Home-Grown Specialties

In an age where an increasing number of the foodstuffs we rely on are trucked in from afar or processed virtually beyond recognition, living in the Ventura area affords a few special privileges to serious eaters. Everyone knows that good produce is available year-round here, but it is less than common knowledge that a number of specialty foods are either farmed, cultivated or prepared in close proximity.

I recently made stops at four very different purveyors, and tasted some of the area’s best local products; smoked Scottish salmon, Santa Barbara mussels, crackerjack Mexican-style salsa and Ventura County macadamia nuts. It’s a tour worth taking, with surprisingly delicious yields.

Patrick Martin takes sides of salmon and achieves what Faberge accomplished with eggs--elevating them from mere foodstuff to objets d’art.

Martin is a a soft spoken, obsessive, red-headed Irishman who has brought his family business, Cambridge House, from Cambridge, England, to Carpinteria, of all places, where he produces smoked salmon so bright, delicate and perfectly symmetrical that one might be tempted to tack it up above the mantle piece, were it not so irresistible to the taste buds.

Martin grew up in the salmon trade, but his formal training as a chef pays dividends with regard to his product. He apprenticed at France’s three-star Auberge de l’Ill and did a stint at Paul Bocuse in Lyon before coming to this country as a chef. A back injury, the loss of a father and the birth of a son combined in his decision to continue the family tradition.

Essentially, he buys Spay Valley salmon from Scotland, just as his family has done for over 50 years. But he imports the salmon on shuttles from Glasgow twice weekly, and does the preparation here. Martin claims that Scottish salmon have the highest concentration of omega-3 fatty acids, beneficial to the cardiovascular system, of any species of salmon.

He also asserted that the fish come to him just 22 hours removed from their natural-water habitat. That, said Martin, is much less than the equivalent time for the domestic salmon smoked locally. Martin told me that local fisherman often spend five to six days at sea before docking with their catch. Because his fish are farmed and never frozen, he said, his product is the freshest available.

Furthermore, as Martin will tell you, much of the so-called smoked salmon that is commercially available isn’t smoked at all, but “injected with salt and liquid smoke in horrible processing plants, enormous rooms the size of airplane hangars.”

Cambridge House, on the other hand, is a small, spotless place where everything is done hands-on. The fish are first trimmed and the fatty bellies removed, a step, which Martin said, few smokers take.

Then the fish are individually salted, cold smoked with English oak and apple twigs specially brought in by Martin, and finally dried in a hermetically sealed room, free of any other product and from the possibility of cross-contamination, a potential hazard in seafood smoking.

This may be the best smoked salmon I have ever tasted--buttery smooth, velvet soft, subtly smoky. Others agree with this assessment. Martin said he has served his salmon at the wedding of British royals Charles and Diana and to luminaries such as Mikhail Gorbachev. He has also won a Judges Award at the Seattle Seafood Show and a first-place ribbon at a recent seafood show in San Francisco.

Martin sells his product, which is certified kosher, to hotel chains such as Four Seasons and Sheraton and to a variety of upscale restaurants, including Pane e Vino in Montecito and Los Angeles. You can buy Cambridge House salmon by phone, by mail order or by showing up personally at the business. Schedule permitting, Martin will even take visitors on a tour of his facility.

The finished side weighs approximately three pounds and sells for $59.95, delivered anywhere in Ventura County. You can have it plain or with a wonderful lemon pepper marinade, a blend of coriander, thyme, marjoram, fresh lemon zest and cracked pepper.

For an additional $5, a whole side, which is actually long and rectangular like a violin, can be split into four equal packages. The salmon remains at peak flavor for approximately two to three weeks, according to Martin. In time, though, the fish eventually becomes discolored and loses flavor.

Santa Barbara Mussels

A little farther north, in the Santa Barbara Channel to be exact, countless thousands of the world’s most plump, succulent mussels are growing in clumps on the legs of offshore oil platforms.

Don’t be alarmed. These mussels and the water that surrounds them are strictly regulated by weekly laboratory tests. Then the mussels are harvested, packaged and sold by a company called Ecomar, run by an articulate marine biologist named Bob Meek.

My first mussel experience was on the Mediterranean, when I ate a bowlful of the little black mollusks bathing in a broth of white wine, butter and garlic. I’ve been a mussel enthusiast ever since. The mussels in Santa Barbara Channel, in fact, are the same species of mussel as the black Mediterranean variety I ate long ago. But according to Meek, what makes these so special is that they are the only mussels in the world farmed in the open sea. That means no grit, no sand and no interior particles to worry about when eating.

That also makes them big. The mussels feed on various plankton, and as they are not subjected to high and low tides, they feed and grow continually until they are harvested.

“Santa Barbara Channel is simply one of the best places in the world to grow mussels,” said Meek, who plans in the near future to farm his mussels on long lines in the ocean.

Anyone who has been subjected to those insipid green-lipped New Zealand imports will immediately perceive a huge difference. The green lips have colorful shells, but the texture is mealy and not nearly as sweet as the Santa Barbara variety.

The variety grown locally are brought in to the Ecomar processing plant in Goleta where barnacles that adhere to the outside of the shells are removed. Then they are packaged in breathable onion type sacks and sold, to the tune of 25,000 pounds per month.

Ecomar does not remove the Byssal thread, which attaches the mussel to wherever it is growing. This allows the mussel to retain seawater inside itself, keeping it fresh longer. Meek also said that it is a myth that a mussel is dead or inedible if only slightly open when uncooked. Smell it, he says, or even better tap it. If the mussel moves, it is alive.

Ecomar can give you various recipes and instructions for preparing mussels. You can eat Santa Barbara mussels at nearly 100 restaurants in the Southland, including Eric Ericsson’s on Ventura Pier.

They are sold Saturdays at the Santa Barbara Farmers’ Market, at the corner of Cota and Santa Barbara streets, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., and Wednesdays at Santa Monica Farmers’ Market, at the corners of Arizona and 2nd streets from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Fiery Salsas

Smith and Smith in downtown Ventura specializes in hot sauces, a few of which are hot enough to burn off the top of your head. But only one of them, JC’s Midnite Salsa, was actually born here.

Jim (the “J” in the equation) Teshner actually got the original recipe for his salsa six years ago from his sister, Cheryl (the “C”). Now the salsa comes in several incarnations, labeled from Mild to Blackout--formerly known as 911.

Teshner is a native of Tucson, where tortilla chips and salsa are as much a way of life as a snack. During a three-year period when Teshner was a student at the University of Arizona, he experimented constantly with his salsas, searching for the proverbial Holy Salsa Grail.

“You start small, with a pot on the stove top, you know,” said Teshner, who exhibited a few worn-out-looking kettles to me during a recent visit to his Ventura home. “And before you know it, you’re making the stuff in 20-, then 50-gallon drums.”

Eventually, the man came up with a winner. His first accolades, in fact, came last year, when his Hotter N’Hell salsa was awarded first prize at the 1995 Ventura County Fair. Then, last July, he entered a few of his salsas in the Fiery Food Challenge in Albuquerque, reaching the finals in three categories and eventually taking a first and a second place.

I listened as Teshner explained with pride that there are 21 different ingredients in a JC Midnite Salsa, including seven types of chilies, oregano, cumin and other undisclosed spices to go with the chopped tomato and onion base. His hottest salsa, Blackout, is actually made with a chile called the chiltepine that he brings in from Mexico, which is smoky and deadly at the same time.

The garlic salsa is intense but not overpowering, and the Hotter N’Hell had me lunging for the Budweiser.

But nothing prepared me for the Blackout, a pernicious creation that actually lulls an unsuspecting victim into complacency, before delivering a Mike Tyson-like blow to the roof of the mouth. The only way to determine your preference is to experiment. The cumin-spiked Medium is a safe route.

Teshner’s business is, well, heating up. At the moment he is selling around 100 cases a month, but he expects his sales to triple over the next 12 months. Because Teshner has a daytime job (hence the name Midnite Salsa,) he recently moved his production facilities to Tucson, so his family can assist him. Most of JC’s Midnite Salsas sell for around $5 a jar.

You can buy the salsas at Smith and Smith, or directly from the manufacturer by contacting JC’S Midnite Salsa, P.O. Box 623, Ventura 93002. (805) 658-0879.

Macadamia Nuts

Almost everyone seems to be nuts for macadamias, those round, creamy white nuggets that normally come roasted in coconut oil and heavily salted from Hawaii. But how many of us are aware that these nuts, which thrive in the volcanic soil of Hawaii’s Big Island, are an increasingly valuable cash crop right here in Ventura County?

Walking Beam Ranches belongs to Dr. Ralph Busch, a retired anesthesiologist, and his son, Peter. The Busch family farms two acres of macadamias, as well as growing lemons and raising venison, though it is the nut production here that makes the farm particularly distinctive.

During my visit, the elder Busch demonstrated the labor intensive process of farming these nuts, and at the same time debunked the myth that the macadamia nut tree will not grow in a wide variety of soils.

The nuts, explained Ralph Busch, are native to Australia, not Hawaii, where they grow at the edge of rain forests in the northern territories. Walking Beam Ranches’ original root stock comes from Fallbrook in San Diego County, but a few years back, the family grafted Hawaiian wood onto the trees here.

One reason that so few people farm the nut is that the tree takes eight years before it begins to yield a crop. The nuts, when ripe, resemble tiny limes, but when the husks split and the nut falls to the ground naturally, only then is it ready to be gathered, husked, dried, shelled and packaged.

The nuts must be picked up from the ground, one by one, which is hard work. They are also difficult, “darn near impossible,” said Busch, to shell on one’s own.

“How did anyone ever figure out that the nuts were good to eat?” I asked the doctor. “How the heck do I know?” he replied. “The Aussies figured that one out.”

Lucky for us. Later I followed Busch into a barn where the nuts are husked and then placed in a special air dryer for 48 to 72 hours. Then they are shelled in a long green metal contraption with holes in it, that I’d say resembles a death ray. The last step is packing and sealing the nuts, which sell for $3, $5 and $7 a bag in 5 1/2-ounce, 12-ounce and 1-pound bags, respectively.

The finished nut is sweeter and crunchier than a roasted, salted version, and thoroughly pleasant. “I don’t roast ‘em because I sell to farmers’ markets,” said Busch, and most of those customers do not want treated fruits or nuts.” The nuts, according to Busch, are also far better for you unroasted.

“The nut is fattening enough as it is,” he said, “so why add oil to it?”

The nuts are sold at the Ventura and Thousand Oaks farmers’ markets.