It’s Always Lamb Season at Jamillah Garden in Tustin

Lamb lovers, listen up.

Do you pine for something more than lamb chops, rack of lamb or lamb osso buco? Would you like to try a restaurant where there are at least a dozen amazing lamb dishes, not to mention 151 other dishes that probably will rock your palate?

I’ve done the legwork and a lot of dining and recommend you visit Jamillah Garden in Tustin.

It’s a no-nonsense restaurant decor-wise. There are half a dozen booths and a room full of tables for parties of all sizes. It’s pleasant enough, but the food is the temple of this empire. The kitchen excels in Peking style cuisine, including lamb specialties.

The foods of Peking (Beijing) and Shanghai have sauces that are more refined than those served at many typical Chinese restaurants. Cantonese food has wonderful, strident flavors with the sauce sharing equal status with the dish’s meat, seafood or vegetable.

In Jamillah’s Peking cuisine, the sauces are sleek supporting elements to things such as fresh shrimp, savory meats and al dente vegetables.

Let’s talk first about the lamb. It’s the season for soup and the lamb version with pickled cabbage constitutes a nice beginning to a meal, or a whole meal as portions are liberal.

Don’t think that pickled cabbage is like sauerkraut. Instead, it’s very lightly fermented strips of cabbage with an underlying sweetness that is quite likeable.

Lamb stew, slightly reminiscent of the Irish favorite, is rich and long-simmered, sent to the table in its own earthenware casserole. There’s no better lamb dish in Orange County than Jamillah’s sliced lamb stir-fried with scallions.

If you like the smack of spiciness, seared Hunan lamb is a great dish. Lamb with the house specialty sauce called sa cha is an engaging dish that we sometimes take home for lunch the next day.

Noodles in some guise always are popular, but they seem perfectly seasonal for cooler weather. Chow mein is served with shrimp, beef, chicken, lamb or a combination. The best is lamb chow mein made with pan-fried noodles.

Noodles in soup yield more variations. Choose the meat or shellfish or the lamb noodles. For anyone who’s a connoisseur of tender, simmered ox tail, have them with soup noodles.

Now aside from all that lamb, you’ll probably be sufficiently sidetracked by the rest of the menu and all those other good-sounding dishes. Four crunchy shrimp make up an appetizer order and the same number of really good egg rolls occupies another plate.

Jamillah only serves eight dim sum items, but they make good appetizers. Northern China-style dumplings are steamed with a savory meatball inside and also envelop the requisite juice released from the meat while cooking. Called shao lum pao, it’s proper to take one on a spoon, bite a little hole in the side, suck out the delicious juice, then eat the dumpling with gusto.

Lots of us love the little meat turnovers called potstickers; this kitchen gives us plump, satisfying ones. The sesame bread spiked with green onion is as serious to the Chinese as the baguette is to the French.

Soups and casserole dishes (those simmered for a long time) find many combinations of ingredients. Long categories of seafood, beef, lamb, duck, chicken and vegetables wander through more familiar territory. Most of those meats come in the beloved orange peel, cashew nut, mushroom, green vegetable, moo shu and kung pao styles.

I’m smitten with the curry chicken. It’s so mildly flavored without all that drippy sauce that we often encounter at Chinese restaurants. I’d also guide you to the shrimp saut & #233;ed in white wine, a big platter of juicy crustaceans that have absorbed the best nuances of the wine.

I like the braised scallops with spicy sauce, crispy duck, beef with Chinese broccoli. If you enjoy sweet and sour sauce, this would be the place to have it with the chicken, shrimp or fish filet. Classify it as really good sauce marrying tender poultry or seafood.

Vegetarians will find 17 items given the same respect as any other dish.

Jamillah Garden is named after owner Jamillah Mah. She or her nephew Ali Shi almost always are on hand to greet customers. It’s simply a deliciously inexpensive place and I hope you will like it as much as we do.

Wine Release

The release of France’s Beaujolais Nouveau wines happens, according to French government decree, on the third Thursday in November.

That would be Nov. 18 this year.

La Vie en Rose in Brea annually celebrates the release by offering a multi-course meal featuring Beaujolais Nouveau wines from one of France’s finest negotiants, Georges Duboeuf.

It was Duboeuf, a winegrower in the early 1980s, who had the brilliant idea of exporting the French celebration of the Beaujolais Nouveau release. The happy yearly event now is an indelible part of the U.S. wine tableau.

I’ve already been on the phone gathering my group of friends to join me at La Vie en Rose to taste the Duboeuf wine exports and enjoy once again the hospitality and food of the restaurant’s owner Louis Laulhere.

Beaujolais technically is part of Burgundy. However, it is a unique region, which it likes to emphasize. While surrounded by great chardonnay and pinot noir vineyards, the main grape of Beaujolais is gamay, which accounts for the fruit forward essence and juicy texture of these newly bottled wines.

Louis always comes up with a super menu that focuses on traditional country French cuisine. The dinner and wines are $49.50 per person, plus tax and tip.

I’d love to stop by your table during the dinner to say “hello.” Just tell your waiter to let me know where you’re sitting. La Vie en Rose: 240 S. State College Blvd. (at the edge of Brea mall), Brea; (714) 529-8333.

Papaya Hunting


I’ve been eating lots of delicious papayas from Hawaii lately.

In fact, my husband Patrick and I have decided to send some of the 10-pound packs to friends and relatives for holiday gifts. They also would make excellent corporate holiday gifts,very affordable ones at that.

I got into this by way of a guy named Grif Frost. Grif spent many years in Japan, is a sake master and used to own one of the world’s premier sake facilities. We met him when he was doing sake dinners here in the Southland.

Last year Grif sold his sake business and decided to make available to us mainlanders some of the once-unattainable first quality papayas grown in Hawaii.

Here’s the gist of it: All of the very best papayas grown in Hawaii have been going to Japan in the past because they pay a much higher price per pound than the mainland or local Hawaiian markets.

Grif goes to Japan often and noticed that the Hawaiian papayas in Tokyo were much nicer and tastier than the ones he bought locally at the farmer’s market in Hilo, Hawaii. That leaves the “seconds” to be shipped to the mainland.

Hawaiian papayas in our markets still look fine enough, but they don’t taste the same as the “pick of the crop” that goes to Japan. After Grif spoke to a Japanese friend, the two decided to set up a direct-to-consumer papaya Web store, www.papayapower.net.

This site now sells those premium Japan export papayas in 10-pound cases for $39.95. Japan pays $65 for the same case of fruit.

Papaya trees are native to Central America but now are grown in tropical regions all over the world. Hawaii has a reputation for having the perfect soil and climate for growing them. The large, yellow-orange fruit is a good source of vitamin C, folic acid and potassium.

Grif’s premium quality papayas come with a sweetness and perfection guarantee. The best fruits come in from the farms on Tuesday just slightly underripe and are shipped to Japan on Wednesday. If you order from Grif’s site, they’ll arrive at your door on Friday. They are delicious and last many days in the refrigerator or a few days at room temperature.

Grif can be reached at (808) 937-0395. You can probably catch him from 9 a.m. our time every day,that’s 5 a.m. in Hilo where he’s up catching the spectacular sunrises.

I only ask one thing: Say “hi” to Grif for me and tell him Patrick and I will be touring his papaya facilities when we are over there in February.

AT A GLANCE: JAMILLAH GARDEN

PEKING CUISINE

Address: 2512 Walnut, Tustin

Phone: (714) 838-3522

Cost: appetizers $3.25-$6.95; dinner entrees $5.75-$12.95; lunch a la carte items $5.50-$6.50