Pleasure Palate Chefs' Market Tour and Lunch at La Casita July 22, 2006

COST:
This tour and lunch needs to Pre-Paid by July 19 to reserve your spot and your payment will cover the entire meal plus one soft drink and includes tax and tip.

* If you are paying via Pay Pal, please send $58.00 ($55 + $3 Pay Pal Fee) to my Pay Pal account at abby@pleasurepalate.com.

* If you are paying via check, the cost will go down to $55 and you'll have to email me for an address to send the check to.

IMPORTANT: You cannot just show up for this dinner. I need to collect all the money and give that to La Casita by July 20 in one lump sum. I also need to turn in a final headcount that same day so that they will know how much food to prepare. This event is first come, first served. The first 20 who pay the fee will get to go.

All fees are non-refundable after July 19.

Event Details:

Time to tempt your palate with all the pleasurable flavors that Southern California has to offer. Join us as we do some culinary exploring of restaurants (both high-end and holes in the walls), various food and beverage tastings, cooking classes, potlucks and so much more. From savory to sweet, from salty to sour, from spicy to tangy, from exotic to All-American, we'll taste it all, so come along and take your taste buds on the ride of their life. Today's event is very SPECIAL because it'll include a Chef's tour of a local Mexican market followed by a lunch that will be utilizing the fresh produce from that market at La Casita!

This event will be even more special because we'll be hosted by the two Chef/Owners of La Casita themselves, Jaime Martin Del Campo and Ramiro Arvizu. Ramiro Arvizu and Jaime Martin del Campo were both in the airline business just a few years ago, when they realized that in L.A. they couldn't get the kind of real and fresh food their mamas in Jalisco used to make. So they left their 9 to 5 jobs way behind and opened La Casita in Bell, California.

Their delicious Mexican cuisine soon gained them such a devoted following that they caught the eye of Univision, the largest Spanish television network. Soon after, this dynamic duo became well known for their cooking segments on that particular channel. They also received even more acclaim by being selected as the "best representatives of traditional Mexican food" in California by noted critics, newspapers and magazines, both at the national and international spectrum. Just recently, they had been hired by Conagra Foods to share their authentic Mexican recipes through a series of cooking camps for the past Mother's Day weekend. These two guys definitely get around and amazingly enough they've agreed to slow down long enough to spend a few hours with us sharing their knowledge of how to incorporate fresh produce and herbs in Mexican cooking.

The afternoon will start with the Chefs Del Campo and Arvizu accompanying us to the Alameda Market, a local farmer's market. At the farmer's market, we'll learn more about varieties of produce and herbs specific to Mexican cooking and in fact, our time spent there will include the Chefs purchasing all the fresh local ingredients needed for our lunch after our tour. This will be a great opportunity to find out from our guides what to look for when shopping for Mexican ingredients and maybe, even get help being able to identify produce that usually seem very foreign to us.

After our trek to Alameda Market, we'll head back to La Casita for what the Chefs described in an email as a "gastronomical tour of La Casita", which of course, will include some of our dishes being cooked with the produce picked up from the Market we just came from. As for the food, David Rosengarten, who is one of the world's foremost authorities on food, wine and cooking refers to La Casita as "one of the most exciting stateside Mexican restaurants [he has] ever been to." Look below for his description of some of the dishes he tried and in his own words:

• Fried califlower in guajillo sauce. Big, puffy chunks of long-cooked, then-fried cauliflower, piping-hot and crisp, with a light tomato sauce carrying real guajillo flavor.

• Grilled cheese in banana leaves. Yes! This is the same idea that Julian Medina has! Hard to choose between the two dishes, which are both excellent. This one uses four cheeses, to devastating effect, and combines them with cactus, mushrooms and tomatoes.

• Chilaquiles. The classic Mexican "mother" food, the way all mamas use leftover corn tortillas--by baking them in a casserole with sauce. La Casita offers five variations (different sauces)--and you can add either chicken or eggs to the casseroles for only a dollar extra! I'm a chilaquiles freak--and these are the best I've ever had.

• The simplest, most elemental cheese enchiladas ever. The chefs take their incredible corn tortillas--made from fresh masa that is produced every day at a shop next door!--and fill them with good cotija cheese. The enchiladas are quickly sautéed in a pan, and barely painted with an intensely-flavored red glaze. No sauce or extra melted cheese gunks things up! This is ancient food, exactly what I want to eat today.

• Chicken in mole poblano. OK. You hear a lot about mole poblano, the most famous of the moles, the one with chocolate in it. Don't bother listening anymore until you've tasted this one. Created from 46 different ingredients, this is one of the most complex sauces I've ever tasted anywhere--and, unusually, you can really taste the chocolate!

Aren't those 5 dishes already making you wish that July 22 is already here? Our lunch will be a multi course meal and may include some or all of the dishes described above as well as a few others. If you're a food lover, this will definitely be a day to remember so please join me for what will be a fun and delectable Mexican culinary adventure.

Official Website: http://www.pleasurepalate.com