Gastronomy 101

Most of the time when I make something for dinner it's in one of either two circumstances: (1) I have a recipe I want to make; or (2) I am throwing something together out of whatever we have hand. But sometimes something different happens. Sometimes I see something somewhere or think of something and then I get an idea in my head of something I want to have and then I have to figure out how to make it. For example, I recently ended up with a simple couscous, but in order to get to that point, the dish itself went through quite an evolution. It started when I saw these beauties: Photo: Woof! Woof! These are stuffed jalapeños wrapped with bacon. They really looked good and they stuck in my mind. Then, when I was at the farmer's market I saw this nice basket of jalapeños and I was reminded of the stuffed peppers, so I decided to get them and make...

I'm always fascinated with food culture and history. It's a type of history you don't often get to study and oftentimes just have to happen upon it. I was originally going to make this post about how to fry chicken, but when I was paging through one of my cookbooks looking up what it said about chicken, I got distracted by a page that explained how to prepare reindeer. Wait ... what? Reindeer? This is a cookbook from the 1940s, I might add, so I am often finding interesting surprises in here when I go to look something up. Once I'd seen reindeer, I was compelled to stop and read about it. The first sentence was really interesting: "Government breeding of reindeer has brought the meat back on the market in modern form." Again .. wait ... what? Government breeding ... of reindeer? I've never heard of this, and I immediately envisioned a secret government Santa project or some such, but I also had to go digging to figure this out. As it turns out, it was a so...

History: Peaches are native to China, and came to Europe via Persia around 300 BCE. For this reason, peaches were once called Persian apples. The Ancient Romans ate peaches, mostly as a dessert. Apicius contained a recipe for pickled peaches: To Keep Hard-skinned Peaches Duracina persica ut diu durent Select the best and put them in brine. The next day remove them and rinsing them carefully set them in place in a vessel, sprinkle with salt and satury and immerse in vinegar. Varieties: Peaches have hundreds of varieties, varying in color (white with a pink blush to yellow with a red blush) and flavor. In general, a peach will either be freestone (pit frees easily from the flesh), or clingstone (pit clings to the flesh and is hard to remove). Freestones are generally found in markets, while clingstones are more often used commercially. Season: Peaches are available from May to October in most regions. May through August is peak season in California. Choosing: Look for a fragrant...

Brad A. Johnson of Angeleno magazine, and The Tasting Panel 's Anthony Dias Blue are co-hosting the annual Chef's Night Out and Restaurant Awards to honor local chefs and resterauteurs and to celebrate the release of Angeleno 's food issue. The dinner benefits the Children's Institute, an organization that works with children and families affected by violence, abuse, and trauma. Tickets are $150 for the event (food from the featured chefs with wine and spirits pairings), and $250 for VIP tickets which includes access to a special reception and the awards ceremony. The event will be held at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel and Bungalows this Sunday, July 26. The chefs at the event include: David Myers from Sona, Comme Ça and Pizza Ortica Lee Hefter and Thomas Boyce from Spago Lee Hefter and Ari Rosenson from Cut Susan Feniger from Street Anthony Zappola from Craft Brian Moyers from BLT Steak Ray Garcia from FIG Restaurant Santa Monica Warren Schwartz from Westside Tavern Evan...

We've been meaning to try Ludobites basically forever. I've never been able to try any of Chef Ludovic Lefebvre's cooking before, and I have to admit I've also had an unshakable albeit tiny crush on him, ever since I laid eyes on this picture: Normally, this is not my type of thing at all - the sort of Fabio-romance-cover-cheesecake genre of handsome, but apparently the idea of a man bringing a fish to me straight out of the ocean that he caught with his bare hands is appealing on some sort of primal level I didn't even know I had. (It helps if you know said man would also be able to prepare it brilliantly after wrestling it from the sea just for you.) Hopefully J is paying attention and perfecting his fish-wrestling skills even as we speak. I had a lot of fun at the restaurant. I like the size of the dishes, which is small so that you may order several things and share, but big enough that you don't have to spend a fortune just to fill yourself up. The dishes w...

A recent issue of Gourmet had a bunch of different dinner roll recipes. You don't have to persuade very hard to get me to make bread products. Baking is one of my favorite things to do, and now I have a whole bunch of rolls to try. The first ones I tried were these Parmesan dinner rolls and they came out great. Before I made them, I looked over the comments on Epicurious and I was a little bit hesitant because a bunch of people said that these didn't taste good. To try to counter that, I added some herb salt I have to the top before baking, just to add some extra flavor. However, the flavor on my rolls came out nice, even apart from the addition of the salt. I wonder what kind of cheese the people who complained used. I got a hunk of parmigiano reggiano and grated it myself using my Microplane, which is what the recipe called for. If you didn't use real parm reggiano, or you used the pregrated kind that comes in a powdery-like form, then perhaps that made a difference. I wo...

One of the best parts of spring and summer is getting to preserve your favorite flavors for later use. Jellies, jams, pickles, etc. are all fun to make and let you save the fruits and vegetables that are in season so that you can enjoy them even in the winter. I've tried to make marmalade once before and it didn't quite work. I used a recipe that didn't involve pectin, relying on the pectin in the fruit to thicken it and I ended up with a lemon syrup rather than a marmalade. Luckily it could still be used for something (ice cream!) but it wasn't what I was really trying to make. This time I chose a recipe that was virtually foolproof and as a bonus it had an added ginger flavor that was really appealing to me. The only difficulty I had was in reducing the recipe, since I had a different size of pectin packet than the recipe anticipated so figuring out the amount to use was kind of tricky. I probably could have used a bit less than I did, but the marmalade still turned o...