Welcome to San Diego Culinary Adventures!

San Diego Culinary Adventures!

Since I was a little girl, I have loved two things:  food and travelling.  Those 2 things alone are what led me to culinary school and made me decide to be a chef.  In 2002, I went to Italy for the first time and the way I looked at and thought about food was changed forever.  Everything I ate there was absolutely amazing.  Most things were very simply prepared, but the quality of the ingredients were what really made the dishes outstanding.  Local, seasonal produce; local ingredients like olive oil and wine; the freshest meat and seafood, again locally sourced.  My former husband and I would visit our family in the middle of summer, when melons are in season.  I have never seen a more deeply colored orange cantaloupe than the ones I have seen in Italy, or a more fire-engine red watermelon.  When you see produce like that, not only does it make your mouth water just by looking at it, but those very vibrant colors mean that there are significantly more nutrients in them.  It's not a tomato that was picked when it was green in Argentina and allowed to ripen on a refrigerated shipping container in transit.

This past summer, I took my niece to Alaska.  We drove from San Diego to Toolik Lake (286 miles up the Dalton Highway and 171 north of the Arctic Circle).  Fresh ingredients are close to impossible to find up there.  I was bartering for vegetables at a restaurant/truck stop in Coldfoot (the furthest-north truck stop in North America).  We were staying the next 2 nights in Wiseman, which is a few miles north of Coldfoot, and we had a kitchen.  We were both so sick of hamburgers!  So I cornered the kitchen "manager", and played the culinary equivalent of Go Fish with him.  "Do you have ... a potato?  Do you have .... cheese?  Do you have ... any green vegetables?"  Between what I was able to scavenge from their kitchen and from the garden at our B&B, I made a couple pretty good meals for us.  We had stopped at a very tiny meat market on our way up where a 10 year old boy and his grandma rang us up.  I bought a yak steak and some ground bison.  So, our meals in Wiseman included penne pasta with bison ragu (I had the forethought to pack canned tomatoes, onions and garlic) and yak steak with baked potato and salad (foraged from the garden).  Not the fanciest of meals I have ever prepared, but memorable nonetheless.

The lesson I learned on that trip specifically is that as much as I enjoy fine dining, sometimes nothing beats a home-cooked meal.  And, as a resident of San Diego for nearly 20 years, I realized how spoiled we are here.  We are blessed with a year round growing season and literally, 7 days a week, there is a farmer's market somewhere.  Not to mention actual farms you can purchase produce from, such as Stehly & Chino Farms.  We are on the ocean and there are some pretty stellar seafood markets -- Point Loma Seafood, Catalina Offshore and Pescador to name but a few.  There is Iowa Meats, Seisel's Meats, Liberty Public Market, Specialty Produce ..... As far as food goes, I know where to go.  It's a side of San Diego that I am very proud of and very eager to share with both visitors and locals alike.  There is so much more to San Diego than Seaworld, the zoo, Legoland, and the beach (I actually love the beach).  When I travel, I get really tired of eating out, and being surrounded by tourists.  I end up craving a meal with fresh ingredients that not only tastes good, but is good for me.  Plus, I try to be a traveler, not a tourist; it's fun to live like a local!  

This is my concept.  In the morning, I will take you food shopping.  For example, if it's a Saturday morning, Little Italy has an incredible farmer's market.  If it's a Sunday, I'll take you up to La Jolla to their farmer's market.  Or we can cruise by Specialty Produce, where the restaurants shop -- they carry local produce as well.  Next stop is either a fish or meat market -- you can pick your protein.  While the shopping excursion may take a couple of hours, you will get to see a side of San Diego you might have missed out on:  neighborhoods, locals, farmers.  And ME!  

When we are done shopping, you can continue with your day, maybe visit Balboa Park, museums, The Zoo, the beach.  Meanwhile, I will concoct a menu from the ingredients we have chosen and start to prep your dinner.  Later in the afternoon, I will come to your property rental and I will show you how to cook something really nice.  I'll even clean your kitchen when we are done!

Or, if you are not in the mood to go food shopping with me, I will help develop a customized menu for you, which could be either breakfast, lunch or dinner. Same thing:  I will shop and cook it for you in your kitchen.

This doesn't only apply to visitors; I can give the same experience to locals, as well.  One may not know about some of these amazing food vendors or farmer's markets, and I can provide you with a bit of a tour.  We can shop together and I will show you what to do with the amazing ingredients we pick out together.

San Diego is a special place and I am very proud to live here.  Sharing my passion for fresh, local ingredients and cooking, and showing off this beautiful city gives me the greatest of pleasures.  Also, knowing exactly where your food comes from makes it special.  Not only does fresh, seasonal produce look and taste better, but it is also better for you.  Sometimes, if you don't know where to look, that is a difficult thing to achieve in a world filled with convenience food, especially if you are on vacation.  My goal is to offer a unique experience, a cooking lesson and a delicious, healthy meal and share a side of southern California with you that you may have otherwise missed out on.

http://www.sandiegoculinaryadventures.com
amalfigourmet@gmail.com
619-379-3099