Never had a turducken yet... looking forward to it. I LOVE duck of course.
The usual Thanksgiving repast on thursday at the home of a distant relative... very good (turkey brined of course, then fried). Epic stuffing and pies.
Aside from the holiday, I've been living off of junk and mediocre takeout for most of the past week... both of the new Thai places I've tried this week have been disappointing. Across the street from yesterday's let-down is a pretty depressing mini-mall (one of thousands such mini-malls all over the eastern half of LA). You know the kind... the parking lot isn't too clean, the stores quite down-scale (even by east LA standards) and a couple of shady-looking characters milling around for no visible reason (other than to frighten off potential customers).
Anyway, there in this run-down mall was a new butcher shop. Now, I know what you're thinking: low-rent retail space + raw meat = food poisoning galore. And normally I think you'd be right. However, oddly the shop had it's "A" rating from the health dept. prominently displayed in the window (not really an assurance, but certainly encouraging) so more out of curiousity than anything else, I wandered across the trash-strewn lot filled with dented cars and went inside.
Once there, I was pleasantly surprised. The place was SPOTLESS... every surface was either stainless steel or white formica/tile and everything gleamed. The had a wide variety of beef, pork, poultry and even a little fish... all neatly presented in gleaming display cases. They also had a decent selection of organ meats (not surprising given the divirse ethnic makeup of the area (mostly Thai, Latino and Armenian) and beautiful little quails already cleaned, marinated and laid flat for grilling. Feeling encouraged, I ordered a pound of their pre-marinated pork loin (which looked beautiful: dark and marbled with just the right amount of fat mostly on the outside) and asked to have it cubed (planning to stir-fry of course) ...my favorite thing about buying from a butcher: they'll cut the item as requested.
To make an unnecessarily long story short: I grilled the pork today (didn't add any add'l seasoning) ...the cubes were just large enough to not fall through (only lost one). They were fantastic: slight char outside and moist and flavorful inside. Not sure what they used as marinade, but oddly garlic was not predominant. As a side I sliced some yellow squash, rubbed them in green chile and black bean sauce and grilled them too. Served both on top of white jasmine rice (salvaged from a recent bad takeout trip) and ate like a king on this cold rainy afternoon. No pix this time (since I did little more than heat things up) but definitely worth relating.
Now, if I don't get triginosis, I'll be going back there soon for the quails!
