Meals on Wheels

Some of the least disastrous, most delicious parties I ever held in my Glendale home were those in which I didn’t try to do it all. And what I did do myself, I did with the best ingredients available. Fortunately for my guests, the Glendale/Pasadena area boasts some of the finest hostess helpers in Southern California. places Like Glendale’s Fish King, a renowned supplier to restaurants, with a retail shop and café, and Pasadena’s EuroPane Bakery and Café, starring Sumi Chang’s baked goods, as well as South Pasadena’s very French Nicole’s Gourmet Foods and Mario’s Italian Deli & Market in Glendale. Indeed, the only mistake I made, when celebrating my newly installed garden’s first round of spring blooms, was not in the menu, a tantalizing array of EuroPane’s croissants, Danish pastries and quiches. The rub was this: inviting a freshly minted lawyer, newly betrothed to a former neighbor, who felt compelled for unknown reasons (social anxiety? professional knife-sharpening?) to persuade my guests of the criminal case against wheat. Sumi’s luscious quiche crusts filled the trash can, and the untouched pile of pastries flooded the freezer.

I didn’t invite the lawyer back, but I still see Sumi as often as I can. The former nurse (the reason I always feel cared for in her presence?) turned baker, who trained with La Brea Bakery’s Nancy Silverton, has a balanced, contemporary approach to such classics as brownies, lemon bars and French macaroons (perfect for the anti-wheat crowd), as well as meringue and cream sandwiches of lemon, chocolate, raspberry, orange and — most addictive — salted caramel.

I always load up on her stollen and gingerbread men for holiday gifting.

Every time I drop by, Sumi’s developing something new. Recently, it was seasonal focaccia bread, topped with kale and roasted garlic from the Pasadena Farmers’ Market, while another version boasted spring dandelion greens and asparagus. Try cutting it into small squares for hors d’oeuvres, topped with a toothpick-speared companion piece, like a marinated mushroom, shrimp, artisanal olive or cubed cheese.

A brunch or simple summer supper can be built of the aforementioned quiches accompanied by Europane’s salads, such as quinoa, couscous, vegetable antipasto or a trifecta of painterly purple, yellow and green cauliflower. The herb-flecked carrot salad glistens with a light oil vinaigrette, and the lentil salad has a surprising element of caramelized onion.

And then there’s the vast array of artisanal breads by the loaf, croissants and scones (try the ginger) and fresh seasonal fruit Danish. Decisions are best made over a EuroPane lunch of Sumi’s acclaimed egg salad sandwich or a cup of comforting posole soup.  

Nicole’s Gourmet Foods in South Pasadena, an endearingly French café and specialty market, is like a small restaurant supply house for the adventurous beginner or accomplished cook. Nicole repackages for retail sale under her own label restaurant supplies sold wholesale by her son. So you will find the kinds of surprises not available in most supermarkets, elusive delicacies like spinach couscous, black squid-ink orzo or fregola sarda (toasted Israeli couscous). Nicole, a native of France’s Loire region, is usually on hand with menu ideas, such as transforming her savory pastry shells into sophisticated hors d’oeuvres with goat cheese and roasted red pepper strips or roasted tomato. The sweet version of the same pastry shells can be filled with her instant pastry cream (enlivened with a touch of Cointreau or other triple sec) or the lemon curd homemade daily and topped with the fresh fruit you’ll find just outside her door Thursday afternoons when the farmers’ market comes to South Pasadena.

You’ll want to recruit weekend houseguests so you can have an excuse to try the frozen croissants and pain au chocolat sold by the bag. They bake fresh in 15 minutes. Or gather a crowd for the sheets of frozen puff pastry that you can cover with caramelized onions, Niçoise olives and anchovies for a homemade pissaladière. Simplest of all is picking a cheese plate, with Nicole’s counsel, from her extensive imported offerings. Sides for that summer barbecue can include her ready-to-go salads, such as lentil, hearts of palm or the celery remoulade, which I have a hard time not polishing off before I get home. Her wine selections, primarily French, include rosés and affordable sparklers for summer.

Glendale’s premiere Italian deli and market is named after Mario, but the recipes responsible for its vast following come from Albina, Mario’s wife and a native of Italy’s Piedmont region. She grew up on a small farm outside a little village, making delicious meals in the midst of wartime shortages. With no wheat for bread or pasta, her family ate mostly polenta. Tony Bennett and Dean Martin croon on the store’s sound system as Albina recalls a favorite breakfast of sliced polenta topped with lightly scrambled eggs, seasoned with salt and pepper and cooked until the eggs were set and the polenta warmed through.

“It was delicious,” she says, eyes bright with the memory.

A highlight of many of my Glendale dinner party preparations was the savory result of Albina’s advice on olive oils, cheeses, salami and sauces. They still carry finocchiona (the fennel-flavored salami my husband and I first discovered in Tuscany) and get shipments twice a week of locally made burrata cheese, perfect for a summer salad paired with heirloom tomatoes and greens, drizzled with good olive oil and balsamic or their homemade pesto. Other homemade pasta sauces sold fresh or frozen are Alfredo and marinara, best paired with their homemade raviolis and pastas, and the gnocchi made under Albina’s tutelage by her daughter-in-law. I can’t leave there without a container of the green cracked-and-marinated olives, and I’ve kept many an impromptu crowd quiet and happy with their hot take-out meals of Italian standards such as lasagna, eggplant parmigiana, cheese-stuffed shells and pizza. Their decent selection of Italian wines includes summer-perfect Proseccos and Pinot Grigios. And the daughter-in-law’s tiramisu (from Albina’s recipe, of course) is a dessert must.

If Fish King isn’t the best fish market, east or west, in Southern California, please educate me otherwise. I’ve looked. Next to buying seafood off a boat at the harbor, this is the place to go. And now that Dungeness crab is available year-round, it’s the place to go even more often.

When I lived in Glendale, I was on the store’s call list for live Santa Barbara prawns. I only bought them once, and they were gorgeous and delicious, but I panicked when faced with actually having to kill them, even if it was in a hot pan with olive oil, butter, garlic and lemon. Still, I always enjoyed getting the calls, and we stayed on the call list until we left town.

For less traumatizing summer grilling, you’ll find wild salmon, whole branzino, red snapper and striped bass. Grab some lime-cilantro butter or tartar sauce to serve it with, maybe some smoked trout or sushi-grade tuna for appetizers and some addictive emerald-green seaweed salad, crispy broccoli slaw, edamame or cucumber salad for sides. Add a fresh lemon from Fish King’s boutique produce section to squeeze over everything, some of its good San Francisco sourdough bread and a bottle of its prize-winning private-label California Pinot Grigio (under $10), and you’ve got the ingredients for a fabulous feast.