Apron, Napkin

Some linakge for the long weekend

2007-10-05T12:26:00.000-07:00

I haven't written much about this season of Top Chef. For a while, my poker game was rescheduled to Wednesday nights, and since I don't have a Tivo (my birthday is coming...hint, hint), I was forced to catch them at odd times. I did watch the finale, and I thought it was a great move on the part of the producers to pair the contestants with celebrity chefs for their final challenge. I wonder what the New York Times thinks about it, in light of this piece pointing out that celebrity chefs rarely cook anymore (at least not on screen)? (Thanks to Andy for the link.) Anyway, I thought Casey was a lead-pipe lock. I was wrong. She choked big-time in the finale, which opened the door for Hung, who put on a "See, I've got soul!" super push with his menu. But molten chocolate cake? That looked like something you could get at a Coffee Bean.

Two good recipes I tried this week that I thought I'd pass along. The first was Fried Cornmeal Shrimp with Butternut Squash Risotto. Risotto always seemed like the domain of seasoned chefs and kitchen masters. This might be because Angela Chase's dad had such a hard time making it on "My So-Called Life." I might seem like a prick right now, but I thought it was a snap. Okay, a snap might be a bit much, but it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Edan did the prep work, roasting the squash and marinating the shrimp because, like most celebrity chefs, I'm above doing the little things. After that, it was simply a matter of stirring in hot stock over and over again. Not exactly rocket science. The other recipe that turned out great was Tuscan Onion Soup, which apparently isn't up yet on Epicurious. It's a simple recipe, using white onions, chicken stock, white wine, rosemary, and a one tomato, seeded and diced. The kicker is the proscuitto crisps that go on top of the soup. It's a nice change of pace if you're tired of the French-style onion soup (but why would you be? It's so cheesy and good). Enjoy your holiday weekend, folks. Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!

From the Annals of Too Much Free Time

2007-09-25T17:11:00.000-07:00

Come these Cheez-it Coasters. I've never been big on Cheez-its, but if I were, I would absolutely spend the requisite time and money to make these babies. My coffee table is in terrible shape. (Thanks to EDAN! for the link!)

Wine for Less (or maybe a little bit more)

2007-09-20T20:10:00.000-07:00

I really like red wine. A lot. Probably too much. I probably like red wine as much as I hate reggae, which is a whole hell of a lot. The other day I found myself contemplating how much money I spend per year on red wine. I stopped when I got to the monthly figure. I vowed to cut back. But it's funny how much one day and two really good bottles of wine can change things.

After my trip to Mozza last Friday, I had a craving for Montelpulciano Quattro Mani, and I knew that Silverlake Wine carried it (It was there that I first discovered it). Now, Quattro Mani isn't that expensive ($7.50 a bottle), but once I was at the store, I couldn't stop with just one wine. I started looking around at all these bottles, most of which I'd never seen before. I usually buy wine at Trader Joe's because their prices are reasonable, and their selection is decent. But the selection is still limited, and sometimes it can get to feel stifling, like these are the only wines in the world. I'd decided a while ago that I was through with the lowest tier of TJ's wine -- the Two Buck Chuck's and what not -- and I've never regretted that decision. Spending $7 on a bottle of wine at Trader Joe's provides exponentially more value than cheeping out on the lowest of the low. Still, there are only so many wines in the $6-$8 price range that are acceptable, especially once one accounts for taste. For instance, I don't like Beaujolais ("The wine for people who don't like drinking wine!"), and Edan isn't crazy about a lot French wines, like Cote-du-Rhone, etc. You can see how this could limiting.

At the wine store, however, I found a bunch of new, exciting wines I'd never heard of, never tasted for roughly what I was willing to pay. I picked up something called a "Bistro red," which was an everything but the kitchen sink blend, called Hey Mambo. With my bottle of Quattro Mani, the total price was $18.00. Which isn't that bad. And neither was Hey Mambo. (One odd thing about Hey Mambo -- it didn't have a cork, it didn't have a synthetic cork, and it wasn't a screwtop. What held the wine in? A zork. This is the future, people. Buy stock.)

Why have I gone on this tangent? Well, the New York Times posted a list of great wines for under $10 (Thanks to Lisa for the link!). I like their list, and I've had some of them, but I do have one recommendation. They ought to publish little thumbnails of the labels next to each wine. With some of the foreign wines (Uruguayan reds, anyone?), I have trouble even finding the name. A label would be helpful. Maybe that's just me.

A Couple of Links for Monday Morning

2007-09-17T09:54:00.000-07:00

Since it's Monday morning, and I worked Saturday, I needed a little something extra to get me up and moving. I figured a few quick links might be just the thing.

Slate has a piece from Mike Steinberger about counterfeit wines, a growing problem and cause for concern amongst serious oenophiles. I felt pretty good about myself when I recognized most of the wineries he mentions in the article (Cheval Blanc, Petrus, Lefleur), but this feeling of pride dissipated as I remembered that I haven't tasted any of them. I recognize their names only because I moved hundreds of cases of fine wine last summer as part of an insane temp job (Buy me a glass of wine and I'll tell you about it sometime).
Steinberger only briefly touches on what I think is the most interesting aspect of the story: wine-lovers' insecurities about their palettes. If they couldn't tell that the '47 Petrus they sipped was a fraud, what does it say about their supposed expertise?

Ever wonder what those Beggin' Strips you give your dog taste like (or have you eaten them yourself)? The Sneeze is the source for all the foods about which you're curious, but wouldn't necessarily like to eat. Like pigs feet. And breast milk. (Thanks to Apronite Ryan for the link)

I'm not sure what's going on in this picture, but I'm pretty sure Tommy Hottpants wore this to the last MisShapes party (Thanks to Apronite Doug for the link):

Gordon Ramsey burned his balls. Hey Gordo, I feel you dawg. I don't mean that in a Randy Jackson sort of way, either.

Two Words: Um, Ewww.

2007-09-06T10:16:00.000-07:00

Regular Apronites no doubt recall my fascination with fast food advertising. Well, last night I was watching a little MTV (reruns of "America's Next Top Model" are strangely soothing) when I saw this bad boy.

What the hell is that? Who thought this up? Did they really believe that this ad would make people want to eat this Oreo monstrosity? This is part of the new breed of fast food commercials that cast bland hipsters, and attempt to cash in on the last, agonizing death throes of irony. The girl who enters at the beginning of the commercial looks like she's wearing fake hair and might be in an Emo-core band. Meanwhile, the younger hipster guy has the same haircut Willie Aames rocked on "Eight is Enough."

And that white sauce they're drizzling over the top looks more than a little like semen. Good call, Dominoes advertising team! I'm starving for Oreo Dessert Pizza now.

In Case You're Bored with Me...

2007-08-27T09:30:00.001-07:00

Our old friend, Ryan, who wrote about the many herring-based dishes of Russian cuisine for this blog, has started a new blog called Middled. Join him as he acclimates himself to life in the Midwest. Ryan is also looking for work, so help a brother out.

I Promise to be Better

2007-08-26T17:44:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted anything since June (fabulous guest posters aside). I can't really say why. Could it be the distractions of baseball season? Maybe. Soul-crushing depression? Possibly. The fact that my computer died and it took me a few weeks to convince myself that buying a laptop was an absolute necessity? Perhaps. For whatever reason, I stopped writing. And I don't mean just this blog. I stopped writing everything. Screenplays, notes to friends, emails, grocery lists. Nothing. This must change. I will make it change. Thank you, Blogger, for not deleting my blog. Thank you, good reader, for occasionally checking here to see if I've returned. I hope this post finds you well. As an apology for my months of absence, I give you several flash reviews of restaurants I've been to recently:

Intelligentsia Coffee: Located in the Sunset Junction, near the fabulous Cheese Store of Silverlake, this is the first LA outpost of the Chicago-based coffee chain. I went to the kickoff party the night before Sunset Junction (What's that? No, no, I didn't go to Sunset Junction. Why? Because it's a huge, expensive, hot, waste of time.). The joint was packed, and the coffee was free. Each cup of roasted coffee is brewed fresh as you wait (It does take a minute), and it is good. They have different roasts or beans or what have you, and they treat coffee more or less like wine, talking about "hints of blueberry on the nose." The design of the shop itself is very hip, and there's plenty of outdoor seating. Try the Iced Angeleno, which Edan has been raving about ever since the opening.

Edendale Grill: My father-in-law took me there last Monday night, after four different restaurants were either closed or deemed unacceptable. Expensive drinks, but a pleasant patio, and good enough food. I wasn't floored by the beat salad or by my Shrimp, Asparagus, Artichoke Couscous. The calamari was good, and the atmosphere and pleasant ambiance will probably bring me back again, but it was far from a home run.

Cobras & Matadors (Los Feliz location): Just as good as the one on Beverly, with more seating and wine by the glass and bottle. I'm never leaving Los Feliz again.

Scoops: Bizzarro ice cream flavors abound at this cute little shop in a very weird area off Melrose Avenue. I had Vanilla Jim Beam (yum) and Brown Bread, which was exactly what it sounds like -- like eating a loaf of pumpernickel, yet strangely good. Edan had Spiced Cheddar, which was very good as a sample but cloying after a few bites, and Vegan Cinnamon Tiramisu, which was good.

Best Fish Taco in Ensenada: Strange fish taco stand operating out of a storefront on Hillhurst. They have three items on the menu: fish taco, shrimp taco, and drinks. Cheap and yummy, on all accounts. I got the spicy mango salsa, which tasted good, but which my body greeted roughly as it would a shot of petrol. The pleasant woman running the register waited a very long time before accepting our payment. She was seriously focused on her knitting. I can see myself eating many a lunch at this place.

Alegria on Sunset: Gourmet Mexican food, with many vegetarian options dished out in a cute, but unassuming location in a strip mall with a Baskin Robbins (Somebody really ought to write about how many totally ass-kicking strip mall restaurants there are in Los Angeles. Off the top of my head, I can think of Alegria, Cafe Suanomaluong, Carousel, and Zankou Chicken. Seriously, somebody get on this already). Our group shared potato tacos, which were good, and I had a steak dish, whose name I cannot recall. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't cheap, and as we were leaving, there seemed to be a substantial wait for tables. On a Monday night.

Russia, A Real Place -- Homecoming

2007-08-23T14:05:00.000-07:00

Ryan is back again with the (perhaps?) final post in his series on Russian cuisine. Perhaps in the future he will enthrall us with tales from that other gastronomic hot-spot, Missouri:

Having supped new flavors from a southern sea, we weren’t sure how well we’d reacclimate to mayo-based salads and pickled herring. Russian cuisine is better suited to winter months when you need something that’ll stick with you, like a devoted friend. Once the temperature climbs or piddles upward, as it turns out this summer, there are a few standbys that offer relief. Though it’s no gazpacho, cold borsch can help a northern body through a hot day. The recipe is a play of raw vegetables, such as cucumbers and radishes, onions, carrots and enough beets to put some pink in your socks. It’s usually garnished with a boiled egg, parsley, dill and sour cream. Another popular chilled soup is okroshka, but its story begins with a beverage that wants description.

With the sun lingering past midnight, every other corner in St. Petersburg is now occupied by a woman dispensing drinks out of a yellow fuel tank or a great barrel that is meant to look old-timey. The presumably ancient beverage, kvass, is also bottled and sold in supermarkets, but the keg version is superior. Made from fermented bread, this summertime refreshment has a polarizing affect. Many Russians are sentinmentally bound to the sweet, soda-rye flavor, but even among their lot, some would rather dip their head in the Neva than take their bread in a glass. I enjoy it on rare occasions, but find the quality inconsistent. Bliny Domik on Kalakolnaya Street, whose staff appears almost natural in its village dress, serves a decent glass. Nonetheless, it seems a stretch to pour such a beverage into a bowl, add some cucumbers, spring onions, radishes, boiled potatoes, eggs and maybe even ham and call it soup. I admire the audacity of such a recipe, but the magic is lost on me.

As August approaches, another summer novelty appears in proximity to the enduring drink sellers in the form of onion-shaped tiger cages. Each of them is painted green, perhaps to stifle the sense of alarm they naturally inspire amongst the pedestrians. For two weeks they stand empty, during which time last summer my mother remarked, “I hope those aren’t for people.” Actually, they’re for watermelons as well as some other kind of melon that looks like a torpedo-shaped cantaloupe. So, there are alternatives to cola soup.

Having just holidayed in a region where the temperature was flirting with the thirty-five-degree mark (that’s centrigrade, so multiply by 1.8 and add 32), Natasha and I were less than overwhelmed by St. Peterburg’s tepid conditions. We decide, therefore, to whip up a heavy-hitting off-season favorite. I’m not going to get into the debate about the national origin of the cabbage roll. When I ate it in Poland, they called it gwombki (apparently translating to “little pigeons”) and it’s also rumored to be a source of pride amongst the Ukranians, who know it as holubtsi. In Russia they refer to these precious pillows as golubtsy, and I’m willing to wager that it’s their simplicity that has made them enduring. Ingredients: pork, rice, onion, and a big head of cabbage.

Once the cabbage leaves are steamed and supple and the pork has been processed in the electric meat grinder (you’ve got to pick one of those up for yourself), you mingle the rice and meat along with any other surprises your loved ones might appreciate and pretend your putting together what could be construed a low-carb dumpling.

It helps to flash fry the bottom of each kitten-sized package, ensuring a proper seal, then delicately arrange them in an oven pan for a good long bake.

The Poles often accompany this dish with a tomato-based sauce, but in our kitchen we eat golubtsy with Russia’s favorite food lubricant, sour cream. It’s best to keep two hands on each plate when serving, as these babies are quite weighty, and to breathe between bites.

Russia, A Real Place -- Hinterlands

2007-08-22T15:28:00.000-07:00

I have no way of proving this, but I think that if you asked the majority of Americans to describe Serbia and Montenegro, they would describe a gray, dreary industrial landscape. Kind of like Utica, with a Central European accent. And of course they would be wrong. Ryan and Natasha recently took a holiday in Montenegro:

Apparently the youngest independent republics in the world are Montenegro and Serbia, having been born on the same day in June2006, indicating, perhaps, that a conjunction can’t hold a nation together. I’ve never been to Serbia, but having now visited its former other-half, I pity its citizens for the loss of their Adriatic coast, though they retained the more interesting capital. Tourism in the neon-lit town of Budva had a refreshingly local feel with most people carrying themselves as natives or once-natives, though I resided with the Russians. Natasha and I also enjoyed a high level of linguistic comfort, speaking both Russian and English with the hotel staff, waiters and hawkers of beach inflatables. Serbian itself often comes across like Russian with an Italian swagger.

Though we did find one restaurant serving what any Russian would identify as a “business lunch” (pronounced, beezniece lanch), meaning chicken soup, shredded cabbage salad, a meat and starch combination, and a beverage for three euro, Montenegrin cuisine happily failed to resemble the things we eat back “home.”

Once you travel beyond the sickly luminance of Budva’s strip and the hum of its blown out club speakers, your attention can play between the very blue sea and the arid mountains, beyond which diligent people are running vineyards and harvesting the honey that the locals dab on their donuts. We stayed in a dinky town called Rafaelovich, something like Budva’s half-corrupted, but still honest cousin. In the mornings I jogged along the water past stacked beach chairs and umbrellas and more than one café advertising pizza dressed with ketchup. The final outpost was a little bar being built by an old man with a hammer and an axe. After that, the beach got rockier and the ruins of some early-twentieth century resort (cement slabs and a few aquamarine tiles) peeked out amongst the shrubs. On the second morning, I noticed a doorway set in the foliage and a sign that read, “Zoff’s Fish Bar.” Natasha and I returned that evening, armed for hunger and disappointment.

The set up was simple with no more than four tables under a palm-leaf roof and an open kitchen. A cement patio went right to the water where an old woman, who turned out to be Zoff’s mother, was lounging in topless repose. Our waiter (a guy in swim trunks) helped us through the menu and we ended up with calamari and some kind of white fish that was never translated. The seafood was seasoned simply with garlic and served with eggplant, all of which were grilled by Zoff himself, who stood in his unbuttoned tropical shirt, blowing kisses to Natasha throughout most of our meal.

We came back twice after that, treating ourselves to the lobster and the sea bass, with the latter winning Natasha’s vote for best meal of trip. At the end of our final visit, Zoff joined our table and provided his abridged life story in labored English and some homemade wine that must’ve scored an alcohol content of around twenty percent. Though he was openly cozy with Natasha, I liked Zoff. For eleven years, he’s only been serving fish that he or the two Bosnian refugees that he employs have caught themselves. He believes a good dinner should span several hours and considers all of his customers personal friends. I’ve never been to a better restaurant.

Did You See Me on Good Morning America This Morning?

2007-06-29T15:28:00.000-07:00

I'm not even sure if the spot ran or not, but I was interviewed outside my local Albertsons about the recall of Veggie Booty. I told them I haven't eaten Veggie Booty in years, so it looks like I dodged the salmonella bullet again. I did express growing concern (that's news talk) about the number of food recalls. I also asked why Americans eat so much processed food. Then I took my bacon home to eat. No, I wasn't being interviewed because I am a food blogger of high regard (who posts as many as two times a week!), they just grabbed me leaving the store. I was wearing flip-flops. I meant to watch the show this morning, but then I slept in, and when I turned it on, they were doing one of those awful concert in the park type things with Bon Jovi or Seal or some other musical act I can't stand, so I turned it off.

On a related note, no more Chinese farm-raised shrimp, catfish, eel, basa, or dace for you!

The Village Idiot

2007-06-26T11:31:00.000-07:00

For my father-in-law's birthday, Edan and I took him to one of the newer restaurants in his neighborhood, The Village Idiot. The Village Idiot serves pub food -- bangers and mash, fish and chips, etc. -- along with pints of Boddingtons and some local brew from the Craftsman Brewing Company, a local Pasadena microbrewery. I'd heard good chatter on the food blogs ever since the VI opened in the old Chianti space last January. As if I needed further encouragement to try it, Jonathan Gold recently named it one of his 99 Essential Los Angeles restaurants.

The VI is spacious, with high ceilings, dark, black wood, and exposed beams. The south side of the restaurant features large windows that open to the street, giving diners a view of the sort of people who frequent Melrose Avenue. This is a bit of a double-edged sword, but it does give the rest of the place a lot of natural light and a pleasant breeze -- nothing to scoff at in a place that has a partially exposed kitchen. I called on Saturday afternoon to book a table, but was turned away, as the VI doesn't accept reservations. Because I am a professional worrier, I was certain we'd have to stand at the bar for an hour Sunday night. Not so. We didn't get a coveted window booth, but we were seated at a table right away. On a Saturday night, I could see waiting a while for a table, but there's always the bar.

The menu is pretty upscale for bar food -- butter lettuce salads and ale-steamed mussels -- but most of the items are some variation on what you'd find at a typical pub. We ordered a romaine salad with caramelized red onions and a parmesan crisp, as well as the aforementioned butter lettuce salad, which included granny smith apples, walnuts and bleu cheese. Both salads were good, but the romaine was clearly superior. Edan can't stop thinking about it. We also ordered the ale-steamed mussels (regular readers should know that Edan can't pass up a good mussel dish, despite Anthony Bourdain's warnings). Aside from the large serving (there were more than enough mussels for the three of us) and the tasty sourdough "mops" (croûtons), the dish was forgettable. Not as tasty as the mussels we make at home, but not bad, either.

For entrees, Bob got the cornmeal-crusted catfish, served with black eyed peas and greens. Edan got the burger (with a slice of Gruyeres) and fries, and I got pork sausages over mashed potatoes. My dish was good. Very reminiscent of the sausages and wine I like to make in the wintertime. The sausages themselves were nothing special (Again, why is it so hard to get really good sausage?), but the red wine sauce was quite good. I tried Edan's burger, and I thought it was great. Very tender meat, cooked exactly as she ordered, and a light, fluffy bun. The fries were fries -- nothing more, nothing less (well, maybe a little less). They were a bit like In-N-Out fries -- very airy, but sort of hollow at the same time. The catfish, which came with a spicy andouille sausage and tomato sauce on the side, looked great. Both Bob and Edan thought it was good.

Since we were celebrating, I demanded we get dessert. The best thing on the menu seemed to be the chocolate chip cookie with a scoop of almond-fig gelato. The cookie was as big as a plate, and served warm. Other than the romaine salad, it was the best thing I tasted all night. The cookie was so rich that the gelato was very much a necessity to temper it a bit.

The Village Idiot would be a great place to grab lunch or an afternoon beer while you're out looking for vintage sneakers or a pair of spiked, black leather thigh-high boots on Melrose. Grab a booth by the windows, if you can, and enjoy a pint of something cold. I'm not sure I'd recommend it as a dinner destination, per se. The atmosphere was pleasantly casual, but as we were leaving it was filling up with folks at the bar, and getting pretty loud. For a casual dinner, though, it was great.

Upstate

2007-06-21T16:51:00.000-07:00

Upstate New York doesn't exactly have a signature dish. Unless you count salt potatoes, which, for those who don't know, are small potatoes cooked in enough salt to pickle a horse. They are quite good, but if eaten too often they will burn the taste buds off your tongue. I didn't have any salt potatoes on my return trip to Upstate. Growing up, I ate a lot of Italian sausage. Good, spicy sausage, packed with fennel. I figured this type of sausage was common everywhere. It wasn't until I moved to the Midwest that I discovered that we in Upstate had something special on our hands. The night Edan and I arrived we had grilled sausage and peppers. It was the perfect welcome home, even though my father's twenty year old grill has only one hot spot left, and it's roughly the temperature of the sun.

For our second dinner, we drove into the big city -- Syracuse. Another long-standing Brown family tradition is the trip to Cosmos Pizzeria on Marshall Street. A popular campus pizza place for about as long as Syracuse University has existed, Cosmos serves something like New York style pizza. The crust is fairly thin, but not crisp, and the sauce is sweet, with a fair amount of oregano. It's the best sauce I've ever tasted, and other than getting our wings at the same time as our pizzas, I had no complaints about the meal.

After two days of lounging about, doing laundry, and walking my parents' dog, Talulah, Saturday arrived, and we all headed to the Finger Lakes for a little wine tasting. I know what you're saying, Wine tasting? In Upstate New York? Well, yes. Despite what must be the shortest growing season of any wine region (unless there's some Siberian Sauternes being produced that I don't know about), the Finger Lakes turns out some very fine wine. Almost all of it is white (they make some reds, but the weather really prohibits much in the way of good reds), but it's not bad.

For lunch, we met my friend Lucia, who happens to live on the coast of Seneca Lake. She knew of a little cafe a few miles from her house. I wish I could remember the name (I'm almost certain it was Full Moon Cafe, or maybe Blue Moon Cafe), but it was very quaint and very tasty. I had a hot roast beef sandwich with grilled onions, and we all split some cookies afterwards. If you ever find yourself on the East coast of Seneca Lake, I highly recommend it.

With our bellies full, we were ready to do some serious tasting of wine. The first winery we stopped at was called Lakewood Vineyards. We had a free tasting of some good dry wines, some white and some red. The highlights were definitely the Pinot Gris, which was a perfect summer afternoon wine, and the longstem red. We tried their Pinot Noir, which was bad. It tasted a little like wood, and not in a good way.

The second stop on our wine extravaganza was Glenora Wine Cellars, a bigger winery that initially reminded me of Frass Canyon, from Sideways. Thankfully, their wine was up to snuff. We went on a tour of the winery, where they showed us the oak barrels in which the wine ages, and the expensive and complicated piece of Italian machinery they use to bottle the wine. After the tour, we sampled a good selection of wines, including two Chardonays, one aged exclusively in oak and the other aged in stainless steel then finished in oak. I preferred the oakier Chardonay, which probably means I'm a heathen. Also at Glenora we saw a bachelorette party, most of whom looked fairly sauced. One of the girls was wearing a dress so tight I could see her digesting the wine after she drank it. Just thought I'd share.

In Syracuse, we ate dinner at a tapas place called Dante's. The atmosphere was cozy, lots of exposed brick, and a little basement area that reminded me of a European restaurant. The tapas was mostly good, although too many dishes were served in one large piece, making sharing them difficult. At dinner, we talked about a lot of things, including Syracuse food critic Yolanda Wright, who once reviewed the Olive Garden.

I probably gained five pounds on this trip, despite all the walking I did in New York. We lucked out with the weather, we didn't miss any of our flights or trains (despite Amtrak and American Airlines best efforts), and I'd say we lucked out on the food, too. Except for Les Halles.

New York, and other things

2007-06-20T13:26:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted here in quite a while. I'd like to say I was phenomenally busy, but that wouldn't be true. The truth is that I went into semi-electronic isolation. I checked my email, and that was it. No more blogs, no more message boards (except the baseball related ones...it is the season after all), no more anything, really. You know what? It was kind of refreshing to not see Britney Spears' genitalia for a few weeks. I think I'm going to keep it up. But that doesn't mean I haven't been cooking and eating.

Edan and I went to New York City for a few days, and then up to visit my folks upstate. In the city, we stayed at my sisters' place in Brooklyn. It was very cute, and quite comfortable, and a good spot to jump off to all the things we wanted to see and do and eat. The first order of business for me was to get a bagel, a real New York bagel. Science has put a man on the moon, but it hasn't figured out how to make a New York bagel in Los Angeles. I guess it's the water. At any rate, I wanted a bagel. With the nearest Ess-a-Bagel several trains away, my Brooklyn tour guide, Doug, suggested I try a place called La Bagel Delight. I ordered my usual--an everything with plain cream cheese--and I was impressed. I would rank La Bagel Delight behind Ess-a-Bagel, but a little ahead of H&H, another bagel shop by which many a New Yorker swears. La Bagel Delight features large bagels, with the perfectly fluffy insides that are so hard to get right (it's a popular misconception that bagels should be chewy), and plenty of cream cheese. All in all, it was a perfect way to start my New York vacation, especially because I remembered to order my coffee black (many times I've forgotten to specify and gotten a cup full of cream and sugar).

After a day of shopping and walking around Brooklyn, Edan, Doug, my sister, and I headed to Manhattan for dinner at Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles. Now, you know I'm a Bourdain guy. I love his writing, he's great when he's on "Top Chef," and his cookbook is really well designed. So it pains me to say the meal I had at Les Halles sucked. We went to the one on Park Avenue. Maybe the other one is better. Our reservation was for 7pm, and the place was more or less empty. It's a big place, which is OK, but as Edan said, it feels a little like a restaurant at Disneyland. It's like a French TGIFridays, playing loud American pop music to tourists in shorts and golf shirts. Of course, we were tourists, too, but I never wear shorts, and I told Doug he couldn't wear his golf shirt. I know this is what the old-time brasseries of France were like -- working men at the end of their shifts sitting next to artists, etc. -- but I think I wanted a slightly more intimate environment...and maybe some damn accordion music. Despite the lousy ambiance, I was still willing to give the food a chance. Edan and I split the pate de champagne, while Doug had French onion soup (I tried a bite, and it was good, but frankly, I think it was better when I made Bourdain's recipe at home...this would be a theme for the night). The pate was pate, good but unspectacular. I wanted steak au poivre, while Edan and Stephanie both got onglette with shallot sauce. Doug got a chicken dish that I didn't try. I thought Edan's steak was terrific -- flavorful, tender, and with a very tasty sauce--but she felt it was undercooked (the waiter may have had trouble hearing her over the Ashlee Simpson song blaring from the speakers). My steak was another story entirely. It was cooked correctly and the sauce was good enough, but it was so damn tough that I burned more calories cutting it and chewing it than I gained through eating it. Seriously. Should I have sent it back? Probably, but I'm no good with confrontations. The fries -- which the cookbook touts as possibly the best in New York -- were not sensational. Another of life's tiny tragedies. Was it the worst meal I've ever had? No. Was it disappointing? Of course. There are few things in life worse than eating at a restaurant you've been dying to try, and then wishing you'd gone someplace else, but that's what happened.

The next day, I woke determined to put eat better than the day before. After another morning in Park Slope (and a decent pain au chocolate at a little bakery), Edan and I set out for some shopping in Soho. I wanted to get a pair of jeans, so I could finally be the sort of person who owns two pairs of jeans at one time. Instead, Edan got a pair of jeans. This always happens. But I digress. After buying a new pair of Converse and wandering aimlessly for an hour or so, Edan and I stumbled onto something truly wonderful -- the Vosges chocolate shop. For those who don't know, Vosges makes all sorts of incredible chocolate bars. Infused with things like ancho chilies, sweet curry powder, and wasabi, Vosges bars are the only chocolate bars I've had that approach gourmet status. Moments after we entered the store -- a sleek, boutique style shop where chocolates sat in a display case like jewels -- an intense thunderstorm broke over the city. It couldn't have been better timing. Edan and I ordered a hot chocolate with cinnamon and chili, and sat and watched people huddle under the scaffolding in front of the Burberry store. Since the rain didn't let up for some time, we got a few truffles as well -- one with sweet curry and coconut, and one with anise seed. Wow.

After our chocolate lunch, we road the subway up to Artisanal, a mecca of sorts for cheese lovers. Edan scoped out the selection of cheeses, and we sat at the bar and enjoyed a very young raw Camembert (so young, in fact, that it may have been illegal), an excellent Benedictine bleu, and a goat cheese called Valencay. I had a glass of Rioja. It was perfect.

For dinner, we met an old college friend of mine, Roscoe, and his girlfriend Susan at a place in Brooklyn called Melt. Roscoe chose the place, and he chose well. Melt features a Tuesday tasting menu for only $20 (in LA, it would've been twice as much). To start, we all shared a few orders of duck confit spring rolls, which were every bit as good as crack. The first course was a sugar snap pea soup, which was light and foamy, and absolutely perfect for a hot summer night. The second course, I thought, was even better than the first. A seared scallop next to a little frisee salad. The only disappointment was the final course, a pork cutlet served in a sauce I thought was a touch too salty. Otherwise, a terrific meal, and one that featured great conversation about everything from sustainable farming to Scientology. Roscoe made sure they kept the wine flowing, which didn't hurt, and we all had a great time.

Tomorrow, I will write a little bit about the second half of our trip, and some of the terrific things we ate in Upstate. Right now, I have to start dinner (salmon in a citrus sauce, with baby carrots roasted in honey and orange juice).

Food Miles and Sustainability

2007-05-24T12:07:00.000-07:00

Last week the Monterey Bay Aquarium hosted its 2nd annual Sustainable Foods Institute panel about what 'sustainable' actually means. Food writers, organic farmers, and even a few folks from Walmart participated in panels on the future of food production, both on land and at sea. With an official government definition and enforceable guidelines about what 'organic' means, sustainability is destined to be the next hot button issue. But can we ever completely and absolutely define sustainability? Some are skeptical:

"Sustainability is a term like truth or beauty," said Fred Kirschenmann, a senior fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. "We struggle but never get there." It means something different to different communities. "When asked if my farm is sustainable, I say, no," he said. "We're working on it. I have to keep changing, keep trying new things, keep adjusting.

"Sustainability is not something we can accomplish and be done with it. It is a matter of conscience, a moral commitment to a way to live," Kirschenmann told the group. Without question, the Earth's energy supply will dwindle, water resources will shift and the climate will change. "If we are serious about sustainability," he said, "we've got to think about it in [the context of] this future."

Tangentially, yet heavily related to sustainability is the term "food miles." Food miles is "a calculation of the environmental costs of transporting food long distances." Michael Pollan discusses this concept in The Omnivore's Dilemma, saying that when you eat that organic asparagus you buy from Whole Foods in January, you are consuming a fair amount of petroleum, as well. That's bound to make your pee stink.

Most people, I think, intuitively grasp this concept when it comes to produce and meat, but what about processed foods? Are you willing to give up that bottle of San Pellegrino or that sixer of Czech beer you love at Trader Joe's? How about French wine? And how the hell are you supposed to find locally grown coffee? I mean, here's a product that celebrates that it's Costa Rican or Ethiopian. A few years ago, some bloggers I was reading at the time were participating in the Eat Local Challenge. There were exceptions made in the challenge for food products not indigenous to the local geography. Things like coffee, chocolate, and wine could be brought in from far off locals, just as some food from the local region would undoubtedly be shipped out to places where they don't have Vermont maple syrup or whatever it is your area produces. This still leaves things like San Pellegrino on the outs. Maybe that's the price we have to pay for reducing our ecological footprint. I'll be honest -- I'm not sure I'm ready to become a food miles purist. I'd like to be, but it seems like a big sacrifice. So I put the question to you. How far is too far when it comes to eating locally? What are you willing to sacrifice, and what will they have to pry from your cold dead hands, to borrow a phrase from our gun-toting brethren?

How do You Roast a Chicken?

2007-05-23T13:17:00.000-07:00

As it says in the Bible, "There are many ways to light Europe." So, too, are there many ways to roast a chicken. For a few years now, Edan and I have been experimenting with different roasting techniques and ingredients, trying to find the perfect roast bird. We started off using Edan's family's recipe, which calls for an incredible amount of salt, garlic slipped under the skin, and some lemon juice (stuffing the lemons into the cavity of the bird, of course). After reading Anthony Bourdain's constant warnings not to break the skin of the chicken, we stopped cutting little slits for the garlic. We tried Bourdain's recipe, which has butter, onions, garlic, and white wine, and it was good, but I missed the lemon juice. In the past few months, we've set out on our own, taking a little hints from one recipe while stealing ingredients from another. Once, I put rosemary, sage, and thyme all over the chicken (not bad), while another time, I filled the cavity with raw chorizo (not good, the chorizo never cooked). Last night, I think, was about the best we've done (although we can do better).

We started by squeezing some a lemon all over the chicken, thoroughly soaking it in the juice. Then we salted the shit out of the bird (this is imperative; the first time I made this recipe alone, Edan told me, "You'll think it's too much salt, but it isn't."), and gave it a good whack with fresh crushed pepper, as well. Next, we took some garlic and slipped it under the skin (being careful not to tear or cut the skin). Into the cavity went the lemon halves, the garlic, and some salt and pepper. Edan had gotten a big, thick piece of prosciutto from her work, one that was too thick to eat on a sandwich, so we chopped it up into little cubes, sprinkled some atop the bird, and threw the rest into the cavity (Isn't it great eating food that has a body cavity? Mmm.). Finally, we stuffed a few whole sprigs of rosemary into the chicken and trussed it.

We cooked the chicken for 30 minutes at 375, turning it several times so that it would cook evenly. After the 30 minutes, I jacked the oven up to 450, poured about 3/4 cup of white wine over the bird, and cooked it for another 30-35 minutes. What resulted was a terrific blend of our old salt/garlic/lemon recipe, Anthony Bourdain's classic roast chicken recipe, and some unique flavor from the prosciutto. The only change I would make is to sprinkle some fresh rosemary over the bird, rather than just stuffing it into the cavity. There really wasn't much rosemary flavor at all.

Which brings me to the titular question -- how do you roast a chicken? What great tips do you have? What strange and exotic ingredients do you use?

(I wish I had better pictures for you, but they all came out blurry; I need a better camera. You'll have to trust me when I say that the chicken looked like the hand of God descending to rub my belly.)

How is Culinary School Like Film School?

2007-05-08T10:29:00.000-07:00

I've often wondered how recent graduates of culinary schools make ends meet. You pay something like $60,000 to go to culinary school and graduate to a physically demanding job making $10.50 an hour (and it's invariably on the night-shift, to boot). According to today's New York Times, the answer is simple -- they don't make ends meet. Culinary school grads -- their numbers ever ballooning thanks to the celebrity chef phenomenon and the Food Network -- are defaulting on student loans at a rate of 11%, more than twice the national average:

Although the restaurant industry is expected to create two million new jobs in the next decade, the Department of Labor reports that in 2005, the latest year for which data were available, the average hourly wage for a restaurant cook was $9.86.
“The problem isn’t getting a job, the problem is getting a high-paying job,” said Susan Sykes Hendee, a dean at Baltimore International College and a member of the American Culinary Federation Foundation Accrediting Commission, which accredits many culinary schools...
Many culinary students come from blue-collar families and do not have the financial experience to navigate the world of college costs, Ms. Sykes Hendee said. “The majority of students are the first people going to college in their families,” she said. “It’s not the rich and famous going to culinary school.”

Once I got my haircut at a fancy barbershop in Los Angeles, and the woman cutting it had gone to some high-end cosmetology institute. She said she owed more than $20,000 from that experience. In her words, "That's a lot of $10 haircuts." I tipped her well.

As a film school graduate, I can sympathize with people swimming in debt with no real prospects of getting out, short of exceptional professional success. It can make you feel hopeless. I'd tell anyone considering going to film school to work on a few movie sets to make sure they enjoy it. Then I'd ask how they are at real politik, since that's the most important skill necessary to earn a living in the film industry. Then I'd tell them that it is the equivalent of going to a $100,000 trade school to learn a trade that nobody really needs. You're not learning something useful, like how to perform ligament transfer surgery, or how to probate a will. People actually need someone who knows how to do those things, and there's no (legal) way to learn how without going to medical school or law school. Anybody can make a film, even a good one. In other words, when you get out of medical school or law school and you pass your board exams, you are a doctor or a lawyer, and you have the marketable skills necessary to pay back $130,000 worth of student loan debt. When you get out of film school, you are merely unemployed and in debt. You might be a filmmaker, but then again, you might have been one before you started school.

Since my experience only applies in an analogous way, I recommend that anybody considering culinary school read David Lebovitz' fine post on the subject.

(Thanks to Apronite Kiki for the link. Kiki!)

Providence

2007-05-07T15:14:00.000-07:00

Friday was my six-month wedding anniversary, meaning that I've been married five and a half months longer than most celebrities. Edan and I had been preparing for the anniversary for a while now, and we'd decided that Providence would be the restaurant of choice for this particular celebration. We'd read rave reviews on Chowhound and the LA Times, reviews calling Providence "the most ambitious new restaurant to open in Hollywood in a long, long time," and we had to go. Luckily, we'd been saving. Since moving into our apartment we've been dropping any spare change we have into a mason jar. After about eight months, it was pretty full. $75 dollars full, it turned out. This was good, since our meal at Providence was not to be cheap. What it would be was an experience that I won't soon forget.

Providence sits on an unassuming block of Melrose Avenue, farther east than the more fashionable section where you can buy leather chaps and vintage T-shirts. I've passed it many times and never even knew it was a restaurant. Hard wood slats form a sort of exoskeleton around the building, and a small, very subtle sign announces that this is, in fact, Providence. Inside, the restaurant is divided into several small rooms, each one fitting a half dozen tables. The room they seated us in featured a view of the impressive wine cellar. The ceiling of the room had a series of flat glass lamps overlapping one another that I thought vaguely resembled the hull of a ship seen from beneath (not that I've ever seen the hull of a ship from beneath, but you know what I mean). This effect was enhanced by small paper "barnacles" that haphazardly covered the upper parts of the walls and ceiling. The subtle "under the sea" theme continued on the tabletop, as a candle nestled in a bed of "sea anemone," small orange and red beads on wire strands. It was a little elementary school art project-ish, but if you squinted, it was beautiful.

Once seated, the sommelier (a dead ringer for Ewan McGregor) came and helped us each choose a wine we would like. I got a glass of nebbiola from Paso Robles that he described as having subtle Coca Cola tones. Finally, somebody understands what I really want from a wine. Edan got a malbec that was very fruity (We tend to have different tastes in wine, but I sipped hers and like it as well).

The menu at Providence is divided into a tasting menu, a section of market specials, and then the the main menu, which has appetizers and main courses. While the tasting menu looked very tempting, we ended up choosing a main course each, and two appetizers. Before any of our food arrived, they brought us the amuse bouche, Mexican shrimp in creme fraiche with tiny cubes of mango gelatin accompanied by a tiny beer stein of blood orange yogurt and champagne foam. The blood orange yogurt was a little sweet for before dinner, but it was still a very good taste that pointed towards a good meal to come. Another good sign was the bread, which was warm and fresh and came with excellent butter and sea salt. Our first appetizer was the kampachi, which came centered on the plate surrounded by a soy gel lime espuma and tiny balls of avocado shaped like little peas. This is one meal I wish I'd taken photos of because the visual component of it was so important. Each dish as it came out looked like a work of art. It's nice to eat a meal like this and be reminded that food can be as appealing to the eye as it is to the tongue...which is the long way to saying, the kampachi tasted as good as it looked.

Next out was the chowda (sic), which came unassembled. The server placed a bowl before us, containing a handful of chunks of potato, clams, diced carrots, and slivers of bacon. She then produced a carafe of creamy clam broth and poured it over the veggies and clams, creating a steaming hot soup as we watched. At the risk of sounding like a total rube, it was frickin' cool. And the chowder was the best I've ever had. As Edan pointed out, the veggies and bacon were so much crispier than if they'd been stewing in the broth the whole time. I've never tasted anything quite like it.

For a main course, Edan got a Hawaiian tuna dish with purple haze carrots and vadouvan butter, while I had the Japanese tai snapper, cooked with sweet peppers, cipollini onions, and chorizo, with a chorizo espuma (that's chorizo foam, for those scoring at home). The snapper was seared, skin side down, creating a crispy crust that had the consistency of the hard sugar atop creme brulee. It cracked apart when I put my fork to it, revealing an incredibly tasty, buttery white fish. Edan's tuna had a consistency I've never seen in a piece of fish. It almost looked like a piece of beef. Cooked rare, it was perfectly smooth and beautiful in its simplicity. It was just a tad salty, and Edan felt the vadouvan butter was wasted (she called it a visual pun, a little green pile like the wasabi you'd get at a sushi place), but it was still an exceptional dish.

Originally, we'd thought we might skip dessert, since that's usually the easiest way to shave a few bucks off an expensive dinner tab, but we saw the menu anyway. You can probably guess that we couldn't resist getting something. I got a glass of calvados, and we split the milk chocolate-whiskey panna cotta, a cookie crumble topping, and coconut raviolo. Let's say I'm glad we did. In the end, unless there's nothing to your liking on the menu, it's always better to stay for dessert at a really nice restaurant. It completes the meal the way it was meant to be completed. When the server brought our check, it came with some petite fours, as well, which is a nice touch. Including tax and tip, we ended up spending $210, which ain't cheap. We each had a glass of wine. I had a drink after dinner, and we got dessert. Was it worth it? Absolutely. The visual artistry of the food at Providence was unlike anything I'd seen, and the flavors and textures were so complex, I swear I'm still tasting them now.

Russia -- A Real Place 3: Homefried Food

2007-05-01T10:02:00.000-07:00

Here's the third in our continuing series on the wonder that is Russian cuisine:

In uninspired times, it’s best to stick with the basics—efficiency, sustenance, food in patty form. This needn’t be a death sentence for the connoisseur in you, the one sulking in the corner of your consciousness as you plunge a fry into mayonnaise or sip your cola through a licorice straw. Someone’s grandmother pushed you getting onto the metro, you saw a pregnant dog sprawled on the pavement, the nation’s leader attended a “no-rules” cage match with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Silvio Berlusconi while protesters were mauled in the street. You need a meal you can cradle in your hands.

Let’s complete the pancake trinity. In fact, this sphere of the Russian diet is an elegant multi-pointed star, but bliny, oladi and seerniki are empresses supreme. Before bowing under the third sister’s heavy touch, it’s necessary to delve deeper into dairy. I’ve mentioned kefir, the falsetto in oladi’s song, but there’s also tan, another digestive ally that I find tongue-numbingly salty. Open-mindedness aside, that stuff is gross. Smetana is numero uno. When I translated it as “sour cream” for some of my students, they were justifiably appalled. Smetana is light and simple in flavor, more than a guest-star on taco night. Russians dollop it into soup and tomato, cucumber and radish salads freshened with dill. Tvorog, on the other hand, is “curd” according to my dictionary. Sometimes it’s like cottage cheese, but it can also be sweet, packaged like cream cheese, fruit-flecked and eaten on its own, on a little plate, with a little spoon, topped with smetana, so I don’t know what that is. Anyway, the cottage cheese version is the launch pad for a seerniki wakeup call and looks like this:

The recipe is easy and best forgotten before eating. Eggs, sugar, salt and flour. Whip it into a curdy batter and fry in thick blobs (sorry, I’m still working on the foodie lexicon). Afterwards it will be golden and good, and I bet you can guess what to dress it up with...duh...smetana! This is no pre-jog snack.

Ready for lunch? Another classic you might nestle with your nose were you some furry animal fattening for winter is the cutlet. I’ve been eating them all week, so I’ll now try to resurrect the wild pleasure with which I anticipated that first Sunday serving. Having beheld the keystone in the triumphal arch of Russian cuisine, I wonder if we didn’t sell ourselves short crowning the ground beef patty our national mascot. The cutlet is more of a concept than a physical entity, an equation flexible enough to allow fish as a potential x-variable. We happened to choose regular-old pork, which went into the electric meat grinder/food processor (What, you don’t have one?), along with some onion, milk-soaked bread, and salo (don’t ask). Egg is essential, but only after cutlet consistency has been achieved. Now fry it, son!

Maybe you prefer some clearer semblance of nature’s design in the food you eat. But who will save us in that cold final hour? Hot dogs?

--Ryan

Tuesday Linky Goodness

2007-04-17T11:33:00.000-07:00

Some big doings yesterday and today in the world of food:

The Food Network had its inaugural Food Network Awards. Apparently they weren't a big hit. Anthony Boudrain was horrified. I didn't watch them. Because I have a life...OK, you caught me. I was watching "The Bachelor: Officer and Gentleman." Edan and I played this drinking game wherein you take a swig of whiskey every time someone says "connection," "journey," "decision," or "love." I was faced by the end. Next week, I think we'll sub out journey for "here for the right reasons," since that seems to be a very big deal this year.
Jonathan Gold, food writer for LA Weekly, won the Pulitzer Prize for Outstanding Criticism. It's a big deal, since he is the first food critic to win the award. He celebrated by drinking alcohol from an enormous glass. (For a complete rundown on the Pulitzers, check out The Millions.)
Speaking of The Millions, there's a post up about Cooked, Jeff Henderson's memoir about learning to cook in a prison kitchen.
I have to admit that I stole a joke from Edan. In my fast food ad post, I said that the badonkadonk butt wasn't a bad thing, and I stand by that, but Edan actually pointed that out first. As a mea culpa, here's a video of Jamie Foxx singing his Tennis Ball song at the ESPYs. Enjoy.

Man I hope Jamie Foxx doesn't become the black Tom Hanks. You know, an actor who chooses only the most serious roles while saving all of his comedy for award shows. It would be a shame.

Breaking News! Mike Midgley Opens Catering Business, uses "Da" instead of Definite Article

2007-04-16T13:55:00.000-07:00

Mike Midgley, my favorite contestant from "Top Chef: Season 2," has opened a catering business called Midgley Catering. On his website, you can find a brief Q&A with the man himself, as well as some very good-looking recipes. This is the sort of insider info I'm privy to as one of Mike's MySpace friends.

Real Food for Less

2007-04-16T13:17:00.000-07:00

Ever hear stories about people who couldn't pay their restaurant tab and had to wash dishes to make up for it? Apparently, it really happens. In the LA Times today is an article about the SAME Cafe (the name is an acronym that stands for So All May Eat), a Denver restaurant that serves good food on a "pay what you can" system. The restaurant, which serves 2 soups, 2 salads, and 2 kinds of gourmet pizzas everyday, uses seasonal ingredients and offers food to anyone, regardless of how much money they have in their pockets. If the patron doesn't have a dime to his name, he can pay for his meal by working for a while in the cafe, washing dishes, wiping down tables, or mopping the floor. Brad and Libby Birky, the owners of the cafe, manage to make it work with some unorthodox methods:

To curtail waste, the Birkys don't set portions for their food. Customers take plates from a stack by the entrance and tell Brad how to fill them: a taste of the couscous with olives and feta cheese, a full bowl of the creamy squash soup, a thin wedge of the pear-and-gorgonzola pizza. They are always welcome back for seconds.

What strikes me about this concept isn't just that poor people are getting a meal, but that they're getting a good meal, full of nutritional value and flavor. Edan and I were talking about this just yesterday, noting that, too often, the only food available to lower-income families is fast food or junk food. Here, for once, is a place that not only presents good food, it also offers varying portion sizes for varying budgets. If only this had been around back when Chris Rock was hungry for ribs.

Fast Food Ads: The Good, the Bad, and The Absolutely Horrible

2007-04-12T12:51:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I watched the first couple of rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament. In addition to wearing a deep groove in my couch, I was subjected to hour upon hour of ridiculous advertisements for everything from cars to insurance to underwear. While nothing could top the surreal terror of the Hanes underwear campaign that features Michael Jordan and Kevin Bacon inexplicably cohabitating (Huh? Do these guys even know each other? And what about their families? Really weird), the fast food commercials left the deepest scar on my psyche. Each one has its own problems. Let's break them down one by one (most of these are still airing, so you can probably see them tonight on prime time or during the sporting event of your choosing).

McDonalds

Mickey Ds is unveiling a new third-pounder burger made from Angus beef. A couple of things interest me here. The first is the rise of the Angus brand of beef, a topic too large to tackle in a post about television commercials. Surely you've noticed that, all of a sudden, the meat in the burger you are eating is branded. This is a fairly recent phenomenon, and I expect it to grow. I can't wait for the Neiman Ranch pork sandwich to debut at Burger King. The bottom line is that, while Angus beef is a high quality brand of beef, it isn't some exotic gourmet meat. Its rise is largely the product of a successful branding campaign. The second interesting thing about the McDonalds commercials is that they have chosen Southern California as a test market. When Edan saw the ad, she said, "I guess if it sells here they figure it will sell anywhere." This represents the prevailing national attitude about California, namely that we eat better than people in, say, Missouri. This is not entirely true. While there is a segment of the population that has popularized sandwiches with sprouts on them (these are the people to blame when you get a slice of avocado on your club sandwich), there are also more fast food joints in LA than anywhere I've been. Tons of taco stands, tons of old school burger places (like Tommy's), all of the national chains, and a bunch of big fast food chains that don't necessarily have outposts on the east coast (Jack in the Box, In-N-Out, Baja Fresh). Not to mention a million places that offer both donuts and Chinese food (a combination I'd never seen until moving west of the Mississippi). What was McDonalds attempting to accomplish by testing the burger in the SoCal market? I'm not sure. My guess is that Southern California, with its racial, economic, and ethnic diversity, offers a fairly realistic cross section of the American population as a whole (but that's just a guess). As for the ads themselves, they were among the least offensive of the bunch, despite one that included three idiots doing the worst Boston accent since those Jimmy Fallon SNL skits. Why is McDonalds introducing a 1/3 pounder? Doesn't this go against the grain in a society where so many people want (and need) to lose weight? Will it be successful or is Bill Maher right when he says Americans are too dumb to realize a third of a pound is bigger than a quarter of a pound?

Jack in the Box

I'm probably the only one who feels this way, but I can't stand the Jack in the Box advertising campaign (for those of you who live in a Jack in the Box-free zone, I'll summarize: Jack, a guy with a huge clown head, is CEO of the actual Jack in the Box restaurant chain). I don't like Jack. He thinks he's the smartest guy in the room, and everybody else is an idiot. In most of the ads, he's so snarky, I find it hard to believe nobody had sued his ass for discrimination or workplace harassment or something like that. And his wife is always portrayed as a closet sexpot suburban Stepford wife (Ooh, I hate that!). Also, if he has a giant clown head, and his wife has a regular human head, how does that work? Why does his kid have a smaller clown head? Shouldn't he have a grotesque half-clown, half-human head? How did she give birth to him? It must've been a cesarean. I know I'm the only one who thinks about these things. I have a problem. The other thing I hate about Jack in the Box is their "everything and the kitchen sink" approach to menu construction. I don't know about you, but something is wrong with a place that has fried chicken, pizza, tacos, burgers, and fancy faux-gourmet ciabatta bread sandwiches. Pick something and stick with it, Jack.

Carl's Jr. (or Hardees, depending on where you live)

Now we're getting to the heart of the matter. Carl's Jr. has always been known for their vulgar, hyper-masculine advertising (these are the people who made the infamous Paris-Hilton-washing-a-car-in-a-bikini-while-eating-a-hamburger ad), so I suppose I shouldn't really be surprised anymore when their ads portray men as brainless, sex-crazed calorie consumers. And yet I am. The most recent Carl's Jr. campaign involves a guy and girl...well, why don't you just watch it.

(I'll twiddle my thumbs while you watch the ad. Because I can't figure out how to make it appear here.)

There are many, many things wrong with this commercial, but I'd like to focus on a couple. First of all, why is the guy staring at the waitress so openly? He's with his girlfriend; is he retarded? Secondly, why is the waitress staring back? She's not a stripper, so why is she trying to seduce this dork? It doesn't make any sense. And the girlfriend, the only one in the ad giving a half-decent performance, by the way, would not just sit there and take it. I think she would throw her fries at "Sarah" and call her a slut. Or maybe that's just what I would do. On a production note, I would've cast a brunette for one of the roles (probably the girlfriend). The two women look too similar. Unless that's the point and I'm just not getting it, I would've tried to make them look as different as possible while still making them both pretty. But that's just me, and what do I know? I just have a Masters Degree in this shit. The bottom line is that Carl's Jr. makes a commercial that manages to offensively portray both men and women. Congratulations, Carl's Jr., mission accomplished (in a George W. Bush sort of way).

Carl's Jr. has always sold testosterone. That's nothing new. Their best ads were the "Burger, Fries, and a Coke" campaign, which emphasized the ease, familiarity, and simplicity of their 'cuisine.' It was successful on a number of levels, not the least of which that it managed to make the burger seem appetizing. This wing commercial does nothing, other than remind me why I'll never eat at Hooters again.

In N Out

The winner for the cheapest looking commercial, and yet strangely, maybe the most effective. All they do is show the burger, put up a really lame slogan relating to basketball or March Madness, and play the jingle. The burger looks good, the music is familiar. It actually makes you want to a burger. Funny how In N Out always seems to get it right.

Subway

Subway continues to push the fact that it serves healthier food than their fat-happy competitors (and continues to downplay the fact that their sandwiches taste like whatever condiment you choose to put on them and little else). The most recent commercial has a couple pulling up to the drive-thru and ordering some disgusting body parts like blubber, a gut, and a double chin. My problem with this commercial is that the woman orders a "badonkadonk butt," and she orders it like it's a bad thing. Jamie Foxx begs to differ, ma'am.

Wendy's, Taco Bell, and KFC

Wendy's ads have sucked since Dave Thomas died. There's just no getting around that. Taco Bell continues to push the concept of 'Fourthmeal', which is probably less healthy than eating a 1/3 pound of Angus beef. KFC, meanwhile, continues forcing Lynard Skynard down our throats. We get it, you're southern. Fried chicken, "Sweet Home Alabama." That's great. Keep it up. Also, they have a lot of ads where families sit down and eat a big bucket of chicken at their kitchen table. The idea is that KFC brings families together. But what I always take away from these ads is that the family is too lazy to cook and is probably going to die early from heart disease or diabetes. I might be reading the subtext here, though.

Anyway, there you have it. The current crop of fast food ads is not too sweet. But are they ever?

Russia, a Real Place -- Eastern Easter Eggs and Cake

2007-04-11T09:26:00.000-07:00

Ryan sends another dispatch from Russia, where he lives and occasionally eats (And before you say it, yes, I know Ryan is a better photographer than I am. He has talent; I don't. It also helps that he uses a fancy digital camera while I have a shoe box with a pinhole in it).


Mmm, bliny.

Often when Natasha and I want to be fed by professionals, we go for sushi,
which is more prevalent in this town than MickeyD's, or something Caucasian
(as in Georgian, Armenian or Uzbek).  The Caucasian restaurants lay out
excellent spicy soups, skewered meats, and cheesy, eggy breads—hachipuri
being my favorite, a godsend in a nation where pizza sucks.  If the
establishment has tablecloths, then it's a safe bet that they also have a
severely beautiful woman positioned under a hot light, accompanied by a
disheveled uncle-figure who strikes a few notes on his synth to juice up the
pre-recorded track.  I'm always the evening's only patron who doesn't know
every song by heart, bringing into question the breadth of my own internal
classic romance collection.  When the bill arrives, Natasha and I squeal at
the expected offering of gum.  It's just Wrigley's, but in stick form, which
is a luxury inaccessible to the average consumer (it's just pellets for the
masses).  Though my stomach is full and never entirely suppressed by the
efforts of breath refreshment, I typically get up from the table a bit
disappointed.  My dining partner and the mock-traditional costumes worn by
the waitstaff were lovely and entertaining, but did the quality of the food
merit either the cost or my labor ordering in a language with six noun
cases, three of which I'm unable to use?  The answer is hurtling towards "no,"
but a few very positive dining experiences keep hope breathing in this city. 

The Russian Orthodox calendar gave us Easter this past weekend (it doesn't
always coincide with Easter back home), so we left the restaurateurs to their smoky
dens and questionable behind-closed-door tactics to face the challenges of our own
kitchen.  Saturday morning doesn't hold up without some kind of pancake, so
we did bliny in the classic style and I was even permitted to wield the
spatula once the pan had produced a few successes, though the batter's
secret is still too heavy a burden for my weak foreign brain.

Breakfast led to a depression of will and napping, but we gathered ourselves
by the afternoon and trekked to one of the superstores, or hypermarkets, as
the call them, for a stock up.  It started snowing mid-journey, with the sun
persistent in the sky, so we were intent on buying something kind of weird
by the time we got there.  We left with a fully intact salmon and a bag of
squid.  I generally expect tentacles from my squid, but these were large and
elf-hat in shape and Natasha said, "Of course they don't have legs," so
again I felt cheated by this persistent deficit of knowledge and personal
experience.

Legless squid.

We fried them up until they looked familiar and I poured beer while Natasha
gutted the fish, filled him back up with onions and lemon, and sewed his
belly with needle and thread.  We left him baking in the oven and plotted
our next move.
Salmon, whole.

Natasha.

If you celebrate Easter, you may have recently found yourself maneuvering a
hard-boiled egg balanced on a customized wire doohickey into a Dixie cup
full of water and food coloring.  Not so in Russia.  Those of the Orthodox
faith take a more natural approach, which works for fabric too (so my sister
says).  It goes like this: toss some red and yellow onion skins into a pot,
mingle with water and raw white eggs, boil for a while.  They come out
looking like something produced by a very small pterodactyl.

Easter eggs, Russian-style. 

So we ate ourselves to sleep and woke up to reddish-brown eggs and a
store-bought loaf of "kulich," which is the traditional bready cake of
Easter.  It's basically raisin bread topped with a thin layer of frosting
and sprinkles, the kind that comes on those pink and white circus cookies.

Now we're fasting between weekends.

--Ryan

Notes from a Fromager: Quick Dinner

2007-04-09T19:39:00.000-07:00

When I am both hungry and lazy, and when the fridge is empty save for some dog food and a few tablespoons of milk, I will watch the Food Network, hoping somehow to visually absorb a calorie or two. The other day, I caught an episode of Barefoot Contessa. While host Ina Garten waited for her stew with biscuits to cook, she made this easy and delicious (or should I say: delicious looking) chicken recipe. Ina sang its praises as she ate it, but then, of course, after a few performative bites, went out to cut some fresh tulips from her Long Island garden. (Which is what I always do after lunch too!)
A few days later I gave her recipe a try.

Here's what you do:

Take some chicken, and under the skin stuff some fresh basil and fresh goat's milk cheese. Drizzle olive oil over it, sprinkle some salt and pepper, and pop it in the oven to bake. The result is juicy, cheesy, herby, chicken goodness.

Despite my gourmet hook-up at the Cheese Store, I used some cheap fresh goat's cheese from Trader Joe's called Silver Goat Chevre with garlic and herbs, which was very good. I was thinking I might try this recipe next time with Le Roule (there should be an accent on the "e" there...), a hand-rolled fresh cow's milk cheese from France that bears a distinct swirl of garlic and herbs. Le Roule is similar to the popular Boursin cheese, except the herb and garlic flavors are stronger. (I can't eat it at work on the sly because my breath will give me away).

Try it, and tell me what you think.

-Edan

Where have YOU been?

2007-04-09T11:38:00.000-07:00

I haven't written anything in a couple of weeks. Where I come from, that's called a vacation. Sorry if that doesn't sit well with your buttoned-down, traditionalist notions of a what a "blogger" is suppose to be. But now I'm back. What's happened since I last wrote? Not much. I ate some food -- most pretty good, some not so much -- restaurants opened and closed, and Anthony Bourdain smoked about twenty packs of cigarettes. So to kick off your post-Easter week, here's a few little appetizers of infotainment to help you through your sugar crash:

The New Yorker has an article by Adam Gopnik about food in fiction. He discusses the 19th Century authors like Trollope, who use food as "the Styrofoam peanuts in the packaging of classic narrative," as well as more contemporary examples from Ian McEwan and Robert B. Parker. Despite his ridiculously hokey jokes ("European mussels have fewer [beards], it's true -- more like soul patches."), he brings up some very valid points, especially regarding the contemporary fiction writer's repeated use of cooking as a means of meditation:
"While you are doing all this, I was reminded as I did it, you are thinking about the bouillabaisse, not about life in our time. Or, rather, you are not thinking about the bouillabaisse, or about anything: you are making the bouillabaisse. And here, I suspect, lies the difficulty with using cooking as the stock for the stream-of-consciousness stew. It is the act of cooking as an escape from consciousness--the nearest thing that the non-spiritual modern man and woman have to Zen meditation; its effect is to reduce us to a state of absolute awareness, where we are here now of necessity."
Indeed. One of the best things about cooking is that you have to worry about cooking, and, consequently, can't worry about student loans, bio-terrorism, or the Red Sox middle relief. Gopnik's analysis doesn't include the best contemporary food and cooking novel, Kate Christensen's The Epicure's Lament. Not only does Christensen create a memorable misanthropic protagonist, full of whiskey and cigarettes, she gives a smashing recipe for quick and painless shrimp Newburg as well. One of the great things about the book is that the main character, Hugo, cooks and eats because he's good at it, and because it brings him pleasure. The food scenes in the book are not excuses to ruminate on anything other than the food itself. And maybe women.

There's apparently a Grey Goose vodka concoction that is the official cocktail of the Kentucky Derby (and for the third straight year, no less). What idiot drinks vodka at the Kentucky Derby? I blame this on Nick Lachey.

Edan and I went to Oakland last weekend and ate some really, really good food. Everybody in the free world had recommended that we go to a place called Burma Superstar, which, as you can imagine, serves Burmese food (I thought about suggesting they change the name of the restaurant to "Myanmar Superstar." You know, cause it rhymes. But then I remembered that the a-holes who are responsible for the name change run one of the five most oppressive regimes in the world, so I decided to keep my mouth shut). It did not disappoint. We had a tea-leaf salad, some spicy lamb, and a chicken casserole, made with rice and peas and a host of spices I can't name. Very delicious. A little like Indian food, a little like Thai food, but different. I highly recommend it. We also had a great dinner at a place called Cesar, which is tapas. The restaurant was the size of basketball court and had every kind of liquor known to man. I got to try both Booker's and Baker's, two bourbons I've wanted to try for a long time. Among the highlights were a hangar steak made olive butter and grilled chicories, spinach salad with grapefruit and bacon (wow!), and a bread pudding that saved dessert. After dinner, I sang a near-flawless rendition of "Piano Man" that brought the house down at karaoke. Surprisingly, the culinary low-point of the trip was our dinner at Cafe Chez Panisse. You all know Chez Panisse, so I won't bother with the in-depth background preamble. I'll just say that we ate upstairs at the cafe, which has a menu and is cheaper, as opposed to downstairs, which is prix fixe and expensive as hell. I had chicken al mattone (which means "under a brick;" basically they cook a de-boned chicken thigh and leg on a grill with a skillet on top of it to press it down), topped with chopped panceta and egg, and served with shoestring potatoes. For once, I ordered well and ended up with the best dish at the table. We all shared some very fresh, tasty oysters to start. Edan had a manilla clam and pea dish that was very heavy on the peas. She was quite disappointed. Others had a pizzetta of radicchio and Roquefort, which I tried. I loved it, but the flavors were intense. It made a nice appetizer, but I'm not sure I could've handled it as my main dish (as I write this, I'm tasting it right now. Isn't it funny how certain foods do that? Cinnamon always does this to me, too). Finally, on Sunday night, one of our hosts, Josh, made us a terrific Japanese noodle dish with beef and Japanese eggplant. Really delicious. Thanks to Diana and Josh, not only for putting us up at their place, but also for putting up with about four hundred stories about our dog.

Russia, A Real Place -- Sunday in St. Petersburg

2007-03-28T09:32:00.000-07:00

My friend Ryan lives in St. Petersburg (Russia, not Florida), which I've heard is very nice. Everything I know about Russia is wildly inaccurate, as I gleaned most of it from Rocky IV. Ryan sets us straight with an account of a typical Sunday in the Motherland:

When I woke up on Sunday, my girlfriend Natasha said, “Someone has fallen in
love with you.  Who is it?”  Then she led me to the bathroom mirror and pointed
at a little pimple on the tip of my nose.  It was the day’s first reminder (thankfully,
a cute one) that this is Russia and stuff is different.

Sometimes stuff that’s different comes out of the tap really hot, but kind
of brown, or it doesn’t want to rent you ice skates because you didn’t bring
a plastic bag for your shoes.  At other moments, it makes you say, “Mmm” and
“Yum,” and the little voice that likes to ask, “What the hell are you doing
here?” takes a nap.

So, back to the pimple.  The second early morning reminder that St. Louis,
Missouri is 4,852 miles away was...bliny!  Bliny translates to pancakes, but
that’s a poor equivalent.  A blin is basically a crepe, similarly enjoyed
with anything from honey to ham and cheese wrapped in its spongy embrace.
Natasha decided we’d try blin’s brother, oladi, for a change, who is more
pancake-like in his nature save one crucial difference: kefir.  You know
that stuff that is only found in eclectic dairy sections and is supposedly
very good for digestion due to the presence of living bacteria (oh my god),
but tastes spoiled at its freshest?  That’s the stuff.  Kefir (400ml or about
2 cups) + 2 eggs + 9 spoons of flour (Natasha was oddly specific) + a little
sugar + a little salt = good pancakes.  Top them off with some raspberry jam
and the condensed milk you were saving for your Vietnamese coffee and your
breakfast might look like this:


But why stop there when you spend most of your work week eating diminishing
portions of whatever you whipped up over the weekend?  We hit our local
market, which, like all good markets, unabashedly greets you with certain
odors the supermarkets assume you just can’t handle.  No feet or
miscellaneous organs today, thank you.  We made a beeline for the fish lady,
who sold us some red caviar and pickled herring without smiling at all.

Back in our kitchen we cracked a beer, buttered some bread and got generous
with the caviar.


This midday indulgence pumped us up for the task at hand, the culminating
dish of the day, which the Russians call, “seliodka pod shube,” and we will
happily refer to as, “herring under a fur coat.”  To make this masterpiece,
you get your girlfriend, Natasha, to do the fancy knife work with the fish,
removing all those annoying little bones while you focus on the
no-less-honorable assignment of boiling some potatoes, carrots, and beets
until soft (but not too soft!).  Natasha renders our fishy friend into tiny cubes while
I shred the veggies. 


Everything then goes into a big bowl in this order: carrots, potatoes, diced
onions, herring, beets, mayonnaise (you thought we’d forget), beets,
mayonnaise.  Then refrigerate until the mayonnaise turns red (like blood).


Bliny and caviar are for tourists.  Get a spoon, dig into this, and you
might be Russian by the end of the year.

--Ryan

Last Night's Dinner

2007-03-26T10:02:00.000-07:00

Last night, Edan and I made Fettuccine with Lemon, Hot Peppers and Pecorino Romano, from the Mario Batali cookbook (There really are no stinkers in the Mario Batali cookbook, incidentally). I'm here not to tell you how this meal tasted (It was good; not as spicy as the ingredients would suggest, but good nonetheless), but to serve as cautionary tale.

Since both of us were home in time to work on dinner, we decided to divide the labor between us. Edan chopped the red onion necessary for the dish, while I sliced and seeded the jalapeños. After finishing the onion, the phone rang, and Edan answered it. Meanwhile, I finished up the peppers and put on the water for the fettuccine. Maybe because I filled a pot with water, I suddenly needed to urinate. Badly. So I rinsed my hands off and took a piss. Relieved, I washed my hands and went back to work in the kitchen, sauteeing the red onions and chili flakes in olive oil. After a few moments, I began to feel an odd sensation. My penis began to burn ever so slightly. At first, I thought someone must've been talking about it (You really thought I'd let an opportunity to use the greatest Gary Shandling line of all time pass by?), but didn't stop. In fact, it got much more intense. As Ron Burgundy would say, "It was such a deep burn." I commenced a sped-up version of the pee-pee dance, clutching my groin and hopping up and down. Finally, I had to return to the bathroom and thoroughly wash my genitals. At last. Relief.

Why do I share this embarrassing story with you? So that others may learn from my mistakes. If you're working with jalapeños, wash your hands. With turpentine. For once, you're all happy there are no photos.

Links for the Weekend

2007-03-23T11:44:00.000-07:00

Wolfgang Puck is no longer offering foie gras at any of his fine restaurants. But can I still get an order of Hepatitis A, that's what I want to know?
The L.A. Times recommends you make your own stock. I agree. Boudrain's been pushing this for years. I suspect that they are both right -- your food (soups, sauces, etc.) will taste much better if you make your own stock, rather than use that salty stuff they sell at the market. One problem, though. I've been trying to make veal stock for about six months, and I can't get my hands on enough veal bones to do it. I've checked all the supermarket butcher counters around, and nobody gets veal bones in quantity. Whatever happened to the stand-alone butcher shop in America, anyway? That's a subject for a longer, more thought out post.
The New York Times has a good article about Ina Garten, aka the Barefoot Contessa. It describes her risky move into the world of publishing (Would-be authors take note: Garten used $200,000 of her own money to hire a consultant and a publicist. All the people I know who know anything about the publishing industry recommend doing this as well. It'd be a better use of your six figure advance than that Lexus hybrid you were coveting) and her resistance to become a shrieking whore of consumerism. The Grinder uses the article to take a jab at everybody's favorite Food Network shill. I've always felt a little ambivalent about Ms. Garten. On the one hand, her East Hampton life with "Jeffrey" (former dean of the Yale School of Business, apparently) represents a completely unrealistic, Martha Stewart-esque mode of existence that can be off putting. Her food, though, is simple to make and damn tasty (although a little butter-happy, if you ask me). Edan and I have two of her cookbooks. They are among the best and most useful that we own.
What's the next stage in eco-conscious eating? Refrigeration optimization. Why waste the freon keeping your mustard cold when you can just leave it in the cupboard? While this article devolves into a laundry list of items that don't need to be refrigerated, it does have a few interesting tidbits. For instance, Ed Koch apparently refrigerates balsamic vinegar. The other problem with the article is that everybody knows that most subzero refrigerators are used to keep boxes of takeout cold. Just like most people with "professional kitchens" cook about once a month.

Blair's

2007-03-19T13:32:00.000-07:00

Blair's is tucked away on an unassuming strip of Rowena Avenue, in the backside of Silverlake (I always get confused when driving around Silverlake...strange, considering my otherwise stellar sense of direction, so I refer to this area as the "backside" of Silverlake...I'm not sure why), near such landmarks as The Coffee Table (soon to be high-rise condominiums) and Ivanhoe Elementary School. I'd heard both good and bad things about Blair's before getting the chance to try it myself last night (Thanks to my father-in-law, Bob, for the opportunity).

Divided into three rooms -- a bar, a main dining room, and a cafe (which doubles as a second dining room at night) -- Blair's offers the kind of dim, orange lighting and private little tables perfect for a date...or in my case, dinner with your wife and her father. The place was about half full, and they seated us immediately. The server, who was training another server, quickly asked us our drink choices. Having been seated only moments earlier, it's no surprise we didn't know yet. So we asked for a few minutes. Why is it that a few minutes inevitably turns into half an hour in these situations. I could just picture the waitress telling her trainee, "This is when we inexplicably disappear for thirty minutes. I don't care what you do -- smoke a cigarette, call your boyfriend, play some online poker -- but DO NOT go into the dining room." When they finally returned, we settled on a blended wine called "Coup d'Etat" from the Andrew Rich winery. It tasted like a Spanish wine to me, and sure enough, it claimed to be inspired by the wines of the Mediterranean, so score one for me.

We asked for the specials, and the waitress informed us that everything on the menu is special (Right, just like every little kid is special, a fiction of which I am no longer a believer). So there are no specials. And the menu is always the same. I later discovered that this is a point of some irritation for the regulars. Having never been there, it didn't bother me at all.

For starters, we decided to share the Maryland blue crab cake and a salad of roasted beets with avocado and goat cheese on mixed greens. The food came out very quickly, and was presented simply and elegantly. With too many greens and not enough beets, I thought the salad was a slight disappointment. The crab cake had a nice, herby flavor, but the consistency was chunkier than I like in a crab cake. Still, I gave the crab cake higher marks than the salad.

As a main course, Bob got the roasted sea bass and substituted out the Idaho potatoes, because he's no longer eating any "deadly nightshades" (which include potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, and nipplefruit (I didn't make that up)...apparently all of these foods are poisons that the modern human has evolved to be able to tolerate...Anyway, it's supposedly good for the joints. Ask Bob about it if you see him). Edan ordered the lamb T-bones with celery root puree, while I had the linguine with Italian sausage and artichokes. Yeah, I got the linguine. I know, it's boring, but that's what I wanted, so suck it. I didn't try Bob's sea bass, but he reported that it improved as he ate, which I think is a sign of a good dish. Maybe the sauces needed to seep more fully into the fish; I don't know. I thought Edan's lamb was better than my linguine, but she thought the opposite, so maybe we should've switched. The lamb was very tender and cooked exactly the way I like it -- red in the middle, but not cold. She said the sauce from the lamb lent some flavor to the celery root puree, which was otherwise bland. My linguine was good, but not incredible. The sausage was heavy on fennel, of which I am a staunch supporter, and there was a pleasant amount of broth at the bottom of the bowl, ensuring that the pasta was never dry. The one drawback of the dish was the congealed cheese resting atop it. I don't understand why restaurants do this. Why not sprinkle the cheese on at the table, like they do at Italian restaurants. That way it doesn't turn into a little cheese mound that the diner must cut with a knife.

After some wavering, we decided to get dessert. We settled on a dish called "Coffee and Donuts," homemade cinnamon and sugar donuts filled with vanilla cream and topped with a scoop of coffee ice cream. Folks, this was the highlight of the meal for me. The donuts were not your garden variety belly bombs, but rather light, airy pastries (almost like beignets) dusted with confectioner's sugar and filled with a delicious custard. The coffee ice cream was the perfect accompaniment. Like "sinkers and joe," the gourmet version. What an ending to the meal. Dessert is so underrated.

With entrees running from $18 to $37, and the starters all in the double digit zone as well, Blair's isn't cheap. I'd recommend it as a place to go for a special occasion or if you get a sudden windfall and feel like a good meal. Hey, you're gonna have to spend that NCAA tourney pool money someplace, right?

Baking is Fun

2007-03-17T15:55:00.000-07:00

I like to bake. Some people don't. They find the precision it requires stifling. I like it. Sure it lacks the improvisational gratification that other types of cooking offer (you can't just toss some stuff together and have it come out right), but nothing rivals baking for its alchemy. The raw ingredients of a typical cake -- flour, baking powder, etc. -- often seem inedible until you combine them and let them work their magic. Baking requires patience, attention to detail, and most of all, faith. More times than not, I'll suffer a crisis of confidence in the middle of a baking recipe. My would-be cake will resemble a pile of wet mush, or the batter of my cookies will seem too chunky, not "satiny-smooth" as the recipe states it should look. "What have I done wrong?" I'll say (or something a little more R-rated, if the recipe really isn't going well). Usually, things work out, and an hour or two later I'm eating some cake or brownies or whatever. It hasn't gotten so bad that I had to throw anything out. Yet.

On Thursday, I decided to make two recipes (because I like a challenge), neither of which I'd tried before. The first, a coffee cake, was from Brunch: 100 Recipes from Five Points Restaurant, an excellent cookbook for people who enjoy eating well morning, noon, and night. While straightforward in nature, this coffee cake does need to rise for at least an hour. Being the crafty guy I am, I figured "Why waste that hour? Why not make some double deluxe chocolate cookies from another recent cookbook, Tartine?" Why not, indeed.

The day started out fine. I had made the dough for the coffee cake, which is a typical flour-eggs-salt-milk-sugar concoction, plus some active dry yeast. I set the bowl full of cake dough on top of the stove (the surface of our stove never drops below two hundred degrees, which is great for making dough rise. Not so great for cleaning it. You basically have to wear an asbestos suit to clean our stove), and started to make the cookies. Of course, I hadn't bought enough butter (The totally uninteresting back story, which I'll tell you now, is that I had bought way, way too much butter the last time I went on a baking jag, and I think I felt like that stock of butter would never run out. I was wrong). OK, minor setback. I went to the corner store, bought the butter I needed to proceed, and got back to work. They weren't kidding when they called these "double chocolate." Basically, melt three good dark chocolate bars (85% cacao, baby!) and dump about half a cup of cocoa powder into the batter, and you'll get a sense of how chocolaty these are. (Side Note: At this point, I had been baking for at least an hour. Have I mentioned how great it is to have a good mixer? Now I have.) I dropped them onto the baking sheets and put them in the oven.

And then the crisis of faith hit. The recipe says to cook them for seven minutes, until they are just firm to the touch. But at seven minutes, I didn't think they were firm at all. So I let them go another two minutes. When I pulled them out, they looked fine, but closer examination revealed that those on the bottom baking sheet were a little burned on the bottom. After tasting the cookies, I think they were all too dry. They definitely require a big glass of milk as accompaniment.Dry, out of focus cookies.

Coffee cake as gooey mess.

Because the cookies ended up eh, there was an undue amount of pressure on the coffee cake. Luckily, the hard part of the caking process was over -- the dough had risen. This coffee cake has no gooey filling, as some do, but it features a topping of cinnamon, brown sugar, and granulated sugar. After applying the topping and letting the cake rise another half hour in the pan, I threw it in the oven. What emerged forty minutes later was perfect. The cake was light, with a fluffy airiness that wasn't the least bit dry. I ate a big piece of it the next morning with coffee. I wish you could all have some. The lesson, as always -- keep the faith. You shall be rewarded with coffee cake.
Coffee cake. Finally.

A Few Quick Things

2007-03-14T13:01:00.000-07:00

If you're like me, you have hours and hours of free time everyday. I like to fill my days watching cheese age. Of course, I also watched a video with the headline "Monkey and Dog are Best Friends" about five times. (via The Grinder)
Every time I leave the supermarket, the Girl Scouts hit me up to buy more of their delicious little cookies. Because I am a man of superior discipline, I've only succumbed once, getting a box of Thin Mints and a box of Samoas (Damn those Samoas are good). The Bon Appetit blog has some nice looking recipes for ice cream pie that will get rid of your surplus Girl Scout cookies in a quick and delicious manner.
EatingLA has a review of Il Capriccio Pizzeria. I agree with most of the points, but I still think it needs a little more cheese.
Tomorrow I will try to post a review of Square One, where Edan and I had breakfast on Sunday, but I make no promises. I'm planning on watching the NCAA Tournament and baking. Because that's how I roll.

Notes From a Fromager -- Los Quesos de Espana

2007-03-13T10:25:00.000-07:00

More often than you would expect, people come into the store where I work, glance briefly at the hundreds of cheeses piled up around them, and then ask, wide-eyed and hopeful, “Do you have Manchego?” They always get excited when I say yes, sometimes clapping their hands and doing a little victory dance. But, really, is it much of a surprise that we sell Manchego, perhaps the most popular cheese after brie and cheddar? Come on, people, that’s like going to a bookstore and asking if they’ve heard of The Great Gatsby! Manchego, thanks in a large part to Spain’s push to publicize and export it, has been canonized.

Hailing from Don Quixote’s hometown of La Mancha, Manchego is a sheep’s milk cheese made from, that’s right, Manchego sheep. At my work, we sell a young and an aged version, the latter being much sharper and saltier than its younger counterpart, the texture a little bit flakier. I love lugging these wheels of cheese, which are covered in a braided wax that gets nice and greasy on the bottom. It’s just so cheesy.

If you’ve grown tired of Manchego, I suggest Zamorano, which resembles Manchego in appearance and texture, but is made from two different sheep breeds—Churra and Castellana. Zamorano is also unpasteurized, giving it a more complex flavor: buttery, nutty, sometimes even a little spicy.

Roncal is another spectacular raw sheep’s milk cheese. At the store last week we had an extra-dry wheel, which proved challenging to cut (it crumbled at the knife’s touch), but was also supremely tasty. Roncal comes from Lacha and Aragonesa sheep in the Navarra region of Spain, and it’s made year-round, the shepherds (or whatever they’re called nowadays) moving from one part of the Roncal valley to another, so that their herds can enjoy uninterrupted grazing. Roncal has a meatier flavor than either Manchego or Zamorano; it reminds me a little of Pecorino Romano, without the nose-flaring sharpness.

Pair these cheeses with Tempranillo wine, a few slices of Jamón Serrano, some membrillo (a.k.a. quince paste) and figs, and you’ve got yourself a fabulous Spanish cheese plate. ¿Valé?

--Edan

Il Capriccio Pizzeria

2007-03-12T09:24:00.000-07:00

Wood fire pizza is as hot in Los Angeles right now as...Jennifer Hudson (It's a gift, I know. I really ought to be writing for one of those Access Hollywood-type shows). First, Pizzeria Mozza, the joint venture of Mario Batali and Nancy Silverton, opened. The hottest restaurant opening in town, with reservations booked for months in advance. The stars, it appears, are off their no-carb diets, as Jennifer Aniston, Topher Grace, and more have tried Mozza's eclectic pizza offerings. While some people have derided the wood-fired crust, claiming it's more like a bagel than pizza, most people have been impressed. Of course, I haven't had the opportunity to go yet. Edan went for lunch on her birthday, and sampled the egg and guanciale pie (egg, ribbons of ruby radicchio, thinly sliced guanciale (which is cured pig jowl), and a bagna cauda (a warm bath of garlic, anchovies and olive oil). She reported back that the egg on the pizza was surprisingly good, and the guanciale was delicious, eventually inspiring us to put it in a pasta dish. Oh, and she saw Randy Jackson from "American Idol" having lunch with a would-be starlet. You don't get that at Pizza Hut. I got to try leftovers of the pizza her mother got, a goat cheese and sausage concoction that was still good a day later. Certainly, Mozza offers something other than your average pizza experience. The crust is thin in the center and bubbly on the edges, almost like a lightly crisped pita bread. The cheese is relatively sparse, and there's not really a sauce to speak of on most of the pies. (Keep in mind that I'm getting all of this from one slice of leftovers and some word of mouth. If anyone has actually been there, please write in and let us know what you thought).

A few weeks ago, I noticed a storefront opening on Sunset Blvd not far from our apartment. It was called Il Capriccio Pizzeria. I wondered, is this the same Il Capriccio that I've eaten at on Vermont Avenue, the one that's about 75 feet from my front door? Then a post popped up on Erin's Kitchen confirming that it was one and the same, and I was officially interested. Edan and I decided to walk over and get a pie on Saturday night.

In retrospect, it was a mistake to walk, since Il Capriccio Pizzeria delivers. While it was a beautiful California night, we took Omar Little with us. That meant dragging him at times, waiting for him to smell every single vertical object in our path (including pedestrians), and stopping him from eating cigarette butts, which apparently taste like pumpkin pie to him. After looking over the menu, we decided on something called the "Salsiccia" pie -- Italian sausage, garlic, rosemary, olive oil, tomato sauce and mozzarella. We also got a mixed salad.

The restaurant is cute and looked surprisingly like a pizzeria, albeit a very new, very clean, very modern pizzeria. There's a counter where the diner places his order, and a big wood-burning oven behind it. One wall features an orange-tinted collage of photographs of Italy, while another wall had specialty goods for sale (olive oil, exotic pastas, and some gourmet chocolate bars). The orange wall is a bit intense, and the chairs seem out of place (They're the kind of white molded plastic chairs one might find in a Korean boba cafe; I'd bet my life they're from Ikea), but it's still a pretty cute place. But we had the dog with us, so we got our pie to go.

Once we got back to the apartment, we sat down to watch some TV and eat some pizza. For all its pretension, the "Salsiccia" is nothing more than a sausage pizza. It's OK with me -- I could eat sausage at every meal -- but we were hoping for a little something special. The crust was very chewy, but I wonder if it would've been better either in the restaurant or delivered by a driver with an insulated bag. The sausage was the ground kind, not little discs. While I'm fine with either, I prefer the discs. Being wood fire pizza, there wasn't much cheese. Since they weren't knocking us out with fancy toppings, more cheese would've been nice. And neither of us tasted even a hint of rosemary. Fairly disappointing. The mixed salad was bagged baby spring mix (I know it well) and some chopped tomatoes. Blah. I'm willing to give Il Capriccio Pizzeria another shot, probably via the delivery man, but I was less than enthused about their pizza this time around.

Dog Bites Rachel Ray

2007-03-06T21:53:00.000-08:00

Rachel Ray -- Food Network personality, Bourdain bete noir, and minor irritant -- was attacked by a stray dog in Union Square Park while walking her pit-bull mix, Isaboo. Apparently the stray acted aggressively towards Isaboo (Seriously? Isaboo?), and when Ray stepped in to stop it, the stray took a bite out of her. Now, I'm no great fan of Rachel Ray; in fact, I think they use her show during interrogations in Guantanamo Bay. But I feel bad for her. I think getting attacked by a stray dog would be positively terrifying, and I hope it never happens to me. But I do have a few quick observations:

1. I hope Isaboo tore that dog apart when it went for poor Rachel. Otherwise, what kind of bitch-ass pit-bull lets its owner get attacked? Isn't that why you get a pit-bull in the first place? Unless that dog was a mastiff or an Akita (those things are badass), Isaboo should've been able to take him.

2. There's nothing worse than the yuppie pit-bull owner who insists that pit-bulls are "totally gentle and just misunderstood." Pit-bulls-are-totally-gentle-and-just-misunderstood-guy is my least favorite 21st century urban inhabitant. (And before you start telling me about how your family dog was a pit-bull mix and how it saved you from a fire and got you into Bucknell, save it. I like pit-bulls. Most of them are pretty sweet. I just don't like pit-bulls-are-totally-gentle-and-just-misunderstood-guy. Take your Jack Spade messenger bag and Kettle One vodka and go back to Park Slope.) I'd almost prefer the gangster who taught his pit bull to attack anybody wearing the color blue. Almost.

Mexico City

2007-03-05T11:07:00.000-08:00

I'd been to Mexico City once before (the restaurant, not the actual city, which I hear is beautiful), and I'd liked it a lot. If I remember correctly, I had the ropa vieja, a traditional dish of pulled pork marinated in all sorts of chilies and spices, and I like it. Edan had carne asada tacos, about which she raved. When we found that we hadn't sat down at a restaurant and eaten together in a few weeks (we've been doing a lot of takeout), we decided to try Mexico City again.

Mexico City is divided into two rooms, which cuts the ambiance in half. It looks to me like they added the second room, cutting a big hole in the wall that divided them, and just went with it. The results are very odd. I kept looking at the whole in the wall, which is shaped like a big mirror, feeling slightly surprised I wasn't seeing myself. Both times we've been there we've been seated right at the border of the two rooms, which isn't necessarily a good thing. Edan spent half the meal trying to eavesdrop on the women seated directly behind her, while I spent the other half trying to ignore the table next to me, who were boisterously discussing politics (ugh). This is the main problem with Mexico City -- it is loud. Something about the design of the place (concrete floors, maybe?) makes it echoic. It's not loud like a sports bar, more like a crowded subway station. This might work for a diner, but it's not quite right for a place like Mexico City.

The other thing that isn't quite right is the service. Both times we ate there, the food was a little slow coming out. The servers are perfectly friendly, but they're not terribly good at slinging food in a timely manner (Minor tangent: The first time we ate at Mexico City, I successfully guessed the name of our server, Victor. It just came to me. Usually, I'm totally off, like the guy's name is Justin, and I'm guessing Alexander. Not that time. Victor. I just nailed it. So of course when we went back and had a female server, I went with Victoria. And you know what? Her name was Esther. I guess I went to the Victor/Victoria well one time too many).

So what about the food, you say? To start, they serve very good homemade chips and salsa. The red salsa is terrific -- very spicy, but with subtle flavors (and they don't charge you for it, like some places ahem-Malo-ahem). For an entree, I got the plato de Mexica, a sampler of sorts that came with a chicken taco, a cheese quesadilla, a chicken tostada, and a few other things, including what seemed like a cheese empanada. Edan again got the carne asada tacos. I thought the taco, quesadilla, and empanada were all good, but not earth shattering. There was some sort of taquito on my plate that was very bad. Bland, dry chicken encased in a greasy tortilla shell. I had to drown in it in spicy red salsa to get any flavor at all. Edan's tacos were apparently good, although by the time the food arrived, she was deeply embroiled in our neighbors' discussion and couldn't be reached for comment.

Mexico City is definitely a notch up food-wise from El Coyote, our other Mexican food standby, and it's significantly closer to our apartment. It's definitely more expensive (for two of us, tax and tip included, it was $43), and the margaritas are nowhere near as strong as El Coyote's, though. That being said, the food is lighter, with a complexity of flavor that's lacking from most other Mexican restaurants I've tried, and they have lots of odd Oaxacan dishes on the menu (next time I'm getting the pepper stuffed with chopped beef and pork and chopped apples and pears, covered in a creamy walnut sauce; I just didn't have the balls this time). So while the service and ambiance aren't terrific, I like the food enough to make it a regular place. Of course, not everyone shares my opinion.

Last Night's Dinner -- Steak Diane

2007-02-28T09:54:00.000-08:00

I used to believe that a good steak, like a perfect Spring day or Jessica Alba, was something that couldn't be improved upon. What I mean is, a steak was something to be eaten sans sauce. I was wrong. After all, not all steaks are created equal in the flavor department. Some steaks, like your rib eye or your New York strip, are bursting with beefiness, while the more tender cuts of meat, like filet or tenderloin, are a little on the flavorless side. If you're serving up some nice tenderloin, it's perfectly acceptable, maybe even necessary, to sauce it up a bit.

This is why the French invented steak au poivre. Nothing like taking a nice cut of beef, coating it in crushed peppercorns, and pouring melted butter and cognac all over it. Nothing like it except steak Diane, that is. Steak Diane is basically steak au poivre with a little Dijon mustard and some cream whisked in at the end. For those of you who are a little uneasy about making something on a weeknight that requires tossing a flammable liquid like cognac into a scorching hot pan, let me tell you, it ain't that hard. Yes it requires veal stock (and demi-glace), but you can pick that up at Whole Foods. And yes, it means having a little cognac kicking around, but is that such a bad thing? A little Courvoisier might be just what the doctor ordered on a cold winter night. It took me about half an hour to make this, start to finish (I crushed the peppercorns in a mortar and pestle while watching The Simpsons. That's called multitasking).

The recipe I made is from, who else, Anthony Bourdain.

Ingredients
(I halved the amounts listed below to make it for two people instead of four.)

4 8-oz steaks
2 oz olive oil
2 oz freshly cracked peppercorns (crushed, not ground into powder!)
4 oz butter (I actually used less than half of that)
1 oz good cognac
4 oz strong, dark veal stock (and a spoonful of demi-glace, if that's how you roll)
salt and pepper
1 oz Dijon mustard
1 oz heavy cream

Cook the steaks

Preheat the oven to 425. Moisten the steaks very slightly with oil, then dredged them in the peppercorns to thoroughly coat. Don't be shy with pepper. Heat the remaining oil in a skillet over high heat. Once the oil is hot, add 2 oz of butter. Place the steaks in the pan and brown on all sides, about 5 minutes per side. Transfer the pan to the oven and cook to desired doneness, about 5-7 minutes for rare, 10 minutes for medium (If you're eating steak well-done, why are you reading this?...No, seriously, why are you still here?). Remove the pan from the oven and remove the steaks from the pan to rest.

The Sauce

Return the skillet to the stove top and carefully stir in the cognac. (Yes, you can start a fire with this stuff, so Monsieur Bourdain recommends adding in to the pan off the stove, then returning the pan to the fire.) Stir and scrap with a wooden spoon to get every scrap, every peppercorn every rumor of flavor clinging to the bottom of the pan. Cook down, reduce by half. Stir in the veal stock (and demi-glace) and reduce over medium heat until thick enough to coat the back of the spoon (If you've cut the recipe in half, as I did, it shouldn't take long). Whisk in the remaining butter and season with salt and pepper. Whisk in the mustard and the heavy cream. Serve immediately with French fries or sauteed potatoes.

What results is a rich, thick sauce that clings to the meat and complements the fire of all those peppercorns. In fact, the sauce was so good, we poured it over the leftover potatoes, creating a diner-style potatoes and gravy effect. Damn good eating on a weeknight. I know, I should've cleaned the rim of the plate before serving. Gordon Ramsay would have me shot for this.

A Few Quick Things to Get Your Weekend Started

2007-02-23T12:19:00.000-08:00

Here is an interesting, if slight, article in Slate about food distribution giant Sysco. Growing up, I remember seeing huge cans of Sysco tomato sauce sitting open on the prep counter in my high school cafeteria. Being an ignoramus, I thought Sysco only made tomato sauce -- and bad tomato sauce at that. That's why it was so shocking to learn that not only do they supply military bases, hospitals, and public schools with prison-grade cuisine, they also supply many fine restaurants. Thomas Keller himself uses frozen Sysco french fries in his restaurants. I'm sure they're totally fine but...ew.
I haven't eaten at a Taco Bell or KFC in about five years, and this is why (Listen carefully to the color commentary; it's the best part of the clip).
This is old, and probably everybody's already read it, but I'm posting it here anyway, because I think it's pertinent to the discussion we had last week about convenience. According to Salon, you should just burn those four boxes of Annie's mac-and-cheese you have stocked in your pantry. After all, isn't just as easy to make mac-and-cheese from scratch? (I'm kidding. It is not easier, despite what the author says. Also, as a kid growing up, my parents frequently made mac-and-cheese from scratch, so hats off to them.)
I was going to do a long and pointless post about the music they play at my local Albertson's, but since your time is valuable, I will simply say it here. What is going on with the music they play at Albertson's (and at most supermarkets)? It's like the music that was too bland to be played on the "lite hits" station. There must be quite a few artists getting by solely on royalties from supermarket chains. Mike and the Mechanics? Air Supply? Bonnie Tyler ("Total Eclipse of the Heart")? Yeah, they're all in heavy rotation at Albertson's. As are the lesser-played selections from the catalogs of Billy Joel, Janet Jackson (pre-nipple flash), Anita Baker, and Mike MacDonald. One time I heard "Hungry Heart" by Bruce Springsteen, and I nearly pissed myself with joy. Then they interrupted it to tell me there was a special on Coca Cola -- buy five three liters, get five free. Or something like that.
The Academy Awards are this weekend. It's going to be a wine and cheese affair at my place. None of the movies I really liked got nominated this year, so I'm devoting all my energy to rooting against every film Paul Haggis had anything to do with. I don't have a clue who's winning what except that Helen Mirren is a mortal lock. So, Wilbon, who ya got?

Whole Foods Continues March Towards Global Domination

2007-02-22T10:01:00.000-08:00

According to the Los Angeles Times, Whole Foods has purchased its main rival, Wild Oats, for the low low price of $565 million. According to the article, Wild Oats stores in areas competing with current Whole Foods stores will be closed, and eventually, all Wild Oats stores will be renamed Whole Foods. Whole Foods made the move to counteract growing competition from "normal" supermarkets, most of whom are investing heavily in the natural and organic food markets.

I've never had the pleasure of shopping at Wild Oats, as there isn't one near my neighborhood; my only exposure to it is through "Top Chef." I do shop at Whole Foods, relying on them for high quality/semi-obscure meats and produce (I don't buy organic milk or whole wheat pasta. I know, I'm a cretin). Maybe someone who has been to both stores can tell me how they differ? Aside from the general idea that it's always nice to have a choice, should I be worried about Whole Foods' acquisition? Will it lead to some sort of organic foods price fixing (as if the stuff at Whole Foods could possibly get any more expensive)? In an urban center like Los Angeles, is there any competition left for Whole Foods?

Two Dinners

2007-02-21T10:54:00.000-08:00

For Valentine's Day, Edan and I stayed in and made moules normande. I have to say, if you like shellfish (and if your religion allows you to eat it), mussels are the absolute easiest, most satisfying dish to make. You can prepare them as simply or as dressed up as you like. We've been making the same basic mussels recipe for a few years now -- the Barefoot Contessa's mussels in white wine -- mussels cooked in a broth of white wine, plum tomatoes, shallots, and saffron (we make a slight alteration and add some spicy chicken sausage; it adds a little spiciness to the buttery flavor of the wine). It's delicious. Edan usually drinks the broth with the empty mussel shells...now you know her secret shame.

This time, we steered off the path, making Anthony Bourdain's mussel dish, which had cream, apples, and Calvados, along with the obligatory bacon and shallots (Everything tastes better with bacon...and shallots don't hurt, either). I thought the flavor of this dish was terrific. The sweetness of the apples blended perfectly into the creamy broth, and the crispy bacon on top gave the dish a textural element that our standby mussels lack. But Edan wasn't convinced. She called it a good "cold weather dish," which is Edan-speak for "a little heavy." She was probably right, in that it was more of a chowder than I was expecting. I suspect we'll make the dish again, but probably not before we make our standby.Sorry you can't see the mussels very well (They're the little black things). If you peek behind the Pinot, you'll spy Omar Little. "Oh fo sho."

Through Edan's job at the cheese store, she procured some really good, blood-red Portuguese-style chorizo (which I totally wish I'd photographed...), so we decided to try paella. We had a whole chicken, cut up, in the fridge, so when we found this recipe for seafood paella (which, for some reason, has chicken in it), it seemed like God was speaking through the interwebs. We picked up the requisite seafood -- shrimp, clams, and, of course, mussels -- at the local fancy supermarket, and we were ready to go.

Paella, the traditional Spanish rice dish, is usually made in a big pan over an open fire. We live in an apartment, so the fire thing was out. The recipe we found called for baking the paella in a very hot oven for 45 minutes, I think mainly to cook the chicken through. After browning the chicken in bacon grease, sauteeing the chorizo with onions and garlic, and stirring in two heaping cups of rice, I started to wonder if we were making too much food. Edan assured me we weren't, and I figured the paella would make good leftovers (if one removed the shellfish; I love mussels, but not on the second day). As you can see, by the time I arranged the chicken, chorizo, shrimp, mussels, and clams, then sprinkled bacon and peas all over the dish, there was hardly any rice visible at all.

After a while in the oven (I didn't use the chicken breasts so I lopped about ten minutes off the baking time), it was ready. I pulled the foil off, and an incredible aroma wafted up. Salty and earthy, with a smoky taste I can't explain, the paella tasted perfect to me. The chicken was overkill, for sure, but it did make great leftovers. The only problem with the dish was that the chorizo, which was cooked and cured (I think) when we got it, got pretty dried out. Maybe this wouldn't be the case if we'd made paella in a pan instead of baking it. I dunno.

Now that I've made this type of paella, I'm curious if anyone with more experience can point me in the direction of a more authentic paella recipe. I don't think I'll have access to an open fire anytime soon, but maybe a stove-top recipe? Anyway, if anybody out there has one, let me know. Paella is officially in the repertoire.Thanks to all you Apronites who've sent in links. If I haven't gotten to them, it's not because I didn't find them interesting, it's because I'm a lazy, pathetic person who can't be bothered. Oh, and I have a small puppy that I have to chase around my apartment.

Duck a la Papelbon

2007-02-15T09:57:00.000-08:00

Finally! A post about baseball. Sorta. Red Sox reliever -- er, starting pitcher -- Jonathan Papelbon recently went duck hunting with New York Giants Quarterback Eli Manning. Afterwards, he told reporters that his recipe for duck beats the hell out of Ted Williams' recipe (which I can't find; a shiny nickel to the Apronite who can dig it up):

("I tried it and it was terrible, dude" he said.) "What I do," Papelbon said, "you marinate it in Coke and Italian dressing, right. What the Coke does, the carbonation takes out all the game flavor. So you marinate it in Coke and Italian dressing in a Ziploc bag. Then what you do, you slice up a breast, quarter it in fours, and then you wrap those four little nuggets in bacon, jalapeno, and sour cream, so you wrap it all in a piece of bacon, throw it on a grill. It's amazing."

Mmm, duck marinated in coke. Now I know what I'm having Friday night. (via With Leather)

Overcompensation

2007-02-14T10:07:00.000-08:00

Three posts in one day! Because I took Monday and Tuesday off!

Michael Pollan and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey are going to meet face-to-face in San Francisco in a debate entitled "The Past, Present, and Future of Food." It's February 27, and if you don't live in the Bay Area, and aren't likely to make the trip (or if you're legally banned from the area by a restraining order), you can watch it on a live webcast. (via The Grinder)

Remember Stephen from "Top Chef: Season One"? Sure you do. He was the guy that everybody hated (although no one tried to shave his head)? The sommelier? Ringing any bells? Anyway, he's opening a new wine bar in downtown L.A. called Tastevin. But this isn't your daddy's wine bar. Tastevin will be aimed at hip 20-somethings who are rapidly developing a taste for wine (and maybe pretension, too). I think it's great. I'm super excited to go be lectured by Stephen about why I'm not sufficiently enjoying the Malbec he poured me. Finally there's a place for hip, wine-loving 20-somethings like -- Wait a minute, I'm thirty. Can I still go to this bar? (via Eater L.A.)

If you're wondering what we're doing for Valentine's Day, I'll tell you. We're making moules normande from Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook. It's basically mussels with white mushrooms, apples, slab bacon (everything tastes good with bacon), and Calvados. Mussels are sort of "our thing." We've eaten them before for romantic dinners, and we both love them. Eating out on Valentine's Day is overrated. Usually the specials are ridiculous "romantic" food, and all of the desserts are laden with chocolate. Plus, the wait staff treats you like you're in Venice or something. And the restaurant around the corner from us has a prix fixe menu. The price? $95 per person. Basically, people who eat out on Valentine's Day are suckers. Unless you're eating out, in which case, have a great time!

Two Dinners

2007-02-14T09:00:00.000-08:00

Saturday night, I needed to improvise a good meal. I felt like eating chicken (mainly by default...after all, chicken is what people eat when they don't know what they'd like to eat), so I picked up some chicken thighs from the grocery store, and figured I'd find a way to make them. I stumbled across a post at the Amateur Gourmet about chicken breast braised in hard cider. I didn't want to braise anything, as I got a late start on the cooking for the evening, but I liked the description of chicken browned in bacon fat, then slow roasted in some sort of alcohol. I had bacon, and I had wine (I don't keep hard cider in the house. What, do you?). I chopped up a shallot and a few pieces of bacon, threw a few tablespoons of olive oil in a pan, and I was in business.

For a side dish, I'd gotten pears, endive, and walnuts. I knew I had some Roquefort in the fridge, so I figured I'd make a classic salad. There was also anise (which I thought was fennel...Have you seen them? They look exactly the same), which I grilled with olive oil, and a head of radicchio, which I sliced into disks, grilled, and topped with a lemon juice vinaigrette (in so far as this is a recipe, it's from Italian Easy, a cookbook about which I frequently rave).

Slightly out of focus endive, pear, walnut, and Roquefort salad. Don't stare too long at, you'll get a headache.

The salad was quite good. Of course, you could put Roquefort on a Ritz cracker, and I'd ooh and ah over it. The chicken browned up nicely, and the bacon added some punch to the dish. The radicchio was the surprise hit of the meal. The lemon juice neutralized some of the intense bitterness of the cabbage and gave it a complex flavor that opened up in the mouth. Not a bad meal for one that started with chicken thighs and little else.

Chicken thighs cooked in bacon fat and white wine, anise (not fennel!),
and grilled radicchio.

Monday night wasn't quite so scatter shot. I knew I wanted pasta, and I felt like trying something new. This meant diving into our new Mario Batali cookbook again. What jumped out was linguine with monkfish, zucchini, and thyme. Since I would be near a Whole Foods, and consequently able to lay on some decent monkfish, this seemed like the right fit.

The only challenge of the recipe, which wasn't really a challenge at all, just a bit of a time issue, was that it required some basic tomato sauce, which I hadn't yet made. Luckily, for the first time in months, I'd started cooking at an appropriate time. I whipped up the sauce with no difficulty, and now I've got a batch of it in the freezer for next time.

Other than making a batch of sauce ahead of time (not hard) this recipe is easier than sleeping in on Sunday. Basically, you chop up the monkfish and the zucchini, chop the thyme (looking back on it, this may have been the most difficult part of the recipe. I hate chopping thyme. Those little annoying leaves. Rosemary. Now that's a spice made for chopping...), and boil some water.

Monkfish was made to go into pasta. Perfect texture (kinda chewy, but not in a gross way), perfect color, perfect flavor (buttery and salty, like it'd just swum out of the sea). This dish garnered high praise from Edan -- she ate the leftovers for lunch the next day (leftover pasta has a way of lingering in our fridge until it has worn out its welcome).

(Sorry. No pictures of the monkfish. You'll just have to imagine its incredible chewy perfection. Here, I'll help. Picture a really good pasta dish you've recently eaten. Now add monkfish. Yeah, I know. It's good.)

Food, for Convenience Sake

2007-02-14T08:24:00.000-08:00

See what happens? I step away for a few days, and Anthony Bourdain goes nuts. First, my blog mentor Max posted on the Millions about Bourdain's Food Network rant at Michael Ruhlman's blog. Now David Lebovitz has chimed in with his two "centimes." (I haven't written about David Lebovitz before, but I will now. He's a pastry chef and chocolate aficionado who lives in Paris. His blog is always entertaining, especially if you've ever been to Paris. Check it out.) Lebovitz comments on the message board at Simply Recipes, wondering why people find value in shows about convenience cooking (Rachel Ray, Sandra Lee, etc.).

I'm curious when people say they appreciate these time-saving cooking shows. But really, how long does it take to make good food? A roast chicken can be tossed with a broken up head of garlic and some herbs in less than 30 seconds. And how many seconds does one save by opening a bottle of pre-made salad dressing as opposed to mixing together a few spoonfuls of olive oil & vinegar? Is it really that much easier to rip open a box of cake mix than to drop a stick of butter in the mixer, add some eggs, then stir in some flour?

And doesn't homemade foods taste better, and is far healthier for you (and much less-expensive), than all those convenience foods? Other than as a gimmick, I don't see how how saving a few minutes is really worth sacrificing your family's health and well-being for by using all these processed foods. While I don't begrudge any tv chefs cooking with real ingredients, it's quite a disservice to spray things with aerosol cheese and call it dinner.

This is always my thing with the Food Network, and with American food culture in general. I know I'm in a unique situation, working from home and whatnot, but I actually enjoy cooking. The process of taking raw ingredients and turning them into something delicious and nutritious is one of the best parts of my day. I'd hate to have to rush through it. Everybody has nights when they've got to throw something together; not every night is seven hour leg of lamb night. I know this. But what Lebovitz is saying, I think, and what I fervently agree with, is that a meal that takes minutes to prepare will likely also be eaten in minutes, and this ain't a good thing.

Freeze Relief

2007-02-10T11:04:00.000-08:00

As you may recall, it actually dropped below freezing here in California a few weeks ago. That was bad news for local farmers, many of whom lost their entire crops. In response, some of L.A.'s finest restaurants have gotten together for Freeze Relief, a benefit for small local farmers affected by the freeze. Chefs are designing special menus incorporating as much local produce as they can and donating 100% of the profits to the farmers. Local farmers will even be present at a few of the restaurants.

Here's a list of the restaurants participating:

If you can't get excited about a few of those places (Angeli! Lucques! AO Freekin' C!) then you don't like eating. If you've got the money (most of the events are in the $40-60 per person range), I hope you'll consider heading to one of the meals. Most of the events are this Sunday, February 11, but a few are later in the week.

Vermont

2007-02-10T09:28:00.000-08:00

I won my poker game this week, which meant we could eat at a fancy restaurant on Friday night. We chose Vermont for a number of reasons, the primary one being that it's a two minute walk from our apartment. I pass it whenever I go to the bank, and everybody in there always looks happy, so I figured it must be pretty good. Since it's so close, we were bound to try it eventually. We made reservations for 7:30, and prepared to eat some "contemporary American cuisine."

A big frosted tree sits smack in the center of a dining room loaded with exposed brick and soft white lighting. The room fills with just enough ambient noise to remind you you're out, but not enough to force you into someone else's discussion. It's surprisingly elegant for a place located next to a crowded bus stop. We had a table in the back of the restaurant, near the kitchen.

Our server was definitely more concerned about whether he got the callback for "NCIS" than he was about our meal. I can't blame him, though, as poor service seemed to be the norm at Vermont. They gave us bread before our meal (my olive bread was burnt to a charred crisp), which was fine, except that we later realized that everyone else got some sort of pesto dipping sauce. Also, we weren't given water, and no one asked if we wanted any. Even in France they ask if you want water ("Gaz ou non?"). Not, apparently, at Vermont.

The menus at Vermont could use a little work. I don't mean the selection of food, I mean the actual physical menus. Twelve point Times New Roman on multi-purpose computer paper? Slipped into one of those restaurant supply store plastic sleeves (you know, the ones with the brass corner reinforcers)? Really? Come on, Vermont. I'm going to spend 50-70 bucks a person and this is what you give me to read? Even at Elf Cafe, a tiny, newly-opened hole in the wall, the menus are multi-color ink on craft paper card stock with an artfully torn edge. At least hire a graphic designer. When your only design concept is to put the prices in bold, you need help. I've seen better menus at a Knights of Columbus pancake breakfast.

What the menu did have, which I thought was a nice touch, were little descriptions of what each wine tasted like. Now, they weren't the most well-written descriptions, mind you, but at least there was effort. For a relatively ignorant wine guy like myself, I found it helpful to know what I was getting (Of course, at other restaurants the servers might be able to tell you what each wine is like, so maybe Vermont is just covering for its wait staff?).

We ordered wine by the glass, thinking we'd each try something different. I got a 2004 Cote du Rhone, and Edan asked the waiter to choose a Syrah for her, which he did. Of course, when he brought it, he didn't tell her what it was. That's not a huge deal, but it would've been nice to know (I looked on the bill when it came: a McManis, of some sort). I guess he thought that since she couldn't choose, she wouldn't care to know what she was getting.

We got tuna tartar to start (We wanted to get the seared foie gras, but they were out of it. Sigh). It was cleanly presented -- chopped and formed into a little disk, and crowned with a dollop of wasabi mayonnaise. It was tuna tartar. It was fine. The best part of the dish was the wasabi mayo. Usually whenever wasabi is cut into something else, like mayonnaise, it loses its edge. Not this time. It had that great, nasal-clearing hotness that wasabi should have.

For a main course, Edan got the braised lamb shank served on a bed of beets and pearl pasta, and I got the fennel-encrusted breast of duck (because you know how I feel about fennel). I thought the duck was decent, although not as good as the duck I've had a few miles down Hollywood Blvd, at Sanamaluang. Served nice and rare, just like I asked, it came with a really delicious puree of potatoes and celery root. The puree had a sneaky extra flavor lurking under the potato, very subtle. Edan said it was the best part of either dish. She didn't like the lamb. I thought it was tasty, but nowhere near tender enough. All in all, I agree with her that I've had better lamb in about a dozen places. After looking over the dessert menu and finishing our glasses of wine, we decided to skip dessert. Nothing looked all that great to us, and when you haven't been pleased with your meal, do you really want to linger over dessert?

We left feeling underwhelmed. When you spend $117 dollars on a meal (that's tax and tip included), you want something special. Even if it's only one thing, you want to be able to say, "OK, that was really good. There's no way I could've pulled that off at home." There wasn't a single thing like that in our meal. Nothing rose about the level of "not bad." Sorry, Vermont, that's not good.

Last Night's Dinner -- Pork Chops with Peppers and Capers

2007-02-07T10:46:00.000-08:00

A trip to the Hollywood Farmers' Market on Sunday morning yielded some really great finds. We decided to get whatever looked good and figure out a way to use it. There were lots of winter vegetables available, and we eventually settled on some leeks, bulb onions, broccoli, and fennel (I love fennel. There, I said it). Additionally, we found something called crosnes (pronounced crones), little white tubers that bear a resemblance to grubs. The guy who sold them to us said they are a favorite of Marilyn Manson, who enjoys their wormlike appearance. We tried a few raw at the market and found them pleasantly earthy and chewy, kind of somewhere between a potato and a radish, in terms of texture. Mmm, grubs.

On our say out, we stopped by the meat stand and got some bratwurst, some skirt steak, and two very good-looking pork chops.

I grilled the skirt steak that night for a late, post-Super Bowl dinner. Covered in crushed peppercorns and kosher salt, and served with the broccoli, it made for a good quick meal. For the pork, we decided to go with a recipe from Mario Batali's Molto Italiano cookbook, a recent gift from Edan's mother. You've probably seen Mario on the Food Network, where he constitutes something like two thirds of their total programming. Known for his orange shoes, be they clogs or Converse, he's a big red-headed lug who can really cook. Here in LA, he's one of the people responsible for the city's hottest restaurant, Pizzeria Mozza (He does the toppings, Nancy Silverton, of La Brea Bakery, does the crust). The recipe we settled on is Pork Chops with Peppers and Capers, or Cotolette alla Zingara , which means "pork of the gypsy."

I set out to make the recipe, heading to the market to get some bell peppers (I didn't see any at the Farmers' Market, which means the ones I got at the supermarket are probably from New Zealand or Jupiter or someplace where it's summer). What I didn't do, and should have, was read the entire recipe. It turns out I was supposed to brine my chops overnight, which I totally could've done if I had known to do it. As it was, I soaked them in a salty, sugary mixture for about two hours. It was more of a marinade than a brine. In spite of my error, I soldiered on, rinsing off the chops, patting them dry, and dredging in flour.

From there on out, things went well. The I fried the chops in oil, then removed them from the pan and put it my peppers (sliced nice and thin), my bulb onions, some spicy red chilies, and the capers. I didn't use any green peppers, because whenever I do, they dominate the entire dish, and I didn't use any olives, because I don't really care for them (I'm trying very hard to get into olives, but it's a slow go). After frying the peppers and onions for a while, I poured in some white wine and returned the chops to the pan to simmer. As I made the pork, I cut the fennel and leeks into big chunks, tossed them in olive oil and salt and pepper, and roasted them in the oven at 450 for about 20 minutes.

I was all set. Everything was ready. "What happened to the crosnes?" Edan said. The crosnes! I'd completely forgotten about those nasty little worms. Quickly, I threw them into a pan with some butter, freshly ground pepper, and salt. I sauteed them for about fifteen minutes, and they softened up to the texture of a just-done potato. Finally, we could eat.

The pork looked nice, with the peppers looking very colorful despite the lack of green. The flavors were good, but too salty. If I'd brined it, it might've been different, but who knows. Soaked in the capers and wine, the peppers and onions tasted delicious. I overcooked the veggies a little (Since the leeks roasted quicker than the fennel, I probably should've put them in later). As for the crosnes, well... When the rubber hit the road, Edan couldn't stomach them (mainly due to their appearance). I thought they tasted like butter and little else. I would try them again, maybe as part of a salad or something, where their texture would be a real asset, but I'm in no rush. At least I know what to serve for my Halloween feast next year. Cotolette alla Zingara
"I will gaze on your treasures now, gypsy. Understood?"

Elf Cafe

2007-02-05T10:14:00.000-08:00

Saturday night continued Edan's Birthday 2007 (It's a week-long festival and a state of mind) with dinner with a couple friends, Stephanie and Charlie, one of whom happens to be vegan. They wanted to try Elf Cafe, a new vegetarian restaurant in Echo Park. I don't tend to eat vegetarian (and I doubt I've eaten a single vegan meal in my life), but I was curious to see what they had on the menu. Online research proved difficult, as Elf Cafe has no website. While that's a little odd in this day and age, it's not altogether unheard of. What's a little more annoying is that they have no phone. And no sign, either. Really, Elf Cafe, get over yourself.

It's a tiny place next to a now-defunct movie theater. They have one or two tables outside, but since it's on Sunset Blvd, would you really want to sit out there? (Actually, you might. I'll explain in a bit). Inside, there's a fair amount of exposed brick and a distressed, Spanish-style tile floor. Some very chic lamps hang from the ceiling, giving the place a dim, warm feeling. A large mirror hangs on one wall, adding the illusion of space, very important to a little sliver of a restaurant like Elf Cafe. They had hung a few Pier 1 Imports-style bamboo dishes and faux-Thai wall hangings that seemed like they were bought at auction from a failed Asian restaurant, both of which seemed out of place. A counter with seating for four or five flanks an open kitchen. While I've always liked the idea of an open kitchen -- something about transparency, I suppose -- there were some unwanted side effects from this one. The space is so small and the ventilation so poor that by the end of our meal, we were all sweating like offensive linemen, and Edan was cursing her cashmere sweater. In total, though, it is a very cute place. Small and welcoming, if way, way too hot (God help them come summer).

The menu was entirely organic and vegetarian, and mostly vegan (the exceptions being the dishes that had cheese in them). Each table gets an amuse bouche of potato-garlic puree with crostini, a nice touch for a smaller restaurant. In France, the tiny neighborhood restaurants we went to always had a small taste of something to get you started. More American restaurants should consider this. The puree itself was only okay, and it was a group serving, rather than individual ones, making this more like chips and salsa at a Mexican place, but it's still a nice gesture. It's BYOB, and none us bought any B, so we had to stick with the beverages offered on the menu. I got a limeade that was very nice. Edan got a mint iced tea. Now, when I think of iced tea, I think of black tea. If you add mint to it, it becomes mint iced tea. What they call mint iced tea is ice water with mint leaves in it. This is not "tea;" it isn't steeped. This is mint water. Not the same thing. Edan sent it back and got a limeade. Charlie got a vegan "kola" that was sweetened with an exotic ingredient called honey, instead of high-fructose corn syrup. He said it tasted like soda used to taste. There's a website for it somewhere, but I can't remember the brand name. Maybe an industrious Apronite could find it?

For starters, I got a crock of lentils with roasted mushrooms and caramelized onions. It was like a thick, tasty lentil stew. Served piping hot, in a slightly larger serving size this dish could've been a main course. Others at the table got a tomato puree soup that I thought was tasty, but a little like tomato sauce (probably because there was no cream in it), and an incredibly good vegan potato salad made with Dijon mustard and perched atop haricot verte.

For a main course, I got their Mac and Cheese, which was actually penne and cheese. This is no small matter, since the penne in my dish didn't hold the cheese sauce very well. What resulted was dry penne on top, and a rich cheese sauce sitting on the bottom of the dish. The flavor was good -- they use a blue cheese (we couldn't get our server to specify which blue it was) and Parmesan. As one of us pointed out, it was more of a penne dish, and less of a loaf or casserole, which is more what I think of when I think mac and cheese.

Stephanie ordered the potato and blue cheese tart, while Edan ordered the tomato and feta tart, both served on a bed of mixed greens, and Charlie got the grilled beets and fennel. I thought the beets and fennel were excellent, grilled whole and simply presented on the plate. Very flavorful. Edan said her tomato and feta tart was more pastry puff than tart, and while she liked the flaky crust, the best part of the dish was the greens, which were very fresh.

We ordered the entire dessert menu. OK, it was only two dishes, but it sounds more decadent when you say "I had the entire menu." There was a saffron pudding and a pear tarte tartin. The saffron pudding (which was not vegan; I guess they haven't figured out how to make a decent vegan pudding) was tasty, but quite soupy. I can get kind of skeeved out by odd textures, so I would've preferred a firmer pudding. It came topped with pistachio pieces and raisins. The tarte tartin was vegan, and I thought it was delicious (Edan didn't like the tart, thinking it tasted too "vegan"). It had a honey flavor, and a chewy crust that was more like the inside of baklava than a typical tart crust (which got me thinking...what do they substitute for the butter in a vegan tart crust? I looked online, and the Whole Foods recipe substitutes margarine, which is actually really bad for you. So, here's an instance where being vegan may have an adverse effect on one's health. Of course, if you're eating a tart, you're probably not too concerned about health anyway, right?).

In total, for four of us, with no corkage fee, our tab came to a little over a hundred dollars, which isn't cheap. As a birthday present to Edan, Stephanie and Charlie paid (Thanks, guys!). I felt like the mac and cheese could've been better, and they should regulate the temperature a little more, but it was still a great meal. The ambiance was cozy (and scorching hot). It wasn't too loud, and our service was prompt and attentive. I will definitely go back, but I might think about sitting outside, Sunset Blvd traffic noise be damned.

AOC

2007-02-03T10:05:00.000-08:00

AOC stands for Appelation d'Origine Controlee, which means something along the lines "label of origin controlled." It's a classification system used by the French to denote that a specific wine or cheese comes from a specific region of France (you'll find it somewhere on the label). It is also a standard of quality, denoting a first class product that meets certain criteria.

That Suzanne Goins, the famed chef of Lucques, chose AOC as the name of her newer small plates restaurant is no coincidence. The place is loaded with wine and cheese. Additionally, it's no coincidence that Edan, cheese lover and budding wine enthusiast, chose AOC as the restaurant of choice for her birthday dinner (Happy Birthday, Edan! Groundhog's Day babies are the best!). We got reservations a few weeks in advance (probably a good idea, since the place started to fill up as we ate). It's one of the hotter restaurants in Los Angeles (Jennifer Aniston was there the night before we were), and we were more than a little excited to go.

[Quick note here: We didn't take any pictures. I know it's nice to have a visual to go with the descriptions of the food, but we didn't want to be rude or gauche. Also, it was Edan's birthday, and I wanted to keep the attention on her. Maybe next time we'll take some photos, but for now, you'll just have to imagine.]

The first thing I noticed upon arrival was that the wine is indeed front and center at AOC. There are stacks of bottles in the foyer and racks and racks on the walls. Not one, but two wine bars border the main dining room on either side. Both bars were already crowded when we arrived. I guess it's a hot place to grab a glass of wine, too (Food service is available at the bar). The room is very attractive. I would guess the main room sat between forty and fifty people, but there was another room off in the wings, as well as a loft-like second floor, which I didn't see until we left. The dining room we were in was beautiful, bathed in buttery light with tall windows on one end looking out into the street. It was immediately identifiable as a Los Angeles restaurant. As Edan put it, it seems like every restaurant in LA hires the same interior designer. The tables were fairly close together, which gave the place a comfortable feeling, encouraging one to get to know the neighbors a little. We were seated next to a talkative guy (an actor) who was a regular there. He recommended a few dishes, and we chatted a bit about finicky eaters, and how we hate them.

As I said before, the menu is small plates. Each plate ranges in price from $9 to $15, and there are dozens and dozens of dishes from which to choose. We started with a cheese plate...but you probably could've guessed that, right? We got three cheeses for $15: Marcilly sur maulne, a goat cheese from France, Sable du boulonnais, a French cow's cheese, and Rogue River blue cheese, from the Rogue Creamery in Oregon. All three were amazing. Edan was familiar with the Marcilly, having had it once before. She was a little disappointed that it was riper than the one she'd had, meaning it had firmed up considerably. The Sable was our server's choice, and she was right, it was good -- smoky, with a soft, slightly chewy texture. I preferred the Rogue River, as I like cheeses that double as chemical weapons. It's a pretty strong blue, but it still has a very creamy flavor and firm, crumbly texture (I could cut it with a knife without it breaking apart).

Next, we had roasted dates with parmesan and bacon. These were eerily familiar for some reason. People had talked these up as if they were tiny nuggets of heroin wrapped in sex. They weren't quite that good. They were intensely sweet, and the parmesan was very subtle, maybe too subtle. I didn't feel like I tasted it at all for the first two dates. Edan said mine were just as good. I wouldn't go that far. After all, I don't think they were using Farmer John bacon on these bad boys. At least, I hope not.

For our next round of plates we tried chicken liver crostini with pancetta, a salad of beets, blood oranges and mint, and beef cheeks with paprika and buttered noodles. The chicken liver corstini was some of the best food I've had in a long time. The tangy, livery taste mixed with the salty, chewy pancetta was incredible. I even liked the frisee salad underneath. Next came the beet salad. This was another revelation. Slices of red and yellow beets intermingled with incredibly tangy slices of sweet-sour blood orange, topped with some sort of dressing. So simple, so beautiful, so tasty. You taste the beets, and they're good. They're sweet, and they have that pleasantly just-firm texture that beets have when they've been cooked to perfection. But then you get a bite of the blood orange, and it bursts in your mouth and adds a whole new dimension to the dish. The mint wasn't overpowering at all. It served as a sort of counterpoint to all the sweetness going on in the dish. It was a next-level salad, for sure.

There was a brief pause at that point, and we sipped our wine and relaxed for a second. When confronted with a wine list as daunting as the one at AOC, I can never make up my mind. There were about fifteen varietals on it that I'd never encountered before, so both Edan and I enlisted the help of our server. We told her what qualities we like in a wine (Edan likes big fruit, I like a wine that laughs at my jokes), and she chose for us. She got Edan a Syrah from Strange Wines in Napa, and she gave me a Toro, a very nice, very earthy Spanish wine (I apologize that I don't have the vintages of either of these). Both of us were happy with her choices. We both got a second glass.

The beef cheeks arrived at exactly the right moment. We'd had the "appetizer" plates and were ready for something a bit more substantial. The problem with the cheeks was that they were a bit too substantial. I'd never had beef cheeks before, so I don't have a point of reference to compare it to. They were a bit like brisket -- so tender I could cut them with a spoon, and with a very beefy flavor and some woody undertones. Neither of us were thrilled with the cheeks. They were too rich. It's not that they were bad per se, but with so many tantalizing options on the menu (the coq au vin, the pork confit!), there must be something better.

We could've stopped there. I was getting full, and despite the somewhat underwhelming beef cheeks, I was very satisfied with the food. But it was Edan's birthday, and we had newly-filled glasses of wine, and we figure, lets try one more. So we got arroz negro, squid with saffron aioli. It was an intimidating dish, so blue-black we could hardly tell where the pieces of squid were. The flavor was nice, although the saffron aioli was much more garlicy than saffrony. I think if we'd had this dish at the time we had the beef cheeks it would've been better. It was too rich, too savory, too intensely flavorful to have at the end of the meal. I would get it again, but I don't think Edan will be joining me with it. In short, I think we pushed it one dish too far.

So of course we got dessert. Again, we asked our server's opinion. She recommended the gateau breton with calvados, caramelized smokehouse apples and creme legere. Again, she was right on the mark. She'd described the dish as "a French version of a pound cake," but it was much better than that. It was a thin cake that had a crunchy brulee top that cracked when we put a fork to it. Edan called it a "deep-fried madeleine," a description I thought particularly apt. We devoured it. Edan said it was the best thing we had all night. It was definitely close. The perfect end to the meal. Now I'm glad Edan didn't let me skip it and get Pinkberry.

In total, with tax and tip, we spent $150, which included dessert, coffee (for me), and two glasses of wine each (Edan's wine was $9, mine was $10...or vice versa, I don't remember which). I was full, but not like I am when I leave a steakhouse. It was a pleasant feeling. I was satisfied on every level, but I didn't feel gluttonous or sick. Basically, it was how I'd like to feel after every dinner. If only every dinner could be at AOC. It's an ideal place to try if you don't have tons of money and can only eat a dinner like this once and awhile (which is how it is for us). I say that not only because it's top quality food (it is) with terrific ambiance and service, but because you can try so many things. If they're all great, good for you. If one or two of them aren't what you'd hoped for, there's always the next plate. On a flavor level, you leave feeling like you ate several meals. I can't recommend it enough.

Top Chef Reaction -- Bourdain

2007-02-02T09:56:00.000-08:00

Via Chow's The Grinder blog. Anthony Bourdain breaks down the "Top Chef" contestants he met when he was a guest judge on the show. Other than calling Carlos "Alex," he pretty much nails it.

Super Bowl Eats

2007-02-02T08:47:00.000-08:00

It's Super Bowl weekend, which means that all sorts of people who usually don't watch football are going to sit down and take in a game. The interweb will be full of ways to enhance one's enjoyment of said game, including recipes and recommendations to make your Super Bowl party the awesomest party ever. Topics will range from which beer to serve to healthy dishes to help keep you alive past halftime (including tips from Super Bowl legend and world-renown money-grubber Joe Montana!). There are even some suggestions from Wine Spectator, if that's the way you roll. Thankfully, this year there won't be any of those stories suggesting you make the native cuisine of whichever cities are battling it out in the big game. The people who write those articles had to be pulling for New England in the AFC Championship, right? I mean, what the hell do they eat in Indianapolis? I say steer clear of the deep dish pizza and the polish sausage. Chicago has dropped a few notches in my book with its fascistic foie gras ban. In fact, part of me wants to eat some foie gras on Sunday, just to stick it to the City of Broad Shoulders. But most of you probably want a little more traditional fare. To help you out, I've come up with a few helpful tips to make your Super Bowl party better than OK.

1. Forget trying to be healthy. I know Joe Montana says you can make totally kicking personal pizzas that are good for your heart, but we all know that he's wrong. If you want to be healthy on Super Bowl Sunday, don't watch the game. Alright, you can probably avoid that third helping of nachos, too. Otherwise, pig out. After Thanksgiving, Fourth of July barbecues, trips to the movies/ballgame, birthday parties, impromptu trips to Krispy Kreme, and Friday Fajitas Fiesta night at Chili's, Super Bowl Sunday is one of the only days Americans have to eat way too much of stuff that isn't good for them. Let's all just try to enjoy it, OK?

2. Make What You Can from Scratch. It's really not that hard to fire up a batch of your own wings. Just buy some wings, throw em in the oven at 425 for about 45 minutes, then toss them in a mixture of butter and Frank's Red Hot sauce. And, please use Frank's. I love Tabasco on eggs and hashbrowns. Love it. But for wings, you've got to go with Frank's. I guarantee these wings will be better than the frozen ones you've been buying. You know, the ones with that Martian-red powder all over them? And while we're on the subject, you know that gelatinous, Syracuse University-orange colored queso you've been buying? Yeah, don't. Buy it, that is. As Michael Pollan would say, that's not even food. Seriously, how hard is it to melt down some cheese? The benefit of making stuff yourself (aside from the godlike feeling of creation you get from it) is that you can control what goes in it. Like jalapeños? Throw em in. Don't like em? Prefer habaneros? You know what to do.

3. Don't skimp on the product. Is there anything worse than bad corn chips? I mean, they're already corn chips, so it's not like they have far to sink. But when you get some stale, bland, nasty chips that fall apart as soon as you dip them in salsa...guh. Buy the good stuff. Those blue corn tortilla chips they sell at Whole Foods are worth the extra 79 cents. Of course, you could make your own. And don't have a case of Bud in the fridge. Spring for some Stella or whatever fancy yuppie beer it is that you like to drink. And if somebody shows up to your party with a sixer of Bud, don't let them drink your good stuff. Let them sip their Bud, and think about what they've done.

4. Stagger your menu. There are plenty of things you can make ahead of time so that when people start arriving you've got food out for them. Also, if you're making something more substantial, try a casserole. You can make it ahead of time and throw it in the fridge. All that's left is to toss it in the oven. The same goes for skewers. Marinate them and get them all set so all you have to do is fire them. That way you won't be in the kitchen missing Peyton Manning's meltdown or the latest ad with the guy who inexplicably works for apes.

5. Have paper plates and napkins. It's worth the investment. Buy the ones made from recycled paper, of course. At the end of the game, you're going to be tired, drunk, and irritable (because they didn't make the overs). The last thing you'll want to do is dishes.

There you have it. Five quick and somewhat easy steps to make your party a little bit better than last year's debacle (Also, don't invite that guy who says "Boo Yeah!" whenever there's a big hit). Enjoy the game!

Top Chef -- No Surprises, Please

2007-02-01T10:23:00.000-08:00

So, Ilan won "Top Chef." Just like Food & Wine Magazine, one of the show's top sponsors, said he did. A few days before the finale. Nice work, Food & Wine. Why don't you tell me who wins the Super Bowl while you're at it? Ilan's Spanish cuisine topped Marcel's gastro-chemist fare. I'm not sure what it is about Ilan that I don't like. Maybe it's the way he wears multiple watches at the same time. Or maybe it's his bizarre Super Mario Bros-esque red suspender getup (Is this some kind of chef-wear I'm not aware of?). Or maybe it was how he ripped last season's winner, the infinitely more likable Harold Dieterle. Or maybe it's because he's a dick. Whatever it is, I don't like him. Sure, Marcel seemed like a prick, too, but at least he had something original going on with his food. I mean, Spanish cuisine? That's so two nights ago.

[Note: Yesterday I wrote a long post about Michael Pollan's article in the New York Times Magazine and misspelled his name throughout. I apologize. The error has been corrected.]

Last Night's Dinner -- Tapas

2007-01-31T11:06:00.000-08:00

You might be saying, "Whatever happened to the Napkin part of this blog? You know, the part where you talk about restaurants?" Yes, I do know the part to which you refer. Rest assured, it's coming. You see that list over on the left of the site called "Restaurants I'd Like to Try?" One of those is getting crossed off the list this Friday when Edan and I go there to celebrate her birthday. I won't tell you which one, but trust me when I say I will have a full write up on it in the days after.

Now about last night. Edan had to teach a class last night and wouldn't be home until 9pm. I went with her to the class and read in a coffee shop until she was finished. This meant we wouldn't be eating until late. Potentially very late. So we decided to make it a tapas night. We figured, hell the Spanish eat at ten, eleven o'clock, why not do the same?

Edan threw together an impromptu cheese plate of whatever we had in the house (it wasn't terribly "Spanish" in nature, as it included Roquefort and Cotswold, but whatever). I had some Medjool dates leftover from Christmas (I had used them in a muffin recipe) and decided to make bacon-wrapped dates. This was a favorite of ours from Devotay, a restaurant we used to frequent in our Iowa City days. It's a simple recipe (the one I used is from Tapas, but I imagine they're all variations on the same basic ingredients):

Cut a few rashers of bacon in half. Pit some dates. Wrap the pieces of bacon around the dates and secure with a toothpick. Peal two cloves of garlic. Heat some olive oil and the two cloves of garlic in a pan. Fry the bacon-wrapped dates until they are brown and crispy. Eat the hell out of them.
Along with the dates, Edan roasted some orange and yellow bell peppers, and I made "Potatoes Rioja-style with chorizo" from a terrific cookbook by Jose Andres called Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America. Basically, it's a Spanish stew of potatoes and chorizo with onions, garlic and paprika. It's one of my favorite dishes, so spicy and flavorful, and so delightfully...well, red. We paired it with a Cote du Rhone, as that's all we had in the house. It probably would've been better with a temparinillo, but we don't choose these things, they choose us.In the end, the stew was a little overdone. The potatoes turned into much, making it more of a mashed potatoes with paprika and chorizo than a stew. It was still tasty, but not quite what I set out to make. The date were delicious, but a little greasy, and I felt the meal lacked some greens. Next time we do tapas I think we'll make a zucchini dish and have a simple mixed greens salad with it as well. Oh, and Edan hated the wine (I thought it was nice. Maybe it's a varietal thing. It wasn't big enough for her). Other than the fact that we didn't eat until 10:30 (!), it was a pretty successful meal. Not terribly healthy, maybe, but tasty just the same.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants...Duh!

2007-01-31T10:24:00.000-08:00

Over the summer I read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, a book about the various food production systems present in America today. It had a profound effect on the way I thought about food. I suppose I knew all along that those Cheetos I'd been scarfing down as a youth weren't very good for me, but I never knew had bad they were for the planet and for society as a whole. It was a motivating factor in making me reduce the amount of processed food I eat. And, oh yeah, it was the most enjoyable book I read all year.

Pollan has an article in this past week's issue of the New York Times Magazine which focuses on the rise of "nutritionism" in America's supermarkets and food culture. In short, he says Americans have shifted from eating food to eating nutrients. The article, which is itself an argument against simplification. His argument, in part, is that food, like a banana or a salmon steak, is a complex thing, and reducing it to its component parts -- its fatty acids and antioxidants -- and then attempting to pump up the good and reduce the bad, is a tricky and often dangerous endeavor. In other words, it's better to eat a banana than attempt to get the nutrients of a banana into a breakfast cereal.

If you want to be healthy (and he's not certain that looking at food as a means to health is necessarily a good thing), he has some fairly simple advice: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." It reminds me a little of advice I heard once from the actor Jon Favreau (he of Swingers fame). He was speaking at the film school where I was a student. Someone in the audience asked him how he lost weight or gained weight for the different roles he played. Favreau said, "I have a revolutionary weight management program wherein if I want to lose weight, I eat less and exercise more, and if I want to gain weight, I eat more and exercise less." I can't believe he hasn't made millions as a diet guru yet.

Pollan expands his advice to ten basic rules of thumb, which include things like "Cook," and "Pay more, eat less," meaning to spend money on smaller portions of superior quality foods. He also urges people to do as much of their shopping outside the supermarket as possible. Generally speaking, I agree with this, although I think it's possible to eat well and shop mostly at your local supermarket. I heard a nutritionist (they are useful for some things) on NPR once recommend "shopping on the outer edge of the supermarket." Most of the good stuff is there -- the meat, the produce, and the dairy. Venture as seldom as possible into the aisles, since that tends to be the province of high-fructose corn syrup and transfats. I would also recommend eating processed foods only if you can see the person who processed them. It seems better to buy bread from a baker and sausages from a butcher. I'm not sure why, it just feels right to me. And that's, in a round about way, the point of Pollan's article. Eat food that's recognizable as food, and stop worrying so much about what's in it.

Notes from a Fromager -- Fancy Cheesburgers

2007-01-29T16:43:00.000-08:00

If you’ve ever been to 25 Degrees, the fancy burger joint inside the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, then you know just how exciting it is to blanket your patty with something other than cheddar. I loved my prosciutto and burrata burger there, but I felt full (too full, I think) for hours afterward.

Still, from then on, I was inspired to be more adventurous with my hamburger, and for me, that meant taking risks with the cheese.

Burrata (sans Prosciutto), a pulled-curd cheese from Southern Italy, is basically the remnants of Mozzarella and cream held in a bag of curds. Sounds gross, I know, but it’s really divine. When you cut into the soft ball of burrata, an incredible creaminess spills forth, perfect for spooning onto your frying burger. Add some grilled onions on top and watch the burrata melt. This stuff’s like Mozzarella on steroids.

If you’re a blue cheese fan, I suggest you don’t mess with anything crumbly, like Maytag or Shropshire Blue. Instead, try St. Agur, a creamy cow’s milk blue from the Auvergne region of France. It’s fairly mild, so it won’t dominate the meat flavor, and its texture makes for easy application. If you want something more extreme, I recommend Papillon Roquefort, the classic sheep’s milk blue from France, famous for being Charlemaigne’s personal favorite. (Check out its legend of origin.)

My last recommendation is Cotswold, an English cheddar peppered with chives and onion. This cheese melts easily and will give your burger enough spice that the meat itself doesn’t need a thing. Cotswold, as you might’ve guessed, is also great on a grilled cheese.

--Edan

Fast Food, Anyone?

2007-01-26T10:35:00.000-08:00

It's Friday. You're tired. You've been working all week (or so you'd like your boss to believe). The last thing you want to do when you get home is get crackin' on a port wine reduction. Save that for Saturday, when you've got all afternoon to prep. Of course, you could go out, but sometimes that's just as tiring as cooking. Some nights you just want to stay home and eat something great. What's the answer? Chinese takeout? Maybe. Pizza? Not tonight. Tonight you want something delicious and light, not some greasy junk food; you had enough of that last week watching football. I've got you covered (Actually, Italian Easy Two, my favorite cookbook of the moment, has you covered, but whatever).

Here's what you do. On your way home from work, stop by the nearest Whole Foods or Gelsons (or your fishmonger, if you're lucky enough to have one), and pick up a pound of their absolute best, freshest tuna (I use Ahi, but there are other varieties that work, too). Again, this stuff had better be fresh. Ask when they got it. If it doesn't look good, abandon the plan and order take out. If they've got the good stuff, get it. Pick up a bottle of wine. Grab some mixed greens, some fresh tomatoes, and anything else you want to throw into a salad. While you're in the produce section, pick up a lemon and a few dried red chili peppers. Finally, head over to the bakery and get a nice loaf of sourdough, the fresher the better. Got everything? OK. Stop by the video store and pick up a good rom com or whatever it is you like to watch on a Friday night when you're absolutely not leaving the house. Now go home.

Throw the salad together. You could get more ambitious and make some sort of lemon grass slaw or something, but this meal is all about ease and convenience, so I say stick to a simple mixed green salad. Slice the sourdough bread into big, thick slices, and broil it until dark and crispy. Drizzle some olive oil over the toast. Cut the lemon in half and crush the chilies. Now, take your sharpest knife and slice the tuna into 1/4 inch strips, cutting across the grain of the meat. Plate the strips and season with sea salt, freshly-crushed black pepper, and the crushed chilies. Serve with the lemon, toast, and salad. Enjoy. The total cost of this meal is about $35, and that assumes you have to buy the chilies and the lemon, and that you spend about $8 on wine. It's probably cheaper than what you'd pay at a restaurant, it's almost certainly healthier than Chinese takeout, and you don't have to cook a thing (OK, you have to toast some bread, but come on). That's some serious fast food.

Quick Links: Those Pie Council goons got to you, too, didn't they?!

2007-01-25T13:27:00.000-08:00

January 23 was National Pie Day. If I had known, I'd have baked a pie, or something. (Isn't it odd that there's even such a thing as the American Pie Council? Who sits on this council? Homer Simpson?) I wonder if the Pie Council's jurisdiction extends to tarts, because this is a nice looking recipe for a leek tart.

It's down to Marcel and Ilan on "Top Chef." Snack points out that Ilan has quit his job, leading to rampant speculation that he is the one true Top Chef, as it were. Or maybe he just hated his boss or something?

Pinkberry has moved in down the street from us, so now we can "love, obsess, and indulge in this pure, swirly lifestyle." We tried it last night. For those who don't know, Pinkberry is frozen yogurt. What sets it apart from other frozen yogurts is that it tastes like yogurt (unless you get the green tea flavor, in which case, it tastes like green tea). I thought it was interesting, but I didn't have the experience described on Franklin Avenue.

We all know that global warming is a natural phenomenon, like the cycle of the seasons or nuclear winter, that has nothing to do with greenhouses gases. What we didn't know, is that it's going to change where we grow our wine grapes. Fancy a Syrah from Sussex, guv'na?

Tough Times in the Kitchen

2007-01-24T10:02:00.000-08:00

I know, I know. No posts on Monday or Tuesday. No Monday Morning Menus. What the hell is going on? Well, I've been busy with work, and in my free time, I've been furiously trying to finish the book I've been reading for three months (Before you laugh, it was Europe Central, which is a cool 750 pages. So, ta!). But that's not the only reason I haven't posted anything lately. I've been going through a tough spot of cooking lately. It's not that the food hasn't been good (although there was a tilapia dish that won't be winning any awards), but more that the process of cooking has been taking a toll on me. It seems like I'm constantly a step behind where I ought to be in the kitchen. I think I'm doing what I ought to be doing. If I'm following a recipe, I've read the recipe in advance and assembled everything I'll need to begin. I've got everything laid out nicely on the counter, ready to go. And yet, all of a sudden, the sauce is coming together too quickly and the steaks are nowhere near done. And my frites? My frites are a soggy mess. My frites suck. By the time I'm done choreographing the latest dinnertime disaster, it's nearly nine o'clock, and it's all I can do to sink into my chair and devour the food, too tired to notice much of the flavor. I know I talk a lot about how much I enjoy the process of cooking (and I do), but I still think of it as a means to an end. Shouldn't I be enjoying the fruits of all that labor? Isn't that what this is all about? When I look back on the last few days of eating, I think the thing I enjoyed most was a sandwich I had yesterday for lunch, and you know what, it only took about five minutes to make. It was simple, but it had great ingredients -- terrific bread from Figaro (which I am blessed to live very near), spicy peppered turkey, Istara cheese, paper-thin slices of tomato, and arugula. It wasn't about my mastery of various culinary skills. It was just good food. And I sat there and read my interminable book and ate. And it was good. And I thought, "This is what eating is all about." So tonight, goddamit, we're eating burgers. Granted, they'll be burgers with incredibly good cheeses and fresh arugula and sharp mustard, but burgers all the same. You gotta problem with that?

Until then, I've posted a (rather pathetic) picture of the sandwich that changed it all for me (It really was better than it looks), and a picture of one of the meals for which I worked so hard -- fillet of beef with shallots and sauce porto (not pictured, soggy, sucky frites).

Quick Links: Is That a Flank Steak in Your Pocket or Are You Just Glad to See Me?

2007-01-19T10:38:00.000-08:00

What a shock -- Walmart's organic food may be not all that "organic."
The Food Network will hold its first awards show, which will air on April 15. Billy Crystal is already busy creating a hokey dance number that involves ceviche and canapes.
Supermarkets are struggling to stop people from stealing meat. One idea is to bring back the old human-to-human interaction with the butcher. In the end, though, they'll probably just figure out a way to fit a rump roast into one of those impenetrable plastic jewel cases they use for CDs and DVDs.

Padma Lakshmi, Fire Hazard

2007-01-18T10:47:00.000-08:00

Apparently the contestants on Top Chef are not impressed with the food criticizing abilities of literary trophy wife hostess Padma Lakshmi. We already heard Michael Midgley say that she was a "wannabe judge" and that head judge Tom Colicchio frequently gave her the "just shut up" look (I know that look. I get it about twice a day). New York Magazine reports that Padma is none too popular with any of the contestants. I only have one question for these people: Did they watch Season 1? Do they not recall the shrill, whiny tones of hostess Katie Lee Joel? (OK, that's two questions). Seriously, Katie Lee Joel's voice is on Satan's answering machine. She has all the charm of a telemarketer. Yes, Padma seems a little know-it-all-ish, but at least she speaks like a human (and a good looking one, at that). And she's married to a one-time fatwa target, which is so cool.

Anyway, this week they gave Cliff the boot. In a scene that could've been taken from the "Deleted Scenes" portion of the Full Metal Jacket DVD, Cliff held down official show whipping boy Marcel in an attempt to forcibly remove his bizarre trademark hair. This has become a reality show commonplace in recent years: a contestant gets a little liquored up, crosses some sort of line, and has to have a sober conference with the head judge (or in the case of "Project Runway," the head judge's bag man, Tim Gunn). I find these episodes a bit tiring. Bravo's reality shows have been a cut above the rest for one simple reason: the contestants actually have a skill or some talent. When they air an episode like this, it threatens to drag the entire episode down to the level of "Real World vs. Road Rules." What makes it doubly annoying is that after the incident, the rest of the episode is full of righteous indignation from everyone else on the show. The judging scene turns into Judgement at Nuremberg. Even Padma's blog seems over the top this week. I'm secretly hoping that all of this is an elaborate attempt to make Marcel more likable so that he can actually win.

(Thanks to Apronite Doug for the tip!)

What's This Winter You Speak Of?

2007-01-17T09:37:00.000-08:00

It's been cold here in Los Angeles these past few days. No, I mean it. OK, I know it isn't Chicago cold or anything like that, but it has actually dipped below freezing at night. That's bad news for a state that grows crops year round. According to the LA Times, we should be expecting winter-long shortages of citrus fruits and some herbs, and the effects of the freeze could be felt into the beginning of the summer. With an increasing number of restaurants advertising that their food is locally grown, I'm curious to see what kind of changes we'll see on menus around town.

The Times, for its part, seems to be in denial. Alongside newsy reports on the frost and its effect on local markets, there are articles on barbecuing in winter and recipes for "always sunny margaritas." I found the barbecue article to be particularly insufferable. I guess it's sentences like this one that I find so tiresome:

"On a gray afternoon, barbecuing becomes a private, meditative, poetical sort of thing, kind of like hiking back to town for a gallon of gas."

Right. The author goes on to regale us with boastful tales of grilling in a light drizzle, with only a beer to keep him warm. Listen pal, I'm from upstate New York, and I have seen my brother cook a flank steak on an outdoor grill during a blizzard. So spare me the Hemingway-esque musings on the manly solitude of the grillmaster. Seriously. And while we're on the subject, I don't find it difficult to stay warm on these chilly California nights. I've got a little something I like to call Kentucky straight bourbon to keep me warm.

Notes from a Fromager -- American Cheese

2007-01-17T08:50:00.000-08:00

Since last night’s main course was a hearty slab of American pork, I decided to go with three domestic cheeses for the mid-meal cheese plate. Tarentaise (in the middle of the photo), is a yellowish hard cheese from Thistle Hill Farm in North Pomfret, Vermont. The Putney Family (mom, dad and 4 kids), runs this farm themselves, and they claim to know all of their Jersey dairy cows by name. I’m not surprised—Thistle Hill is certainly a bovine’s dream; the cows here get milked twice a day, and otherwise spend their time eating organic hay and grains, and, in the summer, moving through various pastures of fresh grass. The Putneys follow the traditional French Alpine way of producing cheese, meaning it’s made in a copper vat, and processed, for the most part, by hand. The result is a wonderfully complex raw cow’s milk flavor with a delicate yet zingy finish.

The two other cheeses I chose are from Cypress Groves, in Northern California. The first, Lamb Chopper (right-hand side in photo), is a semi-firm sheep’s milk cheese whose wheel pictures a lamb, in sunglasses and a leather vest, riding—that’s right—a chopper. Aside from its mild flavor, the most pleasing aspect of Lamb Chopper is its texture, which is both firm and supple, perhaps even chewy. This is the kind of cheese to eat on its own, without crackers or bread or fruit to get in its way.

The other Cypress Groves cheese is by far its most famous: Humboldt Fog. A celebrity for good reason, this aged goat cheese with a ripened surface and a line of beautiful gray-blue vegetable ash running through its center is rich and tangy. I especially love its varied textures; because it ripens from the outside-in, the edges get gooey and runny, while the inside meat remains flaky. (You can see this ripening in the photo).

I paired these three cheeses with pear and apple slices, and an arugula salad with a Meyer lemon dressing. Man, this country has come a long way since cheese spray and Kraft singles.

--Edan

Cote de Porc a la Charcutiere

2007-01-16T11:09:00.000-08:00

Our friend Kathleen came over for dinner last night, so we went all out. I made a pork recipe from Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook, along with a vegetable tian, and a chocolate devil's food cake for dessert (The cake took about four hours to make, and it turned out a little dry. Let us never speak of this again). Edan put together a cheese plate and a little arugula salad as a second course. With a couple of good bottles of Sirah, we were in business.

The pork turned out better than I could've hoped, so I decided to post the recipe here. I highly recommend throwing in a little demi-glace (Demi, for those who don't know, is basically veal stock heavily reduced with red wine) if you have it lying around. I did, and I think it made a big difference. For you kosher or vegetarian Apronites...Man, I pity you.

cote de porc a la charcutiere
(from Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook)

Ingredients
1tbsp oil
1tbsp butter
4 rib chops (I used three, because there were only three of us, and we're not gluttons.)
salt and pepper
1 small onion, finely chopped (I actually substituted a large shallot, which worked great.)
1 teaspoon Wondra flour (or all-purpose flour)
1/2 cup white wine
1 cup dark, strong chicken or veal stock (I used veal.)
2 tbsp Dijon mustard
10 cornichons, thinly sliced
1 sprig of flat parsley, chopped

Equipment
oven-safe saute pan
tongs
platter
aluminum foil
wooden spoon
whisk
serving platter

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. In the oven-safe saute pan, heat the oil, then the butter. Season the chops with salt and pepper, then sear in the hot pan for about 4 minutes per side, or until golden brown. Transfer the pan to the oven and cook for another 8 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and remove the chops. Set them aside on the platter, loosely covered with foil, while you make the sauce.

Return the saute pan to the heat, and add the onion. Cook until golden brown. Add the flour and cook, stirring for 1 minute. Stir in the wine and reduce by half, scraping, scarping, of course. Add the stock (and you really do need a good, dark, strong stock for this). Reduce the liquid by half. Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the mustard. Add the cornichons, the parsley, and any juice that has run off the cooked pork chops. Adjust the seasoning. Arrange the chops on the platter and pour over the sauce. Eat.

Monday Morning Menu

2007-01-15T10:16:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, my parents got me Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook, probably at the insistence of my brother, Kevin, who is a foodie himself. It's a beautifully designed book, full of color photos not only of delicious dishes like Onglet Gascon and Tournedos d'agneau with fig confit, but also of his kitchen crew corking wine bottles, firing dishes, and finishing orders. The jacket of the book is simple craft paper brown, the kind some restaurants use instead of tablecloths. While the book looks good, it's nothing compared to the writing. It's the only cookbook I've read cover to cover. And while it has inspired me to try all manner of complicated culinary techniques and dishes, it isn't exactly welcoming. Consider this entry on roasting a chicken:

Poulet Roti
"That's roast chicken, numbnuts! And if you can't properly roast a damn
chicken then you are one helpless, hopeless, sorry-ass bivalve in an apron.
Take that apron off, wrap it around your neck, and hang yourself. You do
not deserve to wear the proud garment of generations of hardworking,
dedicated cooks. Turn in those clogs, too."

The truth hurts. After some initial shock at how many of the recipes require veal stock (And Bourdain is diligent in his efforts to get us to make our own stocks), I set out to try a few of things. His steak au poivre was good, but too buttery for my taste. His rack of lamb, on the other hand, was delicious. I made it for Christmas dinner. And his French onion soup...Sweet Christ in a kick-line.

This week, I'm going to make cote de porc a la charcutiere. Basically, it's pork chops with a sauce of Dijon mustard, cornichons, parsley, white wine, and veal stock. Edan and I are having a friend over for dinner, so it will be the pork, a vegetable tian from Barefoot in Paris, the French cookbook from The Barefoot Contessa, and a chocolate devil's food cake from Tartine, one of the previous year's best cookbooks. The cake is covered in a dark chocolate ganache and toasted cake crumbs, and it looks as challenging as anything I've ever made (I'm still a novice baker. Oh, who am I kidding? I'm pretty much a novice cook, too). If I survive the cake, the rest of the week should be easy as...er, pie.

Last Night's Dinner -- French Onion Soup

2007-01-15T09:59:00.000-08:00

Anthony Bourdain really is the man. Don't believe me? Try his French onion soup. I did. I had made French onion soup before, from a vegetarian soup cookbook that's actually pretty good. The onion soup, however, is not one of its stronger recipes. At first it tasted right, but once I'd gotten through the layer of molten Gruyere, it took on a sickly sweet and sour flavor, as if the vinegar had overwhelmed the rest of the soup. I decided to try again, but this time I went with Anthony Bourdain's recipe from the Les Halles Cookbook (more on this terrific cookbook later). Immediately I realized what I'd been lacking before -- bacon. The greasiness of the bacon complimented the sweetness of the port and vinegar perfectly. Coupled with the salty goodness that is Gruyere cheese melted over baguette croûtons, this was a near perfect bowl of soup (Next time I will use even more Gruyere). All soups should have bacon in them.

Top Chef -- Michael sent to Grill Steaks in the Great Beyond

2007-01-11T09:51:00.000-08:00

Like almost everybody I know, I'm into "Top Chef." This season has been better than last, mainly because they replaced trophy wife hostess Katie Lee Joel with superior trophy wife hostess Padma Lakshmi. This week's episode saw line cook Michael Midgley sent packing. It's too bad, really. Michael was just coming into his own. For the first six or seven episodes, his answer to every challenge seemed to be, "I'm just gonna grill up some steaks, man. Who doesn't like steak?" Apparently, the judges didn't, since they hated just about everything he cooked. Until last week, when he won not only the Quickfire Challenge as well as the main challenge. His trout- envying-salmon dish was not only high concept, but also looked delicious.

Chow has up a great interview with Michael, in which he trashes his nemesis Tom Colicchio, tells a harrowing story of getting his wisdom tooth pulled in South Central, and explains that none of the challenges are as frenetic as they seem on the air. Oh, and Michael has a totally kickin' MySpace page ("Damn It Feels Good to be a Gangsta," indeed.), complete with candid, behind-the-scenes photos of the other "Top Chef" contestants. God, I hope his publicist didn't create it.

Quick Links

2007-01-10T12:20:00.000-08:00

Does beef from grass-fed cattle taste any better than its corn-fed industrial counterpart?
Like the wine at dinner? Ask for the label.
Food industry muckraking continues to be a popular publishing trend. The latest salvo is from Barry Glasner. But is it as good as The Omnivore's Dilemma?
The FDA assesses the risk of eating the meat of cloned animals. Mmm, I love me some cloned pork belly.

Last Night's Dinner -- Braised Oxtail

2007-01-10T10:06:00.000-08:00

Last night, I had braised oxtail with star anise and Chinese greens. I'd never eaten oxtail before, and I'd certainly never cooked it. Maybe I'd passed it a few times in the meat cooler at the local market, but I don't believe it seriously crossed my mind as an option until recently. It popped up on episode of "Top Chef," and then again in this month's Bon Appetit. In both cases, people were raving about its rich flavor and incredible tenderness. When I found this recipe, I figured I'd give it a shot. While oxtail is common to the cuisine of Britain and the Caribbean, this recipe has obvious East Asian influence. I confess I was a little worried. I mean, this is the tail of a freakin' cow, you know? I tried not to think about that as I set out to cook it.

Aside from cooking time (I braised the meat for 3 hours, then chilled it for one day in the fridge), the recipe was remarkably easy to make. Other than star anise, which some of you may already have in your spice racks, the ingredients are common and easy to locate at your local supermarket. There's relatively little prep work to be done, and almost no chopping at all (one onion and a little ginger).

The only problem I had with the recipe was that the sauce didn't thicken up quite as much as I would've liked (In fact, I ended up throwing in a little cornstarch out of desperation). While this may have affected the presentation, it didn't hurt the taste at all. I found the meat to have intense flavor, a little like brisket, but much, much more tender. When I first took the oxtail out of its package, I was concerned that there wasn't enough meat, and that what there was would be hard to eat off the bone. It turns out I had no cause for concern, as the meat fell off the bone at the slightest touch of a fork. Incredible. What had I been missing?

I got a bottle of Layer Cak e Shiraz 2005 to pair with the oxtail. It was good choice. Very chocolaty and easy to drink. The sweetness and spiciness of the wine complemented the faintly licorice taste of the anise clinging to the meat. Really, people shouldn't eat this well on a Tuesday night. It's criminal.

Notes from a Fromager

2007-01-09T15:32:00.000-08:00

My wife, Edan, works in a cheese store. No, I did not force her to work there, it was her idea. She keeps me stocked with cheeses, good olive oil, salami, and other delicious specialty goods. This is the long way of saying she knows a lot more about cheese than I do. She writes:

I’ve only been working in the cheese business for about two months, but already I’ve come across a few patrons who claim they don’t like cheese. Just the other day in fact, a family of four: father, mother, and their grown daughter and son, ventured into the shop to peruse our many offerings. All except the mother were adventurous cheese eaters—anything these three sampled was swallowed with half-closed eyes and an orgiastic groan. The mother, however, stood back from this feasting, a bit timid. She told me she didn’t like most cheeses because of their texture—and she certainly didn’t like pungent flavors, either. The challenge of finding something to her liking reminded me of my days as a bookseller, when teary-eyed mothers would beg me to recommend something enjoyable and appropriate for their sullen teenagers who preferred text messaging to all else—a difficult, but not impossible, task.

This particular cheese patron said she did like Fontina D’Aosta, a semi-firm Italian cheese made from raw cow’s milk (meaning it’s not pasteurized) and aged for four months. Fontina D’Aosta, by the way, is name-controlled, and should not be confused with the plain old, rubbery “Fontina” cheese you often see in the supermarket. Once I had this information, it was easy to find others she enjoyed. First, Chaubier, a lovely cheese from France, made from pasteurized goat and cow’s milk. This cheese, covered in an orange rind, is very mild without being boring, and its consistency rivals the chicest string cheese. Second, Istara, a sheep’s milk cheese from the French Pyrenees. Istara is firmer than Chaubier, but in my opinion its flavors are better: nutty and sharper, without being the slightest bit offensive. Needless to say, this so called cheese hater took big chunks of both of these cheeses home with her, her palette expanding by the minute.

Monday Morning Menu

2007-01-08T09:45:00.000-08:00

Every Sunday, my wife and I make a list of the meals we're going to eat for the week (just dinner; breakfast and lunch are always catch as catch can), then head off to the market to gather the ingredients. Typically, we plan four or five dinners and assume that we'll eat out or improvise the other meals. After all, you gotta have some spontaneity.

This week, we decided on braised oxtail with star anise and Chinese greens, pumpkin ginger soup, Cornish game hen, and orecchiette/tomoto/ricotta, a pasta recipe from one of our favorite cookbooks, Italian Two Easy. The challenge is clearly the oxtail, which not only requires three hours cooking time, but also must be refrigerated one to three days before it can be served. The other meals should be safely in our wheel house. I'll post updates on how each meal turned out later in the week.

Last Night's Dinner

2007-01-08T09:08:00.000-08:00

One of my New Year's resolutions, in so far as I have them, is to eat more fish. Edan isn't wild about cooked fish (sushi is another thing entirely), so it's easy for us to fall into a salmon-only rut. Last night, however, we decided to try this Mahi Mahi recipe we found in Bon Appetit magazine. I thought Mahi Mahi would be readily available in most supermarkets. I was wrong. After scouring the pathetic fish sections of my local Albertsons and Vons (Vons looked like I imagine a supermarket would on the eve of the apocalypse. There were almost no products on the shelves and the fish display was full of torn up salmon fillets and overturned packages of frozen swordfish), I realized I had to suck it up and go to Gelsons. This is a common occurrence in my cooking life -- I decide to make a slightly exotic dish, insist on shopping at the "normal" supermarket (since I figure good food should be available to everyone), wander around for half an hour before I realize they have less than half the ingredients I need, yell at the produce manager, and leave in a huff to drive to Gelsons or Whole Foods. Every week...I'm a slow learner.

Despite my supermarket troubles, the meal ended up being excellent. I couldn't find jicama anywhere, so we went with a typical green salad with tomatoes and cucumbers instead. It broke up the Asian theme we had going, and it didn't look quite as nice on the plate, but it was still tasty. By far, the highlight of the meal were the rice fritters. When we were forming them by hand, they kept breaking apart and refusing to hold their shape, yet somehow they cohered enough in the frying pan to crisp up into tiny patties of deliciousness. It was miraculous. I think we'll probably make this recipe again, if only for the fritters.

Ultimate Los Angeles Restaurant 2006

2007-01-05T11:39:00.000-08:00

For the last two years, I was living in Iowa. Which was OK. Sort of. They had fun minor league baseball teams to watch, and occasionally it snowed. While enduring the cold Iowa winters, I was surprised to find that what I missed most about Los Angeles wasn't the weather, but the food. Don't get me wrong, Iowa had a few good restaurants (I miss the Lincoln Cafe, in tiny Mount Vernon, which was like an oasis of great cuisine in a cornfield of diner food), but on the whole, it was pretty grim. I found myself longing for good Chinese food, or a decent burrito, or some California cuisine. Basically, the kind of food that's as ubiquitous in Los Angeles as freeway traffic or overpriced drinks. Suffice to say that now that I'm back in Los Angeles, I'm taking full advantage of the ever-widening selection of restaurants.

Conveniently, Chowhound has polled a group of LA-based foodies and come up with their Ultimate Los Angeles Restaurant of 2006. The results are in, and the clear winner is Providence , a two-year old seafood restaurant. Runner up was Spago (Better luck next year, Wolfgang). Sadly, I haven't been to Providence yet. Taking a quick look at the top twenty restaurants, I've been to several. Jar, at which I ate two weeks ago, came in at number eight. I've been to Jar twice. The first time I was blown away. I had the Kobe beef special (which was also on the menu the second time), as well as fries and an appetizer of black mussels, ong choy, lobster Bearnaise, and fennel salt. The fries are served in a little newspaper cone. It was sick. And by sick I mean, completely amazing. Last time I was there, however, I wasn't moved. I had the rib eye, and again the fries. My wife, Edan, had the Kobe, and she was impressed. The rib eye was good, but it was no Kobe. Lesson learned. Also, I was there with a friend who eats kosher, which made it difficult to order any starters, since pretty much everything was rich with shellfish. All in all, I would eat at Jar any chance I get.

Further down the list is the recently-opened Maryland-style seafood spot The Hungry Cat. I ate there a few days before my wedding with Edan and my grandmother. I had a Thai-style Alabama bay shrimp concoction that I see has since been removed from the menu. So it goes. Edan had squid stuffed with tomatoes, and my grandmother had the peel-and-eat shrimp. The restaurant was packed, and we had to sit on the patio, which was actually quite nice, much cozier than you'd think, considering it shares a courtyard with a Border's books. The general consensus was that the food was tasty, but relatively small portions (everything is a la carte). I give the service bonus points for taking it in stride when my grandma ordered her beer "on the rocks."

Even further down the list was BLD (whose website still says it's "coming soon." Come on, BLD! You're big time now. Get a webmaster, already.). Edan and I ate there with a friend. We had purchased tickets to see The Queen at the Grove (I hear it's great) and thought we'd catch a late dinner, then see a really late movie. The only problem was that without a reservation, we ended up waiting about half an hour for a table. It's a testament to the great atmosphere at BLD that we decided to wait and risk missing Helen Mirren's tour de force performance as an embattled monarch. We all had the prix fixe dinner menu, which offers a choice of steak, chicken, fish, or a vegetarian option, coupled with sides and a dessert. I'm fairly certain we all had steak, and I know we all left happy. We never saw The Queen. I hear it's great.

A few of the old standards made the list, including Langer's, Sanamluang, and of course, Zankou Chicken. Mmm, Zankou...

Welcome to Apron, Napkin

2007-01-04T13:51:00.000-08:00

This is the first post, the inaugural voyage of the good ship Apron, Napkin. This blog is about the food in my life – either the food I’m cooking or the food I’m eating, or both. I should say up front that I’m no chef. I’ve never worked in a restaurant (unless you count that summer in high school I spent scooping ice cream), and I’ve only cooked seriously for the last few years. There are blogs out there written by restaurant industry insiders and producers at the Food Network, and they’re great. This blog isn’t one of them. This is more of an everyman’s look at cooking and eating…assuming this particular everyman has a taste for diver scallops and knows his onglet from his rib eye. In the future, you can expect reviews of restaurants and cookbooks, recipes, anecdotes of culinary failure and success, and rants about Rachel Ray. But for now, let me just say “Welcome.”

Apron, Napkin

Some linakge for the long weekend

From the Annals of Too Much Free Time

Wine for Less (or maybe a little bit more)

More Links, More Problems

A Couple of Links for Monday Morning

Two Words: Um, Ewww.

In Case You're Bored with Me...

I Promise to be Better

Russia, A Real Place -- Homecoming

Russia, A Real Place -- Hinterlands

Did You See Me on Good Morning America This Morning?

The Village Idiot

Upstate

New York, and other things

Food Miles and Sustainability

How do You Roast a Chicken?

How is Culinary School Like Film School?

Providence

Russia -- A Real Place 3: Homefried Food

More Fast Food Linkage

Tuesday Linky Goodness

Breaking News! Mike Midgley Opens Catering Business, uses "Da" instead of Definite Article

Real Food for Less

Fast Food Ads: The Good, the Bad, and The Absolutely Horrible

Russia, a Real Place -- Eastern Easter Eggs and Cake

Notes from a Fromager: Quick Dinner

Where have YOU been?

Russia, A Real Place -- Sunday in St. Petersburg

Last Night's Dinner

Links for the Weekend

Blair's

Baking is Fun

A Few Quick Things

Notes From a Fromager -- Los Quesos de Espana

Il Capriccio Pizzeria

Dog Bites Rachel Ray

Mexico City

Last Night's Dinner -- Steak Diane

A Few Quick Things to Get Your Weekend Started

Whole Foods Continues March Towards Global Domination

Two Dinners

Duck a la Papelbon

Overcompensation

Two Dinners

Food, for Convenience Sake

Freeze Relief

Vermont

Last Night's Dinner -- Pork Chops with Peppers and Capers

Elf Cafe

AOC

Top Chef Reaction -- Bourdain

Super Bowl Eats

Top Chef -- No Surprises, Please

Last Night's Dinner -- Tapas

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants...Duh!

Notes from a Fromager -- Fancy Cheesburgers

Fast Food, Anyone?

Quick Links: Those Pie Council goons got to you, too, didn't they?!

Tough Times in the Kitchen

Quick Links: Is That a Flank Steak in Your Pocket or Are You Just Glad to See Me?

Padma Lakshmi, Fire Hazard

What's This Winter You Speak Of?

Notes from a Fromager -- American Cheese

Cote de Porc a la Charcutiere

Monday Morning Menu

Last Night's Dinner -- French Onion Soup

Top Chef -- Michael sent to Grill Steaks in the Great Beyond

Quick Links

Last Night's Dinner -- Braised Oxtail

Notes from a Fromager

Monday Morning Menu

Last Night's Dinner

Ultimate Los Angeles Restaurant 2006

Welcome to Apron, Napkin