labor of food love part 1

So, I have posted several times about El Salvadoreno, but maybe not in the past few months. So for readers who haven't been with me since inception here's El Salvadoreno. It's on Imperial off of 28th, which is convenient for me because I live down the street. They open at 9am, so for those of you who are looking for lengua guisado for breakfast, look no further.


This is the enchiladas. So, contrary to institutional belief, enchiladas do not only come frozen with canned insipid tasting green or red sauce. Enchiladas are actually a real latin american dish, that when actually made onsite can be delish! Anyhoo, these enchiladas are more like what you might know a tostada to be like. It's got shredded beef, cabbage, carrot, ridiculous big slices of cucumber, tomato cheese, but the kicker is those pickled onions they have. Why are they so good? I have been on this pickle kick at work, I realize I have an affliction, and I try to curb my pickling tendencies, but I can't help it sometimes. Anyway, my pickled onions suck after tasting the ones at El Salvadoreno.


So, we always get a pupusa here. Jalapeno and cheese. There's something magical about fresh hand rolled tortilla stuffed with stuff. It puts those school lunch tacos that I had as a kid to shame.



The Food Pimp,who might be disappointed that I first mention him now, got the beef stew. It's probably nacho mama's beef stew - unless she is salvadoranean.

El Salvadoreno
2845 Imperial Ave
San Diego, CA 92102-4025
(619) 231-8254






So, moving on, Labor Day weekend. I got a three day weekend. Really! Well, it wasn't planned. One of the cooks was sick the weekend before, so I worked on Monday, bringing my work week to 8 days in a row. So, to make up hours for him and a day off for me, I took Saturday off. And did I take advantage and party my ass off and get crazy that weekend? No. I felt pretty vunerable to the respiratory thing that half of the people at work had gotten, being rundown. So, we ate all weekend.


So, this was our Saturday. Shrimp and crab boil with potatoes, corn, mushrooms, garlic and sausage. We went to 99 Ranch fairly early, and it was already bustling. The FP, stood and waited to get crabs. (There's so many jokes you could "insert" here, but my humor is way beyond that - so feel free to come up with your own joke)

Anyway, he was impatiently waiting for this philippine couple that was pretty much tonging every since crab. They were small, but cheap, so he waited. And waited. And then he got the tongs. And some of them had two legs and a claw in the watery grave. No, really, they lost a lot of limbs that were not going to regenerate. So, the FP had to tong every crab to dig for the live ones with all limbs, or at least with two claws and most of the legs. And others were impatiently waiting to dig in to the pile. So, we also had to go to Albertson's for Zatarain's shrimp boil and Louisiana hot sauce. And we pleasantly found out that the one on Balboa had moved down the street, all nice and remodelled. The previous one always smelled like ammoniated seafood, and just ammonia - as in cat piss smell.

And, the FP did the boil. I'm not sure what I did - I think I laid on the futon for about 60% of that day, which means it was a good day. It reminded me of the old boil days back in Nola, or even Tallahassee. We would just lay around all day and eat.

Comments

caninecologne said…
hi fh (and fp) - i love the pupusas at el salvadoreno. i also had this other thing, a baleada that was like a huge folder over wrap of chorizo-y goodness. that's not even a word, but you know what i mean. their pickled cabbage is so good too and i don't even like pickled stuff that much!

i hate when people pick at the crabs at the market. last time i was there with tc, she was watching an old asian lady poking and fkng up the crabs. she would pick it up with the tongs, then a leg or claw would break, then she would put it back and search for more. tc thought it was pretty funny.

your crab boil stuff looks really good too!!!! corn and potatoes!!! yum!