Aaron's Eatzz: Keeping Kosher in Kearny Mesa

I’m often nostalgic for Los Angeles and New York. LA, specifically Encino, is where I was raised, and while mocking the Valley and LA is a favorite pastime of people in San Diego and beyond, it was a magical place to grow up, particularly for a Jewish kid. New York, where I lived for several years after college, is more of a spiritual home. Its uber-urban, multi-ethnic streets are where I’ve always felt most comfortable, most myself. It’s where much of my extended family lived or passed through following passage from Eastern Europe. Going to the Lower East Side always is a moving adventure in retracing both my grandfathers’ steps early in the 20^th century.

Of course, all this nostalgia is completely intertwined with food—the bagels, lox and cream cheese, hot pastrami sandwiches, kreplach (think Jewish won-tons), kugel (sweet noodle pudding), corn rye and egg creams (a milk, chocolate syrup and selzer concoction) of my childhood. Every cholesterol-laden, high-calorie bite. And, it’s what I miss in San Diego. Sure, go ahead and remind me we have D.Z. Akins and Elijah’s and Milton’s. Sorry, I enjoy them, but they’re just not the same as the old Encino Deli (now known as Froman's), Mort's in Tarzana, Art’s in Studio City, or the Carnegie Deli or Katz’s in New York. And, certainly not my beloved Zabar’s (a deli market on steroids).

So, you can imagine how startled I was to discover Aaron’s on Convoy at Balboa several years ago. No, it’s not strictly a deli; it’s a little (tiny, really) glatt kosher* market with a deli section in a little strip mall that also houses a checking cashing store, dentist’s office and bait and tackle shop. But, I live in a neighborhood where if I’m really, really lucky, the local Albertson’s will have a rickety card table set up for Passover with a few boxes of matzo, and not always kosher for Passover. That makes Aaron’s a huge find.

Tomorrow evening (Monday) marks the beginning of Passover (or Pesach), which commemorates the travail of Ancient Egyptian Jews, who having been slaves of Pharaoh, fled and wandered for 40 years in the desert, led by Moses. On the first and second evenings of Passover, a Seder is held. This large meal is structured around the reading of the Haggadah, which tells the story of the Exodus and orchestrates how the meal is conducted, rather like stage directions. Those who strictly observe Passover for its eight days require special foods that are kosher for the holiday (even using separate dishes and utensils). No leavened bread can be eaten, hence the flat cracker-like matzo, made of just flour and water, which can be ground into a meal and used for baking. Matzo symbolizes the haste in which the Jews fled that left no time to let bread rise and bake. And, it's not just bread or other leavened foodstuff (referred to as "chametz") that's forbidden. All foods must be "kosher for Passover" and packaging is always marked either kosher or not kosher for Passover. In cities like New York and LA, with large Jewish populations, kosher-for-Passover foods are pretty easy to find, even in the chain supermarkets. However, it can be a challenge here, especially outside of La Jolla. I don't keep kosher, but I do try to keep with the spirit of Passover by eating matzo and other traditional foods.

When I walked into Aaron's on Friday before lunch, owner Aaron Hutman, a long-time grocery man originally from Montreal, was uttering a frazzled mantra, “I love Pesach; I love Pesach” as he cheerfully kibitzed (chatted) with and rang up orders for customers from around San Diego County coming in to pick up Passover provisions. Hutman has owned the market for eight years and in the past, he has been able to find nearby storefronts to set up as temporary Pesach staging quarters to sell kosher-for-Passover necessities like matzo, matzo meal, wine, potato starch, gefilte fish (small ovals of deboned, ground fish, eaten chilled with horseradish) and macaroons. This year, however, he couldn’t locate a spot so the market is swept up in a Passover frenzy. My Friday visit, pre-Passover and, more immediately, pre-Shabbat (Sabbath), was probably not the best time to try to speak with him, but he was good natured about answering questions, all the while, stocking food from an unending stream of boxes he had picked up in LA before dawn that morning.

I was wowed by the solid chocolate Seder plate, something I had never seen before. Traditional seder plates have a spot for each of the symbolic items featured in the telling of the Passover story while reading the Haggadah (maror, or bitter herbs in the form of horseradish; charosets, made of chopped apples and walnuts, cinnamon and sweet wine; a roasted lamb shank; a hard-boiled egg; parsley and salt water to dip it in). So, a chocolate seder plate? It's got to be Manishewitz's answer to chocolate Easter bunnies!

Hutman has brought in a variety of baked goods from Eilat Bakery in Santa Monica and all are kosher for Passover, including almond chocolate and chocolate chip macaroons and even mandel bread, a biscotti-like cookie. In the freezer section, I was surprised to find kosher-for-Passover pizza. You, too? Well, it turns out the crust is made with matzo meal.

Along with the Pesadic foods, Aaron’s has a wide variety of kosher meat and dairy products he carries year round, as well as products from Israel, including a range of wines from Efrat Winery (Merlot, Petite Syrah, Muscat, Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz), vibrantly colored bottles of fruit nectars and cans of stuffed cabbage leaves, eggplant and peppers and Syrian cracked olives.

I got a kick out of the beers—He'Brew, the Chosen Beer, comes in two varieties, Genesis Ale and Messiah Bold.

Up at the front of the store is where, to me, the real treasures are—pastrami and corned beef, and containers filled with old-fashioned delicacies like chopped liver, cole slaw and egg salad. Jacob Dashevsky, a student at San Diego State, has been helping out Hutman in the rush and was busy slicing pastrami and wrapping up orders. Hutman may need Jacob’s help after Passover since he tells me that Aaron’s will be doing more catering and setting up a larger take-out section, with both kosher and non-kosher foodstuff.

These days, there’s no extended family around for a Passover seder, but my parents and I will be celebrating the holiday together Monday night and thinking of relatives around the country who will be doing the same. I always associate the holiday with my now late grandparents, Tillie and Abe Gould, who loved to host Seders for the entire family. Poppa’s job was to mark up the Haggadah with everyone’s names to establish reading parts. After all, Passover is nothing if not participatory theater. And, of course, he hid the Afikoman for us eight grandkids to find. The Afikoman is the middle matzo from a stack of three special ones placed on the Seder table. As a game to keep the children interested, the Seder leader sneaks it out at the beginning of the meal to hide it somewhere in the house, wrapping it in a special embroidered Afikoman cover or a dinner napkin. I think the winner got a dollar back then. Nana cooked for weeks in anticipation of at least a dozen guests and usually more. Chicken soup with matzo balls (dumplings made with matzo meal), homemade horseradish, roasted chicken or brisket, potato kugel (a potato pudding), charosets and flourless cakes served with strawberries. She was a fabulous cook and baker and fortunately, when I was in my 20s I hounded her to make me a cookbook of her recipes, which she did. Here is one, for matzo meal popovers, which I doubt you’ll find anywhere else. People never believe these are made without yeast, but they are. They are the Madeleines of my life.

Nana Tillie’s Passover Popovers

Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees.

Bring to a boil: 2 cups of water, 2 tablespoons of sugar, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 stick of butter. Take off the heat and add 2 cups of matzo meal. Let cool.

Beat in 6 extra large eggs, one at a time. Cool in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.

Spoon onto greased cookie sheets or into muffin tins.

Bake at 450 degrees for 13 minutes, then turn down the temperature to 350 degrees and bake an additional 30 minutes. They should sound hollow inside when you tap the bottom. Makes about 15. Don’t double the recipe!

Aaron’s is located at 4488 Convoy St.

* Glatt means smooth in Yiddish. If the lungs of a kosher animal slaughtered in a kosher way are found to be smooth, then the animal's meat is considered to be "glatt kosher," a higher standard than kosher. However, it's come to refer to a store's reliable kosher supervision.

Have some thoughts about Aaron’s or other Jewish delis and markets in San Diego? Add to the conversation by clicking on comments below:

Nijiya Market: Japanese Living on Convoy

I’ve long been a fan of Mitsuwa, formerly Yaohan, on Mercury, off of Balboa in Kearny Mesa. Okay, their produce department is modest, but I enjoy their wide variety of teas, sake, sashimi-grade fish, frozen delicacies and, most of all, the fresh sushi. I’d never really thought about shopping for Japanese products elsewhere until I decided to follow Mineko Takane Moreno around on her tour of Nijiya Market. Years ago, I’d taken a beginning sushi class from Mineko at Great News (alright, I promise to check out other cooking schools in town!) and learned more than the basics from this petite, elegant woman. She is extremely knowledgeable (she’s the co-author, with my old friend Judi Strada, of Sushi for Dummies) and could probably spend days in the market, explaining what’s in various mysterious jars, bottles and plastic bags and how they can be used. In fact, if she’s game, I’d do it again to hit all the things time constraints forced us to miss.

And, I’ll definitely be returning on my own to Nijiya Market. First of all, their produce department is a delight, especially because they sell what they grow on their own organic farm. Here were the standouts:

• Enormous daikon radish, which I love to eat raw, but is perfect grated as a condiment to accompany fish or other protein (just don’t put the grated daikon in the refrigerator or everything inside will smell).
• Lanky long onions—at least two feet in length—that can be thinly sliced and rinsed for use as a condiment for noodles and dipping sauces or simmered with beef, grilled with chicken or cooked with duck in udon noodle soup.
• Mounds of gorgeous kabocha squash, ready for baking, grilling, roasting, deep frying as tempura or pureed as a substitute for chestnuts. Last night, I chopped one up and simmered it with sliced green onions in rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil and a little sugar. It took perhaps 20 minutes and was delicious with steamed rice sprinkled with Shichimi togarashi, a seven-spice chili seasoning combining chili flakes, black and white sesame seeds, poppy seeds, sancho (a Japanese pepper), aonori (a type of seaweed) and Mandarin orange peel.
• Burdock, an earthy-looking long and slender brown root wrapped in cellophane, enjoyed in stir fries. Peel it and add to roast chicken with other root vegetables.
• A variety of herbs and leaves, like Chrysanthemum leaves, used in one-pot dishes, tempura, sushi rolls and salad; Ooba, a mint-like herb with antisceptic powers, enjoyed with raw fish, on top of wasabi ice cream or with pasta instead of basil and Kinome, the leaf of Japanese peppers. This has a very strong flavor that can be released if you put it in one hand and smack it with the other.

Be sure to investigate the various mushrooms, taro root, lotus root and Naga-imo, or long mountain yam. Long, straight and a light beige color, they’re displayed surrounded by sawdust. It can be crunchy like jicama, but peel it and it’s a bit slimy. Eat it raw or cooked but just peel the skin first.

I didn’t even mention fruit, but there’s plenty—kumquats, fuji apples, satsuma oranges and amazingly huge and sweet grapes. I swear they tasted like apples.

Okay, moving on. If you enjoy pickled fruits and vegetables, Nijiya Market has a great selection (although Mitsuwa, with its own little room for their pickles, wins this competition). Alongside pickled plums (often placed on top of a mound of white rice to imitate the Japanese flag), there were bottles of Neriume, which Mineko explained is a paste made of Japanese apricot and used like mustard on salmon or in a vinaigrette.

There is a huge selection of different misos—white, dark, saikyo (sweet compared to regular white miso) and even an organic miso. Next to them is a variety of tofu and soy products. You’ll find bags upon bags of rice—avoid the mochi gome, or sweet rice if you’re looking for something for a daily meal. It’s simply too sticky. Mineko enjoys shorter grain Kagayaki California premium rice.

Like at 99 Ranch Market and Mitsuwa, I was overwhelmed by the selections of soy sauces, ponzu sauces, rice wines and rice vinegars (not to mention the various spices, noris and other packaged products). All I can say is take a tour with someone like Mineko to learn the distinctions. The choices here are amazing and picking just the right type, whether it's light or dark soy sauce or light or dark rice vinegar, can make a big difference in the dishes you prepare.

I was delighted to find a gorgeous display of meats and fish, although naively I was shocked at some of the prices. Sashimi-grade toro goes for $80 a pound as do geoduck clams; blue fin tuna for $70. They sell a long, iridescent fish called sanma, which I’ll try in the summer so I can grill it whole. The market has a wonderful display of freshly made sushi and bento boxes, as well as fish cakes, spring rolls, croquettes and tempura and they have an in-store bakery that sells large boxy loaves of white bread.

While my idea of the perfect day touring Nijiya would end with a return to someone’s home to go cook up our purchases, we did the next best thing—ate a homestyle lunch at nearby Sakura Restaurant. Our group of 20 enjoyed shrimp and assorted vegetable tempura, miso-marinated grilled salmon with grated dikon, tofu and wakame miso soup, sweet and salty root vegetables, a salad and mochi ice cream. I recommend Sakura so out of kindness, here’s how you find this unmarked eatery: It’s located on Convoy in the same strip mall as the Original Pancake House. Look for the doorway under the brown awning next to the Army recruiting office. That’s it. Why there’s no sign, I’ve no clue, but people know it’s there because it was packed on Sunday afternoon. I plan to return on an evening when owner and chef Kazuya Maeda serves sake with “tapas”-style treats.

Finally, at lunch I asked Mineko to recommend the best Japanese cookbooks around. She offered three, which I found available on Amazon.com:

• Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen by Elizabeth Andoh
• Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art by Shizuo Tsuji
• The Japanese Kitchen by Hiroko Shimbo

Nijiya Market is located at 3860 Convoy St. in Sunrise Towne Centre. It’s just north of Aero Drive.

Sakura Restaurant is located at 3904 Convoy St.

Have some thoughts about Nijiya Market or other Japanese markets in San Diego? Add to the conversation by clicking on comments below: