Into the Kitchen

Pizza, Pizza

2012-01-27T12:14:00.000-08:00

If you've been following this blog for any length of time, you know that I am absolutely in love with the books Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Both books make the process of having freshly baked bread easy.

The authors, Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois, published Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day back in October, and the book is every bit as good as the previous two. I am now keeping buckets of pizza dough in the refrigerator for those nights when I can't think of anything else to make. My son sometimes pulls the dough out to make lunch.

As in the previous books, the basic dough takes only minutes to make and goes through an initial two hour rise. Then, into the fridge for up to two weeks, while you pull off balls of dough to shape and bake.Here's a sequence of my son, Michael, making a pepperoni pizza.

Soon after my copy of the book arrived, I decided to let the Sunday Super Supper Squad have a hand at making their own pizzas (Jeff and Zoe have been encouraging pizza parties to promote the book.) I made up the buckets of dough, choosing the basic dough and what they called the "strong" dough which would be better for tossing. Then I divided out the half-pound balls for everyone. I had told folks that I would provide sauce and mozzarella cheese, but they would each have to contribute their own favorite toppings to decorate their own pies.

Our friend Bob Harris (of Jeopardy! fame) showed up ("What could be better than pizza and The Amazing Race?") and jumped right into the fun.

I love having a kitchen that is big enough to accommodate more than a dozen people trying to make pizza.

The evening was a huge hit. I have two baking stones and a double oven, so, while it might have been nicer to make more than two pizzas at a time, it was certainly faster than one pizza at a time. Dinner was kind of a serial meal that night, but we had a large salad to carry folks through the stages of waiting and there was the viewing of The Amazing Race at the end.

I've found that using the parchment paper helps keep the baking stones a little cleaner and it is easier to get the pizzas on and off the stone. What we sometimes do is remove the paper for the final few minutes of baking. Generally, it comes off pretty easily and the crust is a bit crisper for it. We also decided we liked the taste and texture of the basic mix better than the "strong" dough. None of us has much skill at tossing to stretch the pizza, so the strong dough isn't really necessary.

I am weighing my flour before mixing the dough. I think it is leading to more consistent results. I also weigh the dough before shaping and stretching it. A half-pound piece was used to make each of the pizzas in the photographs--the final diameter and thickness were all the result of the pizzaiolo's skills.

Summer Tastes

2012-01-26T12:04:00.000-08:00

Here's a draft I started in early August, with a few choice updates:

Summer time means some traveling for us, particularly the five days we are gone every year for San Diego Comic-Con International. As often happens, it fell on my birthday this year, so a party had to wait until the weekend after. The other person who got short-sheeted on a birthday party is my son, who turned 30 in August. Please tell me where the time goes.

I did plan a special excursion for Michael's birthday, which involved the L.A. subway system, food, Little Tokyo, and a Dodgers' game. Michael loves all things Japanese, so lunch was a stop at a highly praised ramen shop for noodles.

The place also served some pretty good goyza, those lovely little Japanese dumplings.

We spent part of the afternoon at the Japanese-American Museum, visiting an exhibit of the work of Stan Sakai, an artist who is an old friend of my husband. He's the creator of Usagi Yojimbo, a samurai rabbit. The exhibit was to honor the Year of the Rabbit, which is my sign in the eastern zodiak.

The final event of the day was the trip to Dodger Stadium, where a special acknowledgement greeted Michael.

The food at Dodger Stadium left a lot to be desired. I don't eat hot dogs and everything else was pretty awful. But the Dodgers did win that night and we got lap blankets as a premium because we were there as part of a group from the college district.

My attempts at gardening last year were pretty feeble. The herbs did o.k. in pots on the patio. The tomatoes didn't make it. Our adolescent dog Riley, is risked his life by digging them up. (Tomato plants can be toxic to dogs.) The plan for this year involves raised beds on a strip of the property the dogs can't get to. I'm a little worried about the amount of sun, but I'm willing to give it a try. Ideally, I'd like to cut the bamboo outside the kitchen windows and put the raised beds there (and add greenhouse windows to the kitchen), but I haven't been able to get the gardeners to do the work.

When we had my birthday party, the caterer could not get enough of my fresh thyme. I have to remember to water it, because the summer heat can really dry the dirt out but the sage seems to do better with less water, and is happy in a pot with some rosemary. One can never have too much rosemary, and there is a huge plant at the far side of the pool (I dream of having a topiary formed in the shape of Swamp Thing for it), but in a down-pour, I'd rather it was closer to the kitchen. There is also never enough basil, but it bolts really easily in the summer around here. In the north-east, where I grew up, I can remember rows of the fragrant plant in Great-Aunt Rose's garden that lasted through the summer.

When my party was over, I was left with a lot of heirloom tomatoes that never got incorporated into the salad the caterer planned. That meant it was time for a Tuscan Tomato Soup, which I've made before, as well as a "Deconstructed Eggplant Parmesan" recipe I found. To balance things out, I also made a four-cheese mac'n'cheese (since Len won't eat eggplant and isn't supposed to eat tomatoes any more.) It was meatless Monday for the Sunday Super Supper Squad that week.

I used Anne Burrell's Tuscan Tomato and Bread Soup recipe. Her cookbook (Cook Like a Rock Star) came out in October and I made sure I preordered it. I just love her show Secrets of a Restaurant Chef on Food Network. I'm pretty sure I've seen every episode and I'd buy the series if was offered on DVD. I always learn something new from her. I must admit, I'm looking forward to the third season of Worst Cook in America, because she is a great teacher.

Back to the Kitchen

2011-10-20T10:35:00.000-07:00

Where did the summer go? The last vestiges are sitting in a box on my counter: peaches waiting to be made into a cobbler or sorbet if they last until the weekend. I've been enjoying one an evening as dessert and I will be sad when they are all gone.

We traveled only as far as San Diego, celebrated a major birthday (mine), and then it seems like I was in tax-prep hell for all of August and September. That's done, and I'm well on my way to making up for all of the backlog of statement reconciliations I've avoided doing for YEARS, as statements got lost or misplaced during the various moves because of the fires. I find reconciling bank statements somewhat zen, and I have a permanent spot to work on bookkeeping now, which will encourage me to work on this stuff during the year.

Right now, I'm looking outside at gloom and cold and all I can think of is how wonderful it would be to be at home making huge pots of soup: butternut squash for me and chicken for my son Michael. We're both going through dental work right now and soup is easy to eat. Len's been in New York for a week and he sounds like he'll need that chicken soup as well when he gets home tonight. It's been raining in New York and he was sneezing when we spoke on the phone last night.

It isn't as if I haven't been busy cooking for the Sunday Super Supper Squad. It's just that I usually forget to grab the camera before the chow hounds chow down. I've done some new recipes and some old reliable ones. In one case, I made a beer bread that my friend Melinda Snodgrass insisted I had made for her one winter that caused her to go out and buy the Silver Palate cookbook it is in, but I had no recollection of ever making it. It was a big hit, and went well with the pot of vegetarian chili I made that night.

Another recent evening, I did make pots of butternut squash soup and chicken with rice soup for the gang, along with an old favorite recipe for a no-kneed rye bread. The stock for the chicken soup came from all of the pieces left over from when I fabricate whole chickens. Eventually, you need to empty out the freezer, and it was a good time to do it. The resulting meal was food that looked like October, in a very good way. Plus there were leftovers for lunch at work.

With Len out of town last week, I took the opportunity to make a dish with an ingredient he doesn't like: wild salmon. I used a variation on Marcella Hazan's baked fish and potatoes, and it was a huge hit. The leftovers were delicious as well. When I started making the recipe I lived on the East Coast, and I was able to use blue fish filets, but I can't find them in California. The wild salmon is a good West Coast substitute. There were 10 of us for dinner, so I needed two large filets of salmon and I used 5 pounds of the small red, white, and blue potato mixed bag that Costco sells. They fit nicely down the center feed tube of a large Cuisinart, so slicing them all thinly took very little time. Marcella says to peel the potatoes, but, unlike my friend Mark Evanier, I like the skins, so I kept them on.

The potatoes are coated with a mixture of minced garlic, olive oil, and parsley. I mixed them together in a large bowl, adding additional olive oil so the potatoes were all covered. I added some salt and pepper. Then spread the potatoes out in as thin a layer as possible in a large pan (in this case, two half-sheet pans), sprinkle with coarse salt, and put into a 450 degree oven for 15-20 minutes. Then they are turned and I left them in the oven for another 10 minutes before I took them out to lay the salmon on the top, skin-side to the potatoes. Spread more of the olive oil, parsley, minced garlic, salt and peper mixture over the top of the fish. Bake for approximately 12-15 minutes, until the salmon is almost cooked through. Take it out of the oven and let it rest for a few minutes to continue cooking and then serve.

I made a salad of butter lettuce, radicchio, and thinly sliced fennel tossed with a lemon-garlic-olive-oil dressing and plenty of salt and pepper to go with it. Plus I cut up a couple of butternut squashes and roasted them for a side. Dinner was colorful and delicious.

The Grilling Season

2011-07-01T09:30:00.000-07:00

Is it just my imagination, or is the July 2011 issue of Bon Appetit ("The Grilling Issue") a little easier to read than the recent run has been? I'm not sure about that, but I am sure that it contains some of the best recipes I've tried in a while.

With Len out of town last weekend, I had an opportunity to make Food That Len Won't Try because it breaks one or more of his eating rules:

1. No curry and nothing really spicy.
2. No fruit or berries.
3. Nothing that looks like itself.
4. Nothing with a bone except beef or pork.
5. No eggplant, ever.

There might be a good reason for the first rule, but the rest of them must have some deep psychological origin and I accepted that he wasn't going to change before I married him almost 20 years ago. But I do look forward to making things he might not eat when there are plenty of folks around who will. The Sunday Super Supper Squad gives me that excuse, as long as I can accommodate my non-meat eaters (some of whom will eat fish and others will eat bird.)

From the above-mentioned magazine, I made:

Grilled Chicken with Za'atar (page 80), which required roasting some garlic and mixing a za'atar spice blend (page 111.)

The chicken was charred, but pronounced excellent. The recipe called for halved chickens, but I also used bone-in breasts and increased the recipe for the marrinade (I had 12 people for dinner, only two of whom only ate salmon.)

Roasted garlic.

Za'atar.

For the non-meat eaters, there was Green Shawarma Salmon (page 80) and vegetarian lasagna. In keeping with the Middle-eastern theme, I made tatziki and a potato salad with green beans dressed with olive oil and lemon juice.

Potato Salad.

For dessert, because the berries at Costco looked great that morning, I made the Blackberry Buttermilk Cake (page109), the standout in the collection from the story "The B-List."

Blackberry Buttermilk Cake.

Served dusted with powdered sugar.

Len did not get home until after 10, so he missed out on all this goodness. Now I'm flipping through the magazine to see what we might try when folks come over on Sunday to use the pool and watch 1776.

Middle-eastern Potato Salad

5 lbs. mixed small potatoes
1/2-1 lb fresh green beans
1 medium onion, diced
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
2/3 cup olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup Italian parsley, chopped
Fresh mint & dill, a few tablespoons, chopped
Kosher salt and pepper to taste

Combine the olive oil, lemon juice and garlic and let sit while vegetables cook.

Boil the potatoes in their skins in well-salted water until just tender, drain and let cool. If desired, peel the skins (I leave them on) and quarter the potatoes. Steam the green beans until tender-crisp and shock in cold salted water to stop the cooking process. Drain. Add the beans, onion, salt (start with at least 1 1/2 teaspoons), and freshly ground pepper to the potato quarters in a large bowl.

Whisk the oil and lemon dressing well, pour over the potatoes and gently toss to cover everything. Add the parsley, mint and dill and additional salt and pepper to taste. This can be served warm or cold (I like warm best.)

Because I had baked extra garlic cloves, I used some of the garlic paste in the dressing. It added a nice depth of flavor.

Winter Is Coming, If You Know Where to Look

2011-06-22T16:30:00.000-07:00

I've been planning to write about Game of Thrones for months, ever since I read about the food truck which debuted in New York City during the last week in March. The fact that Tom Colicchio had designed the menu was a clue that HBO was going full-throttle on it. When I attended Wondercon in San Francisco the weekend of April 1, I got a chance to ask a representative of the agency about plans and discovered the Game of Thrones Food Truck would also be in Los Angeles--but not at the HBO party for Game of Thrones we were invited to attend. (The food there was delicious anyway.)

My friend George R.R. Martin is the author of the books upon which HBO based its latest hit series. I've known George almost 25 years, but my husband has known him even longer. They met through the letters pages of comic books back in the 1960s, and George has the No. 1 badge from the first "comic-con" Len co-created back in New York. George loves to eat, but I'm pretty sure that never in his imagination did he think his television show would be promoted with a food truck. (Apparently, Camelot rushed in to follow suit with turkey legs, a staple of Renaissance Fairs, but totally anachronistic to that production.)

We tracked George down at the food truck on the last day it was in L.A. back in April, at a stop in Venice. That's him in the captain's cap. We got a big kick out of George being surrounded by an entourage, paparazzi, and television cameras--and the show had not even debuted yet. We are so pleased for him that the show became the "water cooler" event of the spring, If you have not seen it, try to catch it on HBO On Demand or in reruns before the next season.

But we did come for the food, and it did not disappoint--except, perhaps, in portion size. Head cheese is not nearly as scary as it sounds--it is something akin to a terrine made of bits of meat boiled off the skull. As long as I didn't have to see the original, I was o.k. with it. The venison was excellent and is something I grew up with. It is the only red meat I've had in years and was worth the momentary lapse.

The "famous Westeros Lemon Cakes" are delicate and tart cakelettes (in the center of the photo below) that come from one of Tom Colicchio's cookbooks and you can watch a video about them and the food in the video above and here where there's a link to download the recipe. I'm planning to make them one of these days. I just wish the rest of the recipes were as easily available on line. I really enjoyed the farro and dried fruits and the baked apple, barley, and cinnamon that accompanied the venison.

George directed me to a web site where the goal is to recreate every food dish in the Song of Fire and Ice series. It is off to a good start, and if you have an interest in a look at medieval food adapted for a fantasy book series, you want to take a look at Inn at the Crossroads.

Sur la Table Update

2011-06-02T09:45:00.000-07:00

I got a note from a Sur la Table representative this morning asking me to update the links I had to their cooking classes. They've upgraded their website and moved things. I'm flattered to find I am on their radar and I am happy to oblige. I updated the links on the two posts where I found them. For convenience sake and your information, here's the link as well.

I've been a fan of the store since I visited the original location in Seattle almost 25 years ago and now I am happy to live in the vicinity of four stores. For some reason they do not have a location in the San Fernando Valley, but I can get to the Thousand Oaks, Los Angeles Original Farmer's Market, Santa Monica, and Pasadena stores without too much trouble. Parking isn't even a problem with the TO store. But only the Farmer's Market location holds classes.

By coincidence, my niece is visiting and asked if I was still writing this blog. I am. Sitting down and working on it at the computer that's got access to the best versions of my pictures has been my downfall lately. I realize promises to do better haven't been fulfilled, either. I'm sorry. Will try harder.

Changes

2011-04-20T13:19:00.000-07:00

I am a long-time subscriber to Bon Appetit, and before I subscribed I would buy issues on the news stand as they appealed to me. My husband shares my addiction, and we had a pretty complete set of the magazine going back almost 20 years before we had a house fire. Now the set goes back only two years, with a couple of composite cookbooks on the shelf.

So, I've seen a lot of changes to the design of the magazine over the years and the latest arrived in my mailbox yesterday.

I don't like it.

This doesn't mean I won't get used to it (I wasn't overly fond of the last make-over either, but I did get used to it), but I found it difficult to read and very hard to tell the difference between ads and editorial content. The visual clues weren't there. Or, more accurately, I thought the ads looked beter than the content pages, so I was a little confused.

I also did not like the first letter from the new editor. It reeks of a New York snobbishness I try to quell in myself unless I need it for humorous effect. I don't think that Adam Rapoport was going for that.

I guess I found a certain comfort with Barbara Fairchild, someone who must have started out in the publishing business around the same time I got out of college and went to work for a New York publisher. I found it easy to relate to her editorials and enjoyed her stories. I'm not sure that the former editor of Esquire has a lot in common with me and he's unlikely to make people feel as welcomed as Ms. Fairchild. Take for example this post that came up in a link on Facebook today. The question asked is "Are Goyim Allowed at Your Seder?" Mr. Rapoport's answer, related at the bottom of the article, is a resounding "No."

If my subscription wasn't paid up for the next five years, I probably wouldn't consider renewing it despite my heretofore delight in reading the articles and trying out new recipes like this Pistachio and Dried Fruit Haroseth from the April issue of the magazine, which was a huge hit at the seder I took it to on Monday night. It is a good thing the May issue was about things Italian or it might already be in the circular file.

Fried Dough

2011-03-09T16:31:00.000-08:00

As threatened, I made beignets last night. They are not the most beautiful lumps of fried dough I've ever made, but they tasted pretty good. I've come to the conclusion that my Cuisinart fryer is really too small, but I don't actually use it enough to upgrade to a bigger capacity. I think that I should just plan on using my cast iron Dutch oven the next time I need to fry something.

I had a box of Cafe Du Monde beignet mix, but I passed on using it. I had made brioche dough on Friday night and I was running up against a use it or freeze it deadline (according to the source, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.) I decided to shape the brioche and use the left-over dough for the beignets (which is one of the uses suggested in the afore mentioned book.)

I probably should have used more flour on my work surface, which is why the dough looks free form: it stuck as I tried to get it up and my bench scraper just kind of mushed things. Never the less, I got about two dozen of the tasty bites made and neither my husband nor son complained about the appearance.

Beignets always take me back to New Orleans, a city I have visited on two occasions, both times for conventions. The first one was over Labor Day Weekend in 1988 and the weather was terrible. We got deluged by rain, which is not surprising for hurricane season. I was busy working on my portrait project, so I got out very little during the course of five days. The second trip was in late October of 1995. The weather was much better and, although some of the company was the same, the relationships were different.

Every night for the week we were there, we'd end the night at Cafe Du Monde, across from the cathedral, and eat beignets and drink chickory coffee or hot chocolate. Then a shuttle would take us back to our hotel north of the French Quarter, along with a group of our friends.

My first trip was on a tight budget and my big eating experience was dinner at Dooky Chase's Restaurant. I was divorced, self-employed, had a seven-year-old, and was pretty much living from hand to mouth. I met a lot of people for the first time who are now very close friends, and I even caught a glimpse of the man I would later marry, although I did not have a clue that was in my future. I spent most of those four or five days corralling writers like Connie Willis, Pat Cadigan, Jack Williamson, and George Alec Effinger to sit for portraits for my planned exhibit in Boston in 1989.

On my second trip, I was married and our finances were a lot more stable than mine had been. We did dinner at K-Paul's, the Court of the Two Sisters, Tujaques and many places I can't even remember. As I recall, in 8 days, we had only two bad meals. One was the banquet for the World Fantasy Awards (no surprise there, with hotel food fare) and the other was our last dinner in the city at what purported to be the oldest Italian restaurant in New Orleans. A friend later described the place as a tourist trap. The food was awful, but we did discover that our adventures at Tujaques the night before had made the rounds of stories among the food service personnel in the city.

Tujaques is located in an old building across from the old market in the Quarter. We had made reservations with three other couples (Fantasy and Science Fiction editor Kris Rusch and her husband Dean Wesley Smith, screenwriter Ted Elliott and his then-girlfriend Kim Rawl, and novelist and television writer Melinda Snodgrass and her then-husband Carl Keim) to have a private dining room for an evening of conversation and laughter.

In the next room was a huge party of diners with other friends of ours from the convention. We were separated by a door which had a knob only on our side, and the door knob could easily be removed. When we discovered who was on the other side of the door--the party included George R.R. Martin (before he became "The American Tolkien", the late, lamented Roger Zelazny, Joe Haldeman, Gardner Dozois, Walter Jon Williams, and various wives, girlfriends, and others--we asked the waiter to send them a bottle of Perrier, in a champagne cooler, with our complements. This started an on-going escalation of hilarity. They sent a waiter with their bill for us to pay. We refused. Then Sue Casper (Gardner's wife, and a writer in her own right) and Parris McBride (G.R.R.M.'s significant other and now wife) came over to visit. And took the door knob. Then they started opening and closing our door to much laughter on all sides.

I went to get the door knob back. I think I'll leave the story there, except to say that the tales of Gardner's Knob reached epic levels among the science fiction community in the years to follow and I was reminded of it this morning when someone said they referred to it to discover if a spammer was trying to reach them by IM or if it was really Gardner (it was a spammer.)

I was happy to learn that most of the French Quarter was spared the destruction of Katrina, and that the Cafe Du Monde and Tujaques, the second oldest restaurant in New Orleans, are still there. It's nice that you can pick up a box of beignet mix out here in L.A. (World Imports carries it) and have a taste of New Orleans in your own kitchen.

Mardi Gras

2011-03-08T17:38:00.000-08:00

March is turning out to be a good time to try different things in the kitchen. This past Sunday, I decided to do a New Orleans themed dinner to celebrate Mardi Gras. The menu for the Sunday Super Supper Squad was Shrimp and Crayfish Etouffee, Jambalaya, home baked bread, and a King Cake.

I looked for a recipe to make a King Cake from scratch. I've got several of them now, but I realized the problem I had the last time I tried to make one from scratch was coming up with the correctly colored sugars for decorating. So I decided to go with Mam Papaul's box mix, which includes all the necessary ingredients and decorations.

Unfortunately, in my haste to get the dough made, I threw in the wrong packet. It looked brownish, so I thought it was the yeast. Wrong. It was the praline mix for the filling. That dough is still sitting in the refrigerator.

Len was out, so I called him and asked him to pick up another box mix. I had seen it on Friday at the World Imports. They were out. Instead of calling to tell me, he headed all over the San Fernando Valley until he found one where the King Cake mix was in stock. It threw my timing off, because I had the main courses to make, but I did manage to pull it off. I'm glad our friends were happy to wait until I had finished decorating it. Tonight, I'll make beignets to remind us of the Cafe Du Monde.

While I don't really have any desire to visit New Orleans for Mardi Gras (Halloween there was enough for me), I do enjoy the food in limited quantities. The eight days we spent there in 1995 were about 5 days too long. I needed fresh vegetables and no more fried food for a while.

I was very pleased with my first attempt to make a dark roux for the etouffee, but it sure is labor intensive to make. I got the right color, but I think the final result was not quite as thick as traditionally done. That's o.k. I liked the effect on rice.

We've got a bit more leftover jambalaya for tonight. It's even better that way.

Oscar Party Time

2011-03-08T17:14:00.000-08:00

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my new kitchen? Space. I have space. And I know how to use it.

Christmas finally got put away in time for our annual Oscar Watch party. This year, we had almost 20 people. As often happens, there was the same basic crowd plus a few newbies. I didn't get to attend our party last year because I was still packing us out of the rental house and cleaning as I went--I had a really good crying jag over that one. This year, I didn't really have much interest in the show hosts, so I happily puttered in the kitchen getting food out to everyone else. I missed something funny at the beginning--there was a lot of laughter--but it wasn't like Hugh Jackman was hosting. I did see him sitting in the front row, and I did enjoy Anne Hathaway's singing complaint about him not doing a duet with her. I wish we got a dime every time Wolverine is referred to outside of the comic book industry, but we don't. I meant to ask Bruce Vilanch if Hugh had actually bailed on the song or if it was just the routine, but I forgot to do it when I photographed him last Wednesday. He is not on my PDA, so the moment has passed me by. Back to food.

The hit appetizer was my Inception dates, stuffed with Gorgonzola and wrapped in bacon. Even my non-fruit-eating-spouse ate them and the credit goes to Secrets of a Restaurant Chef Anne Burrell, who made them with manchego cheese on a recent show. What I really like about them is that I can make future batches ahead of time and throw them in the oven during a party to keep them coming. They are a little labor intensive, but oh, so good. I couldn't find my maple syrup to do the final step of Anne's recipe, but they were fine without it.

My friend Lisa Klink brought True Grits, which I think was an inspired name. They went quite well with the ham (always appropriate for the Academy Awards) I made for more serious eating. I got my son Michael to make another lemon tart from the supply of fresh lemons I've harvested from the little tree in my old garden. I'm really happy I can push him into making some of the things he learned in the baking class we took last fall.

Pasta and Gnocchi alla Fabio Viviani

2011-02-15T12:21:00.000-08:00

Somehow, I missed out on the first two seasons of Top Chef, but then I became a convert. I'm a fan of the Richard Blais, the Voltaggio brothers, Carla Hall, and some of the others, but I was greatly entertained by Fabio Viviani.

Now it happens, that the first time I heard of Fabio and his restaurant out in Moorpark was when William Shatner sang Fabio's praises at one of his charity horse shows and Cafe Firenze provided catering for the event (we didn't have tickets to dinner, sadly.) Then my hairdresser, who lives out in Moorpark, also gave the place a rave. That was about the time Fabio showed up on Top Chef.

After he was on Top Chef, I heard he wasn't at the Moorpark restaurant any longer (that's changed and he is back there) and then I heard he had opened a place in North Hollywood. Lately, he's been hosting Top Chef viewing parties at both restaurants (doing the east coast feed in Moorpark and the west coast feed in North Hollywood.) He's also teaching cooking classes at both places, though, sadly, not hands-on classes. At least, not yet, but he promises they are forthcoming.

Fabio is also an avid tweeter, and I happen to follow him (and a lot of other chefs) on Twitter and Facebook. So I caught the announcement that he would be teaching a pasta and gnocchi class at Firenze Osteria in North Hollywood on February 13. The class was $40/per person or $70 per couple, so I signed up for two, figuring that if Len couldn't go with me, my son Michael or someone else would. Michael lucked out because Len started a class on Sunday.

We got to the restaurant about half an hour ahead of start time, which was good, because there were only two people ahead of us in line and it turned out that seating was first-come, first served, and it was a fairly large group. Women outnumbered men by a factor of about 10 to 1, and there was a huge group of women who all came together, leading me to the obvious conclusion that this celebrity chef has groupies.

We came to watch pasta and gnocchi being made and we got an afternoon at Comedy Central as well. Fabio is hysterical. From his good-natured difficulties with English ("the thumb rule" "rule of thumb-a") to his retro male-chauvanist-pig remarks (reminding me why I would never marry an Italian-American male), I laughed until I wanted to cry.

Fabio wanted everyone to understand that making pasta is EASY. A egg, some salt, some oil, and some flour in a food processor--that's pasta. Some baked potatoes, an egg, some salt, some nutmeg, some pepper, some flour in a mixer--that's gnocchi. There was also a big emphasis on common sense--I pinch or a hand of some measurement isn't a child's hand or that of Andre the Giant, use a folded towel to take a hot potato out of the oven and the n let it cool off. And so on.

Like most of the Italian and Italian-American cooks I have known, there's less about measuring and much more about taste and feel in his methods. To make pasta, Fabio uses one egg per person and he advises working in batches of no more than four eggs. ("Don't have more than 4 people to dinner!") So for four eggs, add a pinch of salt, a little olive oil, and about 2/3-3/4 cups of all purpose flour in the food processor until a ball is formed. Then knead the dough a little and cut it into several pieces to run through the rollers of a pasta machine. The kneaded dough feels a bit like your earlobe when it is ready to rest. Depending on the type of pasta, either cut it by hand (after rolling up the sheets of dough) or use a pasta machine to cut the noodles.

He advocates the use of the food processor over the hand-mixing method because it is quick and easy. He does recommend giving the dough an opportunity to rest between mixing and rolling.

I remember watching my grandmother rolling out her pasta dough by hand. She made it look so easy, but it is so much faster and easier to use a pasta machine. I love mine.

After Fabio finished making the pasta, we were all served some with a meat sauce. Then it was on to gnocchi.

The rough recipe for gnocchi, which won rave reviews every time he made them on Top Chef, involves baking potatoes, letting them cool, and running them through a meat grinder or a ricer after peeling them. Do not mash them--it give the wrong consistency. It looked like he used about 4 cups of ground, cooked potatoes to 1 egg, two pinches of salt, one pinch of pepper, about a half-teaspoon of nutmeg, and a handful and a half of grated Parmesan. This was mixed with a paddle in a Kitchen-aid mixer.

(There were lots of ooohs and aaahs over the mixer and a number of people were whispering about how expensive they are. I will say that my Kitchen-aid is one of the best investments in the kitchen I ever made, and the one I had before that was one my mother owned for 30 years. I've had my K5A for twenty years now and I expect to leave it to my son. My sister may still own the one our grandmother had.)

After mixing those ingredients together, Fabio added flour to reach the consistency he wanted. It is a softer consistency than the pasta dough. I would guess that he added around 1-1/2 to 2 cups of all purpose flour to get the consistency he wanted. After that, he took lemon or tennis ball lumps of the dough, shaped it into cylinders of about 3/4" thick and 10" long and cut them into approximately 3/4" pieces. He used very little flour on the counter and on his hands to keep things from sticking because adding too much flour to the gnocchi makes them heavy.

When cooking the gnocchi (and the pasta) he advises adding olive oil to the pot. With the gnocchi, don't stir them in the pot and, no matter how many are in the pot, scoop them out and drain them all when two or three of them have risen in the water to float. To do otherwise will water-log the gnocchi and make them fall apart.

We got to sample the gnocchi in a marinara sauce. Heavenly.

Fabio spent quite a bit of time answering questions from the room. And then we got an added surprise--door prizes for four of the attendees. We were told to check under our seats and this note is what I found under mine:

And this is what it redeemed:

It is a Bialetti ceramic-lined, nonstick saute pan. Fabio will be selling it on QVC or some such channel in the not too distant future.
<br>
I planned to upload some video of the class, but I'm having big problem with it. So I am sorry. If I figure out what to do, it may just be another entry. Fabio will be teaching a risotto class at Firenze Osteria on Sunday, and I think there are still spaces available. It is a fine bit of entertainment on a Sunday afternoon.

Paula Deen's Herb Crusted Pork Tenderloin, with Reservations

2011-01-19T12:20:00.000-08:00

My friend Gillian had a gathering on Sunday because a friend who had moved back east was in town for a long weekend. That meant there was not Sunday Super Supper Squad and the pork loin I've been storing needed to be cooked. I went looking for a recipe that would be simple and could travel. I found one on the Food Network website from Paula Deen for Herb Crusted Pork Tenderloin.

I had rosemary growing out by the pool, thyme in a pot on the patio, and basil growing inside--the benefit of a Southern California winter. I made up the rub, put it on the pork and popped it into the oven. Is there anything as wonderful as garlic infusing the air on a Sunday afternoon?

My boneless pork was just over the four pounds called for, but I've got to change a few things before I try this again. The half-hour at 475 degrees caused a lot of smoke and charring of the herbs. The recipe is also a bit heavy on the salt. I used kosher salt and biting into the crust really tasted too salty--applesauce cut that back, but I think less salt may be in order. I should also have tested with an instant read thermometer at the end of the half-hour, but I waited until 45 minutes into the hour at 425 degrees. It was too long and the internal thermometer was already close to 170 degrees rather than the 155 degrees she indicates. So it was a bit dry, despite having plenty of time to rest before we drove across the Valley to Gillian's house.

I am planning on making the rest of the pork loin for dinner. I will avoid too much salt and roasting it to death this time. Too bad there will only be two of us for dinner, but I think the leftover pork will be good for sandwiches.

UPDATE on 1/20/2011: Careful measurement of the salt and oil, and repeated checks of temperature after 30, 45, and 60 minutes resulted in a more satisfactory result. Unfortunately, the glass on the inside of the oven window cracked in two places. I don't know what caused it, because I didn't spill any cold liquid when I opened the door, and it happened between temperature-taking. I wonder if something spattered, but it didn't look like it. I often use a 475 or 500 degree oven when I'm making bread, so I'm baffled. Another call to appliance insurance today. Good thing it is a double oven.

Christmas Run-down

2011-01-04T10:32:00.000-08:00

Christmas means it is time to pull out the special china, which I've been gathering for only about four or five years now. I bought some dinner plates in the Lenox Holiday pattern at an after-Christmas sale and I was hooked. I've accumulated service for 12, a large number of serving pieces, and matching linen. I've even acquired matching flatware. It makes for a very festive table. If we have an earthquake, I'm screwed.

We spent Christmas day, as we usually do, with our friends Karen Bodner and Michael Olecki (that's Michael in the photograph.) Karen's a recovering attorney who plans to open a bakery when they move to Three Rivers, up near Kings-Sequoia National Park. She went through the baker's training program at L.A. Trade Tech and currently bakes to special order or for special events. For Christmas, she made us sticky buns (in the foreground of the photo below, with Len, Karen, and my son Michael.) Quite yummy, and indicative of her Philadelphia origins.

Karen and Michael used to hold a party on Christmas Eve called vigilia, which is the Polish version of the Italian Feast of Seven Fishes. Except that the Poles prepare 11 or 13 fish dishes. They haven't done it recently, but we used to get the left-overs for our Christmas brunch. This year, Karen brought poached salmon, cold shrimp and smoked salmon for brunch so we wouldn't feel deprived (I did miss the traditional pierogies, but I understand why she didn't make them.) We made mimosas with proseco while Len made eggs and bacon.

It had been so long since Len used the coffee maker, he forgot to put a filter in the basket. This was NOT a good idea. It is very difficult to clean a coffee maker which has been so abused. And it made a real mess on the counter and the floor. Do not try this at home.

In other disasters, the refrigerator (behind Karen in the photo) betrayed us once again on Christmas Eve. The motor in the fridge stopped working and I lost a lot of food. Thus far, the freezer is still functioning but the insurance people have not returned our calls. This is the fifth time in four months the motor has stopped functioning. I hope they will agree to replace it. I'm not sure how I'll be able to handle food for the party, because I doubt it can be replaced by then. The repair guy who came the first time said "you've got great appliances--except for that refriderator." No kidding. I'm looking for recommendations.

My favorite Christmas gifts included the ones which are helping to rebuild my cookbook collection. I got several of the books I requested (I love the "Wish List" feature on Amazon.com), including Bon Appetit Desserts, Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, and The Arabian Nights Cookbook. There's a brownie recipe in Desserts which incorporates pieces of toffee. I remember getting it out of the magazine when Michael was really little and taking it to my chocoholic friends Michael Whelan and Audrey Price as a gift. I think they've tinkered with it, but I can't wait to try it again. Or I'll let Michael give it a try for Saturday.

"Tis the Season

2010-12-20T15:35:00.000-08:00

I'm beginning to mentally plan our party for Twelfth Night, which will also be our housewarming event, but it isn't until January 8. Until then, I have the pleasure of going to Other People's Parties.

First up this weekend was Laurie Perry's annual Solstice Party on Saturday night. There, I learned that Laurie and her sister (and various other relatives and SOs) are writing a blog called Party Know-It-Alls. Laurie does a beautiful spread of food every year, often Middle Eastern, but this year she decided on a taco bar. Check out Party Know-It-Alls for the salmon taco recipe. It is delicious. No surprise.

Our Sunday afternoon party at my barn was canceled due to the rain we've been getting in SoCal for the past three or four days. The text came just as I was about to go buy ingredients for a hearty, warm dish a fancy mac and cheese recipe from Rachael Ray that is always a hit with the Sunday Super Supper Squad

Because of the rain, we decided to stay home rather than to risk the freeways on a trip to a party in Pacific Palisades. I was sorry to miss it, but people in L.A. drive like they have no idea what to do and any hilly area is subject to mudsides. Ugh.

I took the opportunity to get the kitchen ready for baking. I've been organizing my dry goods in blue-lidded Fido jars from Italy, ever since I discovered them at Ross. Sur la Table has them in other sizes at greater cost, but it does not sell the ones with cobalt-blue lids. I have many of the one, two, half, and three-quarter litre sizes, and a couple of 3 litre jars for sugar and flour. I think they go as big as 5 or 6 litres, but I have yet to see these in the flesh. My rebuilt house had a pantry with shelves just deep enough for two rows of the jars, but I lack that in the new place. Instead, I have a cabinet pantry, with pull-out drawers on the lower part. That's where I'm keeping the jars (they hold about 16 big ones or 20 small ones.) I got Len to do the labels for the filled ones yesterday and he'll do the new ones as I add ingredients.

I did get a chance to make the famous mac and cheese last week for the SSSS, along with a glazed ham and some brioche.

Then I took the remainder of the brioche dough and made pecan sticky buns for breakfast (I should have made this photograph when the buns were hot, because the caramel coagulated when they cooled. Not nearly as attractive.)

Sticky buns turned out to be pretty easy to make when the dough was already in the refrigerator. Seems like a theme in my cooking lately.

Turkey Three Ways

2010-12-20T13:46:00.000-08:00

Our Thanksgiving dinner went well, despite the rapid last-minute decline in attendees. I was expecting 14 and ended up with 11. So we could have kept the table in the kitchen and still had enough room for everybody without going through the bother of creating a replacement for the two 18" wide leaves that died in the house fire. But that gave everyone more than enough room for full place-settings and glassware. And it only took me about three days to clean up--just in time to make a post-Thanksgiving feast on Sunday night with a boned, stuffed, and rolled turkey breast and thighs.

Len insists on doing the stuffing for the turkey, but the rest of the duties are mine. Although I had been concerned about getting a large bird into the oven, there was plenty of room for it and I still had the other oven for baking and sides.

Last year, I attended a Thanksgiving dinner class at Sur la Table. One of the things I carried over from it was making the gravy base in advance. The one from the class started with some turkey legs and the wings and neck. Last year, I went out and bought the legs, but they were kind of expensive and hard to find. This year, I noticed that Costco had some smaller fresh turkeys available, so I figured I could fabricate it for the legs and use the rest in another way. Good choice, if perhaps a bit more work than I expected. I've also requested a good boning knife on my Christmas list to replace the not-so-good-one we've been using for a utility knife since Len got it from a friend of his years ago.

My friend Gillian arrived for dinner with individual oyster pies--kind of like oyster stew with a cracker topping--and salmon mousse for appetizers. I love them, but they are something my husband won't touch. More for me. Liz and Ed arrived and made a salad of mixed greens, pomegranate, blue cheese, and pecans, with a pomegranate dressing, which they plated for everyone.

I managed to get the table set ahead of time (hooray for finally having enough room for things) and we moved the living room furniture into the media room. Turns out, we could have kept the couch in its place, but it was nice to have a cozy sitting room for appetizers and to retire to after supper. In the photograph above, you can see the red couch in the room behind my standing husband, and salads in front of the diners (Kelsey Nixon's cranberry salad, described below, in the large blue bowl on the right.)

A couple of years ago, I found a great recipe for a sweet potato souffle by Martha Rose Shulman in the New York Times. It has become a Thanksgiving favorite, replacing the old canned yams with marshmallows everyone thinks they want and nobody eats. This gets eaten up and it is so light. Souffles are not that difficult, once you get past the perfection fear factor.

Harlan Ellison gave me the mother of all potato ricers as a gift several years ago (one of those years where he bailed on Thanksgiving at the last minute) and it does make for excellent mashed potatoes. Fortunately, there's always someone willing to lend the muscle to do the work while I busy myself with other things. This year it was Lisa, who got through all 10 pounds of potatoes with little difficulty. The ricer comes from Williams Sonoma and it is much nicer and larger than the mid-century one I got from my mother's kitchen years ago.

I tried a new recipe for a cranberry side this year that I found on Kelsey Nixon's website. Kelsey was a contestant on Next Food Network Star about three years ago and she's got a new show on the Cooking Channel. It is her family's recipe for a cranberry salad and the link is here to Kelsey's Kitchen. It was a bit 1950s--Gillian or Jim referred to it as ambrosia, since it contained tiny marshmallows and whipped cream. I'm not sure I'd make it again for dinner--it makes a huge amount--but I might very well make it for our party. It is quite pretty. When I served left-overs, it made a great presentation in a divided bowl with cranberry sauce. I'm sorry I don't have pictures of it.

My friend Jim made a mushroom risotto with a hen of the woods wild mushroom he had gathered back in Wisconsin earlier in the Fall. He proclaimed he had been eating it for several weeks without dying, so we need not worry. It was about 20 pounds when he gathered it, and he brought it back to L.A. in a paper bag on the plane. Good thing TSA didn't stop him. It was very good and worth its weight in gold.

I made pie crust, puff pastry, and brioche dough from the recipes I got from the October baking class Michael and I took. I planned to use it all or Thanksgiving. I used some of the pie pastry to make pumpkin pies, but didn't get the rest made up. So, with all of the leftover cooked turkey, I decided to try my hand at making pot pies with puff pastry crust.

You know, it's easy to make them if you've already got puff pastry made. I checked out an Ina Garten recipe and made adjustments for my ingredients. My son and husband approved.

Sunday rolled around and it was time to face that partial turkey I still had in the fridge. With a little help from Ina Garten, I managed to debone the thing. Then I made up a stuffing recipe like my mother's and grandmother's (foregoing the one Ina had with sausage), spread it across my butterflied turkey (sans legs and wings), rolled it all up, and roasted it in the oven. It is a lot faster than cooking a whole, stuffed bird. Were it not for Len's (and Michael's) insistence on a traditional bird, I'd probably do it for Thanksgiving itself next year. It was very moist and cooked in about two hours. Then all you have to do is slice it.

I wound up with another eleven people for dinner on Sunday night, and the rolled bird (below) easily fed everyone. It was also an excellent way to get rid of my leftover side dishes from Thanksgiving and I got to use the Lenox Holiday Christmas china for the first time this year.

Marilyn Monroe's Stuffing Recipe

2010-11-10T11:26:00.000-08:00

Today's New York Times has a nice piece about a stuffing recipe found in a new book which compiles fragments of Marilyn Monroe's life. My issue with the article is the authors' astonishment at some of the techniques and ingredients and their conclusions about the possible source of the recipe.

First of all, I'd like to tell them that they are probably right that the recipe comes from Joe Di Maggio's family, because the technique of soaking and shredding bread for the stuffing is definitely a technique I learned from my Italian-American mother and grandmother. We didn't use fresh bread, however charming the description of Marilyn buying a fresh loaf of bread is. It is a way of utilizing left-over, stale, dried-out bread which is saved for just this purpose. That's why it needs soaking in water (or milk.) Coming out of the Great Depression and the privations of WWII, this is what people did. I never in my life purchased boxed stuffing mix and wouldn't have it in my house except that my husband has claimed the stuffing-making duties for Thanksgiving since before we were married. I much prefer using dead bread.

As for the authors' contention that sourdough bread was not well known outside of San Francisco at mid-century, I say "nonsense." San Francisco is NOT the beginning and end of sourdough, no matter how good it might be. Sourdough traveled west with pioneers and Forty-niners, but it didn't start in San Francisco. I knew what sourdough bread was as a child in Upstate New York around the time Marilyn was cooking up this recipe. It wasn't until Nancy Silverton's La Brea Bakery Bread Cookbook that I was actually able to make a starter from scratch (using the grapes in my garden) but thinking that sourdough wasn't well-known in the 1950s is pretty naive.

My mother also used Parmesan, bird livers and lots of parsley, but no beef. Occasionally, chestnuts were added (but I think they might have been hard to come by and I do remember some exploding in an oven once upon a time.) I agree with the writers that the recipe shows a Sicilian influence with the use of raisins (I'd argue that came by way of Phoenicia as there's a lot in Sicilian cooking that reminds me of Lebanese food) because my Southern-Italian heritage doesn't use them in stuffing. My husband always puts raisins in his stuffing, which I find foreign. His Jewish family came from Poland and Russia, but I wonder if the raisins go back to a Middle Eastern origin.

2010-11-05T13:31:00.000-07:00

If you read my other blog, Out of the Darkroom, you know the reason I haven't had time to post much lately is that we moved twice in the past 6 months or so--the first move was back into our rebuilt house and the second was to a much larger house about four miles away. The old house is not yet on the market, but I hope it will be soon.

The new house has a huge kitchen with some top of the line equipment, although it was probably installed around 1994, after the last big earthquake when the house was enlarged. At least, that's when the GE Monogram built-in refrigerator was made. That piece of equipment has barely worked since we moved in. The repair people have been out four times so far (and, yes, we did purchase insurance against such breakdowns) but it still isn't working right. I see Thanksgiving looming and fear a repeat of my then year old fridge breaking down on me just in time for that holiday.

That's Len and my friend Karen in the kitchen when we did one of the walk-throughs. There's a center-island with a prep sink and the refrigerator, range, and wall ovens are on the left side of the picture. There's a skylight/backlit ceiling stained glass of ducks over head (a motif also found in the etched glass of the front door) that's quite cheerful. And there is a lot of cabinet space, even if I no longer have a walk-in pantry (my favorite thing about the rebuilt old house.)

Fortunately, we brought both the big refrigerator and the one we use for cold drinks with us when we moved. The big one is in the garage where, sadly, there is no water hook up for the ice maker, and the other sits on the patio for the convenience of our guests. And to give me some extra freezer space because I don't have a working refrigerator in the kitchen.

This has not put a stop to the Sunday Super Supper Squad, which did not miss a beat during the move. I've been trying new recipes almost every week and the kitchen is big enough that I can extend my dining room table to comfortably seat a dozen people. We'll have to move it to the living room for Thanksgiving and its full extension for a larger crowd, but that's no big deal.

For Halloween, I made a huge pot of chicken and dumplings (above) which was a big hit and has provided lunch at work all week. It hasn't been nearly cold enough for such comfort food this week, with temperatures in the 90s, but it was cooler on Sunday night. I'm hoping for a bit cooler this weekend because I've got two large butternut squashes awaiting their squash destiny as butternut squash soup.

I love the Viking range that came with the house--four large burners and a grill. When I made the lobsters (below) for my friend Gayle's birthday party, I could boil 3 large pots of water so everything was ready at the same time. I don't know why people think making lobster is hard to do when the best way to serve it is so easy.

While the Dacor electric double wall oven would not have been my first choice (I prefer gas and my range had a 5.3 cubic foot oven, much bigger than these), it does a fine job and can take half-sheet pans. I haven't gotten around to making bread yet, but roasted chicken and frozen pizzas made on my baking stones have come out right. I am quite inspired to do Christmas cookies this year.

I will say that I am actually looking forward to Thanksgiving this year. In the old house, I always dreaded the task of rearranging furniture to make space for the people we would try to squeeze in every year (23 was the most, 16 was average.) We usually had to put our living room furniture outside to make room for the tables inside. Then it was really hard to work in the kitchen because there wasn't really enough room for more than two people and everyone wants to volunteer to help. This year, I fully expect to be able to set the table the night before the actual event, while different kinds of desserts are baking away in the two ovens. And I won't have to stay up all night to do it. <a style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; float: right; margin-left: 1em;" href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0740773348?tag=intothe-20&camp=213761&creative=393545&linkCode=bpl&creativeASIN=0740773348&adid=0JXXH9YHGNMGR13G5QPV&" target="_blank"><img style="" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51+nEIgMsPL._SL110_.jpg"></a>Heaven.

Two Days in the Kitchen

2010-11-03T11:40:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know how to bake. So why would I sign up to take a two-day baking class at Sur la Table? It sounded like fun and my son Michael expressed an interest in learning more about baking. I signed us both up for the class since I've wanted to learn how to make the always-intimidating puff pastry and brioche and he doesn't drive, so getting to the Farmer's Market would be tricky, even if it wasn't the same weekend as AIDS Walk LA, and streets were blocked all around the Farmer's Market on Sunday.

We had a blast and learned a lot. Michael now knows how to make pastry cream, butter cream frosting, and chocolate meringues. I can make brioche bouchees, palmiers, galettes, and sorbet. That's him piping meringues in the photo above (making meringues is not recommended on a weekend as rainy and humid as the one in October when we did this.) He also made the butter cream frosting and the pastry cream filling for the genoise in the photo below.

The class was taught by Vanessa diStefano (photo below.) I didn't realize she was teaching until we got there. I know Vanessa through her screenwriter beau and we first met at a dinner with Harlan Ellison three years ago. She worked as a pastry chef at Mesa Grill after graduating from culinary school and before coming out to California.

Here are the finished desserts, starting with Apple Galettes.

Chocolate Meringues with Strawberry Sorbet followed by Ham and Cheese Bouchees, Lemon Tart with Pignoli Crust and Raspberries, and Palmiers.

Vanessa will be teaching the same workshop again at the end of January at the Farmer's Market Sur la Table in Los Angeles near Fairfax and Third Street. Here's a link to register at Sur la Table classes. I recommend it. It is a hands-on class and you are bound to meet interesting people and have a great time. Vanessa will be teaching a number of other classes, including other types of baking classes in the coming months. She's knowledgeable and a good instructor.

Note: As of June 2, 2011, I've change the link to the Sur la Table classes because they've updated their website. Check the schedule for the Farmer's Market location to see when Vanessa will again offer this class. She does it several times a year.

Sweet Smell of Summer

2010-07-29T15:50:00.000-07:00

"There ain't nothing in the world that I like better than bacon and lettuce and homegrown tomatoes...." begins a song by the late, great John Denver. I find it hard to disagree.

My mother's cousin Mike grew the world's best tomatoes in his garden in Queens, under the flight path for Kennedy International Airport. I remember summers when my sister and I got to stay with my cousin Adrianne and enjoy the daily deliciousness of tomato sandwiches.

Last night, I realized I had a variety of tomatoes that were red and ripe out in the garden and Len brought home LaBrea Bakery rosemary bread from Costco. When he suggested Chinese, I told him that he and Michael were welcome to it, but I had something else in mind.

I went outside, picked a bowl full of the fruits, ranging from grape and cherry tomatoes to Romas, and a few leaves of basil, and came in to clean and cut up the tomatoes. The smell was heavenly. Some olive oil, salt, garlic, and the basil dressed the salad. I took a slice of bread for dipping, and I had a most wonderful dinner.

Thoughts of Italy

2010-06-16T11:20:00.000-07:00

My friend Melinda Snodgrass and I were discussing how much we love Italy yesterday. It was in the context of wanting to go see Letters to Juliet just to look at the scenery. We disagree about Rome. While I love the history and historic buildings, I did not feel safe alone there. Melinda loves the energy of the place. I thought it was like being in the seamier parts of New York without knowing enough of the language to get out. I prefer the more civilized pace of the hill towns of the north and the areas around the lakes. And the food everywhere. As a fellow photographer once said to me, "my idea of heaven is you die and you go to Italy, where you eat a little and you drive a little and you eat a little..."

My affinity for things Italian is genetic. Three quarters of my grandparents were from (or offspring of people from) the south of Italy: Padula (near Naples), Venosa (at the end of the Appian way), and Calabria. (The other quarter was Czech, from the days when they were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but they called themselves Czech, no matter what the census of the day says.) Both of my grandmothers were born in the U.S., but both of my grandfathers came here as children from Italy, during the huge wave of Italian immigration around the beginning of the 20th century. My mother's father said they came because his mother, the terrifying Nonna who lived to be 94 and refused to speak English (though god knows she must have known plenty after 50 years here), was worried that she would lose him to a war with the Turks. His two sisters were already living here.

Italian was spoken in my grandfather's house since his mother wouldn't speak English and it was a way to keep secrets from children. My mother learned it, and each of her siblings learned less and less, and even I learned enough that when I finally took the language in college, it wasn't too hard for me to keep up. I can read enough to get by, I know my way around an Italian menu or grocery, but any Italian two-year-old speaks the language better than I ever will. It's O.K. Italians will love you for the tiniest try. I spent a train ride from Florence to Rome sitting with a woman from Sardinia and we managed a long conversation with the help of my Italian-English dictionary. I believe if you know the phrases "quanta costa," "troppo," and "dov'e il bagno per la donna," you can get by. For food, just point.

I've been watching David Rocco's Dolce Vita on the new Cooking Channel (which has the worst tagline I've heard recently: "Cooking Channel, Stay Hungry." WTF?), which reminds me of the lovely weeks I spent in Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany taking a workshop in food photography back in the 1980s. The show is shot in and around Florence, so I can point and say "been there, done that." It makes me want to jump on a plane. Three weeks in Italy, never a bad meal.

For a long time I thought I deserved a trip to Italy as a delayed honeymoon for my second marriage, but after almost 20 years, that's not happening. If we don't find a house to buy soon, I may take some of the Jeopardy! money and treat myself to the trip I want. Sometimes the fantasy trip involves taking an Equitour of Tuscany and sometimes it involves going to a cooking school for a week. If Len won't go, maybe I could get Melinda, my sister, and my friends Gillian, Karen, and Gloria to go along. I'm sure we'd have a fine time. I've got a major birthday coming up next year--hmmm.

Since I'm more likely to go to New York in the near future, I was delighted to follow a few links from a Saveur e-mail this morning to discover Di Palo Selects, an Italian grocery and mail-order store in Manhattan. The founders were from the same area as one of my grandfathers, and emigrated around the same time. While I always include pilgrimages to Zabar's when I'm in The City, this place looks like a good reason to go Downtown. I'm sorely tempted to order the cheese sampler and some fig molasses, just because it sounds so good. I know of one pretty good Italian grocery down near LAX, but the ones in the Valley aren't particularly well stocked. I'm open to suggestions, if anyone has them.

Oregano-crusted Tuna under the Stars

2010-06-11T10:13:00.000-07:00

Dinner was very simple last night, but delicious. The guys grilled steak and I grilled tuna. They had baked white potatoes and I had a baked sweet potato. It didn't take that much time, so I just don't understand why we don't do it every night.

The tuna was a variation on a recipe from Evan Kleiman's Cucina Del Mare: Fish and Seafood Italian Style. She does the recipe with swordfish--and I've done it that way as well--but the tuna came out just fine.

Take a piece of tuna, sprinkle with salt and pepper, rub it all over with olive oil, and then press oregano on as a crust. Throw it on the grill until it is done to your liking. Serve it with a squeeze of lemon. Heavenly.

It can also be made in the broiler, but we've got the gas grill set up outside the kitchen, so it is convenient to use it and there's less to clean up.

I'm not sure what Len did to the beef, but Michael pronounced it the most delicious steak ever.

I'm a big fan of Evan's cookbooks with and without Viana La Place, and they were among the first cookbooks I replaced after the fire. As I've written before, I really enjoy eating at her restaurant, Angeli Caffe, over on Melrose in West Hollywood. The last time I was there was for a "Feast of Seven Fishes" family-style dinner just before Christmas (see photo for the appetizers for that dinner.) Our table companions included Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief, and her husband. Susan had come out to California for research she was doing on the Army's use of mules in Afghanistan. My friend Karen, who was my dinner companion that evening, is a knowledgeable mule fanatic, so she had much to offer on the topic of mules. That's the fun of an Angeli Caffe family-style meal: meeting new and interesting people.

Remembering the French Quarter

2010-06-09T15:16:00.000-07:00

I don't get over to the Farmers' Market on Fairfax in Los Angeles very often, but the spousal unit spent another four days in Cedars-Sinai Hospital and I needed lunch before it was time to spring him yesterday. One of the kinds of food it is a bit difficult to find good examples of in my part of Los Angeles County is Cajun/Creole fare. Fortunately, The Gumbo Pot at the Farmers' Market is pretty good.

I had a small bowl of the seafood gumbo, along with the sweet potato chips and beignets. These are all things I could make at home, but I just don't have the time and Len doesn't eat food this spicy.

Since they sell it, I presume the recipe for the beignets is the mix from Cafe du Monde in New Orleans. The boxed mix is available pretty much everywhere (including Amazon.com, apparently) and it is easy to make. During one of the longest conventions I can remember going to, we were in New Orleans for eight days, and every night ended at the Cafe du Monde, across from the cathedral, with a raucous group of fantasy/science fiction writers downing chickory coffee and sugar-powdered beignets.

For the record, I think eight days is far too long a stretch to eat in New Orleans. For all the wonderful food there is to be tried(and in eight days I had exactly two bad meals: the awards banquet at the convention hotel and dinner at what was reputed to be the oldest Italian restaurant in the city), you just know your arteries hardening by the minute. My previous trip there had been five days, and my limited budget at the time saved me from places like K. Paul's. I think three days is probably an ideal amount of time to spend there without dying for a fresh salad and a light lunch.

Baking Bread

2010-05-25T12:25:00.000-07:00

I hope you will forgive me, but this is my first attempt at "monitizing" this blog by setting up links to Amazon.com for the books I mention. Amazon will probably skim information about you if you link through here, but if you already use Amazon, this is probably not such a big deal.

Here's the main part of the meal for our most recent Sunday Super Supper Squad. The bread is the basic recipe from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day and the Provencal Chicken Stoup is from Rachael Ray's Book of 10.

I love to make bread. It is so relaxing and it really doesn't need to take a lot of time. Here's the recipe for the basic bread dough. I think it works better than the basic recipe in the original Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (which I wrote about in 2008) does. It may be the addition of Vital Wheat Gluten (I found it at Whole Foods, but it is available through other sources.) Check out the authors in this video to help you get through the process a bit better (I use a container like the one in the video that I picked up at Smart & Final, but I noticed it is available through Amazon as well.)

5 1/2 Cups Whole Wheat Flour (I use white whole wheat flour from Trader Joe's)
2 Cups White Flour
1 Tablespoon Kosher Salt
1 1/2 Tablespoons Granulated Yeast (2 Packages Fleishman's)
1/2 Cup Vital Wheat Gluten
4 Cups Lukewarm Water (approximately 100degrees)

Mix all ingredients with spoon in large container. Cover loosely and let raise for 2 hours on counter, then put into refrigerator to rest overnight (or for up to 2 weeks.) (It can be used after the initial rising, but it will be sticky and not have as much flavor than if it has some time to develop in the refrigerator.)

When you are ready to make bread, cut off a piece of approximately 1/4 of the volume/weight. If too sticky, dust hands and dough with flour. Quickly shape into a round or a baguette and place on parchment paper (which I put on a pizza peel.) Let raise for 90 minutes. Then brush top with water & sprinkle with choice of seeds (poppy, sesame, etc.) Slash top in three places to help steam escape.

While dough is rising, preheat oven to 450 degrees. I use a baking stone in my oven, which gives the best results. Have the stone in the middle rack of the oven. Place 1 cup of hot/boiling water in a broiler pan on the lowest shelf of the oven to make steam (I've been known to spill some water on the bottom of the oven to really bring up the steam when I put the bread in to make a crunchier crust.)

When oven is preheated, slide the dough on the parchment paper onto the baking stone and close the oven. Bake 30-35 minutes. Bread is done when it sounds hollow when thumped. Remove parchment and cool on rack.

Zoe Francois, one of the co-authors of the book, has a blog you can read here. It has a lot of great recipes. I only wish I had enough time to try them all.

The $500 Omlette

2010-05-20T12:15:00.000-07:00

My son has occasionally expressed some interest in learning how to cook. He can make banana bread and can actually follow a recipe if he sets his mind to it. As Julia Child might say, though, he lacks the power of his own conviction that he can do it, let alone do it well.

I think that all men should know their way around the kitchen. My first husband acknowledged that he could burn water and his description about his own mother's cooking was far less than admiring: "when the kid I was tutoring invited me to stay for a dinner of leftovers, and I tasted seconds that were far better than firsts at home, I realized how bad a cook my mother was." I am far less kind about describing the late Frances' skills in the kitchen. Some cooking skill and a genuine interest in food were traits I looked for in a second spouse. While Len's interest in or tolerance for some kinds of cuisine are far less adventurous than mine, he can and does cook. His soul mate may very well be Rachael Ray, but he's content to settle for her cookbooks.

About two years ago, I sent Michael off to Sur La Table with my husband to take a knife skills class. He seemed to enjoy it. If French cooking is about perfection rather than yield, he has the perfect mindset to work in the kitchen. OCD actually is good for some things. When I broke my arm early this year, I knew I could rely on Michael to chop and slice for me and produce results far better than my own "good enough for government work" knife skills.

I noticed that Sur La Table was planning a three-part, basic kitchen skills class in January or February, which, if they had been offered in the evening or on weekends, I would have taken. Our friend Sandy had expressed an interest in taking such a class, so I decided that, if Sandy did it he was willing to take Michael with him, I'd pay for Michael to go. They had a blast and the class so enjoyed it, that they convinced the chef to plan another three-part series building on the first one. Two months later, there was a third, at an expenditure of almost $500 on my part.

Now, getting Michael to do anything more with his new skills other than chopping has been a chore. There's always some excuse. But one day I came home from work and my husband told me Michael had been working on his omelet skills. So I announced that what I expected for Mother's Day this year was breakfast in bed. Made by my son.

His excuse that he didn't have the right ingredients (the recipe he got in class was for an omelet with arugula and feta cheese) was answered with a trip to Trader Joe's to pick up some of each. He said he was going to practice, but somehow never got around to it. On Mother's Day morning, I waited in bed as long as I could stand while Len and Michael went to the store for other things and then puttered around the kitchen. Eventually, I just got dressed and joined them in the kitchen.

Michael's first attempt ended with egg on the floor, rather like the famous moment on Julia Child's program. But the second attempt worked quite well and looked and tasted just fine.
Now, if I can just get him to make some stock, some sauces, and the creme brulee I know he learned how to make, that $500 will amortize quite nicely.

Say Cheese

2010-05-19T15:56:00.000-07:00

I love cheese. I can spend a lot of time looking at the selection of cheese at Trade Joe's or any specialty market. When I go to the farmer's markets, you are likely to find me talking to the artisan cheese makers and sampling their wares.

Over in Studio City, there's a place called the Artisan Cheese Gallery. Back before Christmas, my friend Gillian invited a group of us to attend a wine and cheese tasting there. It was a splendid evening, and I had hoped to get back over there with Len to try some different cheeses. Life got in the way, but we happened to be in the neighborhood last week and stopped off, possibly prompted by the cheese tasting my son got to go to at the famous Cheese Store of Beverly Hills a few weeks ago.

We were treated to a mini cheese tasting and finally settled on (starting at 12 o'clock and going clockwise below) Blu Bufala, a blue buffalo milk cheese from Italy, Beemster extra aged Gouda cow's milk cheese from Holland, Cabot Clothbound Cheddar cow's milk cheese from Vermont, and Toma Maccagno a soft cow's milk cheese with saffron in the rind from Italy.
Dinner that night consisted of cheese, bread, fruit and nuts. Heavenly, though probably not a good choice for a steady diet.

Surfas

2010-05-14T15:55:00.000-07:00

There's a wonderful restaurant supply store in Los Angeles called Surfas. I think the sign says it's been around since the 1930s. What sets it apart from Star Restaurant Supply in the San Fernando Valley is its size, its food section, its cooking classes, and, in its most recent location, a good cafe.
The Bon Appetit Magazine columnist Andrew Knowlton (BA Foodist, often to be seen judging television chef shows) recommended the cafe in a recent issue. I've eaten there several times, and last Saturday I had the Lobster Panini, about which he waxed eloquent.

Sadly, I was a bit disappointed. The next day on Big Daddy's Kitchen, as Aaron McCargo, Jr. was making a lobster roll, the reason was pointed out to his audience. Lobster is a delicate flavor and you have to be careful with the bacon. The Surfas panini had too much bacon on it. Yes, it is true. There is such a thing as too much bacon.

I have no idea how many thousand square feet the equipment/food store covers, but it is a lot. There is a case of high-priced antiques (currently located near the entrance) and featured prominently is this cookbook, priced at several hundred dollars:
I taught myself to make pizza dough and doughnuts from that cookbook. My mother may still have her copy. It is bound the way many law books are, because I think she bought it in sections at her grocery store and had to put the sections together over a period of months to make the book. It's probably 8-1/2" x 11" by about 3 or 4" thick and reflects much of what cooking in the late 1950s and early 1960s was about. The doughnut recipe was great, by the way, and I still use the pizza dough recipe (which I had copied from it) some times.

Both my husband and I are huge fans of neat food labels, and Surfas is a great place to go to look at them. Here's a selection of oils and vinegars. I couldn't resist buying the chocolate balsamic vinegar. We haven't tried it yet. I'm thinking strawberries might be the right pairing, since Marcella Hazan says sprinkling balsamic on fresh strawberries brings out their flavor.
We used to make Sunday morning pilgrimages to Bristol Farms, an upscale grocery chain, when there was one in the neighborhood, just to look at labels. That's probably why we've got so many odd bottles of mustard and other condiments.

I used the occasion to pick up the heaviest-weight cookie sheets I've ever owned and some half and quarter sheet jelly roll pans. Aluminum, not non-stick. The rimmed pans should be as good for prep organizing as they are for baking. Now I should get rid of some of my old pans and find some time to actually cook.

Pizza Dough from the Mary Margaret McBride Encyclopedia of Cooking

1 cup warm (not hot) water
1 package active dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons oil (I use olive)
2 cups sifted flour, plus an additional 1-1/2 cups, approximately (depends on the weather)

Sprinkle yeast into water until dissolved. Stir in sugar, salt and oil. Add 2 cups flour and beat until smooth, then gradually add rest of flour, a little at a time. Dough should be like biscuit dough.
Turn dough onto floured board and knead until elastic. Placed in a greased bowl and rub top lightly with soft shortening (again, I'd use olive oil.) Cover with a damp cloth (or plastic wrap) and place in a warm spot to rise until double in bulk (approximately 45 minutes.)
Divide dough into two equal parts and shape with hands to stretch into two 12" pizza pans. Top appropriately (sauce, cheese, whatever you like.) Bake in 400 degree until done.
Notes: These days, I'd be more likely to shape it on a pizza peel lined with some parchment and slide it into the oven to cook on a baking stone for a much better crust. I own two of them and I love them, but pizza gets a little sloppy sliding off a peel using only cornmeal. My pizza pan was made by my father at a plant which made hubcaps and other chrome accessories for automobiles. I've also got a couple of non-stick pizza pans with holes in the bottom, but I've only used them for heating up frozen pizza--and that was before I got the baking stones.

Potager

2010-05-05T15:29:00.000-07:00

I love this French term for a kitchen garden.

I first planted vegetables and herbs at the house in the summer of 1990. Len and I had met the previous July, just before I started law school. Soon after I arrived in L.A. from Ohio for my job as a summer law clerk at the Writers Guild of America, west, I decided he needed to have more growing in his yard than a neglected orange tree. At that time, there was a sizable patio out side the kitchen door which had a large picnic table on it. There was a strip of dirt about a foot wide along the fence and I figured I could try to add a few herbs and maybe a tomato plant or two there.

It worked pretty well. The rosemary I planted that summer grew pretty large and an English lavender plant eventually took over one corner. I may have even gotten a tomato or two off the vines before I headed back to Cleveland in the fall. The next summer I added a few more things and I remember that when my friend Anna Todeschini visited from Italy with her family, her husband was very impressed that I had basil growing.

Len and I got married on Christmas in 1991, so I got an earlier start on the garden in 1992. I planted a number of things in containers because the physical space for in-ground planting didn't change until the Northridge earthquake of 1994. We had to have a lot of things fixed and I thought it was a fine time to get rid of most of the concrete patio on the kitchen side of the house. So the workmen came with a jack-hammer and I wound up with something close to a 10 x 10 plot of dirt instead of concrete.

The rosemary survived the earthquake repairs and a fence replacement (at one time I thought about asking Bernie Wrightson to create a Swamp Thing topiary frame for it) but it finally gave up the ghost the year before our fire. The lavender lasted until the garden area clean-up this spring, when we moved the fence to give us a much larger space on the west side of the house. Moving the fence did not disturb the two grape vines I put in about 10 years ago. They are spreading like crazy and look like they will have abundant bunches of Thompson Seedless and Flame grapes by the time Comic-Con rolls around in July.

The original orange tree is still here, along with a lemon tree I planted the first year we were married. I added roses six or seven years ago, and all five plants survived the fire and a year of neglect to produce like mad this spring. I've got two artichoke plants, and even a ruthless cutting back has not prevented a number of choke heads from forming. (I love artichokes, but nobody told me they attract earwigs like nothing else I've ever seen.)

Our new landscaper had his workers build me two raised beds where my in-ground garden used to be. I spent the weekend replanting the potager. I am so excited, because the space looks lovely and I can't wait to just sit outside with my laptop to watch humming birds enjoy some Mexican sage under my kitchen window.The photograph above shows you what things look like from the kitchen door. I've put some herbs (oregano, thyme, rosemary, mints and nasturtium) into the spaces in the cement blocks and it looks like they're going to take. I planted a variety of tomatoes and basil in the near bed, along with two kinds of strawberries and parsley. In the far bed, there are corn, beans, pumpkins, zucchini, cucumbers, dill and tarragon. I hope to be able to stay mostly dry when I need herbs during the wet months out here. In the past, the rosemary was along the fence and it was a muddy walk to get some in January.

I've got three different kinds of mint in large pots on wheels and a beautiful bay laurel which will need a bigger pot soon. I'm planning to put giant sunflowers along the fence, which will make some birds very happy later this year. I've got more rosemary in a border garden under the kitchen window, along with sage, chives, and the afore-mentioned Mexican sage for the hummers.

We're planning on turning this area into an extension of the kitchen by keeping the propane grill on this side of the house (rather than on the patio out the living room door where it has been for years.) It makes it easier to get from and to the kitchen and is a great alternative to a hot summer day cooking indoors.

Back in the Kitchen

2010-04-28T15:15:00.000-07:00

Where did eight months go? It isn't as if I stopped cooking or eating. I guess it is catch-up time.

The rebuild on our house was more or less done in February. We've been back in since early March. There was quite a bit of change, but not of the over-all square-footage. The open floor plan we went with for the front of the house works really well. The color of the cabinets is fairly close to that of the first photograph. (This was shot before we actually moved back in and is a view from the living room into the kitchen area. The powder room is just past a coat closet next to the front door. The hall was formed to make room for an additional couple of cabinets.)My new kitchen has a pantry, a big oven and range, a big refrigerator (after dealing with the horrible rental refrigerator, we're doing the happy dance), and lots of cabinets (though, sadly, there are never enough cabinets.) Did I mention the walk-in pantry where the useless laundry sink used to be? The kitchen sink now looks into the yard, rather than the living room, but it does not have a big, single tub like I finally got when we redid the kitchen three years ago.
Somehow, the contractor didn't hear that I wanted it returned, no matter how many times I told him. The granite counters are lovely, but every one of them is a bit too high for my comfort. I anxiously await the return or my great grandmother's Hoosier kitchen, which will have a workspace for someone of my height.The door leads out to my garden--and the grilling area. My landscape artist just got the raised beds in for my herbs and vegetables and I can't wait to get plants in that will attract humming birds near the kitchen window.

The counter on the right is over a good-sized cabinet with drawers and has a seating area outside the range of the picture. This was taken before we moved things back in. It's a little more crowded on those counters now.

The new kitchen does inspire use, but I've largely been limited by time (mostly spent unpacking) to making dinner for the Sunday Super Supper Squad. I've rediscovered the joys of using a crock pot after purchasing a copy of The Italian Slow Cooker by Michele Scicolone. It's a great way to cook for a crowd, especially if you don't have a lot of time.

On Sunday, I tried the recipe for Seafood Couscous. It was a good choice because my husband, who has limited seafood tastes, was on a plane back from a comic book convention in Calgary, and my pescatarian was in attendance. Len will eat salmon, tuna, and swordfish, but won't eat most whitefish or shellfish (there's an exception for peeled shrimp.)
This wasn't the best styling I've ever done on a plate of food, but I appreciate my friend Liz taking the picture for me before it disappeared. Everyone loved it and it was so easy to make. Onions and garlic are sauteed, chopped tomatoes and tomato paste added, along with broth and clam juice and brought to a boil. Then it's into the crock pot for four hours on low. The fish (scallops, shrimp, and firm white fish) get added 20 minutes before serving. The couscous is made separately. I have a six and a half quart crock pot and doubling the recipe filled it up.

Thanks also go to my son, Michael, who is turning into a great assistant. He does a great job with prep, which has been a godsend since I broke my arm in December (there went four months of my life.) I'm almost done with physical therapy, but he's been most helpful. If French cooking is about perfection and not yield, he's got a future in the kitchen.

Michael has just complete the third of three three-day cooking basics classes taught at Sur la Table at the Los Angeles Farmers Market on Fairfax. (If you have a Sur La Table in your area, check them out. Not all of the stores hold classes.) The group that took the first round had such a good time that they convinced the chef to do it twice more with different recipes. I wish I had the time to go with him and our friend Sandy, who's been doing the driving. Tomorrow they get to go to a wine and cheese tasting, which is so much more fun than anything I'll be doing.

Cooking as a Spectator Sport

2009-08-11T15:48:00.000-07:00

Has cooking become a spectator sport? I'd like to recommend an article from the New York Times which suggests this and proposes we'd all be thinner if we took more time to cook for ourselves. I think he's on to something.

My husband and I are addicted to cooking shows. He actually does most of the cooking, because I'm the one with the traditional job these days and he works at home. But his idea of cooking is along the lines of "Semi-homemade." He's more than happy to use canned sauces for pasta, even though making them from scratch is fairly quick and easy. I'm reluctant to complain, because by the time I get home from work and the requisite trip to the Arabian Prince at the barn, I'm not in any shape to cook.

I am feeling somewhat inspired by Julie & Julia, and I think it would be so much more interesting and healthy to actually eat fresher things with fewer ingredients (a la Mark Bittman and Food Matters.)

So I think I'll challenge my other half to this: starting September 1 and going til the end of the year, I'll cook for the Sunday Super Supper Squad and one other night each week and you get to do the same three nights a week for the three of us, but the cooking can't use highly processed foods (that means canned or frozen things with more than the maximum requisite number of ingredients Mark Bittman writes about.) You can go back to Rachel Ray's books, which actually are pretty good about these things, or any other cookbooks on the shelf (Julia Child is still there, even though most of our cookbook collection is gone because of the fire.) I claim Marcella Hazan and the Silver Palate books.

Remember, we live in southern California, where the produce at a farmers' market is always wonderful and fish is readily available. And we've got a really nice grill in the back yard.

It will require planning on both of our parts, but we can do this. And we don't have to give up watching cooking shows while we do it.

Gordon Ramsay at London, West Hollywood

2009-08-10T10:23:00.000-07:00

Len scored points for the second year in a row by taking me out to a special restaurant for my birthday. Last year it was the too noisy Osteria Mozza, disappointing because we could not carry on a conversation over the din of the music and hard surfaces. This year it was the pretty close to perfect Gordon Ramsay at the London, West Hollywood.

I wanted to take Len there for his birthday in June. He wasn't feeling well, so it didn't happen. We learned when we went on my birthday in July that Gordon Ramsay had spent the entire month of June at the restaurant, celebrating its first anniversary. As big fans of Hell's Kitchen, Kitchen Nightmares, and The F Word, we were most disappointed we had missed meeting him.
We decided to be adventurous and go with the seasonal chef's menu, a seven-course meal of modest sized portions. (I intended to post the actual names of the selections, but it was not available on-line and I didn't take notes at the time--I barely remembered to take pictures.) It was beautifully prepared and beautifully presented, starting with the amuse bouche of endive with a filling of duck confit and fruit and home made potato chips with creme fresch shown above. This was followed by focaccia and a savory sweet corn custard of Japanese influence, shown below.
The next course was a cured salmon with mushrooms...
followed by an amazing fois gras.
The only thing that Len wouldn't try was the seared scallops of the pasta course, served on fettuccini with a lobster bisque sauce and a decorative dollop of caviar. I finished off his scallops as well as mine and he ate the rest of the dish.
For the main course, Len chose the beef. It looked wonderful, but I no longer eat red meat. He said it was wonderful.
I ate every bit of the sea bass, and couldn't have been happier.
We paid for an upgrade which included a cheese course. I love blue cheeses and the one served was divine. I'd love to get the recipe for the fruit and nut bread which was toasted as an accompaniment to the cheese.
The dessert was a chocolate bavarian cream, followed by...
some meranguey cookies and chocolate. Unfortunately, they were made with peanuts, so I couldn't try them. When we asked for a box to take the cookies home so my son could have them, the restaurant included a box with four hand-made truffles.
When we finished eating, Len informed me that it was the most expensive meal he had ever paid for (and we didn't have any alcohol.) I told him it was by no means the most expensive meal I have ever eaten (which was probably one of those dinners a publisher-paid-for dinners in San Diego) but it was definitely one of the best meals I've ever had. I can understand why Gordon Ramsay has won so many Michelin stars for his restaurants. I'm hoping we go back for our anniversary in December to try the seasonal chef's tasting then.

Sunday with Julia

2009-08-10T00:16:00.000-07:00

Run, don't walk, to see Julie & Julia, well written and directed by Nora, Ephron with wonderful performances by Meryl Streep, Stanley Tucci, and Amy Adams. I've been looking forward to seeing this film for several months and I think that Meryl Streep is on her way to another Oscar nomination.

While I love good food, I've never been overly in love with French cooking. I generally do not go looking for French restaurants to try and, until recently, I haven't been tempted to try French cooking at home. I did buy a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking when I replaced a couple of what I consider cookbook staples after our house fire in April. the two volumes are still shrink-wrapped, whereas I've already used the most recent editions of The Joy of Cooking, The Silver Palate Cookbook, and Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking already.

Marcella Hazan's books are my kitchen bibles, and I my original copies Classic Italian Cooking and More Classic Italian Cooking were worn and stained. I would be far more likely to recreate Julie Powell's year of Julia as a year of Marcella using Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking as my guide. My husband and son would have no objection to that, I'm sure.

I did go through an intense period of baking right after the attacks on the World Trade Center because I had an incredible need to do homey things. Nancy Silverman's The La Brea Bakery Bread Book had been sitting on my shelf for several years, because I felt intimidated by it. It requires working with a sourdough starter. Every time I had ever tried to make a starter, it had failed miserably. In 2001, my grape vines were producing lovely clusters of grapes that were never exposed to pesticides. That allowed me to make a starter from scratch, using Nancy's detailed instructions. And, much to my surprise, it worked. It also became the source of much amusement and many jokes from my husband about the living thing we referred to as "Seymour" calling "feed me" every four hours. Following Nancy's recipes is a life-calling. Most of them require two days of work, and some even three, to properly raise and proof the doughs. They are wonderful and definitely worth the time. Sadly, I don't have the luxury of time (because of flexibility) I did when I was self-employed.

We came out of the movie with a need to find a good restaurant fast. Some people have referred to Julie & Julia as "food porn." I'm not sure what that means, exactly, but much like Stanley Tucci's wonderful film Big Night which required finding an Italian restaurant at which to eat when the film ended, we decided that a French restaurant was in order. Fortunately, I remembered there was a place not far from the theatre about which I'd heard friends rave. We gave the others directions to the place.

Even though we couldn't remember the name, we knew it was next door to Earth 2, a comic book shop owned by a friend of Len's. Turns out the name is La Frite. The food was good and reasonably priced. We had to wait for a while to be seated, because the restaurant was packed. Probably with other people who had just been to see Julie & Julia.

Len, Lorien, and Becky all tried the baked crepes, Lisa went with the chicken cordon bleu, and I had the Sunday night special of swordfish brochette. Served with rice, green beans and a piquent salsa verde, the grilled fish was heavenly. I'd go back for it again. The gang decided it would be fun to go back for the cheese platter, some wine, and dessert.

I look forward to adding Julie & Julia to our film collection (and I've wanted to find a copy of Big Night for a long time.) If it were playing anywhere near my mother's, I'd like to take her to see it when I go back East this week. I'm sure she'd enjoy it. We all noticed that the audience was one of the oldest groups of people I've seen at the movies in a very long time. This is not a bad thing, just an unusual thing. I suspect that most of the people there usually don't go to a movie theatre any longer, but they came out because they remembered watching Julia Child on television.

I would recommend seeing Julie & Julia after you've gone to a good dinner, preferably French. If you are brave enough to go on an empty stomach, make sure you've made reservations for afterwards.

Lunch at TGI Fridays

2009-06-25T11:16:00.000-07:00

Len called me yesterday to see if I'd like to meet him and Bob Skir for lunch. They get together for lunch every Wednesday and then head off to the comic book shop for their weekly fixes. The TGI Fridays was a bit out of their way, but close to my office and I agreed (even though it would never be my choice for a meal.)

I am pleased to report that TGI Fridays makes an excellent tomato basil soup, almost as good as the tomato soup I had at Angeli Cafe last year. It was the soup of the day and I had it as part of the Endless Lunch special, which included soup, salad, bread, and beverage for less than $10. I don't know if the tomato soup is served every day or every Wednesday, but it is definitely worth considering the next time you go to TGI Fridays.

Taking Tea

2009-06-23T23:51:00.001-07:00

Susan Ellison (wife of Harlan) and Kathryn Drennan (wife of JMS) took me out for tea last Sunday. I thought we were going dutch, but it turned out they wanted to treat me because they felt they hadn't been able to do anything to help us with fire recovery. It was very sweet of them. They took me to the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, where tea consisted of the lovely spread you can see in the photograph above.

Tea seatings start early at the Peninsula--around noon for the first seating, which was the one we attended. We enjoyed a glass of champagne (I wasn't driving, so it seemed like a good idea to me) and I tried the caviar treat, which was caviar and creme fraiche on a pumpernickel bread round. Good, but it added a disproportial expense to the tea.

There were lovely strawberries in cream before getting to the main meal: four kinds of savories and an equal number of sweets. The waiter suggested we eat the two kind of scones while they were still warm, and we did. They were served with clotted (or Devonshire--I don't remember which) cream and a choice of lemon curd or a chocolate-raspberry spread which was...unusual.

Susan and Kathryn like a smoky Russian tea, the name of which I cannot remember, and insisted we needed to drink the caramel-pear tea with the sweets. Both were quite good. I was a bit pedestrian with my choice of Earl Grey, which Susan finds "too fussy." I've been known to try a bit of rooibus tea, which I now know is the "bush tea" referred to in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, but I passed up on it last week.

We had a lovely time, and then went off to do a bit of retail therapy in Beverly Hills and at the Farmers' Market and the Grove. I was trying to locate La Creuset kitchen canisters in cobalt, but neither Williams-Sonoma nor Sur La Table carry them in that color. It looks like I'll have to buy them on-line.

While at the Farmers' Market, we felt the need to refresh ourselves with beverages and beignets at The Gumbo Pot, one of the few reliable places I know in Los Angeles to get New Orleans style food. The beignets were hot out of the oil, powdered with sugar, and tasted exactly like the ones at the Cafe du Monde in the Crescent City. It's been years since we were there, but we went every night of the week we were in town to cap off the day.

It's too bad that Susan and Kathryn don't go to San Diego Comic-Con, because there are several tea shops I'd like to take them to. We've decided to give Gordon Ramasy's restaurant at London West Hollywood a try for tea sometime soon.

Meanwhile, I'm going to reprint the recipes for the best scones ever. They came from the Ticky-Boo Tea Shoppe in Carlsbad, which went out of business virtually overnight much to our disappointment. I don't know what shape my cookbook from there is in, wherever it is in the warehouse, so I was thrilled to remember I had put it in to this blog early on. Enjoy:

Ticky-Boo Scones

2 C. All-purpose Flour
1 T. Baking Powder
1/2 tsp. Salt
1/3 C. Sweet Butter
1/4 C. Vegetable Shortening
1/3 C. Heavy Cream
Splash of Water

Place baking sheet in oven and preheat to 450 degrees F.
Sift the measured dry ingredients together, twice.
Dice fats into the dry ingredients, then lightly rub with cool fingertips or pastry blender. Make a well in center and stir in cream. Lightly mix with a fork until a soft dough forms. If dough is dry, add water, sprinkling a little at a time until the dough is perfect for kneading.
Turn out on a well-floured board and knead very lightly for about 1/2 minute for a loose smooth dough. Roll out with a rolling pin or pat with hands to approximately 3/4" thick.
Stamp out with a cutter or cut into triangles with a sharp knife. Knead together any trimmings and stamp out again, continuing until all the dough is used.
Lift with a spatula onto the preheated baking sheet, placing them 1" apart. Brush tops only with beaten egg or milk (optional--I don't.)
Bake toward the top of the oven for approximately 10-15 minutes or until well risen and golden brown. Remove and turn out onto a wire rack for cooling. Best served warm with clotted or Devon Cream and jam or curd.
This basic recipe may be adjusted to add currants, raisins, cheese with sage and walnuts, chocolate chips, dried fruit, or any other spice or variety you choose.

Rebuilding a Kitchen

2009-06-08T14:47:00.000-07:00

In case you hadn't heard, our house caught fire on April 6, so blogging has fallen by the wayside. We're now somewhat settled in our rental house and making decisions about what to do (rebuild the old house the way it was and sell it or rebuild it so it meets our needs.) I have now truly come to appreciate what I need to have around in order to cook and what I can do without.

I can do without clutter. There are a number of items which were packed out of the fire-damaged house that I don't need again. There were other things we simply said "don't bother" at the time, so they were trashed. I don't need Tupperware or a lot of space-hogging plastic anymore, thank you very much. I am still trying to find nice ceramic or glass canisters for storing flour and sugar, but I really don't want plastic, which seems to attract grease and then refuses to ever get really clean again.

I do need a good selection of glasses. Most of my glassware is still at the packers because two of the boxes I expected to bring home with me got left behind. I had no stemware until yesterday, when I scored 8 Libby champagne flutes in cobalt at the $.99 Store. When we had the party to thank everyone who helped us through the fire, we had to use plastic cups for the margaritas my friend Michael whipped up. I don't think it changed the taste, but there's something really nice about having the correctly shaped glassware on hand.

As I've long thought, I need to have my Cuisinart to feel that I'm in a useful kitchen. I also want to keep my Kitchen Aid Mixer close by. Surprisingly, the first electric tool I really needed was the blender. All of them got a great cleaning at the company that packed out the house.

We went out and bought a couple of good knives right away. And we bought a new storage system for our spices, since we no longer have the beautiful shelf unit which was built for our kitchen less than three years ago. Sniff. We also had to buy new cutting boards and a number of kitchen implements. I'm still looking for a good can opener because the one Len bought is awful.

I discovered it is good to have several sets of dishes, because I managed to stop the packers from taking my Stangl Country Garden stuff with them. I washed that myself, and some of it was quite close to the source of the fire. The packers took the Correlle, which Len was desperate to get back (he's got it now), the Sun and Moon informal stoneware, and the Noritake Adagio fine china for cleaning. The Stangl, made back in the 1950s and 1960s with different flowers on different pieces, was incredibly cheerful to use and put on display. I really needed cheerful during the first part of this disaster.

Good stainless beats the hell out of cheap stainless. I discovered that Oneida has discontinued the Act I pattern I've used for 25 years and we only got part of the set before the packers got the rest. I think I've now got most of it, but trying to buy more is problematic. I've seen prices high enough to put it in the range of my sterling pieces. Act I is a particularly nice, heavy stainless pattern, with a certain heft to it, which balances nicely in the hand. When I was young an foolish, I almost picked out a sterling pattern because there was a coordinating stainless pattern. I've held pieces of it and thank my lucky stars I didn't go that way--it's really uncomfortable to use.

Speaking of the sterling, it was a good thing it wasn't stored in the bedroom any longer. I got all of it out and with me unscathed. It could have wound up like my silver jewelery: in free-form puddles. I am going to make sure I've got an insurance floater on it now.

Good pots and pans are an absolute necessity. We finally got back most of the pieces of the Analon I bought for Len for Christmas and such, but before they came home I picked up a couple more pieces to carry us through. We cook a lot of pasta, and having big pots is critical. Good thing Sur La Table was having a sale. I also bought an enamel-coated cast-iron dutch oven, which is great for making sauce. I love cast iron. Len doesn't.

I miss my own range, which is sitting in a warehouse in Glendale along with our refrigerator. We hate the frige that the rental place sent. Neither Len nor I find it convenient to get to the lower shelves after several years of having a freezer in the bottom set up with our Maytag. On top of that, the rental unit is about 10 c.f. smaller than ours and, strangely, I haven't had my calls about this returned.

We're still waiting to hear how much it will cost to fix the dining room table leaves. The table itself is not a big deal, but the leaves (all six of them) were in my closet and half of them looked pretty bad when I saw them in the trash heap.

Since we entertain almost every Sunday, the first few weeks without appropriate serving dishes and utinsels were tough. It's much better now. I got some of my Nambe back and I picked up two new pieces at the Pasadena City College flea market yesterday. Nambe does not melt in fire or break in earthquakes, making it an ideal artform to have in Los Angeles. Things seem to be going for less on E-bay these days, so I got a few serving pieces, including a huge bowl, in Country Garden. Shipping is still a killer.

A really big inconvenience is the loss of the use of my cookbooks. They too have been taken away and I don't yet know if I'll be getting them back. I ordered a few necessities from Jessica's Biscuit, such as Marcella Hazan's Classic Italian omnibus (can't live without it), the most recent Joy of Cooking (although I really prefer the edition from the 1970s), the 25th Anniversary Silver Palate Cookbook, Mark Bittman's updated How to Cook Everything and Food Matters, and thought I'd give Julia Child a try. I miss my artisan bread book and Len misses all of his Rachael Ray books. I did pull out my little blue notebook with a few of my favorite recipes in it, but it is woefully inadequate. Len did not get his notebooks out, so he's struggling to remember a couple of his favorite recipes.

We're still missing most of my baking pans, but I think I could do a sit-down dinner with no trouble. The Belmont tea would have been a bit problematic, since my tea trays will be in storage until we have a new permanent home. Holding a barbecue is no issue, since we've got a really nice built-in grill and we brought our big grill down from the house to keep it safe. The 30 people who came for the thank you party seemed to enjoy themselves a lot, so I expect we'll be doing a lot of grilling this summer.

One item that is a new edition to the kitchen is a butter bell. I'd never heard of one before we stayed at our friend Gillian's during the days after the fire until we could move into the rental. It keeps a quarter pound of butter spreadable and safe by using water to form a barrier. They are available for under $10 at Ross and similar stores (more at places like Le Creuset, Sur La Table, or Williams Sonoma) and I can't recommend one enough. Try it, you'll like it.

Dining Out

2009-02-05T11:10:00.000-08:00

Restaurant Week is coming to a close and I've not had a chance to take much advantage of these discounts, but I did get to go to two restaurants I visited for the first time last year.

I introduced my friend Melinda to Angeli Caffe last Friday. It is participating in Restaurant Week, but not on Friday nights. Nevertheless, we had a spectacular supper of a selection of appetizers from the seasonal menu, with Melinda choosing the lasagna bolognese while I got the ahi tuna with garlic on linguini as main courses. The restaurant was very busy, but they managed to find an open seat. I just wish it wasn't quite so noisy, but hard surfaces are in.

On Tuesday, we went to see "Minsky's" a new musical which will probably go to New York this spring. Our friend Gillian discovered the four of us could eat at Roy's Hawaiian Cuisine near the Staples Center and then get a complementary shuttle to and from the Ahmanson Theatre, which is not located in a restaurant-populated neighborhood. Roy's has a seasonal fixe prix menu for $34 (the same as the mid-level Restaurant Week price), and we did justice to the selections for appetizers and entrees, but we all chose the same dessert. Roy's put a bowl of edamame on the table which was flavored with salt, sugar, and a selection of some Japanese spices--fantastic. I had the seafood chowder (which had a New Orleansean kick) and the grilled salmon, both of which were very good. The other selections on the table included a salad with grilled chicken or a salad with grilled beef for appetizers and the short ribs or grilled shrimp for entrees. There was none of the pork pot roast available or someone would have ordered that as well. Dessert was moulten chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream. We then waddled off to catch our shuttle, which turned out to be a stretch limo.

Restaurant Week L.A.

2009-01-27T13:10:00.000-08:00

I've been looking through the list of restaurants participating in Restaurant Week L.A. which runs January 25-30 and February 1-6 (Saturdays not included.) There is tiered pricing, unlike in San Francisco where there was only a difference in price between lunch and dinner, not dining establishments. Lunch is $16, $22 or $28 and dinner is $26, $34, or $44, depending on whether it is a deluxe, premier, or fine dining establishment.

I can enthusiastically recommend the food at a number of the restaurants on the list, such as Drago (one of the best high-end Italian restaurants at which I've eaten), Angeli (an excellent and reasonably priced restaurant about which I've written before), Roy's Hawaiian Fusion Cuisine in Woodland Hills (which surprised me and was a hit with both my husband and son as well--and which has a tasting menu throughout the year), Patina, Border Grill (owned by televsion's Two Hot Tamales, but I liked the food a lot anyway), Lowry's and Ruth's Chris Steak House (although I no longer eat red meat, I remember it well.)

I'm somewhat surprised by the appearance of the Daily Grill, which I don't really care for and Gladstones (at best o.k., but they do know how to wrap leftovers), identified as deluxe dining--in someone's dreams. Katsuya may well be a cheaper dining experience alla carte than the premier three course price. I was stunned by the selection at a $$$ tapas restaurant. $44 gets you three tapas dishes at The Bazaar by Jose Andres, considerably more than it cost the last time I went out for tapas.

The participating restaurant I would most like to try is Gordon Ramsay's London West Hollywood, which is one of the $44 selections, but I'm not sure about the menu choices. I'd have to go through the list and menues before I'd make any other choices. With our booked schedule, it is unlikely we'll actually get a chance to participate this year unless we make an early-evening reservation for the night we're going to see Minsky's next week.

Restaurant Week in San Francisco

2009-01-20T22:17:00.000-08:00

My photographs all look much better on a Mac than a PC. It's about the difference in settings. Oh, well.

We got into San Francisco and to the hotel after 9 p.m. on Thursday evening. By the time we got our luggage in the room and went to find a place to eat, it was closing in on 10 p.m. However, in this economy, restaurants are willing to stay open a bit longer to make a little more money, and the concierge found us a place in walking distance which was willing to serve us a bit later than it's normal 10 p.m. closing time.

The restaurant was the Nob Hill Cafe, a California-Italian place which suited us just fine. We each had a pasta dish (mine was the linguine con vongole, but I can't remember what Len ate--we left the extras in the refrigerator at the Fairmont) and I also had a mixed greens salad. For the first time in my life I actually noticed the off-taste of mixing Parmesan cheese with shell-fish, but maybe it was the last of my cold messing with my taste-buds. I was really hungry, but I could not finish the dish.

I never left the hotel during the day because the group that had come to town for the meeting worked from 8:45 a.m. until 6 p.m. every day. Breakfast was at 7:30, lunch around 12:30, and snacks were brought in mid-morning and mid-afternoon. It was like being on a cruise in a barrel because we didn't have a window. Those of us with significant others were told tales of gorgeous weather and shopping trips to Pier 39 and Chinatown. But we had important work to do and we were quite faithful about performing.

Dinners, however, were elsewhere and in different social combinations. On Friday night, ten of us went to Chinatown, where we did a family meal that included dungeness crab in spicy salt and Peking Duck. Fantastic. Did I remember to take my camera out for pictures? I don't even remember the name of the place or the street it was on, except that it was not on Grant Avenue. It was on a street parallel to California, though. I could tell by the slope.

On Saturday night, Joe and Gay Haldeman and Len and I went off together for a quiet dinner together at a small place about seven blocks from the Fairmont, not counting ups and downs. The quiet was the important part, because it allowed us to really talk and laugh. I met Joe and Gay decades ago, but this was the first time we've ever had this much face time and it was really great.

Joe and I both ordered the halibut in papillote at the Hyde Street Seafood Grill.
Mine was quite good. Joe's was a bit undercooked, but that's the downside of cooking in paper where you can't really tell if stuff is entirely cooked through. My potatoes could have used a little more time, but the fish was just fine. I think Gay had shrimp cooked in garlic and Len had the potato-crusted salmon, which I also tasted and liked. Len and I shared key lime pie for dessert, but I bet Gay and Joe, who live in Florida for part of each year, would have found it lacking in real key lime.

On Sunday night, Joe and Gay went off with Karen Haber and Robert Silverberg for a traditional double date they always do when in the same place and Len and I went off with Russell Davis and his wife Sherry to Big 4 at the Huntington Hotel to have a "San Francisco Restaurant Week" prix fixe meal.

The Huntington Hotel was about a block away from our hotel on Nob Hill. The Big 4 referred to include Leland Stanford, Sr. and three other California magnates. Karen Haber said to me the next night "I hear you did the boy thing for dinner." It does look like a men's club, with dark paneling out of the Victorian era, but the food was excellent. The restaurant is considered to be among the top 20 in San Francisco (at least according to Gourmet Magazine) and we would have spent close to $100/person if not for the $34.95 three course special.

Len had the butternut squash soup for a start.
I had a salad with apples, candied walnuts, blue cheese and a champagne vinegarette.
For the main course, Len had a chicken dish and I had the crusted sole with grilled corn and spinach. It was very good and I cleaned my plate.
Dessert was a flourless chocolate cake with a bit of vanilla ice cream and raspbery sauce. Yum.
We waddled back to the hotel to get a good night's sleep. Restaurant Week is later this month in Los Angeles and I'd love to try out a few pricy places at the reduced rate. Particularly Gordon Ramsay's London.

During the four days in meetings, Russell had arranged for one lunch menu to be repeated. It was my favorite, with crab bisque, lobster salad sandwiches, greens wrapped in cucumber for a salad, and some nice marinated mushrooms.
Dessert was chocolate. On our last day, the afternoon snack was a Ghiredelli chocolate spread, with mouse filled chocolate cups, dark chocolate tarts, macademia cookies and a chocolate torte. We were all in a sugar and caffine-generated high.

On Monday night, we had a group dinner for 16 people in the Laurel Court Restaurant. The restaurant is normally not open on Mondays, but Russell convinced them to let us have a private dinner there. The Fairmont Hotel has an excellent kitchen. I had the ahi tuna salad and the duck breast and finished with the lime panna cotta. Robert Silverberg chose the wines and I had a California white and a shirraz from Australia. I didn't taste the French red. Nor did I bring the camera to dinner, which is a real shame. The presentation was really nice, with unusually shaped plates, much like on Iron Chef America.

It was a great trip, even if I never got down to the Pier to eat cheap shrimp cocktail or watch Len ride a Segway.

San Francisco, Here I Come

2009-01-13T13:07:00.000-08:00

Len and I are driving to San Francisco on Thursday morning. I get to go to all-day meetings and he gets to enjoy the Fairmont Hotel, the City, and whatever else he feels like doing between 7:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. for four days. He's got the better deal this time out.

I wanted to have dinner at COCO500, where Jennifer Biesty, one of last year's competitors on Top Chef, worked, but she is no longer there and I can't find out where she is. It is a great eating city, and I'm sure we'll have at least one memorable meal.

I lived in Palo Alto on the Stanford University campus during the first year of my first marriage. It was about an hour trip into San Francisco from there. We managed to get into the City on a couple of occasions (not nearly often enough during that year), including a trip to watch the Chinese New Year's parade in Chinatown. It bore no resemblance at all to the parade in Flower Drum Song. It was rather disappointing. We did, however, eat at this strange restaurant called Sam Wo's, where they made fantastic noodle concoctions, including what I think were thick rice noodles that were stuffed and rolled like a jelly roll (but not slimy like the steamed dim sum stuffed with shrimp you can get in so many places.)

At Sam Wo's, you entered the narrow building through the kitchen and walked up the stairs to the second or third floors, which were the actual dining rooms. The object was to get seated on the second floor, where the waiter named Edsel Ford Fong ruled over the very few tables croweded with diners. He was a great floor show, and made a lasting impression on a lot of people. You can even look him up in Wikipedia. Herb Caen called him the world's rudest waiter. Robin Williams confessed in an article in TV Guide that he wanted to learn Chinese so he could go to Sam Wo's and confound Edsel Ford Fong, who "considered every occidental a challenge" in the words of one review from those days. One of these days, I will ask Harlan Ellison to ask Robin if he ever actually did this. It would have been a beautiful thing to behold.

On the night we were there with a group, the pretty young blond (not me--I was a brunette in those days) was shanghaied into setting the table and taking the order by Eddie. He would brandish a fist full of spoons in front of every occidental's face demanding "insurance?" I was always glad that I had mastered the use of chopsticks early in life.

Oh, yes. Dinner for 5 of us was $11 that night.

I hear the restaurant is still there, but Eddie is gone. I'm not sure the food has the draw of the entertainment.

Cookie Time!

2008-12-23T10:42:00.001-08:00

It's that time of year when the house should smell of baking. I think I used to have more time for this--I know I did when I was self-employed and didn't own a horse. I'm not giving up the horse to spend more time in the kitchen, though.

When I do have the time, I like to make cookies which have been made in my family for as long as I can remember (with the exception of Mexican Wedding Cakes and the Fudge Crackles, which I added along the way.) The most of the recipes came from my Italian-American grandmother, but a notable one came from my Czech-American grandmother, and both were filtered through my mother's kitchen. My mother has this habit of leaving out key notes, so one year I went home for the holidays and watched her do things, making notes in my little blue book the whole time.

I've rarely found recipes in traditional cookbooks for these sweets. I don't know if it is because the names I've got are in a dialect rather than in formal Italian or Czech or some other reason. They all tend to be time-consuming undertakings and I don't have help in the kitchen to make them, unfortunately.

The Italian Cookies:

Tarella are hard anise cookies which we dip into a frosting and sometimes decorate with sprinkles or colored sugar. They are good dipped in coffee or hot chocolate. I remember getting the recipe to make in home ec in junior high. My mother neglected to give the correct amount of flour, which varies depending on humidity. We were scraping dough off everything, it was so sticky. I'm better at it now.

Pizzelles are made on a special waffle iron and are very much affected by humidity. They take a lot of eggs and it is slow going because you can only make two at a time. My grandfather used to eat them with wine.

Ceci are half-moon shaped fried cookies filled with a chickpea-honey-orange rind filling. The finished cookie is springled with cinnamon & sugar. I'm sure that ceci and some of the other fried dough Italian Christmas cookies (the names of which I can't recall right now) owe something to Jewish cuisine in Italy. They just seem like they'd be right at home at a Hanukkah party.

While not a cookie, I do make panetone for the holiday. It is a bread with some preserved citrus rind and pine nuts that is traditionally baked to look like a chef's hat. I tend to make it as a boule. I like it toasted with jam. It is easily purchased at Italian food emporia this time of year, but when I was growing up, the only way to get it was to make it. It isn't that difficult. Really.

The Czech Cookie:

Kolachki are Czech, with a delicate, flacky pastry enclosing a nut or fruit filling. They are probably akin to rugalah, but not as dry. They are absolutely addictive, but so labor intensive I rarely have the time to make them. The pastry is Crisco and flour, rolled in powered sugar to keep it from sticking. It is very difficult to work with under the best conditions. After filling and sealing and baking, the cookies are dusted with more powdered sugar, which I think must have the addictive power of another white powder. The other reason I don't make them more often is that I would eat all of them. It's the one recipe I've got from my namesake grandmother and making them on the Hoosier kitchen top always makes me think of her.

The Other Cookies:

I found a recipe for Mexican Wedding Cakes in the Washington Post soon after I moved to Northern Virginia many years ago. It was the recipe that convinced me that margarine is no substitute for sweet butter, no matter what the cost or health risk. The small round cookie is made with pecans, lots of butter, flour and powdered sugar and after baking it gets two more coatings of powdered sugar. They melt in your mouth.

Fudge Crackles use three kinds of chocolate and get their name from the shiny cracked surface. They are best barely cooled from the oven. The recipe came from a holiday cookbook I own and was worth the price of the volume. A plate of fudge crackles and Mexican wedding cakes makes a lovely presentation.

If I'm really good, I'll get up on Christmas morning and make a batch of scones from the Ticky-Boo Tea Shoppe Cookbook. The recipe is in a post I made back in July. I don't think I've got time to make lemon curd, but that's easily purchased at Trader Joe's.

Have a Merry Christmas or whatever winter festival you celebrate. There's lots of good things to eat at most of them.

New Mexico Cuisine

2008-12-10T15:16:00.001-08:00

I traveled to New Mexico back in November to work on election protection. I decided to take the train because I really like traveling by train, I don't like to fly, and it was too far to drive by myself. By taking the train, most of the trip was overnight and it took about as long as it would take me to drive. Instead of a hotel, I had a roomette. And I could eat without stopping for an hour.

Food on the Southwest Chief is not the culinary experience I remember from either the Broadway Limited (Chicago to New York) or the Southern Crescent (Washington, D.C. to New Orleans--but I got off at Atlanta.) Those trips were 20 or more years ago, and things have changed. My meals were included in the fare going to New Mexico. They were extra on the way back, when I didn't take a roomette.

While service was generally pleasant, and the company fascinating (because you are seated with strangers), the food was pretty disappointing. Microwave was the heating method of choice and the fish dishes suffered for it. They did make excellent brewed iced tea, however.

In New Mexico, there were two places on my must-eat list: Tomasita's and The Shed, both located in Santa Fe. My friend and hostess Melinda introduced me to the latter, but Parris McBride took me to Tomasitas on my very first trip to Santa Fe and she joined the two of us for dinner there the night before the election.

Tomasita's makes the best sopapillas ever, eaten with a drizzle of honey to cut the hot of the Christmas (red and green) chile I had with my entree. The only restaurant I've had them at outside of New Mexico was a New Mexico-style hole-in-the-wall in Vienna, Virginia, the name of which escapes me now (although it may have had a woman's posessive name and was located near--but on the opposite side--of Magruders on the main drag through town.) Tomasita's was the first place friends took me to when I visited New Mexico on my way to Los Angeles almost 20 years ago, and it's the place we all go to at least once when I visit. I only regret that I was driving the night we went this time, and had to get up before the crack of dawn to get to my assignment at the San Filipe Pueblo, so I couldn't have a margarita with dinner. Next time.

The other must-eat is in the heart of Santa Fe, The Shed. It is located about half a block off the Plaza, tucked in behind an adorable Christmas store, and usually has lines of people snaked out the door.
The restaurant is noted for its brightly colored interior and its red chile.
I had the posole, on the left, and Melinda had the corn chowder, on the right. Both were delicious.
Last year, I made posole from leftover Thanksgiving turkey. Traditionally, it is made from pork. Melinda gave me a lecture on the proper way to prepare the hominy, which I will need to review before making posole again. Here's a link to the Rachael Ray turkey version of posole I used. Posole is traditionally served on New Year's day.

One of the problems with Santa Fe in the winter is that many of the restaurants are closed on Sunday. That's rather strange to anyone coming from Los Angeles, but it meant we didn't have much of a choice for dinner the night I arrived. I took Melinda out to an Italian place she recommended, but I think we were both disappointed with dinner. Perhaps the regular chef was off that night.

I had one other must-do while in Santa Fe, and that was to visit the Nambe outlet. There are now two, one near the Plaza and one on a street with a number of art galleries. My Nambe collection started with a wedding gift from Parris and George R.R. Martin and Melinda has given me several pieces as well. I've added to it by haunting flea markets, where pieces go for a fraction of their retail prices.

I found a wonderful 5 quart single-handled bowl, asymetrical, as is often the case, at the down-town outlet and it makes a great centerpiece as well as a serving bowl which keeps things warm for a long time. I could spend a fortune in the Nambe store, so I was thrilled with this piece I found on the discontinued shelf. Packing for the return trip was a little tricky, but I got it into my checked bag and it arrived without damage. I may have Melinda pick up another piece I saw and bring it out to me when she drives out next month. I wonder if one would have difficulty getting Nambe on a plane in carry-on. You could do a lot of damage if you hit someone in the head with a piece of it.

Thanksgiving Prep

2008-11-26T10:48:00.000-08:00

For my birthday in July of 2007, Len promised me a new dining room set because I've always hated the This End Up trestle-table which was part of his bachelor furniture (which is still most of the furniture we have.) It looks like a picnic table, and would be fine out doors. It seats six, but no more comfortably, because it doesn't expand.

So, I've been looking for a table which would accommodate our large Thanksgiving crowds (we've had up to 23 people) but possibly take up a bit less space when at rest. In the past, I've configured lots of folding tables to make a banquet of 60"x 144" or more. It's rather like fitting a square peg into a round hole to make sure it fits in our living room.

I really like round tables, but I don't have room for a round table which seats the 17 people who are coming this year. I saw a spectacular round table that goes from 6 people to 12 people with beautiful wood inlay and a creative twist, but it was $13,000 and it would take over the house. I'm sure King Arthur would wonder where it went.

I found some lovely tables on line with split pedestals that could expand to seat upwards of 22 people (with 12 12" leaves) and close down to a 48" round. They even came in cherry, which is my favorite wood. But they would have to ship from Michigan and god knows how long it would take to be made. The cost for a table alone would be close to $4500, which is not a number Len would have liked.

While I was on-line last week, I found a possibility at a local oak-specialty furniture store I've visited a number of times, Barn Furniture Mart. There was a 10% off coupon which I could print out and take in. So I squeezed in a stop on Saturday morning and I found a 54" round with 6 18" extension leaves. They had it on display with 16 chairs. Even better, they could deliver it the next day. It's a Mission design (very California, right?) and the price was a lot less than the table I saw on-line. I didn't get the chairs shown in the picture. First things first.

I had a hard time figuring out how I was going to break the news to Len, since I had been waiting for 15 months for him to actually make a move toward getting the promised dining room set. I could hardly sleep on Saturday night because my stomach was so upset. On Sunday, I started moving furniture around to make room (under the guise of getting ready for Thursday and bringing in the folding tables.) After we got back from the farmers' market and I heard Len make a remark to a friend about my making changes to the house while he is away, I had the opening to tell him. I said we needed to have a talk and that he might want to sit down. He went a little pale with the news and said "but I thought we'd pick it out together." I told him I'd been waiting 15 months for him to do anything, and I would have waited until next week while he was at the convention, but I thought we should have the table for Thanksgiving. I did say I'd let him help pick out chairs to go with it. No hurry on that. I've actually got 12 really nice, high-back chrome folding chairs which will do nicely for now and furniture is the modern 17th anniversary gift. (We're celebrating that anniversary on December 25.)

We moved the old table out onto the patio. The new table was delivered within the four-hour window as promised. It is heavy, and the delivery guys had to roll it on its side to get it in the front door. It looks really nice and the Sunday Night Supper Squad made appropriate noises.

So tonight, after I make my pie crust, I've got to make a table cloth to cover the entire thing (extended, it is 162" long, and the longest tablecloths I could find were 144".) I couldn't find two 70" x 86" table clothes to sew together (the ideal solution), so I'm taking a 70" round, cutting it in half, and sewing a half to each end of a 70" x 120" oblong. It will work. I'm sure it will work.

Tomatoes and Basil

2008-09-17T11:15:00.000-07:00

I tried the Pappa al Pomodoro recipe. I didn't get the bread-to-tomato ratio quite right, but Len liked it a lot. I ate some of the leftovers last night, and it still tasted pretty good. It was a lot more mushy than at Angeli. Next time, I'll do better.

The farm stand located on the corner of the Pierce campus gave away a basket of tomatoes to each Pierce employee who bothered to stop by. There were about 8 huge ripe tomatoes in my basket, and I've had several wonderful tomato salads and sandwiches with fresh mozzarella and basil. Truly the best taste of summer. If I had the time to throw eggplant slices on the grill, I'd be making tomato, eggplant, mozzarella, and basil sandwiches on my home-made artisan bread for lunch.

When I was growing up, my mother's cousin Mike had a fantastic tomato and vegetable garden in his back yard in Queens. His secret: horse manure. I have never smelled or tasted more flavorful tomatoes in my life and I loved eating tomato sandwiches with mayonnaise for lunch when I visited.

For years, the Pierce has been disposing of horse manure by spreading it across the fields which are now under cultivation for this privately-operated farm stand. I'm pretty sure our soil is an excellent growing medium.*

The farm stand was also selling huge bunches of basil for $2 each, so I bought several and perfumed my house by putting them in a vase before using. I have trouble growing basil because it gets so hot and bolts easily around here, although I noted that the plants I put in among my few cherry tomato plants has thrived. Love that companion planting thing.

I've made several batches of pesto so far and there's some in my refrigerator now to throw on pasta for a quick meal. Nothing could be easier:

Pesto

2 large cloves garlic
2 packed cups sweet basil leaves
1/2 C. pine nuts
1 C. grated parmesan cheese
3/4 good extra virgin olive oil
Kosher or coarse Sea Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Purist will use a mortar and pestle to make this. I don't own one, so I use my Cuisinart.

Turn on the food processor and drop the garlic through the tube until it is chopped. Add the basil and pulse until chopped. Turn on the machine and drop the pine nuts in to be chopped. Add the cheese, salt, and pepper, and drizzle in the olive oil while the machine is on to make a paste of your desired consistency. This keeps well in the refrigerator (I add a layer of oil to the top to prevent discoloration) or freezer. Some people like to freeze it in ice cube trays and pop them out as needed to add flavor to food.

*I have been told that horse manure needs to be well-aged before use as fertilizer or it will "burn" plants. I'm told that means three or four months before you put it around your plants. I'd suggest turning it into the ground in the fall, so that it will be ready for spring planting. I also use it around my roses, which my friend Melinda swears is the best thing for them. God knows, I've got a constant supply of horse manure to haul home.

A Taste of Tuscany Close to Home

2008-09-07T17:09:00.000-07:00

Sometime after I returned from a trip to Italy where I took a two-week workshop in food photography from Aldo Tutino, the photographer who had created the images for many of the Time-Life international cookbooks, I found a copy of Cucina Fresca. Written by Viana La Place and Evan Kleiman, the recipes reminded me of the food I ate at Tuscan restaurants during my three week adventure. The food is simply prepared and served cold or at room temperture, as the book announced on its cover.

I knew that Evan Kleiman still owned Angeli Caffe on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, but in all my years here, I never made an opportunity to try the place. Several months ago, my friend Karen and I were talking about places to take cooking classes and I said that I knew Evan Kleiman taught cooking classes in Italy. Karen told me that she also teaches them at her restaurant here and that Angeli had periodic "family dinners" which required being on an e-mail list for notification. She gave me the e-mail address and, on Thursday, Len and I headed off to our first family dinner at Angeli.

We were not disappointed. For $35 a person, excluding tip and wine, we were treated to a garden harvest bounty of Italian food. The announcement asked the indulgence of not providing a menu because the food would depend on what Evan found fresh at the market. Seating was in long tables of eight diners, so we would be meeting other foodies. Evan walked around greeting diners and explaining the food. It was very much like having dinner in Italy, except earlier in the evening.

We were given a lovely loaf of rustic bread to start, while we waited for our tablemates to arrive. We had four others at our table: married couple David and Cynthia and friends Glory and Amanda. Everyone had a connection to the entertainment industy. David and Glory were actors, Amanda was a producer, and Cynthia worked for a production company. David, it turned out, had spent time at the Cleveland Playhouse. So the table conversation was lively.

Dinner began with the best tomato soup I have ever eaten. Called Pappa al Pomodoro, The flavor was intense. It was served warm, not hot. It was love at first taste. There were a number of antipasti--clearly it was a good day at the farmer's market. There was a salad with parmesian, zucchini and onions; a bean dish made with beans brought back from Italy; grilled red peppers; and a pizza with fresh corn that had an amazing aroma. We were served a platter of perfectly steamed shrip. The pasta course was a triangular shaped tube pasta with pesto and clams and mussels. For dessert, we had fresh figs with zabaglione drizzled over the pieces. Heavenly.

David and Cynthia had been to these dinners before. Sometimes Evan serves food from other culinary traditions, like Indian, Thai, or Indonesia. She's even done a sedar in the past. I'm looking forward to going to another one of these dinners in the future.

When I got home, I pulled Cucina Fresca off the shelf. Much to my delight, the recipe for Pappa al Pomodoro was in it. The cookbook recommends using only the best extra virgin olive oil with a strong fruity flavor and cautions against even trying to make the recipe without a good loaf of country bread.

Pappa al Pomodoro
(from Cucina Fresca by Viana La Place and Evan Kleiman, ISBN 0-06-096211-9)

2 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
3/4 cup fruity olive oil
1 bunch fresh sage leaves, stems removed, or 1-2 T. dried sage leaves
1 1/2 pounds day-old country bread, cut into small thin slices
1 1/2 pounds ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and pureed, or a large can (28 oz) tomatoes, pureed with their liquid
Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Water
Grated Parmesan cheese for garnish

Saute the garlic briefly in the oil in a saucepan on a high flame. Add the sage and bread to the pan. Mix with a wooden spoon until the bread turns golden to medium brown. Add the tomato puree, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil and boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Add just enough cold water to cover the bread-tomato mixture. Bring to a simmer. Cover and cook over a low flame, stirring 0ften, for at least 30 minutes or until the "pappa" achieves its unique consistency, somewhere between thick and runny; it should grab the spoon. Serve the soup tepid and pass Parmesan cheese. Serves 4-6.

Road Food

2008-09-03T19:29:00.000-07:00

We just took our first real vacation in quite a while. Naturally, this involved a considerable amount of eating out. Yay!

Our first stop was Santa Barbara. There's a fine New Orleans style eatery just off State Street called The Palace Grill. Len and I ate there for dinner one night when we drove up to Santa Barbara to see 1776 on stage. I wasn't sure it would still be there--after all restaurants have a very high failure rate--and I didn't know the address. By coincidence, the parking lot we stopped in was right across the street from the restaurant and it was open for lunch!

Len decided to try the artichoke po'boy (above) and I went for the soft-shelled crab po'boy (below.)

My tolerance for being in New Orleans is about 3 days--after that I want food that isn't fried. But for a change of pace, it is terrific, and the po'boys at The Palace Grill did not disappoint. We also liked the version of fries--sort of like deep fried country potatoes with Cajun accent.

We continued north on U.S. 101 to San Luis Obispo, which has a very large farmers' market on Thursday evenings. We stopped and walked the entire market, picking up some very yummy, freshly fried mini-donuts. I like the powdered, Len got his with cinnamon sugar. They were a bit of warmth against the settling off-shore dampness.

I bought locally produced vinegar in raspberry and blackberry flavors and then we stopped for an olive oil tasting at a permanent shop on Higuera Street calld We Olive. (We returned to the shop on our way back south to actually buy a couple of small, expensive bottles of California-produced olive oil that we did not want to submit to possible overheating in the car on our trip.)

Dinner was pretty much forgotten as we continued north until we found a place for the night in Paso Robles. We read that there would be an olive festival on Saturday, but we had a party in Salinas to attend. There are both vineyards and olive farms to be found in abundance in this central coast area. We were told repeatedly "where there is good wine, there is good olive oil" because the plants like the same kinds of conditions. I did notice how many more vineyards were planted along the 101 than I recall from my first road trip between L.A. and San Francisco in 1990.

We found our hotel in Salinas, unpacked, and headed north to Gilroy for the factory outlet mall and a stop at Garlic World, a place to find wine, olives, and, of course, garlic in its many forms. There was a huge selection of hot sauces, most of which contain garlic. I'm a sucker for label design, and I loved looking at the selection set up by the windows. I've made purchases here in the past, but these things last a long time in my house.

Len and I used to go to Bristol Farms on Sunday mornings for our weekly religious experience of looking a packaging and sampling the food. Now the nearest Bristol Farms market is in Thousand Oaks and the Whole Foods market doesn't have the same kind of bakery.

Saturday afternoon was the event for which we added 900 round trip miles to the odometer: my friend Terri's surprise party. It was held at the home of the daughter of a close friend of hers only a few miles from Terri's place in Salinas. After being punked by our GPS ("you have arrived" turned out to mean we were about 300' below the house and had to continue down the road and twist our way up the hill), we parked and socialized with a house full of strangers until the birthday girl arrived. The look on her face when she saw me was worth the entire trip.

The party was catered by The Inn at Tres Pinos. The food was wonderful. In the cast-iron pot in the foreground (below) was a chilled appetizer containing seafood, to be eaten with the freshly fried tortillas. Then there was chicken with a mole sauce, a beef dish, and vegetarian chile rellenos.

I confess, I had never eaten chile rellenos before, since the sauce and cheese didn't appeal to me, but I really like these a lot. I suppose it had something to do with the grilled corn that was included. Below is another look at the chicken mole.

The cake was a work of art, covered with shaved white chocolate and included a mouse-like layer of chocolate. I discovered I had shed quite a bit of the white chocolate on the living room floor, which was embarrassing. It was one of the best cakes I've had in quite a while.

We did several meals at diners or diner-type places on the trip. Len really liked the Black Bear Diner next to the Laurel Inn where we stayed in Salinas. I'm really glad most places have learned to substitute fruit for fried potatoes with breakfast. The decor was rustic, with artwork of bears everywhere, including carved bears and photographs. At Margie's Diner in Paso Robles, I had a huge platter of fruit in what was identified as a fruit salad. I took some of it with me. Our last full meal on the road was at Pea Soup Andersen's in Buellton, where we had the requisite pea soup, even though it is a dish better suited to the winter than 100 degree days in August.

In addition to stopping at the olive shop in San Luis Obispo, we stopped at the flagship location of House of Bread, a bakery which has only recently opened a location in Chatsworth. I pass it every time I go to see the Arabian Prince, but I hadn't had a chance to try it in the few weeks it's been open. We picked up a loaf of blue cheese and walnut bread to take home. It is quite flavorful, but I like a crustier bread. I suspect that either the plastic packaging or the moisture in the cheese prevents a crackling crust. I will try some of their other offerings when I don't have time to make bread at home. Right now, Audrey III is trying to take over the refrigerator, so I'm good.

Rhubarb

2008-08-28T22:46:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago--about the time the Olympics were a few days old, our friend Jim Newman called to say he had come back from Wisconsin with rhubarb from his family's home and that he'd like to share his grandmother's rhubarb custard pie recipe with me. The catch was that Jim doesn't have a good oven, so he needed to make the pie at our house. The hitch was that Jim didn't make pie crust. He was perfectly happy to buy a frozen crust, but I said I'd be more than happy to make one for the pie.

I'm not a great pie crust maker. My mother is. But I muddle along and I've learned to do a pretty good job with a recipe from the 1975 edition of the Joy of Cooking. I use it for my apple and pumpkin pies at Thanksgiving, which is usually the only time I seem to get around to baking these days.

We had a rhubarb plant in our garden at my parents house--it was there when we moved in. I've since learned that rhubarb is also called "pie plant" in some parts of the country. I've tried to plant it here, but so far I haven't gotten it to take. I'm going to try planting the crowns again this fall and hope for the best. Once established, the plants grow forever and thrive on neglect--my favorite kind of gardening. Be aware: the leaves are poisonous, and must be trimmed off. The stalks are incredibly sour, so a generous amount of sugar is necessary when cooking rhubarb.

Mom would make stewed rhubarb (great over ice cream or by itself), rhubarb pie, and strawberry-rhubarb jam. I had never heard of rhubarb custard pie, but it was as good as Jim promised it would be. Jim said I could share the recipe here, so I will, along with the pie crust recipe I use (which Jim has just requested from me.)

Basic Pie Crust from The Joy of Cooking (1975)

Sift together 2 cups all-purpose flour and 1 tsp. salt.
Measure and combine 1/2 cup chilled leaf lard or shortening (I use Crisco) and 2 T. chilled butter. Cut half of the shortening into the flour mixtue with a pastry blender until it has the grain of cornmeal. Cut the remaining half coarsely into the dough until it is pea size.
Sprinkle the dough with 4 T. water. Blend the water lightly into the dough. Lift the ingredients with a fork, allowing the moisture to spread. If needed to hold the ingredients together, add an additional 1 tsp. to 1 T. water.
When you can gather the dough into a tidy ball, stop handling it. I find it helps to chill the dough before rolling, and I would divide it into two slightly flattened portions before wrapping it and putting it into the refrigerator. This recipe makes enough pastry for a 9" double-crust pie or a single crust pie with a generous lattice or two 9" single-crust pies.

Filling for Jim Newman's Rhubarb Custard Pie

Beat slightly, 3 eggs.
Add 3 Tablespoons milk
Mix and stir in 2 cups sugar, 1/4 cup flour, 3/4 teaspoon nutmeg
Mix in 4 cups sliced rhubarb.
Pour into unbaked 9" pie crust.
Bake 50-60 minutes at 400 degrees.
The pie should not jiggle too much in the center when you take it out of the oven.

Jim e-mailed me today saying he had scored some more rhubarb at a farmer's market. It makes me want to go out and get some to make jam. The recipe really couldn't be easier.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Jam

4 Cups Sugar
5 Cups Diced Rhubarb
1 Cup Crushed Pineapple, drained
1 3-Ounce Package Strawberry Gelatin

Mix rhubarb, pineapple, and sugar in large pot. Let stand for 30 minutes. Bring slowly to boil and cook 30 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and add gelatin. Stir until dissolved. Pour into sterilized jars and seal with wax. Recipe can be doubled, but if doubled, use three packages of gelatin.

The Staff of Life

2008-08-22T08:35:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of Nancy Silverton's Breads from the La Brea Bakery: Recipes for the Connoisseur. That subtitle is totally accurate, because baking almost all of the breads in the cookbook take 2-3 days--and that's after you've gone out to the garden, cut down a bunch of grapes, and spent two weeks developing your own, personal sourdough starter. The results are totally worth the effort, but I no longer have the time to feed Audrey Two like clockwork or the money to keep myself in enough flour to keep her healthy. It is much easier to go to Costco and buy two loaves of the wonderful rosemary and olive oil bread for less than $5 and bank the time.

A couple of months ago, I was perusing food blogs and came across references to Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. It sounded intriguing. I called my friend Karen, who, aging hippie as we both are, has gone back to school to study baking because she wants to open a bakery when she and her husband finally move up to their land near Sequoia National Park. (Karen was a second career trademark attorney and spends some of her spare time weaving. Her husband is a litigator who relaxes by turning wood into beautiful pieces of art.) She was familiar with the technique discussed, but hadn't heard of the book.

Len bought me a copy for my birthday, but I didn't get a chance to try it out until 2 weeks ago. That's part of the charm: you make up the dough, let it raise once, and throw it into the refrigerator. Then you can pull off parts of it and quickly make fresh bread over the course of the two weeks the dough lasts. And yes, it works.

You can find links to Jeff Hertzberg's and Zoe Francois' blogs in the list on the right side of this page. Below are the before and after baking photographs of the loaf of bread I made while doing laundry for our vacation. I got a slice, but my son gets to eat the rest while we are gone. The technique is so simple, even my husband could do it if he wanted to. Except for a baking stone--and what kitchen should be without one?--there's no specialized equipment. The basic recipe is good for four one-pound loaves. I'll be mixing up another batch as soon as I get home. It will be really good with the artisan olive oils from the Central Coast of California.

The dough after it comes out of the refrigerator and has been shaped in about 30 seconds before a 40 minute raising time:

The dough after a 30 minute bake in my 450 degree oven on a baking stone:

.
I'm going to try some of the variations next, because this is just the basic white sourdough. The book has all kinds of wonderful goodies, including pecan sticky buns. Yum.

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day is available in hardback from Amazon.com.

ISO the Perfect Crab Cake

2008-08-07T15:03:00.000-07:00

We've been back from San Diego for more than a week and I can't believe I haven't done a food write up about it. San Diego Comicon is as much about eating as it is about comic book business, as far as I'm concerned. All we seem to get to do is eat and do business, often at the same time.

We stayed at the Marriott right next to the Convention Center. While the rooms are a bit more shabby each year, it is convenient for almost everything. It also has a nice breakfast buffet, which is a good choice for meeting friends before hitting the convention floor. I think we had breakfast there three of the five days we were in San Diego, one morning with Len's friend Stan and his wife Ruth and their son, another with Connie Willis and her daughter Cordelia, and one with Ray Feist.

Taking tea in San Diego was a washout this year. Because of Len's schedule at Comicon and the wonderful things I wanted to attend (do you think I would miss being hugged by Hugh Jackman in order to go to tea?) I couldn't commit to being away from the Convention Center for an afternoon.

Instead of tea, the quest became one for crab cakes. It didn't start that way, but it did evolve over the course of a few days. We got to San Diego around 2 on Wednesday afternoon, so we were able to check into the hotel, get our badges and those of our guests, and run out to get a quick lunch at Dick's Last Resort, just a couple of blocks away in the Gaslight District.

Dick's is a place we've eaten at a number of times, more for convenience than anything else. The food is o.k., but depending on whether you are seated outdoors (recommended) or indoors (not recommended) you will find the waitpersons friendly or mock-surly and the noise-level bearable or beyond noisy. As it happens, we ate at Dick's twice that day, and got the full Dick's experience. Afternoon out doors was fine, dinner indoors, with a loud (not so great) band and the screaming waiters was unacceptable. It was a toss-up as to whether Peter David, Melinda Snodgrass, or I would be the first one to deck one of the waitpersons. Peter wound up screaming back for them to shut up.

I ate crab cakes for both meals at Dick's, or, more correctly, crab cakes for lunch and crab balls for dinner. They were o.k., more filler to crab ratio than I like, but better than having to settle for grilled chicken (since I don't eat red meat.)

On Thursday, we gathered up a group of friends including Gillian Horvath, Bob Skir, David Wise, Audrey Taylor, and Melinda Snodgrass to go to Harbor House along Shoreline Village, a short walk from the Convention and Hotel. There the crab cakes were part of the appetizer menu, so I had a salad to go with them for my meal. The crab cakes were almost all crab with a crunchy coating, which I liked very much. I don't understand why crab cakes aren't an entree at more fine restaurants, since I think they make a perfectly good main course.

In addition to the food, the other plus for Harbor House was that we could carry on conversations with each other and not have to shout. There were almost a dozen people in our party, but that wasn't a problem. And there was enough light to actually see our dinner (granted, we got there while there was still plenty of light coming through the large glass windows, but it was dark when we left) which seems to be a rarity these days (see below.)

On Friday night, we didn't actually have dinner. We went to the Eisner Awards, since Len was nominated for the Hall of Fame and had been asked to hand out some of the writing awards. There were appetizers, from which we wound up making a meal. Good thing, because the award ceremony didn't end until almost midnight, leaving no possibility for an actual dinner.

Saturday involved having two dinners: the annual Writers Guild Animation Writers Caucus reception (there were crab cake bites) and dinner at Cafe Sevilla, a tapas restaurant in the Gaslight District, with the Bloodfire Studios crew. The restaurant had a few items which aren't traditional Spanish dishes, including, I suspect, the crab cakes which I ordered (photograph below.) They were made with lump crab meat and a small amount of filler, and were quite good. The problem with Sevilla is that it is so dark it is almost impossible to read the menu and pretty difficult to actually see your food. It is another restaurant which is ruined by decor which amplifies sound, rather than muting it. I'm just not a fan of excessive noise with dinner.The best place to go for crab cakes--and crab in any other form--has got to be Baltimore, with Seattle a close second. I suppose it depends on what kind of crab you want to eat. I would run into Phillips' Harbor Place Restaurant anytime I had to make a trip to Baltimore, especially if it was the season for soft-shelled crab sandwiches. I may have eaten those sandwiches for lunch every day the last time the World Science Fiction Convention was in Baltimore.

Road Tasted, with Bobby and Jamie Deen did a segment on the Market Inn Restaurant crab cakes which made me want to get on an airplane. The Market Inn is located in southwest Washington, D.C. and, fortunately for those of us who are flight-impaired, offer a mail-order service for its crab cakes. By going to the link, you can also watch the segment on the Road Tasted show.

I have a recipe for crab cakes from The Junk Food Cookbook by Lydia Saiger, which I really like and which aren't all that hard to make. I don't know if the cookbook is still in print (my copy is almost 30 years old) but it has recipes that approximate a number of fast food places with healthier ingredients--in so far as that is possible.

Maryland Crab Cakes from The Junk Food Cookbook

1/4 C. Butter
1 small onion, minced
2 T. green pepper, minced
1 pimiento, minced
3 T. flour
1/4 C. clam juice
1/4 C. cream or milk
1 egg yolk
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
Dash Tabasco
8 oz. crab meat
1 1/2 C. bread crumbs
1 tsp. chopped parsley

Heat 3 T. butter in frypan; fry minced onion, green pepper, and pimiento until soft. Add flour; cook and stir for a couple of minutes. Pour cloam juice and cream or milk into pan. Cook until thickened, stirring constantly.
Mix egg yolk in well, blend in Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, crab meat, 3/4 C. of the brad crumbs, and parsley. Chill for at least 2 hours, then shape into 4 cakes, each about 3" in diameter and 1" thick. Roll in remaining 3/4 C. bread crumbs. Heat remaining 1 T. butter in frypan. Brown cakes on both sides; lower heat and cook for about 6 minutes. Serve with Tartar Sauce.

Mozza on My Birthday

2008-07-30T11:33:00.001-07:00

I managed to get a riding lesson in before rushing home to shower and head out for our 8:45 reservation at Osteria Mozza on my birthday. Anticipation is a wonderful thing, and I've wanted to go the the restaurant since I first read about it in the building stages. I'm a huge fan of Nancy Silverton's breads from the La Brea Bakery and who doesn't enjoy watching Mario Batali on Iron Chef America?

First of all, the food and service at Osteria Mozza was wonderful. You could fill me up on the multi-grain bread any time. And the margarita, made with agave nectar, lime juice, and a pure agave tequila, hit me like a sledge hammer.

The decor was lovely. The sound, not so much.

As my friend had warned me, it is very noisy. When I'm spending that much for dinner (or watching someone else spend that much) I'd like to be able to talk to my dinning companion(s). It was almost impossible. I suppose if we were sitting next to each other at the mozzarella bar, we could have whispered in each others ears. But we were sitting opposite each other at a dining table. Pity. The sound was the only drawback to the evening.

I had the better view for watching what was going on in the room. The place was hopping and it served dinner quite late. If it weren't so expensive, it would be a good stop for those nights after a trip to the theater. The place is also quite hip, judging from the youngish crowd in cool clothing (where do they get the money?)

Dinner started with a complementary amuse bouche of heavenly ricotta on toast. Len ordered the burrata with bacon, marinated escarole, and caramelized shallots. Burrata is a very creamy, fresh mozzarella--and quite "in" these days. It was wonderful. I had the equally good prosciutto di Parma con melone--the melon tasted like a childhood memory. I would have ordered the mussels or something with eggplant, but I promised Len I would order food he would actually taste.

We split the egg and fresh ricotta raviolo in brown butter--a large raviolo with a whole egg nested in ricotta. This is a pretty impressive presentation and I marvel that it was done with the neither the pasta nor the egg yolk breaking, but I'm not sure I'd bother a second time. There were a number of pasta dishes I would like to try instead. For the main course, Len had the pan roasted pork loin and I had the crisp duck al mattone. His pork was fantastic. The duck skin was indeed crisp and wonderful, but I'm not sure I liked the duck flesh as much as I would have liked the striped bass or the grilled orata, neither of which Len would want to try. Next time. Whenever that is.

We didn't do dessert. We were too full from dinner and nothing appealed to me. I might be convinced to go by for coffee and dessert some time, just as I would like to try Pizzeria Mozza some night.

It was definitely worth the wait and I'd go back, but I wish Mario Batali and Nancy Silverton would turn down the noise. The room has lots of hard surfaces, which makes everything bounce around and contributes to the cacophony. I like quiet conversation with dinner, which was one of the big draws of the old Paul's Cafe in Sherman Oaks (in addition to its great food and low prices.)

Osteria Mozza is located on the southwest corner of Highland and Melrose Avenues in Hollywood. Pizzeria Mozza is located one door south on Highland. Reservations are definitely needed for the Osteria, but I don't think they are taken for the Pizzeria.

Strange Concepts

2008-07-21T08:13:00.000-07:00

On the fourth week of Next Food Network Star, the contestants were given some god-awful choices of things to pull together for a meal. The winning dish wound up on the menu at Red Lobster. I had forgotten this until we got to Red Lobster for dinner with our friends, Harlan and Susan Ellison, and Dr. Who writer James Moran and his wife, opera singer Jody Kearns (I hope I spelled that correctly), on holiday from Britain. There on the menu was the Macadamia Crusted Tilapia in White Chocolate Beurre Blanc, which had been concocted by contestant Kelsey during the challenge.

Len nudged me into ordering it, when what I really wanted was the steamed lobster. He wouldn't order it because he won't eat white fish that could possibly have a pin in it. All I can say is that the other meals from that night's competition (some of which had to incorporate marshmallow creme or caramel) must have been pretty near inedible if this was the winning dish. Well, that's not all I can or will say.

The contrivance of having to add white chocolate is the downside of this dish. The fish itself, with the macadamia crust is pretty good. It's the buerre blanc that didn't work for me. If it had been a normal buerre blanc, with a goodly amount of lemon, or perhaps even a lemon caper sauce, I would have really enjoyed it. I did not like the sweetness at all, and it was an overly rich dish which sat heavily in my stomach for hours.

I really liked Kelsey, whose bubbling personality was absolutely engaging. She was the one contestant I thought I'd like to see on a repeating basis. But this dish is not one I'm going to make at home, ever. If you want to give it a try, the name links to the Food Network website with the recipe in full. Personally, I'd deep six the white chocolate and the coconut cream.

I did get to take home the leftover lobster from the table, which I turned into lobster salad sandwiches on Sunday night. It was pretty easy to do. I chopped up some fresh tarragon (do you know that means "dragon's tooth" in French) from my garden, finely diced two stalks of celery, added some scallions and mixed it together with a few tablespoons of mayo and sour cream. I think it may have needed a little more salt and some lemon, but it made a nice dinner on a really hot day.

Anticipation

2008-07-18T09:30:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased to say my husband does read my blogs--all of them--and he's made a reservation to take me to Osteria Mozza on Monday for my birthday. While the menu looks like something you'd much rather have an expense account paying for, I refuse to feel guilty over a rare treat. Needless to say, I'll write about it next week.

Also coming up next week is our annual trek to San Diego for Comicon International. 125,000 fans looking for autographs and a chance to discuss the physics of Nightcrawler's "bamffing" ("we make this stuff up, there's no science involved" says the spouse, who created the blue-skinned one.) While Len gets to be "The Famous Len Wein" on the convention floor, I will engage in one of my favorite activities: checking out the tea rooms of San Diego.

For the past two years, the group of wives of the not-so-rich-but famous, have gone to Tea on Chatsworth for their unique offerings. This year, I'd like to try the newer tea room over on Del Coronado Island I've read about.

This all started when Len and I used to stay at the Horton Grand, an old Victorian Hotel which served a wonderful Victorian tea. I gathered up a group of friends and we went there for high tea annually for three or four years. The woman in charge of the service dressed and looked like Jean Marsh in Upstairs, Downstairs, the food was wonderful and the scones were great. Then, one year she was no longer there, the goodies were less good, and the service less transfixing. We went looking for other tea rooms. We did the Westgate Hotel one year and the U.S. Grant Hotel a time or two, but they didn't have the same cache we felt in the early years at the Horton Grand.

Ten years ago, we found a fantastic place in Carlsbad called "Ticky-Boo Tearoom," with a totally Victorian decor, including the dress of the servers. The scones were the best I've ever had, served hot from the oven. Before we left, my friends bought me the self-published cookbook with that recipe. We are all really glad they did.

I stopped at Ticky-Boo again about six months later on a pilgrimage to the Mary's Tack and Feed Annual February Sale in Del Mar (I also always go to Mary's during Comicon weekend because they have things I can't find in my local tack stores.) It was as wonderful as it had been the first time, with the added treat of a male server in a kilt (the owners were quite proud of their Scottish heritage.)

The next summer, the Comicon group made plans to go to Ticky-Boo. In fact, it was going to be a meet up for those of us who were already in San Diego and those who delayed the trip for a couple of days, since Carlsbad is about 30 miles north of San Diego, just off Interstate 5. To our horror, it was gone. According to other shop owners on the street, it disappeared literally over night! The original founder had died and left it to her two daughters to run. But running a food establishment is really hard work with long hours. After carrying on for several years, something went wrong. We still don't know what. But at least I've still got the recipe for the best scones ever, and so can you:

Ticky-Boo Scones

2 C. All-purpose Flour
1 T. Baking Powder
1/2 tsp. Salt
1/3 C. Sweet Butter
1/4 C. Vegetable Shortening
1/3 C. Heavy Cream
Splash of Water

Place baking sheet in oven and preheat to 450 degrees F.
Sift the measured dry ingredients together, twice.
Dice fats into the dry ingreients, then lightly rub with cool fingertips or pastry blender. Make a well in center and stir in cream. Lightly mix with a fork untill a soft dough forms. If dough is dry, add water, sprinkling a little at a time until the dough is perfect for kneading.
Turn out on a well-floured board and knead very lightly for about 1/2 minute for a loose smooth dough. Roll out with a rolling pin or pat with hands to approximately 3/4" thick.
Stamp out with a cutter or cut into triangles with a sharp knife. Knead together any trimings and stamp out again, continuing until all the dough is used.
Lift with a spatula onto the preheated baking sheet, placing them 1" apart. Brush tops only with beaten egg or milk (optional--I don't.)
Bake toward the top of the oven for approximately 10-15 minues or untill well risen and golden brown. Remove and turn out onto a wire rack for cooling. Best served warm with clotted or Devon Cream and jam or curd.
This basic recipe may be adjusted to add currants, raisins, cheese with sage and walnuts, chocolate chips, dried fruit, or any other spice or variety you choose.

Hell's Kitchen Winner

2008-07-11T11:55:00.001-07:00

Christina, my favorite contestant on Hell's Kitchen this season went home with the big prize: a job at London in Hollywood, Gordon Ramsay's new restaurant. She seemed to be the brightest and most diligent of this season's crop of chefs, even if she had less experience than most of them. As Ramsay said in his concluding remarks, she seemed to have the most potential. I'm sure she'll do just great.

It was great to see that Corey was able to overcome her own disappointment at not being a finalist to dig in and make a big effort to see that Christina won. This was in sharp contrast to Jen, who wound up on the other team (thank goodness) and couldn't get past her resentment at not being the winner. She even had the nerve to ask for a letter of recommendation from Chef Ramsay while she was supposed to be working.

I'd love to try the restaurant, but I expect that reservations are hard to come by right now.

Corn Crazy Redux

2008-07-06T16:56:00.000-07:00

I am happy to report that the recipe for Roasted Corn Dip was a huge success at the July 4th barbecue at my friend Gillian's house. I prepared everything up to the point of putting it into the oven to heat at home, and when I got to Gillian's house we heated it to bubbling and everyone dug in with tortilla chips. Trader Joe's roasted frozen corn worked really well and shortened the preparation time.

The fresh roasted corn that Gillian served was also really good. She had leftovers. I suggested she use them to make another batch of the corn dip.

Gillian had specifically requested that I bring macaroni salad, because she likes the way I make it. It really comes out a little differently each time I make it, depending on what's in the kitchen or what I remember to pick up at the store. The basics are:

1 lb. dry, small elbow macaroni, cooked in salted water, drained and cooled
3 hard boiled eggs, chopped
1/2 C. finely chopped white onion
2 T. sliced green onion tops
1 C. diced sweet peppers (I like to use several colors)
1/2 C. drained, pitted and sliced black olives
1/2 C. diced celery
1/2 C. shredded or diced carrots
3/4 C. mayonnaise
Salt & black pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl and add additional mayonnaise until the desired consistency is reached. All measurements are approximate. I generally just fiddle around with the basics until the color and mix tastes right. I also usually make this for a crowd, so I'm starting with 2 pounds of dried pasta and upping the other ingredients accordingly. If I've got the right kind of bowl, I might slice some eggs to decorate the presentation and sprinkle paprika and more sliced olives on top of everything.

This couldn't be easier and beats the hell out of anything you'll find at a grocery store deli. I like having the leftovers for lunch or dinner on these hot summer days. You could toss in some drained, canned tuna or cooked salmon to add some more protein.

Corn Crazy

2008-07-03T08:25:00.000-07:00

Corn is definitely one of my favorite things. I remember happy moments when I was growing up in the Catskills where we'd head off to Jackson's Farm to buy corn which would be pulled off the stalks while we waited and then we'd run home to a boiling pot of water to toss it in.

I'm not happy to learn that most of it is being planted for fuel these days. What a scam. I've had to buy ethanol when I've been in Iowa (my sister and nieces used to live there) and my mileage wasn't any better and the price wasn't any lower. I'm worried about world wide famine being increased because food corn is being repurposed.

I'm nuts for fresh or green corn tamales. It's a treat I discovered after I moved to Los Angeles. I can't remember if it was a night we went to El Cholo with our friends Karen and Michael or a night at El Coyote with Harlan and Susan Ellison. As good as those tamales are (and El Cholo claims to have originated them), it wasn't until I tasted the green corn tamales from Corn Maiden at a farmer's market that I found food for the gods. For one thing, Corn Maiden does not stick cheese or peppers in the green corn tamales (except for the ones sold at grocery stores.) I usually eat mine with a mild tomatillo sauce and it is just heavenly.

Corn Maiden has a booth at most of the larger farmer's markets in Los Angeles. It has booths at Calabassas on Saturday and Studio City on Sunday. There is always a Corn Maiden booth at the Sunday morning farmer's market in Hollywood (see picture), which I attend regularly (there's also a place selling roasted corn on the food concession row.) I like to eat mine while I shop, but I sometimes buy them for the freezer and steam them at home. While I've got a recipe, it's a labor intensive affair that I doubt I will ever try. It is so much easier to buy them, and Corn Maiden does have an on-line mail order business in Culver City.

(I will note that El Torito markets a packaged corn cake mix to which you add a can of creamed corn. It tastes very much like a green corn tamale and will do in those moments when I've just got to have one. I try to keep a package on hand for just such emergencies. I can find it in the Mexican food section of some of my local grocery stores, such as Von's.)

What I am willing to try is a recipe for a Roasted Corn Dip. It seems like a swell idea to take to a 4th of July party this weekend. We had a wonderful Roasted Corn Dip provided by Bite Catering Couture at Larry Niven's birthday party two weeks ago. While I didn't ask for their recipe, I found the one below at Emeril Lagasse's website. It reads like it will taste very much like the one I had (although I don't recall the olives.) I'm a little lazy, so I plan to use some of Trader Joe's wonderful frozen roasted corn (thawed, of course), which will make things go a little faster:

Roasted Corn Dip

4 medium ears of fresh sweet corn, shucked
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon butter
1 cup minced onions
1/4 cup small diced red bell pepper
1/4 cup small diced yellow bell pepper
1 medium jalapeno, stemmed, seeded and minced
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
1 cup homemade mayonnaise
1/2 pound grated Monterey Jack cheese
2 tablespoons finely chopped green onions, (green part only)
1/4 cup chopped black olives

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Rub each ear of the corn with the oil. Season with salt and pepper. Place the corn on the grill or either on a open flame. Cook the corn for 1 minute on all sides. Remove from the heat and cool. Using a sharp knife, remove the kernels from the cob. In a large saute pan, melt the butter. Add the onions and peppers. Season with salt and pepper. Saute for 2 minutes. Add the corn and continue to saute for 2 minutes. Add the jalapenos and garlic. Continue to cook for 1 minute. Remove from the heat and cool slightly. Turn the vegetable mixture into a mixing bowl. Stir in the mayonnaise and half of the cheese. Mix well. Stir in the green onions. Season with salt and pepper. Pour the mixture into a greased 6 cup ovenproof oval baking dish. Spread evenly and top with the remaining cheese. Bake for about 10 to 15 minutes or until bubbly. Garnish the dip with the chopped olives. Serve warm with tortilla chips.

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

Hell's Kitchen Nightmares

2008-07-02T10:36:00.001-07:00

We are addicted to cooking shows. Before there was the Food Network, our Saturday default was the PBS cooking line-up. Now we've got all food, pretty much all the time.

It took me a while to start watching Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen show. Len had watched it for a while, but I don't think I watched the show until last season's finale. Between then and now, I got hooked on Kitchen Nightmares (both the BBC America version and the FOX Americanized version) and The F-Word (thanks to my friend Gillian.)

Gordon Ramsay is probably an acquired taste. While the "F" in the television show stands for "food," the "F" coming out of his mouth in his various shows is bleeped and blurred. I've always found that Brits have a lot less trouble with that word than we do here, but I guess you don't say "bloody" in polite company over there. Ramsay is a perfectionist and quite brutal to those working around him. It doesn't surprise me at all that there are often tears on his shows.

Kitchen Nightmares is a show which can really put you off from eating out. Some of the kitchens Ramsay's visited are nothing short of disgusting. One wonder where the food inspectors are. Here in L.A. we can decide if we want to go into a "C" or "B" rated restaurant, but that doesn't seem to be the case in New York or Great Britain. Ugh. Many of the restaurants in the American version of Kitchen Nightmares were shot in the greater Los Angeles area: one was in Moorpark, one in Burbank, and one in Pomona. The one I was most interested in visiting, because it is in an area where we used to visit a row of antique shops, closed before the show aired. It had lost too much money to survive the nice makeover. The pizza place in Burbank had an owner whose attitude just put me off. We did wonder we should find the place and see if the changes had been kept. The place in Moorpark is out of the way of our usual travels, so I haven't suggested we try it.

So this season, I was ready and waiting for season four of Hell's Kitchen to start. I am totally invested and I am dying to try Gordon Ramsay's new L.A. restaurant, London. (But not before I get to Mozza.)

Last night was the penultimate episode in the series. It's down to a 47-year old man and a 25 year old culinary school graduate who's won 9 of the competitions, either alone or with her team. That's a record for the show. She's smart and hard working. Last week, when the remaining three chefs were surprised by a visit from family and a meal prepared by Ramsay, she was the only one who realized there was something afoot and she and her mother both worked on figuring out what ingredients were in the dish. The other two contestants were oblivious. She did win, and I'm rooting for her to win the whole thing. She may be young, but she's got what it takes to survive in a business that's got something like a 98% failure rate in the first two years.

I found that most of the men in the competition were obnoxious, sexist pigs. You'd think we'd be past that, but no. The word "bitch" was used a lot. Of the women, there was one who was so obnoxious that we rooted for her to lose despite some of her obvious competencies. I was extremely disappointed that all of the chefs seem to smoke. Much as I can't understand why Liza Minnelli would risk ruining her voice by chain smoking, I can't understand why a chef would destroy his or her palate by smoking. I also fear finding cigarette debris in my food.

The show ended last night with the choice of the final cooking team members up in the air--the six most recently eliminated chefs were brought back to help in the kitchen. The 47-year-old Petrozza had first pick and they are now down to the guy who had something of a nervous breakdown and the woman I'm afraid will try to sabotage Christina.

So, if you need to speak to me next Tuesday, don't call while the show is on. It's almost as exciting as the last episode of The Amazing Race.

Despite my reservations about what the Brits know about food (except for high tea), I'm intrigued by Gordon Ramsay's insistence that the chefs he helps look for local, fresh ingredients. So, for Len's birthday, I bought him a copy of Gordon Ramsay's Fast Food. I haven't had a chance to actually go through it myself, but I'm looking forward to a few minutes alone with it this weekend while Len's out of town.

Making Cakes Special

2008-06-26T19:32:00.000-07:00

I know it didn't start with Ace of Cakes on Food Network, because I had booklets showing how to make cute cakes when I was growing up. In fact, I think I remember cakes that incorporated dolls for birthdays or showers. I insisted that most of the sections of my own wedding cake, a zillion years ago, be chocolate (scandelous!) Imagine what the people who went to my first, long-ago wedding would think about the armadillo on the top of my friends Lisa Jane and Andy's wedding cake.

Yet today, cakes look more interesting than they used to. There's an extreme cooking challenge show that had a bigger-than-life sized sock monkey cake with pyrotechnics on it this season. We went to our friend Mel Gilden's birthday party last summer, and he got a cake that looked like a volcano with all kinds of dinosaurs around it. By mixing a little dry ice and water in the tube in the center, smoke rose out of the cone and down the sides of the mountain, an effect lost on the still shot I've got here. It was still fun, especially for a 60th birthday. We and our friends have never grown up.

I haven't really seen one in person, but there's a printer that can print on a cake with edible inks. My husband has gifted me with several such cakes: one had a photograph of my horse on it, another had Len's variation on last year's Harry Potter title, which was released on my birthday. In our area, Bea's Bakery in Tarzana can print from provided photographs.

I had a very simple cake made for Len's birthday earlier this month. Yellow cake with chocolate icing celebrating his 60th birthday. It wasn't until it was too late that I actually thought of some interesting graphics to pull together in Adobe Photoshop--although I might run into some copyright problems when I go to the bakery. There was a sign at the counter of the Von's bakery that indicated there could be no changes in the superhero cakes because of licensing restrictions. My choice would be a cake with both Wolverine and Swamp Thing on it, and that's an unauthorized Marvel-DC crossover, I'm afraid.

Marilyn (a.k.a. "Fuzzy") Niven was absolutely inspired when she ordered a cake for her husband's 70th birthday party, which we attended on Saturday. Using the cover of one of Larry's books, the spine celebrated the 70th edition and the opened cover of the book revealed spun sugar creatures and worlds based on Larry's stories. It was quite wonderful, as you can see from the photographs. The spun sugar elements had been sprayed with some sort of preservative, so they weren't actually edible. They might make an interesting addition to someone's crystal figure collection until they melt in the forthcoming heat.

West Valley Occupational Center, which is located in a block between where I live and where I work, has a cake-decorating class which a couple of my friends took. I don't have the time to do it this summer, but it might be a temptation when I have a little time. It's just that I'm so clumsy and I'm a bit too much of a perfectionist to want to take on something at which I'm likely to be miserable.

Cookbooks and Gamers

2008-06-19T08:13:00.000-07:00

I have never been a role-playing gamer (RPG), so this wouldn't mean much to me except for the fact that my son, who also works as a video game tester, is. Actually, we know a lot of people who are into gaming and eating, but not cooking. I got a link to a commentary piece which, if you picture cookbooks subject to the continual updating of software, is pretty funny. Here's the link to Killjoy Cooking with the Dungeons and Dragons Crowd by Lore Sjoberg at Wired. Thank goodness that, unless you are a lawyer, your paper books are not subject to updates which can upset your life if you don't get them. As I said elsewhere, the 1970s version of the Joy of Cooking is my kitchen workhorse and the recipes still work just the way they should--even though it's been updated twice since my edition.

Birthday Dinner at Roy's

2008-06-16T12:16:00.000-07:00

I'm very particular about whom I trust for restaurant reviews. I'm not taking about newspaper reviews. I'm talking about social acquaintance reviews. There are some people who simply cannot tell good food from bad and frequently think that quantity equates with quality. I've had some of the worst meals of my life with these people.

It was therefore with great trepidation that I made a reservation for Roy's, an Hawaiian-fusion chain with a location only a couple of miles from our house, for my husband's birthday last week. Len had expressed an interest in going based on the recommendation of friends who ate at the original Roy's in Hawaii. All of my alarms went off because I've been greatly disappointed by recommendations from these people in the past. I guess you can't be wrong 100% of the time.

The food and service was quite good. The only down-side was that we were seated in a booth next to the open kitchen, and the noise made it almost impossible to talk for a large part of the meal.

We stuck to the prix fixe menu, which had two choices for appetizer and dessert and four for the main course. Len and I had the crispy duck spring rolls (honestly too much for one person) and Michael ordered a fish dish. Both were excellent. I shared my spring rolls with Michael, whom we used to call "Marabunta Boy" for his voracious appetite and skinny frame.

For our main courses, Len got the filet of beef with wasabe mashed potaotes, Michael got the beef short ribs, and I had grilled prawns stacked over a small serving of pasta with a lemon-caper cream sauce. Since I no longer eat most read meat (I quit one day after looking at a new-born calf in the eye,) I didn't sample either of my guys' dishes. I hear they were excellent, although the wasabe cleaned out Len's sinuses. My prawns were just fine.

For dessert, we all had the molten chocolate souffles, which Michael described as a brownie with hot fudge sauce inside. It was served with vanilla ice cream, which I really appreciated. The staff also presented us with a family photograph, since it was a birthday dinner. That was charming--along with the "happy birthday" wishes on arrival, at seating, and when leaving.

The prix fixe was $35 and it would have been hard to get three other courses on the menu for less than that. We didn't have drinks, so the experience wasn't bank-busting by any means. The decor is modern deco, the staff attentive, and free parking was plentiful in the evening. The restaurant is located in a medical-professionals office building at the corner of Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Victory Boulevard in Woodland Hills. Reservations can be made on-line for any of Roy's locations nation-wide.

The Joy of Cookbooks

2008-06-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

One can never be too rich or too thin--or own too many books. One of my mottoes is "a room without books is as a body without a soul" and I used to be able to quote it in Cicero's original Latin. We own one of those houses where people ask "have you read all these books?" Harlan Ellison's response to that question is "No. Who wants to live in a house filled with books you've already read?" The truth is, each of the three of us has read most of our own share of the books which reside with us, leaving plenty more to try on a rainy day.

The first time I stepped into Phyllis C. Richman's office at the Washington Post, I knew I wanted to have a cookbook collection like the one I saw there. My collection was only a shelf or two at the time, but it has grown substantially. Most libraries and bookstores don't have as good a selection. I buy them new, but I've had pretty good luck haunting thrift stores, antique shops, flea markets and yard sales in order to expand it.

There are frequently cookbooks on my nightstand, along with the other books I'm in the process of reading. Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes did one of his commentaries about cookbooks and couldn't understand why people would have more than a few and certainly didn't believe people actually read them for pleasure. We do.

There are certain cookbook writers I collect like I do some fiction writers. Marcella Hazan is at the top of that list. I think I own every one of her books and I use them repeatedly (Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, which combines two earlier volumes is the best Italian cookbook I own.) Julie Rosso and Sheila Lukins, together and alone are big favorites (it is possible to throw an entire party using the two Silver Palate Cookbooks) and Viana La Place, Julie Sahni, Madhur Jaffrey, and Nancy Silverton also rank. For my husband, Len Wein, it is Rachael Ray--Len probably owns every one of her books. What he didn't buy, I bought for him. I also collect cookbooks on certain topics: Italian food is the big one--without counting I know that dominates my shelves. I'm also prone to picking up books on baking bread, Indian cooking (even though Len can't eat it) and other ethnic cuisines, dim sum, holding tea parties, appetizers and other finger-food.

For my son Michael, I keep looking for cookbooks which will make him want to investigate the kitchen, not just the refrigerator. I've bought him Alton Brown's books (which are largely about the science of cooking, which Michael can relate to), some on Japanese cuisine (he's a Nipponophile), and some aimed at kids in college (I had The Campus Survival Cookbook when I was in grad school which I just loved and have passed on to him.) So far, he makes a nice banana bread.

After September 11, 2001, I spent a year working my way through Nancy Silverton's Breads from the La Brea Bakery. This book is not for the faint of heart, which is why I probably had it on the shelf for four years before I tried it. I started by cutting grapes from my arbor to make sour dough from scratch. After several aborted attempts to learn to make sour dough, Nancy Silverton's method actually worked. The smell of fresh bread brought comfort to me when things were crazy. Of course, Len took to calling the sour dough starter "Audrey Two" since I was constantly having to feed it and I never quite got the knack of keeping it dormant in the refrigerator. So I had lots of it bubbling away in a six-quart tub on the counter for a long time. It lived several years before I finally screwed up. Now, if I need starter, I call my friend Karen who is planning to open a bakery when she finally moves out of Los Angeles. She's doing some contract baking and she always has starter available.

I wouldn't be without my 1970s edition of the Joy of Cooking. Although it is on my shelf, I find the more recent update impossible to read--it uses a kind of type which is not kind on my old eyes--and it just isn't as friendly as my falling-to-pieces one. This is the book I go to every Thanksgiving for its reminders on the right way to roast my turkey and a great pie crust for my apple and pumpkin pies.

I love well-photographed cookbooks. One of the most beautiful cookbooks I've ever seen is an over-sized coffee-table book called Jean-Louis: Cooking with the Seasons. It was shot by Fred Maroon, a photographer of my acquaintance in Washington D.C., and written by Jean-Louis Palladin, a great character who died too early. I met him several times while working with Phyllis Richaman, and though I couldn't afford to eat at his restaurant at the Watergate Hotel, I did get to sample his food elsewhere. Because I am not inclined to take on French cuisine, the book is not in my personal collection. I do hope to have a copy one day, just to be inspired by the pictures.

The most valuable cookbooks in my collection are the notebooks where I've collected family recipes since I was a teenager. There should probably be a lot more, but I concentrated on the Italian holiday sweets. I discovered that some of the recipes didn't really work when I tried to make them on my own, so I had to go back and watch my mother in action in order to make notes to get them to come out right. I'm not entirely sure she was intentionally deceitful, but Mom often doesn't measure when she cooks and there was a lot more refinement needed in the quantities to make things work. Since I'm a by the book kind of baker, I'm surprised there weren't more disasters.

Nanny's Kitchen Table

2008-06-10T09:02:00.000-07:00

Food plays a far too important symbolic place in my life. That's the kind of thing that interferes with dieting and really argues against the Weight Watchers' mantra of "nothing tastes as good as being thin feels." Not true. Not at all. Food is about family and friends, good conversation, great times, and comfort.

My mother's mother died when I was 10. Before that, she was the person who watched over us while my parents worked. Some of my earliest memories are of watching her cook for her extended Italo-Americano family in a long kitchen with an old stove and refrigerator. She had six children, a husband, and a mother-in-law who died only a few years before Nanny did. There were always lots of people around, the married children dropping in for the weekend, along with nieces, nephews, cousins, and the inevitable grandchildren. While most of the family would head out to Sunday mass, Nanny would be in the kitchen from dawn, preparing a massive mid-day meal that everyone would eat before heading home--often to New York City or Long Island.

When I think of my maternal grandmother, I always smell flour and eggs. She was constantly making pasta--or "home made macanoni" as the first of my brothers called it--on that Formica-topped kitchen table which could not have been as big as I remember it. Noodles and cavatelli, all made by hand, were a daily occupation. I still sit in wonder at the idea that she cut her long noodles evenly with a knife after rolling them out with a rolling pin. I've got a pasta machine for that, thank you. I've never really been able to master the cavatelli, rolling the little balls of dough and doing the three-finger drag that create the elongated shape that curls into itself of sufficient thinness that it cooks evenly and doesn't taste of raw flour when it is done.

My other grandmother and namesake, Nanny Christine, was Czech and had a whole different culinary heritage. I've heard tales about how she could hand-stretch a strudel dough paper thin on a table. She died when I was seven or eight, so I don't remember her well. I do have her recipe for kolachki, a time-consuming, filled-pastry cookie which I sometimes make at Christmas.

I also own a piece of furniture which came from Nanny Christine's family: the bottom half of a Hoosier kitchen. It has an enamel top which is the best surface for working dough short of a marble counter-top, I suspect. For many years, my cousins used it for storing clothes or toys and then my mother managed to get it from one of her sisters-in-law. I honestly don't remember where she had it in the house, and I'm not entirely sure how I managed to wrangle it away from her around 30 years ago, but I am awfully glad I did. It is my favorite prep space because it is about 6" lower than the kitchen cabinets' surface and I can get much better leverage when kneading bread or rolling pie crust. I sometimes wish I had the upper cabinet for storage, but if it was a choice between them, I'm glad I've got the lower half.

Homemade Pasta

2 Cups Semolina
3 Large Eggs
Pinch of Salt

Mix the semolina and salt in a mound on a clean work surface. Make a well in the middle and break the eggs into it. Using a fork or your fingers, work the semolina into the eggs until there is a mass of dough. Knead the dough until smooth, sprinkling the surface with flour as necessary. (Depending on the size of the eggs or the humidity in the air, the dough might be very stiff until kneaded. It is also possible to make the dough in a food processor.) Let the dough rest, covered with a bowl or plastic wrap to keep it from drying out, for about 20 minutes before proceeding.

To make noodles, break off a piece of dough, knead it a little more, flatten it, and use a rolling pin or pasta machine to roll it out to desired thickness (it will take several, successively narrower, passes through the machine.) Let it rest while repeating with the rest of the dough. Then, use the cutting device on the machine to cut to desired width. Or, roll up the dough unto a cylinder and use a sharp knife to slice the pasta into the desired width. Allow the cut dough to air-dry until ready to cook. Cook in a large pot of boiling salted water until al dente, which can only be determined by tasting. Serve with your choice of sauce.