshu accepted. I've eaten peacock once before, roasted, and it was great. 

A 1627 painting by Peter Claesz, Still Life Peacock Pie. This peacock pie is even more elaborate, having not only the head and tail, but the wings sticking out of the pie and a rose in the peacock's beak. 

In the interim, I started to look at what I would need to cook a peacock pie.  The 1612 recipe used by Planet Money provided that a peacock, of course, would be used. The peacock is the more colorful male of the peafowl, the drab female is called a peahen. The Indian peafowl, which is blue, originates from India and Sri Lanka. The green peafowl, which is green, originates from Myanmar, Indochina and Java. So not only did the peacock have an exotic looking tail and head, it had an exotic origin, a wonderful showpiece for those enjoying the fruits of the terminus of the Dutch East India Company in Amsterdam. 

An Indian (blue) peacock.

A green peacock.

The recipe provides that the peacock insides be sprinkled with: (a) pepper; (b) cloves; (c) nutmeg; (d) cinnamon;  and (e) salt. Aside from the salt, these ingredients were were almost as exotic as the bird. Black pepper, or the peppercorn, is the dried out fruit of the pepper plant, which is native to south India. Cloves, the flower buds of a tree, are native to the Maluku Islands in Indonesia and the Dutch East India Company, which tried to control the spice trade in the 17th century, tried unsuccessfully to monopolize the trade in cloves. Nutmeg is the seed of a tree that is also indigenous to the Maluku Islands, also known as the Moluccas, or Spice Islands and the Dutch East India Company did have a monopoly in the nutmeg trade of the 17th century. Cinnamon is obtained from the inner bark of several types of tree. There were four types of cinnamon at the time, one from Arabia and Ethiopia, one from Sri Lanka, one from northern India and one from China. The Portuguese had the monopoly on cinnamon from Sri Lanka (Ceylon) at the time the Dutch recipe  was developed, but the Dutch East India Company dislodged the Portuguese from their monopoly in 1638 and expelled the Portuguese by 1658. 

The 1612 Dutch recipe then called for added lard and panicles of sweet fennel, to be added to the peacock cavity, to make it tender. Fennel is a flowering plant indigenous to the shores of the Mediterranean. Though not as far afield as the other ingredients, fennel was probably an exotic ingredient as well. The legs of the peacock were then chopped off and the breast and thighs stuffed with cloves. The bird was then placed on a pastry bottom covered with thin slices of lard, then slices of lard were placed over the peacock and then even more spices before the top layer of pastry was added. The head of the peacock stuck out, wrapped in paper to protect it from the heat. However, the recipe noted that the head of the peacock could be cut off and put on the pie after it was baked, the most common method as of 1612. 

NPR's Planet Money peacock pie. 

Planet Money elected to cook their peacock with the legs attached and the resultant pie was very uneven. And of course there was no way to delicately cut into the pie because it was full of bones. 

Then I found a 1757 recipe for "peacock pye" at a blog known as Researching Food History. This was from an English cookbook called The Art of Cookery by John Thacker. Thacker recommended cutting of the head of the peacock, putting a stick up the neck to the head, then drying it in an oven. He also recommended cutting off the legs, keeping them, and keeping some of the short feathers of the tail. The peacock was trussed up, as for boiling, the breast bone broken down, then seasoned with pepper and salt. Put a piece of butter in the cavity, roast it about half through, then let it cool. The recipe then called for making a raised pie crust form, placing the half roasted bird in, the cavity filed with ten hard-boiled egg yolks, then six sweet-breads (brains) blanched and diced and laid around the bird filling up the pie crust so that it was even at the top. Over the top, put thin slices of larded bacon, then butter, then close the pie with pie crust on top with a funnel in the middle to let out steam. 

Peacock pie from here. 

Example of a raised pie painted by Peter Claesz in 1637, from here. 

There were several things I liked about this recipe. It gave guidance for how to deal with the head, the peacock was partially cooked before going in to the pie, reducing the likelihood of rare peacock, and I liked the idea of other ingredients being added to bulk it up, in this case egg yolks and sweet breads, making it more like an early version of an English meat and potato pie. It would make the pie even, unlike the undulating top of the Planet Money pie. 

Then I found that the Researching Food History blog also had a recipe for boning a turkey from an 1862 book titled Mrs. Somerville's Cookery and Domestic Economy, respectfully dedicated to the Ladies of Scotland.  This was intriguing to me because a boned peacock in a pie would make it so it could be cut and eaten like a traditional pie. To bone the turkey, you singe it, draw the sinews from the legs, cut off the head and neck and leave four or five inches of skin on the neck. Then it goes into detail about preparing it in such a way that it can be sewn up in a way to make it take its original form again. 

The more I thought about peacock pie, the more I thought about the meat and potato pie, an English staple I ate quite a few times when I lived in England. Vegetable ingredients along-side the de-boned peacock would allow the pie to be filled evenly and cut and eaten more easily. The final piece of my recipe puzzle came together as I watched a Gordon Ramsay video on cooking slow-roasted pork belly. I'd been thinking about using pork belly as the lard layer next to the pastry. Ramsay used fennel and liberal amounts of fennel seed and star anise to season the pork belly. I decided to focus on fennel as one of the vegetables, which was also in the 1612 recipe, and fennel seed and star anise as spices. 

On the Friday before President's Day I showed up at the Exotic Meat Market warehouse in Grand Terrace to pick up a peacock. Anshu was not there, but one of his employees was. He picked out a 6.5 pound peacock for me. The only problem was that it did not include the head or any tail feathers which I'd hoped to insert in the pie. The employee improvised and found the head of a Muscovy duck they had - at least it would help create some semblance of what the traditional peacock pie would like like. 

Head of a Muscovy duck.

It occurred to me that Anshu might have some of the fat trimmings from the wagyu beef he has butchered - that would be even better than pork belly as the lard layer to put next to the bottom and top crusts of the pie. The employee provided me with several packages of wagyu beef lard.  

Monday morning, after defrosting the peacock, I brushed canola oil over the entire carcass and rubbed in pepper and salt. 

6.5 pound peacock, oiled and rubbed with salt and pepper.

I wanted to half-cook the peacock, as called for in the 1757 recipe, and then de-bone it. I put the carcass on a cooking rack and put it in the oven at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, covered in tin foil. Then I pulled off the foil and roasted it for another 30 minutes without the foil. 

The peacock after roasting for 50 minutes. The peacock has a very distinctive yellow fat. 

While the peacock was roasting, I put together the vegetable component of the pie. I cut up one bulb of fennel, one large onion, cut small potatoes into thin slices and sauteed them in a pan with olive oil and liberal sprinklings of fennel seed and star anise. I also headed several large heaping spoonfuls of crushed garlic. As it was about cooked to where I wanted it to be, I added in frozen sweet white corn kernels and frozen peas, and let the ingredients cook together long enough for the peas and corn to mix well with the other ingredients. Then I set those ingredients aside in the refrigerator.

Vegetable mix: fennel, onion, potato corn and peas with fennel seed and star anise.

The boning of the peacock was quite a chore. As I boned I cut the meat into bite-sized pieces with kitchen shears to aid the end product as being one that would cut like a pie. I separated the meat into two piles, one pile with more cooked pieces and one pile with pieces that were more raw. 

I've never made pastry before, so Judy did it for me. The ingredients are pretty simple, water, flower and vegetable shortening. The tricky part was rolling it into a square and inserting it into a pan for the bottom crust. 

Rolled out pie crust.

Fitting the pie crust into the pan.

Once the pastry was put into the pan I layered in the ingredients: first, a layer of wagyu lard, second, a layer of the more cooked peacock pieces; third, a layer of the vegetables; fourth, a layer of the lesser cooked peacock pieces; and fifth, another layer of wagyu lard. 

The first layer of wagyu lard.

The second layer of more cooked peacock pieces.

The third layer of vegetables.

The fourth layer of lesser cooked peacock pieces.

Judy rolled out some more dough and skillfully put the pastry layer over the top, then scalloped the edges with her fingers. It looked great. She then put some slits in the top, somewhat in the shape of a peacock's tail feathers, to allow steam to escape. 

The pie, which was very heavy, was put in the oven at 375 degrees for about 1 3/4 hours. My biggest fear was that it would be under-cooked, so I let it go longer than I should have. It came out a beautiful golden color and retained its shape. The Muscovy duck head which was put in the oven for 40 minutes covered in a napkin, with chopsticks inserted in the neck to hold it up, was inserted in the pie. 

The peacock pie out of the oven. Taking a cue from one of the recipes, a melted an entire cube of butter and poured it over the top when it was finished. 

The peacock pie with the inserted Muscovy duck head. 

Judy set a wonderful table with a cheap tablecloth we got in Egypt with Egyptian geese on it, appropriate for this occasion. 

The peacock pie turned out well. The pastry was flaky and flavorful. The vegetables mixed well with the peacock and the peacock had nice flavor. The only negative was that some of the more roasted bits of peacock were a little over-cooked and chewy. Overall, I was very happy with it and I was surprised at how much the pastry really added to the dish. Usually with pie, I'm all about the filling. With the peacock pie, I was actually seeking for bits of pastry with each bite. 

The peacock pie cut into sections and the first piece removed.

Peacock pie at the front of the plate with a nice bison filet and roll at the back. 

Anshu asked for a second helping of the peacock pie, and specifically asked for more pastry with it. It was obvious he liked the pastry as well. It was a wonderful excuse to get together with friends and enjoy an unusual dinner. I would highly recommend anyone else with similar interests to give it a try. 

Le Vallauris - Palm Springs

I had a yearly business meeting with my partners on Saturday and following the meeting we met for dinner with our wives at Le Vallauris, a French restaurant in Palm Springs. It was a sunny day in the 70s as we were seated on the outdoor patio late in the afternoon. Men waiters in formal attire, portable message boards with the days menu filled in with chalk and tall trees resplendent in green leaves were some of the dominant images of the beautiful seating area. 

The menu offering, though not large, provided great variety and some difficult decisions for me. There were only a few things on the menu that would not have been of interest to me. Petrosian caviar, two types of duck fois gras (both sauteed and a cold torchon), raw oysters on the half-shell, snails, a salad with three types of beets, a salad with a whole Maine lobster, a warm lobster dish, several types of lamb, Chilean sea bass, rabbit fricassee, a hangar steak, and others. 

I had no clue what "Petrosian caviar" was, so I had to try it. It also happened to be the most expensive thing on the menu. It came on a large round silver tray. In the middle was a silver bowl filled with ice and a small jar of caviar with the lid pulled off and resting against it. The bowl was full of very tiny black sturgeon fish eggs and a small white plastic spoon was inserted, to scoop the eggs out. On the tray were four square white ceramic containers with grated white cheese, chopped Bermuda onion, sour cream (or creme fraiche?) and shredded egg yolk, each separated by a half-lemon in yellow cheese cloth tied with a green ribbon. On a separate white dish covered in white linen was a stack of 8 quarter sections of toast. It was the most fancy serving of anything I've ever had. 

It turns out that "Petrossian" is a French company that sells caviar and if I'd looked at the little lid propped up against the jar I would have been able to determine exactly what type of caviar I was getting. There are three types of sturgeon from which caviar is obtained: beluga, ossetra and sevruga. Beluga is considered the best, it has larger eggs and is mostly unavailable in the U.S. I had some when we visited Turkey and Russia.  On the Petrossian website it states: "Serve fresh, premium quality Petrossian caviar in its original perfection – do not sprinkle with lemon or serve with chopped egg, onion, or sour cream. Save these garnishes for inferior grades of caviar. For serving accompaniments, we offer blini and crème fraiche – very subtle flavors made specifically to let caviar’s full flavor shine through."  Contrary to the Petrossian instructions I got all of those things and more. I did try the little toast slices with variations of the condiments and caviar and I liked the sour cream and onion the best. I did not like the egg yolk. But Petrossian is right, the caviar was best on its own. These eggs were much smaller than beluga eggs and did not have the same wonderful pop when bursting in the mouth, or as strong of a salty, fishy taste. The presentation was great, the taste was okay. 

Judy ordered some oysters on the half shell and shared several with me. I love the salty juice of the slimy oyster as it mixes with the bite of the cocktail sauce and slips down the throat. 

I ordered the sauteed duck foie gras and for the first time got foie gras in its original form. I've had it in a pate form, and in a cool torchon form, in small quantities, but this was the entire duck liver in all its glory, barely seared - a liver sushi. As I first cut into it and put it in my mouth, I was a little surprised - it was just liver. Of course, I knew foie gras was liver, but I'd never seen or tasted it in its original form. It was like discovering a dead whole chicken after experiencing only chicken Mcnuggets and Kentucky fried chicken. The foie gras came with an unusual dark bread that distracted the taste buds and a sweetish sauce that masked the real taste. I tried these distractions, then pushed them away and went for the real thing. It was weird. I loved trying it this way, but pate is better. Another distraction on the plate was a large yellow slice of quince and what appeared to be a quince puree which was delightfully thick and sweet. It had the taste of a pear, but was stronger and thicker.

Judy ordered a lobster salad with one of the most wonderful food preparations I've ever seen. The lobster salad was in the shape of a lobster. The front claw meat, shaped like the claw, was laid on the plate where the claws of the lobster would be. The lobster head stood upright below and between them. Asparagus spears represented the front legs and avocado slices represented the hind legs. Lobster meat resting on lettuce represented the torso and the tail followed at the end. It not only looked great, but it was cooked perfectly. The meat was perfectly cool and still very moist.  

I went back and forth between rack of lamb and veal sweetbreads and opted for the sweetbreads. The sweetbreads are something that not many restaurants offer and it was an opportunity to expand my experience with brains. The sweetbreads were amazing. They were on a bed of asparagus and mixed in with many capers with several freshly fried potato crisps. The sweetbreads were beautifully seasoned and cooked, very tender but with an outer crustiness with taste-bud relishing flavor. None of the heavy thickness of the cold, lemon infused lamb brains I had in Amman, but a decidedly lighter, more flaky texture. Great, great dish.

Veal sweetbreads

Judy got a chocolate something-or-other, of course, with a side ginger snap cookie with ice cream on top. I had a taste of the cookie and always love ginger snaps.

I got an ice cream cake with crunchy meringue drops and assorted fruits on a graham cracker-type crust. I don't recall all the details. It was good.

I got to eat one of my partners lamb chops. It was glorious: tender, flavorful, perfectly medium rare. This was a great meal: great atmosphere, perfect weather, great company and a wonderful variety of challenging dishes. Caviar, foie gras and sweetbreads in one sitting, who needs dessert. Le Vallauris is the no. 1 rated restaurant in Palm Springs on Trip Advisor. I have no argument with that. 

Salo-Salo Grill - West Covina, CA

Judy gave me the book Fed, White, and Blue by Simon Majumdar for Christmas and in one of the early chapters Simon visited Salo-Salo Grill in West Covina to learn how to cook Filipino dishes. As I read the chapter I realized that I have never eaten Filipino food (at least that I can recall). So I proposed to Judy that we go there and she was game. We invited Jeff and Julee, Jeff a former LDS missionary to the Philippines, to go with us. Salo is ranked no. 24 of 232 restaurants in West Covina on Trip Advisor and gets 3.5 stars on Yelp with 235 reviews.

I looked up Filipino cuisine on Wikipedia and I was blown away by the variety of dishes I've never heard of. Where has this been all my life? Filipino cuisine focuses on a combination of sweet, sour and salty flavors and tends to be less spicy and less complex than other Asian cuisines. Vinegar is a common ingredient.

Salo-Salo is a larger building to one side of nicer-than-average strip mall. Other ethnic restaurants are represented including one serving Indonesian food. Salo-Salo was full of Filipinos, usually a good sign when visiting an ethnic restaurant.

We ordered, then waited, and waited and waited. People who came after us were served, ate and left, before we were served. The restaurant filled up while we were there, but was emptying out before we finished. I'm not sure the cause - what we ordered, what we looked like, or what we smelled like, but we felt and were unattended. The sago-gulaman, a sweetened tapioca with diced gelatin drink I ordered never came, adding to the gripe of poor service. Fortunately, we were with good company and the unfamiliar smells that were assaulting us while we sat gave evidence that we were going to eat a food foreign to us. I was excited to dig in when what we ordered was delivered.

I ordered the "make your own platter" which included three items and one side, ostensibly to share with Judy. I picked three of the four items from the crispy meat platter, including lechon kawali (deep-fried pork belly with crispy rinds), Kuya's fried chicken and lechon ribs (battered pork ribs). I got a side of mango salad at Judy's urging, I would have ordered something more savory.

Pork belly on the left (3 slices), chicken in the center and unrecognizable pork ribs to the back right. The mango salad is back center.

I particularly wanted the pork belly as that was one of the items Simon Majumdar learned how to cook when he visited, and I generally quite like pork belly. Simon wrote that the pork belly was first brined with lemongrass to freshen up the flavor, then simmered with a broth flavored with onions, celery, garlic and carrots, then dried in the oven, and then deep-fried. These steps create pork belly that is very crispy on the outside and very tender succulent and juicy on the inside. It reminded me very much of the chicharron that I occasionally buy from a local Mexican food market - crisp on the outside, but in this case, on the inside much, much more tender. This was probably my favorite food item of the night and something I would order again.

From the picture you can tell is was very crispy - but what is not obvious is that it was very juicy on the inside.

The lechon ribs were heavily battered and crisp on the outside, although nowhere near as crisp as the pork belly, and quite juicy on the inside. I liked the juiciness of the ribs, but I felt that all of the batter hid much of the taste. I'm all for batter when what you are eating is kind of bland, like fish or chicken, but for ribs it just got in the way.

Overly battered pork ribs - front and right. The chicken is to the left.

The fried chicken was much too dry for me. I would have taken I bite or two and left it. However, I discovered that the Mang Tomas All Purpose Sauce, when liberally slathered, moistens it up and gives it more flavor - like salt and butter on corn on the cob. The ingredients of Mang Tomas are water, cane sugar, breadcrumbs, cane vinegar, salt, onions, garlic and black pepper. Without the Mang Tomas, the chicken would have been left for dead.

Transforms the inedible into the edible.

Judy got kare-kare, an oxtail in peanut sauce with vegetables and served with a bangoon, a sauteed shrimp paste. She had them leave out the tripe that was also supposed to be included. Simon Majumdar also made kare-kare when he was at Salo-Salo. He described it as a stew traditionally made of oxtail, thickened with ground toasted rice and ground toasted peanuts. Wikipedia states that kare-kare is made from a base of stewed oxtail, but can be made with all sorts of other ingredients, including seafood. Vegetables, such as eggplant, Chinese cabbage and other greens are added, usually "equaling or exceeding the amount of meats." The stew is flavored with ground roasted peanuts or peanut butter, onions and garlic and can be thickened with toasted or plain ground rice. It is often eaten with bagoong (shrimp paste), sometimes spiced with chili and sprinkled with calamansi juice. This is Filipino comfort food and it was very, very good. Judy pronounced it the best dish on the table and her assertion had some merit.

This picture was taken after some of the contents had been removed. The item in the center-front is a segment of oxtail. Green beans, bok choy and purple cabbage are also floating around in it. 

Julee ordered an appetizer that I think was vegetable lumpia frito, vegetable spring rolls. Lumpia is a staple in Filipino cuisine, but originated in China. It is served as an appetizer or main dish and accompanied by a sweet sauce and/or an apple cider vinegar/garlic sauce. The outside was hard and crispy, the inside very moist. I tried both the sweet sauce and the hot vinegar sauce with what looked like green beans floating in it. Toward the end of our meal I popped one of those green beans in my mouth and learned that it was a pepper with a pretty good kick. I ended up eating some of the extra pork belly I was going to take home in an attempt to silence the raging fire in my mouth.  Julee who had earlier eaten something she could not identify and complained about how hot it was, laughed almost beside herself, as I scrambled for an antidote. 

Beware of the innocuous looking green beans floating in the vinegar. They are chili peppers and they contain fire. 

Julee ordered a milkfish, I'm not sure what the exact preparation was. I've had milkfish before and find it kind of mushy and soggy. This was similar.  

milkfish

Jeff ordered what I believe was miki-bihon, a combination of egg and rice stick noodles sauteed with Chinese sausage, shrimp, fish balls and vegetables. The miki or Shanghai noodle is an egg noodle and the thicker of the two. The bihon is a rice noodle and thinner. I really love rice noodles and quite liked the small taste I had of this dish.

miki-bihon

Jeff ordered a boneless chicken fillet fried in adobo sauce. Adobo is a  hallmark dish of the Philippines. The chicken is marinated overnight in vinegar, soy sauce and garlic. Then it is simmered and browned after it is cooked, one of the things that distinguishes Filipino adobo. I had a piece of the chicken. I loved the flavor, but the chicken was over-cooked. 

adobo chicken

After a huge meal, we still decided to try dessert. Judy and I ordered the halo-halo special: sweetened beans, coconut gel and fruits over crushed ice, sprinkled with pinipig (rice crispies), topped with leche flan and ube ice cream. Ube is the name for purple yam in the Philippines. The ice cream was good, but nothing really made it spectacular, except the purple color that was fun. The crushed ice was quite runny and I was not particularly fond of the sweetened beans. I enjoyed the texture of the flan. A fun dessert, and although visually unusual and combining many weird elements, not something I would order again. 

halo-halo special

Julee ordered leche flan, a Philippine custard pie in caramel syrup. Flan is flan. I enjoy the smooth texture, but a little goes a long way. 

Finally, Jeff ordered the turon ice cream delight which was ube ice cream with sweet bananas in a fried pastry in a langka syrup. The fried banana in the syrup challenged the kare-kare and the pork belly as the best dish. I would go back to try that dessert again. 

This picture was taken after it had been whittled down. It was originally surrounded by pastry wrapped and fried bananas. 

Aside from the very poor service, we really enjoyed the meal. We got a great introduction to a new cuisine that I now want to learn more about.