Gastronomy 101

This is not a food blog, but a bit of nepotism. My cousin is in Oxford right now and has started a blog about her adventures there. In sonnet form, no less. She is a super-genius, you guys. She is smarter than I am, and I don't say that often, because I like to think I am smarter than pretty much everyone, except for maybe Einstein and Thomas Pynchon and my husband. Not only that, but she looks like a supermodel and is getting her MBA. In other words, she should totally go on The Apprentice. She even kind of looks like Ivanka, so I know she would win. And you totally want to marry her now. I'll accept your offers, but can't guarantee anything. So go to her blog: TAE.

NOTE: Do to a severe lack of being funny, there will be no attempts at devising clever rap lyrics on my part. In the food blogging world, they often have special blog events, and they go like this: someone hosts the event. The put up a blog post with the name of the event and the rules. Generally there is a certain theme and bloggers create dishes/drinks/whatever that go with that theme, then post about it and send it in to the host, who does a round up of the entries and sometimes selects a winner, if it is a contest. I never do these. I just have a hard time conforming to a theme, because I like to make what I like to make and I don't like to interrupt my flow to try to figure out how to make something with a certain herb or wine or whatever. But then ... THEN ... Sarah hosted the latest edition of Sugar High Friday , in which participants create some kind of dessert. Theme was "Ice, Ice Baby." Okay ... so ... I decided to do it. Sarah is the blogger that inspired me ...

It is no secret that one of my favorite chefs in Southern California is Suzanne Goin. Sometimes I am not sure whether I want to eat her food or make out with it. Chica has a wood-burning oven and she knows how to use it! I also like her cooking because it's not only great, but it's accesible. Although her dishes are quite clearly gourmet, there's also something rustic and simple about them that makes it seem like, if someone only told me how, I could make them too. So, imagine my delight when, within an article about creme fraiche in the L.A. Times food section, I came across a recipe based on Suzanne Goin's fingerling potatoes with creme fraiche. This is a dish I have eaten and loved, so I was excited to see if I could make it. So I was having one of my typical Saturdays: it started out with me going with a friend just to get a cup of coffee. But then on the way, Mashti Malone's was mentioned and we decided that we really must have some after our coffee. But then o...

Potatoes were a staple of Peruvian civilization as early as 3500 BCE. The discovery of the Americas by Europe introduced potatoes into Old World cuisine. Recipes for mashed potatoes (Mache-Potetesse), potatoes a l'anglaise, and potatoes dites appear in Antonin Careme's Art of French Cooking in the 19th Century (1835) as dishes to be eaten during Lent. In 2000, Amos Latteier , the "Best Fake Professor in Portland" built a battery out of 500 lbs. of potatoes. It was able to power a small sound system, which he then drove around town for people to listen to. A potato can work as a battery because the phosphoric acid in them enables a chemical reaction allowing electrons to flow from copper to zinc. One potato will generate approximately .5 volts and .2 millamperes. Once the potato is used as a battery, it is no longer edible. Experimental psychologists Massimiliano Zampini and Charles Spence investigate whether modifying the sound made by a crunching potato chip would...

So, a friend of mine is in love with the mac'n'cheese at Lola's, on Fairfax. We both love macaroni and cheese, and are forever in search of the perfect one ... she is convinced it may be Lola's. We are constantly planning to somehow get the recipe. So, one day, I decided to just try e-mailing Lola's and seeing if they would give it to me. No dice. I never heard back. But someone obviously got my e-mail, because a couple of weeks later I received an e-mail in my inbox from Lola's, advertising their next event: a vodka tasting dinner for Modern Spirits, a local producer of flavored vodkas. The dinner was to be seven small courses, each paired with a different flavor of vodka. But here's where it got me. The dinner was only $35 per person. $35 for seven small plate courses plus seven "tastes" of vodka all within walking distance. Okay, I'm there. I'll admit that I don't usually go to Lola's for the food. I'm not saying that I disli...

When the weather is nice and warm, and everything is blooming and blossoming, what could be nicer than a picnic lunch? A picnic is one of the nicest ways to enjoy food and the outdoors simultaneously. When I was growing up, we used to have a bigass picnic every year out at my grandfather's ranch. It was variously for Easter, Mother's Day, or just for spring. We invited everyone we knew and spent a day in the outdoors, eating, fishing, picking flowers, hiking, swimming and for some reason, having a pinata. I don't know where the pinata came from, but it was sort of a tradition. Even though someone got hurt every time. When I was an angsty adolescent, I always wanted a boy to take me on a picnic. I think if anyone had taken me on a picnic, I would have melted instantly. But it was asking a little much of teenage boys to carry out my vision of a picnic, which involved a nice bottle of wine, a fresh baguette and good cheese, and fresh fruit and a blanket spread out under a tree...

Well, shoot! I done been tagged . So, let's play! Five items in the freezer. 1. A buttload of Mashti Malone's ice cream/sorbet in all different flavors. 2. A bag of bagels. 3. A bag of crushed ice. 4. Regular cube ice 5. Assorted frozen foodstuffs in boxes Five items in my closet. All I have in my real closet is clothes and shoes. Boring! So let's look in the junk closet, shall we? 1. My "Laura Palmer" Halloween costume from last year, which I never got to wear, so I'm saving it for this year, unless I think of something cooler. 2. Lots of coats. 3. All of the shameful board games received as gifts and not played yet. (Example: Big Brother: The Game) 4. CDs to sell to Amoeba 5. Lots of purses. Five items in my car. 1. Thomas Guide 2. The Sol Mate yerba mate soda I got from Whole Foods and accidently left in my cup holder. Oops! 3. A flyer from some kabbalah person. 4. Various parking stubs from the downtown courthouse. 5. All kinds of survival stuff, so I can ...

My favorite kind of foods are the ones that are able to be made in an infinite variety of ways and be like a completely new dish every time. Sandwiches can contain anything, and be made on any kind of bread. Salads can be any combination of vegetables, greens, fruit, flowers, dressings, nuts, etc. Pizzas can have different combinations of toppings and cheeses. And ... pasta comes in all different types and can be made with all different sauces. It's also fairly easy to make a homemade pasta sauce. Just throw a bunch of stuff in a food processor, and voila! Dinner. Pestos are my favorite sauces, but I pretty much like anything non-creamy, that doesn't involve tomatos. Sauces with a bit of tang to them are my favorite. So I had some leftover pasta from making the deconstructed pesto. What to do? Finish it. But I would need a sauce. Well, in that same issue of Fine Cooking, the June/July 2006 issue, they had an array of sauces made with parsley, so I chose out this one, which seem...

Parsley is an herb, meaning it comes from the green part of the plant. The parts of parsley that we eat are the leaves, the root, and rarely, the fruit. Parsley comes from southeast Europe (probably east Mediterranean) and western Asia. Parsley became popular in more northern regions in the middle ages, when it was grown in monasteries and Imperial gardens. The name "parsley" comes from the Greek word meaning "rock celery." It is uncertain why. Parsley is found in the Odyssey, on the northern shore of Ogygia, where Odysseus encounters the nymph Calypso. "The meadows were full of violet and wild parsley ..." Parsley is indispensible to European cooking. It has a distinctive flavor, which is strongest in the root, accompanied by generic fresh green notes that complement many foods. When parsley is chopped, these green notes become prominent and the distinctiveness fades. Parsley comes in curly leaf and flat leaf varieties. The flat leaves have a strong parsl...

For our birthdays, my husband and I always take each other out to a surprise dinner. It started when I was living in San Francisco and he was living here in L.A. I visited around his birthday and decided to take him out to dinner at this restaurant I had read about. But for some reason, I didn't want to say which one. So, I would only tell him that it rhymed with "weenie." The restaurant was Angelini (Osteria) and it remains one of the best meals I have ever had in my life. I was with someone that I was newly in love with and I was eating branzino that had been pulled from a sea salt crust like a rabbit from a hat to be delicately fileted and placed in moist, juicy, fork-sized pieces in a bath of the most delicious sauce I have tasted ever upon my plate. It was so successful, it became a habit. I was overjoyed, because my ex-fiance was, well ... more of a Taco Bell/KFC Superstore kind of guy, and the one time I took him and his friends out to a really nice seafood restau...

In about two weeks, I finally get to take my coveted vacation. I am going to Cinque Terre, Italy for about a week, and then to Tuebingen, Germany for a wedding. I am so excited to go to Cinque Terre. I have always wanted to go there. Cinque Terre is a series of five villages along the cliffside oceans of Northwestern Italy, in the region of Liguria. After walking around for about six months with permanent stress ... I am looking forward to sitting down with my first glass of wine, looking around at the colorful buildings and crashing waves, taking a big breath and feeling my muscles all simultaneously relax. I plan to eat a lot and not feel guilty because I will be hiking from village to village. One of the specialties of the region is pesto, which I am looking forward to consuming a lot of. In order to prepare myself for eating lots of pesto, I prepared this deconstructed pesto pasta recipe from the June/July issue of Fine Cooking. This is actually my favorite kind of pasta: pasta wit...

Basil is an herb, meaning it comes from the green part of the plant, rather than the seed, bark, or root, as spices do. It is part of the large mint family, which is characterized by glandular hairs on stems and leaves that contain aromatic oils. Basil has a spicy, warm aroma that is strong and persistent and is produced by phenolic compounds within the plant. Basil probably originated in Africa and was domesticated in India. While basil was known in Europe from Greek and Roman times, most particularly in Liguria, where pesto was invented, it was hardly known in the United States until the 1970s. There are several varieties of basil with several different flavors. Flavor depends on the variety, as well as the growing conditions and the stage at which the plant is harvested. The flavor changes as the plant grows so that in a plant which is still growing, you can find that the flavor compounds actually vary along the length of the leaf, with the older tip rich in tarragon and clove, and ...

I recently purchased some new cooking gadgets that shold hopefully save me some space and make me feel way, way cooler while cooking. The green bowls up there are Mario Batali Prep Bowls . These are destined to make you feel like a TV chef when you are cooking. They are nice looking prep bowls and have measurements inside for the whole bowl or 1/2 bowl so you don't have to wash a measuring cup and a prep dish. The bowls are made of melamine rather than glass. I wouldn't go looking for too much information about melamine. It's not dangerous or anything, but I just found out what it's made from and, ew. Don't put these in the microwave, and don't clean them with abrasives. But you can put them in the dishwasher. The measurements go from 1/8 cup up to 2 cups. And they nest inside of each other to be compact. And then we've got the collapsible silicone measuring cups . It's a set of 1, 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4 cup measuring cups made of silicone. They collapse into ...

Tofu is something I don't eat much. If I eat too much of it, I not only get really sick of it, but I start to get bloated and gross. So tofu is a sometimes food for me. However, when the June/July issue of Body + Soul magazine featured a "What to Do With Tofu" article that contained a recipe that called for frying tofu in panko, and recipes using silken tofu to make creamy desserts, I was intrigued. These are ways I haven't had tofu and all three of those particular recipes sounded delicious. And right now, in the heat of summer, I just never feel like preparing meat, so this seemed like a good way to get a little protein to substitute. AVOCADO-MINT SALAD with STIR-FRIED TOFU INGREDIENTS: 1 package (14 oz.) regular tofu, firm or extra firm, drained 1/2 cup spicy Asian chili sauce, plus 1/2 tsp. for dressing 1/2 tsp. grated orange zest 2 tablespoons fresh orange juice 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil Coarse salt 1 cup panko 3 tablespoons canola oil 2 heads butterhe...

Is there anything better than weekend brunch? Especially when the weather is nice and you can sit outside? The only thing better is a WEEKDAY brunch, when you're on holiday and instead of being stressed at work, you are relaxing and enjoying a late breakfast in the sun, and when you are done, the waiter offers you a beer. At 11:00! On a Monday! And you could totally have one, if you wanted to! A new location of Eat Well opened recently in the old Cafe Tartine spot. Cafe Tartine was okay, but it was a lunch place and that location just isn't great for lunch spots. Plus, while they prided themselves on Fed Exing bread from France, I had to wonder why you would do that when La Brea Bakery is about a minute away. Eat Well is a diner style breakfast place with some healthier options. They also serve lunch and dinner. J. opted for the French toast combo, pictured above. The eggs were fluffy, the bacon crispy and the French toast looked pretty good. I looked at the menu and they had ...

Everybody thinks that their pet is the cutest and the smartest. But does YOUR dog get you a birthday present? And even if he does, does he wrap it HIMSELF? "KT Treat" "Birthday By Buster" I didn't think so. I think we know whose dog is really the cutest and smartest.

Photo from Beacon website BEACON So recently, Jonathan Gold came out with his list of " 99 Essential L.A. Restaurants ." You do not understand how much I love lists. I love them so much. I love to read them, and I love to make them, and I love to read them and then make my own lists based off of the lists I read. Lists are the joy of my life. And so are restaurants. So a list of restaurants is pretty much the best birthday present Mr. Gold could have given me. Thank you, honey! I am now determined to eat at all of these restaurants--within reason. I won't go out to the San Gabriel Valley or Whittier because ... I just won't. Not unless I have to, and if I do I'll come back and refer to the list at that time. And I'm not going to go to Geisha House, because ... I just won't. The reasons should be obvious. I can't imagine...

I would like to think that the Cheese Man is my own secret discovery, but I am afraid that he's not. He's already been profiled in the L.A. Times and that makes him pretty much famous in my book. Nonetheless, I want to add my voice to the throng. I had Monday off this week, which was fun while it lasted, but has now resulted in my having to attempt to do five days of work in three days. But it also resulted in me getting to go to the West Hollywood Farmer's Market and meet Laurent Bonjour, the magnifique frommagier. The West Hollywood market is (barely) in walking distance from where I live, but is on Mondays, so I usually don't get to go. I had just gone the previous day, so I actually didn't need to get anything, so I thought my only purchase would be the delicious strawberry juice I drank to cool myself down. But then, J. got a baguette. And the baguette stand happened to be next to this cheese cart manned by a wonderfully French person. So I stood there eyeing ...

Avocado Soup/"Guacamole Suave" Spiced Avocado Sandwich Summer is a great time for avocados, because there are so many refreshing dishes you can make with them ... last week I made a couple of avocado recipes. The first was a sandwich. The original recipe was for a pita sandwich, but I prefer a nice thick slice of artisan bread. I can't help it! I am Western European! So I made the avocado filling part of the sandwich and then slathered it on a rustic country roll and slapped some shredded carrots and alfalfa sprouts on there to make me feel super healthy and veggie. Alfalfa sprouts always make me feel like I am eating something healthy! The sandwich turned out really good. The avocado mix was not too spicy, just enough for flavor. It held up well too ... I made an extra sandwich, wrapped it in wax paper and ate it for lunch the next day and it was still just as delicious as the day before. The avocado soup turned out a little strange. See, I forgot that the recipe called ...

I haven't lived in Westwood for, oh, almost ten years now. And because I haven't lived there for ten years, I also haven't had much occasion to go there. I have been there a handful of times to see some movies, and another handful of to do something on the UCLA campus, and once to go to the Armand Hammer museum. That's about it. In ten years. Going back to Westwood now is like going back to my hometown. I am always simultaneously impressed and saddened at the changes that have occurred since I have been "gone." I have to admit though, I never frequented the restaurants of Westwood much. Sometimes I would go to Mongol's and stuff a giant bowl with barbecue for a week's worth of meals. I could often be found perusing the selection at Diddy Riese or Stan's Donuts (and Tandoori Food) for dessert. If it was late, I would sometimes have to run to Don Antonio's or Burger King for a snack. But other than a "date" at BJ's Chicago pizza; a...

This Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons image is from the user Chris 73 and is freely available at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:TofuWithSoySauceAndCarrot.jpg under the creative commons cc-by-sa 2.5 license. Tofu, aka bean curd, is curdled soy milk. Tofu was invented in China around 2,000 years ago and became a daily food around the year 1300. To make tofu, cooked soy milk is cooled to 175 degrees Fahrenheit and coagulated with calcium or magnesium salts dissolved in water. This takes anywhere from eight minutes to half an hour. When curds have formed, the remaining "whey" is ladled off, or the curd is broken up to release water and drained. The mass that is left over is then pressed for fifteen to twenty-five minutes while still hot. The tofu is then cut into blocks, packaged in water and pasteurized. The texture of tofu can be altered by freezing it. When tofu is frozen and then thawed, it is able to absorb cooking liquids and has a chewier, meatier texture. One...

It seems like I am constantly stumbling across more and more food blogs. It makes it really hard for me to do things like work, and write my own food blog. Thank goodness for RSS readers, which help me manage my food blog reading time. Here are some food blogs recently added to my regular reads: Sweetnick's : If you are a food blog reader, this one probably needs no introduction by me. Sweetnick's is already a very popular food blog, and I've heard quite a lot about it, but for some reason, didn't have it on my regular route. Well, now I do. One of Cate's regular features is a blog event called "I'll Show You Mine, If You'll Show Me Yours" in which bloggers take pictures of whatever is called for ... event number one was the inside of your fridge, and event number two was your spice rack. Event number three will be your recipe file. It's really interesting to see these little parts of other people's food lives, especially since the pictures...

Charcoal: We see almost all of our movies at the Arclight. There's no waiting in line, there are assigned seats that are cushy and all of them have a pretty good view, and there's a bar at the theater. What more can you want? So, I'm always on the lookout for new restaurants in the area. You can only eat at Fabiolus and the Hungry Cat so many times. Magnolia ... is just okay, and is trendy and pricy. Bowery is good but not great. In August or early September, Adolfo Suaya and Michael Sutton, of Gaucho Grill, will open Charcoal in the Arclight complex. It's going to be a mesquite grill serving American comfort food, like baby back ribs, steak and seafood. There will be a bar serving cocktails as well. Sounds like another uber-Hollywood type place ... I might have to wait for the next Hungry Cat to come around. Eat Well: A new branch of Eat Well is now open on Beverly Blvd. in the old Cafe Tartine space. I think it will do well there, since we can't seem to get enough...

I finally got a real live digital camera! No more crappy, grainy cell phone pictures. And my camera has a special "food" setting! Of course, since my dog hates cameras and so does my husband, most of the pictures I have taken look like this: Is this a camera I see before me? Come, let me clutch thee! But I have taken a few pictures of food so far: You know it's summer when ... This is all you can eat for lunch.