Where have YOU been?

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

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

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

• 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

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

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

• 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.