Portabello Wellington with Walnut Pate and Wine Reduction

We have been derelict both in eating our vegetables from our CSA and in updating our blog. We have lots more greens this week, as well as parsnips and strawberries, and we still have dandelion greens and some other odds and ends left over from last week. We're going to try and use them up in a Passover dish.

But in the meantime, I've entered my portabello wellington and my smokey roast shitakes into the mushroom competition on food52.com! Here's links to the recipes:


http://www.food52.com/recipes/11150_new_millenium_portabello_wellington_with_walnut_pate_and_red_wine_reduction

http://www.food52.com/recipes/11151_smokey_roasted_shitakes

Gretchen also made mushroom ravioli and she made the whole wheat pasta dough by hand!

Although we haven't cooked as much as we should lately we have eaten very well. Let me introduce you to Carmen, the Mistress of Masa! http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/04/food/la-fo-find4-2010feb04

We came upon Carmen making quesadillas once a long time ago on Breed Street. Every tortilla is fresh, and they were the most fabulous quesadillas we'd ever tasted. She has a really unique toasted sesame seed salsa and the quesadillas have cotija and lettuce in addition to a melty cheese. The tortilla is thicker than you'd expect, and absolutely delicious. These are some of the best things you will ever eat! Well, Carmen won the LA Street Food Fest with her quesadillas, beating out all the hip fusion food trucks. Now, she has her own little restaurant she runs with her husband called Antojitos Carmen in Boyle Heights. It has maybe eight little booths, and there are pictures of Carmen's hometown in Michoacan and her family on the walls. It's paper plates and styrofoam cups, and it's some of the best Mexican food I've ever had. Her mole enchiladas were absolutely to die for, and we had a fantastic squash blossom quesadilla as well as a huitlacoche huarache, a carne asada taco, a potato taco, pineapple agua fresca, and walnut atole. If you've never had atole, it's a comforting hot drink made with cormeal, cinnamon, vanilla extract, and at Antojitos Carmen, walnuts. Perfect for a rainy day, or any day really. Carmen's huaraches also had fantastic texture, that sort of crispy-soft-chewy-perfect huarache texture. She really knows what she's doing with masa. If you live in LA, or if you are ever in LA, you must go here. Our meal came out to $21. They clearly make this food with a lot of passion, and it's such an amazing value!