Seafood Noodle Phô at Saigon Noodles in Salinas, California

Seafood Noodle Phô at Saigon Noodles in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget 

I learned to love Vietnamese food when I lived and worked in downtown Chicago (Illinois) and ate at the Mekong House Restaurant after work. I had graduated with a degree in East Asian Studies from the University of Chicago and considered myself to be doing graduate work in Southeast Asian Studies when I ate at the Mekong House. 

I mostly ate deep-fried egg rolls that I wrapped in a fresh mint leaf and tied with a string of fresh carrot before dipping them in sweet-and-sour sauce. The lemongrass chicken stir-fry I ate and loved was a close cousin to the Chinese stir-fries I also loved. 

I did not venture into Vietnamese soups until I moved to Monterey County California and ate them at the Orient Restaurant in Seaside, California. 

I like how phô soup has three layers of food items surrounded by delicious broth: 

-half a bowl of rice noodles or glass noodles 

-half a bowl full of sliced beef, sliced chicken, or seafood 

-garnish toppings such as bean sprouts, fresh basil, lime wedges, and jalapeño slices 

I recently tried seafood noodle soup (phô) at Saigon Noodles in Salinas, California and liked the large bowl of rice noodles and seafood ingredients that came with a container of broth that was large enough to fill the bowl twice. 

The flavorful broth tasted like a bone broth that had been boiled with shrimp shells and strained. The soup was full of curled shrimp, scored squid slices, fish dumplings, fish balls, and imitation crab made from fish. 

The soup came with packages of hoisin sauce for salt and sriracha for salt and spice. I like hot, spicy broth so I added sriracha to the soup. 

Flavor and quantity of food in the seafood noodle soup (phô) at Saigon Noodles in Salinas, California make this dish a great deal for an international lunch. 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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3-Course Vegetarian Lunch at Alvarado on Main Brew Pub in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget

3-Course Vegetarian Lunch at Alvarado Main Brew Pub in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget 

Alvarado on Main Brew Pub in Salinas, California is well known for entrées like wagyu smash burgers and salmon yakisoba, but you can also eat a three-course vegetarian meal here with regular menu items. 

Market day on Saturday mornings is an especially good time for a vegetarian lunch at Alvarado on Main. The market begins in front of the brewpub, but you can park in the nearby garage by the Steinbeck Center, which is just two blocks away on Main Street. 

The day my daughter Florence Paget, husband Laurent, and I went to lunch, we began our meal with crispy, long pretzels that came with warm bar cheese for dipping. Lacto-ovo vegetarians eat dairy and eggs, so this was a great vegetarian beginning for market day lunch. 

I ordered blackberry-burrata salad as my main dish. Burrata cheese comes from Apulia (also known as Puglia) Italy, which is located in the heel of Italy’s boot-shaped peninsula on Italy’s eastern coast by the Adriatic Sea. It is served as a large disc of milky white cow’s cheese with a thick soft layer of edible crust surrounding a creamy interior. 

Alvarado on Main inserts blackberries into the creamy interior of the burrata cheese from the bottom of the burrata. The cheese is placed in the center of a large bowl of baby spinach leaves that have been mixed with sautéed shallots. Blackberry halves were scattered around the burrata on top of the baby spinach and shallots. 

The salad was so beautiful to look at that I kept rearranging it for artistic presentation each time I took a delicious bit. Blackberries and burrata cheese could be a dessert on their own. The crunchy spinach leaves and salty shallots added to the surprising and pleasing sweetness of this dish. I think an iced tea would be perfect with the blackberry-burrata salad. 

I shared a vegetarian and antioxidant dessert with Laurent – a stout brownie with pineapple ice cream. Stout here refers to a brownie made with a frothy and chocolaty beer. Adding beer to a brownie recipe makes the brownies very moist. 

The brownie we ate had a pronounced chocolate flavor, which makes me think it was made with bitter baking chocolate, which is a strong antioxidant. 

This already great dessert came with whipped cream and caramelized slices of fresh pineapple that were sautéed in butter and brown sugar and candied shavings of coconut. 

That glorious dessert was also vegetarian. It was high-calorie, but worth the off-diet delight. The stout brownie would be great with coffee alone as a “sugar meal” as the Austrians say. 

This delicious vegetarian meal is a winner that you can order everyday from the regular menu at Alvarado on Main brewpub in Salinas, California. 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Dibi Lamb at African Soulfood Restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia by Ruth Paget

Dibi Lamb at African Soulfood Restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia by Ruth Paget 

The last time I visited Atlanta (Georgia), I tried dibi lamb from Sénégal, a former French colony in West Africa, at the African Soulfood Restaurant. 

Dibi lamb is delicious and requires very little effort to make according to food.com, which lists a recipe that takes half an hour to make on the grill. 

In this recipe, you make the sauce first from vegetable oil, chopped onion, Dijon (France) mustard with large grains, water, and optional sugar. 

Once the sauce is done, you grill lamb chops 6 – 8 minutes per side for medium chops. When the lamb chops finish cooking, you place them on a serving platter with onion-mustard sauce spooned over it. 

I ate my dibi lamb with spicy rice and thought this was a great little dish to eat in the Georgia heat. 

(Note: Other websites mention that you can make dibi chicken in the same way as well.) 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Taquería Jackpot in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget

Taquería Jackpot in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget 

I love Mexican food, so I was very happy to move to Salinas, California with its many taquerías and restaurants serving food from all the regions of Mexico. 

I did an online search to see how many tauerías there are in Salinas and counted 68 as of May 2024. It is very easy to do Taco Tuesday in Salinas with that many taquería in town. 

Almost all of these taquerías can do a combination platter or platillo for about $15 to $20. Taco combination platters usually come with the following items: 

-2 blackened chicken tacos with shredded cabbage or lettuce and melted Swiss cheese 

-refried black beans with softened cotija cheese on top. (Cotija cheese is like Greek feta cheese in that it does not melt and has a slightly tangy flavor. Cotija comes from the western Mexican state of Michoacán on the Pacific Ocean.) 

-Mexican rice, which at its most basic is boiled with chicken broth and tomato juice to give it a nice orange-yellow glow.

-2 small containers of pico de gallo salsa made with chopped hot peppers, tomatoes, onons, and cilantro 

-2 lime quarters to squeeze into beer, diet soda, water, or tacos 

I think this is a nice combination of food for $15 to $20. Almost any taquería can do catering for combination platters with some advance notice, too. 

Having food like this available allowed me to have a simple yet cost effective food system in place when my daughter Florence Paget was a teenager. Anyone in the family could make the following items or buy them from a restaurant: 

Monday – pasta night with marinara sauce, shredded gruyère cheese, boiled eggs, prosciutto, and salame

Tuesday – Taco Tuesday with combination platters 

Wednesday – Pizza Day 

Thursday – Asian Restaurant Day or Costco Yakisoba at home 

Friday – Baked fish with onions and potatoes or baked fish with chopped tomatoes and onions 

Saturday – Baked chicken 

Sunday – Macaroni and cheese or lasagna

I would serve lettuce, fruit salad, and a slice of cheese to go with these meals. 

I did not always stick to this plan, but it helped me take inventory to make shopping lists and have items on hand to easily make these meals. 

I am a big fan of Taco Tuesday for making food systems like this possible and love it that I can get tacos at 68 food outlets in Salinas, California. 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Butter Chicken at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget

Butter Chicken at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget 

Butter plus warm Indian spices always sounds good to me when I order butter chicken at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California. 

There is more to butter chicken than butter and spices, which merits some sleuthing for ingredients and cooking techniques. 

To make butter chicken, you start with Indian tandoori chicken, which is a dish all by itself. Tandoori chicken is marinated in yogurt along with ginger, garlic, garam masala (curry powder), red chili powder, turmeric, and dried fenugreek leaves (these have an onion-like flavor). Tandoori chicken is marinated overnight and is then roasted. (Recipe information source: www.indianhealthyrecipes.com) 

Tandoori chicken is the building block for butter chicken Julie Sahni writes in Classic Indian Cooking. Sahni notes that Indian cooks often use leftover tandoori chicken to make butter chicken. 

Once you have the tandoori chicken, Sahni advises cooks to cut it into pieces. Then, she puts tomatoes, green chiles, and ginger into a blender to make a tomato purée. Sahni’s recipe calls for browning the tandoori chicken in butter and browning cumin and paprika in the leftover butter once the chicken has been removed. 

Sahni next places the tomato purée in the pan and lets it simmer before adding salt, cream, and chicken pieces in her recipe. Before serving butter chicken, Sahni’s recipe calls for adding a large bunch of chopped coriander (cilantro) to the dish to add a fresh tang to offset the rich butter. 

Butter chicken is a perfect buffet dish and tastes great with naan flatbread studded with licorice-flavored anise seeds. A perfect place to try butter chicken is at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California. 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Saag Chana at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget

Saag Chana at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget 

Saag chana masala (spinach chickpea curry) at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California is a delicious, vegetarian dish that merits a try for nutritional content, too. 

Saag chana is made by caramelizing onions in ghee (clarified butter) and then adding fresh ginger and garlic according to the Ministry of Curry website I used as a reference. 

After that, chopped tomato, turmeric, red chili powder, and cumin are added to the onions. You then add water for simmering before adding cooked chickpeas and spinach. To finish the dish, you add garam masala (curry powder) according to the Ministry of Curry website. 

The result is delicious with white rice or naan flatbread studded with licorice-flavored anise seeds. When you add saag chana’s ingredients together, they provide a vitamin boost as well: 

For 1 cup of the following ingredients, I found the following percentages of recommended daily allowances for vitamins in the main ingredients: 

-spinach: 

-potassium – 4% 

-vitamin C – 14% 

-iron – 4% 

-magnesium – 6%

-vitamin A – 64% 

-chickpeas (garbanzo beans): 

-iron – 4% 

-vitamin B6 – 5%

-magnesium - 3% 

-tomatoes: 

-vitamin C – 23% 

-potassium – 8% 

-vitamin A – 5% 

(Nutrition information from medicalnewstoday.com and USDA – US Department of Agriculture websites)  

Saag chana masala at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California is a tasty, vegetarian meal that might appeal to spinach lovers and chickpea lovers alike. 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Aloo Gobi at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget

Aloo Gobi at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget 

The antioxidant powerhouse called aloo gobi at Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California is similar to korma, a braised vegetable dish, which dates back to the Mughal Dynasty in India according to Julie Sahni in Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking. 

Basically, aloo gobi is made up of sliced cauliflower and potatoes cooked in a tomato sauce flavored with fennel, coriander, and ground almonds among other ingredients. 

The dish starts out like many Indian dishes with onion being caramelized in oil and seasoned with garlic, fresh ginger, coriander, fennel, pepper, and turmeric. 

Once the onions and seasonings have cooked, a cook adds tomato purée to the mixture along with water, sliced cauliflower, and sliced potatoes and lets the mixture simmer for 30 minutes. At the end of cooking, cumin powder or garam masala (curry powder) is stirred in for additional flavor. 

The huge antioxidant in this dish is Vitamin C along with significant amounts of other nutrients, notably: 

Percentage of recommended daily nutrients in one cup – 

-Cauliflower: 

-potassium – 50%

-dietary fiber – 48% 

-vitamin C – 472% 

-vitamin B6 – 55% 

-Potatoes: 

-potassium – 15% 

-vitamin C 30% 

-vitamin B6 – 10% 

-Tomatoes: 

-Vitamin C – 28% 

(Nutrition information sources: USDA – US Department of Agriculture, Potatoes USA.com, and healthline.com) 

It is easy to dwell on the outstanding antioxidant benefits of aloo gobi, but the taste just makes you think of how delicious the dish is.

I love ordering aloo gobi from Avatar Indian Grill in Salinas, California for an out-of-the-ordinary lunch that is really good for you and vegan, too. 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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