Boutique avocados, Sweetgreen's grass-fed beef, Contramar tostadas

Tablescapes, mayonnaise distribution, menus with large fonts, and your musical pairing

I got this message from an avocado farm here in Southern California called Primavera:

I asked Peter, who runs the family-owned business, why their avocados are better than others. He told me his dad advised avocado companies for 40-plus years and now looks after their orchard. It is ideally situated in Ventura County’s foothills, bordering a forest full of beneficial insect life, allowing them to avoid spraying pesticides. Sounds good to me. 

Eight or so hard green avocados arrived in a tasteful and biodegradable box, and Karolyn treated them like flowers. What else do you do with unusable produce other than tablescape it? I woke up a few days later to find most of them soft and dark, ready to eat. I gave a few to my neighbor because I can’t eat eight avocados in three days. (He told me “primavera” means “spring,” and I said, “Oh, yeah. I should have known that.”) And then, per Peter’s suggestion, I made some Contramar tostadas. 

Contramar’s tostada, not my own.

Addicting and simple to make, these tostadas don’t really need a recipe. A swipe of chipotle mayo across a crispy tostada, hopefully still warm from the fryer; a few slices of raw tuna and avocado; and finally, fried leek strings on top. The combination of flavor, texture, freshness, and fat make it one of the more captivating things you can eat from its food group: crunchy and mushy, but together. At Contramar, in Mexico City, you’ll see hula-hoop-size serving platters weaving among the dining room tables like flying saucers. I’ve never not ordered another round for the table. Speaking of rounds, the ideal way to eat at Contramar, if you haven’t been before, is to have a very long, drunk lunch—punctuated with cigarette breaks, old friends leaving, new friends joining, and the euphoric feeling of walking back from the restroom while cross-eyed at 4 p.m., only to see this strawberry cake waiting at your table.

Photo by Bill Addison

The only trouble with making these tostadas at home is that good-quality sashimi-grade tuna can be challenging to find and expensive, even if you’re buying and butchering a whole fish. But what is easy to track down, affordable, and preseasoned is poke. I’m lucky to get mine from my local monger, Fish King; they make some of the best on the mainland. I’ll grab a half-pound of Hawaiian-style tuna poke for $10 and some tostadas for $2, and we’re basically there. I substituted the fried leeks with ramps for my version because I had them, and why not? (I’ll tell you why: they didn’t crisp up as well as a leek.) I also switched out my chipotle mayo for Japanese chili pepper and sesame seed mayo and squeezed it on top instead of underneath. For some reason, I wanted to frost my rounds like a Toaster Strudel, but coaxing mayonnaise in a squeeze bottle is a fool’s errand.

In addition to being a more affordable and accessible version of the original, it becomes a hybrid of two relatively similar dishes: the Mexican tostada and the Japanese-American-style tuna tartare on wonton crisp. I won’t share exact proportions because it’s a loose assembly, a technical challenge. But I made six tostadas with one avocado and half a pound of poke.

• Mix a few fat spoonfuls of your favorite mayonnaise (Kewpie is actually too powerful for this, in my opinion) with some toasted sesame seeds and as much chili pepper as you can handle. Squeeze in fresh lime juice, but don’t get things too watered down. Cover and leave out for the flavors to release. I love the idea of blooming spices in mayonnaise. Or just make chipotle mayo.

• Thoroughly soak and dry your ramps, leeks, scapes, scallions, or other long greens.

• Dice them into small strings.

• In your smallest pot, fry them on medium-high heat in an inch of olive oil for a few minutes, stirring often. Keep a close eye and remove them from the heat before they turn brown-brown.

  

• I pour mine into a small metal strainer, reserving the flavored olive oil for later. Then I shake them out onto a folded paper towel to hopefully crisp them up. I hit them with a pinch of salt while they’re still warm.

• You can make mayonnaise from your reserved ramp-leek oil, thus acting as a sourdough starter of sorts, a perpetual mayonnaise.

• Mash your perfectly ripe avocado with a liberal pinch of salt and a squeeze of lime. 

• Finally, roughly dice your poke, leaving some chunks. Remember, seaweed is good for you.

• Now assemble your tostadas however you like. Don’t add edible flowers or caviar. Maybe a little fresh wasabi would be nice, though.

Rumors & Ramblings

• On Monday, I drove to Sweetgreen’s HQ to try out their new grass-fed (and finished) beef. They get tri-tip from New Zealand and Australia and sous vide it for the better part of a day at a proprietary temperature hot enough to pasteurize but low enough to still have some pink in the middle. The meat is seasoned with a few things (nutritional yeast being one) and reverse-seared in an algorithmic convection oven. The beef is then cut into nice little rectangular pieces and tossed in olive oil and parsley to finish. Tri-tip is usually a more challenging cut of meat to cook, but Sweetgreen took the time to figure out how to keep it tender while retaining that beefy chew. I thought it tasted best paired with chunks of bleu cheese in their steakhouse chopped salad (the quinoa somehow improved it?), and in a caramelized garlic protein plate with roasted sweet potatoes and pesto dressing. As Chipotle’s prices rise and portions shrink, it’s nice to have some thoughtfully cooked, high-end beef and fresh vegetables available on speed dial. SG is currently testing steak in their Boston locations—TBA on the national launch.

• Congratulations to Stir Crazy on their 1 year anniversary. I posted a few photos, but this menu got dozens more comments than their deviled quail egg with caviar or their strawberry tree. People either loved the oversized font or hated the thought of a non-alcoholic Jello shot.

• I’m a Featured Publication on Substack this week. Thanks to

  Pierce Abernathy
  for the recommendation. I’ll be interviewing him soon. They told me to post this badge, but it feels a bit too Scholastic.

Music Pairing 

Wandelaar, Haron, 2018 (via YouTube)

Haron – Wandelaar

Wandelaar, in Dutch, means “hiker” or “walker,” which makes sense, as I usually put this on when I’m trekking to baggage claim. Pitchfork said it’s “everything you could wish for in an ambient soundtrack to humid midsummer nights.” But I prefer it in the mornings.