Summer Oh Seven

I never cry after sex

2010-09-21T06:25:00.000-07:00

"Just a little further,
let's see what's up ahead!"
Standing on a bit of compact earth
with only sea
and night
and wind
and arms around me,
I savor every bite before I tell you.

Before you suddenly stop chewing and
slowly,
politely even,
spit me out.

Cleverly, efficiently, subconsciously:

A girl from the past.
A girl from the present.
A girl from the future.

The One, perhaps.
Not me, clearly.
Italy.

Punch, punch, punch.
Ticket taker,
train conductor,
punching time and date and destinations
that are over
on my heart.

I'm not done yet!

2010-08-15T07:50:00.000-07:00

We never went to see that cuban salsa band
and I didn't get to wear my green striped heels
you never saw the piece I did on sadness
and I never got to feed you my best meals

We never went to see that one exhibit
and we never even tried to partner dance
we didn't get you eating beans or butter
and you never saw me in my yellow pants

We never got to go to Santa Barbara
and you never heard me play on my guitar
we haven't ever sung a hymn together
and we didn't even wish upon a star.

Fuck, I just need another week
another year or ten
a lifetime would maybe be enough
time to do these things and then

I promise I wouldn't bother you
after that I'd let you go.
Just one itty bitty lifetime please,
I'd give you mine, you know.

What wonders can be made with what I find?

2010-08-12T05:03:00.001-07:00

Sometimes,
through the decompressed voice stream pressed to my ear,
I hear your skin unzip,
just a little.

I want to reach through the cells
between us to cradle your head and undo
the stuck
bits
in the
zipper,

see you lying there, your primary colors hanging out all over the place.
wordlessly root through you, piece by little Lego piece.

2010-05-17T01:31:00.000-07:00

Everywhere teeth and smiles and serious eyes.
Laughing cup holder. Corn in a bag.
Sunday, perfect Sunday.

Butterscotch Pudding

2010-02-10T20:54:00.000-08:00

2 ounces unsalted butter
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups milk
1 T cream
1/8 t. salt
2 egg yolks
2 tablespoons corn starch
splash or more scotch

Melt the butter and brown sugar in a medium saucepan. Cool slightly.

Whisk together the cream, cornstarch, salt and yolks. Heat the milk, add the sugar mixture, then temper into the yolk mixture.

Return mixture to the pot and simmer, stirring constantly, until the pudding mixture begins to boil. Stir in the scotch. Divide among ramekins. Refrigerate 6 hours.

And another one...

2010-01-30T10:44:00.000-08:00

sub Coconut oil (melted) for the vegetable oil in your waffles. And then use it to coat the pan. It even "fries" the waffles crispier on the outside than veggie oil does.

YUM

2010-01-29T20:11:00.000-08:00

I recently acquired a gallon of coconut oil after trying it out at my sister Annalaura's house. She taught me a few uses and I've discovered a few more:

Mix it into peanut butter and eat it on apples or anything.
Mix a teaspoon into your cup of hot chocolate
Use it to cook your popcorn in
Fry shrimp with fresh peppermint in it

The popcorn, I must say, is spectacular. Especially with the pink Himalayan salt I got from my other sister, Gypsy.

Oh, and it's good as moisturizer for you, too.

2010-01-12T20:29:00.001-08:00

TWO people (who are not family) told me this week that they still check my blog. Aack! How boring since I never ever update it. So, I'm updating. But the only thing I've been doing is cooking. And unfortunately, I haven't been taking any lessons in food photography, so my pictures are, well, not as good looking as the real-life food. But, here you have it:

Candied lemon slices

addendum: I was just asked where I bought the candied lemon. They are just in an anchovie jar because I didn't use them all on the cake. They're boiled in simple syrup and then dipped in the same syrup once it has boiled down and reached firm ball stage.

Lemon curd butter cake for Patrick's birthday (no I did not serve it in this, but I forgot to take a picture after it was on the cakestand)

Duck legs for New Year's Eve (in Orin's pot from Ross)

Dinner at the Duddridges (sorry, Linz and Joey...shoulda been there)

Close up of the Duddridge dinner, short ribs and some sort of salad, I guess.

Orange, date, and pistachio salad

Ryah

2009-10-26T22:47:00.000-07:00

I got to visit Janina and Peter's baby today for the first time. This is 3-week old Ryah.

Ideas from the market, for Cherry. And anyone.

2009-10-25T22:30:00.001-07:00

Today Cherry and I were discussing easy dishes to make from the things we get at the market. She inspired me with pickled beets, and I told her about the $1/pound tomatoes I've been throwing whole into a pot of olive oil and cooking for 3 hours. They can be used for sauce (blend and add grated Parmesan and egg yolks), as a side dish, on crostini, mixed with greens.... This evening I got to thinking of a few more simple things I've made recently:

Beluga lentils -- cook them in water or stock. Cool to room temp. Add chopped chervil and mint and drizzle with olive oil.

Roasted things: cut up apples, celery root, butternut squash, and shallots. Toss them with olive oil and stick them in the oven at 400 until they're all nice and brown.

This is one mom and I tried after hearing a bit of Carol's lecture at the New School of Cooking: Greens with dates (sliced lengthwise into matchsticks, if possible), pistachios, oranges, and goat cheese. We dressed it with white wine vinegar and olive oil.

Guess I'll add more as I think of them. Happy marketing.

Simple Dreams

2009-08-25T22:07:00.000-07:00

You grade papers by lamplight.
I shell a colander of black-eyed peas.
Zig zag zig zag we sip our jars of wine.

Fig and Raspberry Almond Tarte

2009-08-23T14:01:00.000-07:00

Crust:

1 cup butter, cold, cut into 1/2 inch pieces.
1 cup almonds, finely ground
1 cup ap flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
ice water as needed

Mix together ground almonds and flour. Add salt and sugar. Mix. Cut butter into flour mixture until it looks like course sand. Add just enough ice water so that the dough holds together. Gather dough into two equal balls and flatten into disks. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate while you make the filling.

Filling:
12 oz fresh or frozen raspberries
1 cup sugar
12 figs

Heat berries and sugar in a sauce pan until mixture resembles a watery jam. Depending on the berries, you may have to add a little water. Let cool to room temperature.

Cut figs in quarters lengthwise, set aside.

Roll out one disk of pie dough into 1/8 inch thick circle. Place in 8 or 9 inch tart pan. Place figs evenly around the bottom of the tart pan on top of the dough. Pour raspberry "sauce" over the figs to fill the pastry shell. Roll the second disk of pie dough into a 1/8 inch thick circle. Cut into 1 inch strips.

Lay strips along top of filling, attaching at the edges to the bottom crust and leaving a 1 inch gap between each strip. Turn the pie and place the rest of the strips are at a diagonal, forming a diamond shape of raspberry filling showing through. Don't worry about doing any sort of "basket weave" under-over thing. This dough is so buttery, it all just melts into itself anyway.

Bake at 400 for 30-45 minutes or until the crust is brown. If the outside part of the crust starts cooking too fast, turn the oven down to 350.

Serve with 1 cup whipped mascarpone cheese mixed with 1 teaspoon lemon zest and 1 teaspoon vanilla.

Happy Birthday to Me

2009-07-30T06:03:00.001-07:00

I just bought myself 2 pounds of foie gras that will be seared in celebration of 30.

Electronic Company

2009-06-28T04:09:00.000-07:00

4 am, lonely prone
Read. Type. Click.
I don't want to sleep alone.

"New message" shown.
Spam. Hype. Ick.
4 am, lonely prone.

Up, down phone.
Texting, texting, buttons stick--
I don't want to sleep alone.

Neighbor, Neighbor. are you home?
Toss. Turn. Kick.
4 am and lonely prone.

Lonley, lonely dial tone
Facebook status shtick.
I don't want to sleep alone.

Complain. Refrain. Moan.
Clock. Tock. Tick.
4 am--lonely prone--
I don't want to sleep alone.

Highlights of Last Night's Fondue Dinner

2009-06-27T19:00:00.000-07:00

Orin in a green frilly apron.

Tom Jones on vinyl.

My nail that the cheese grater got.

Hot plum brandy.

2 bottles of Pellegrino all for me.

The cheese crust at the bottom of the pot.

Christa's running commentary on Michael Fisher's age.

Song and the stories she told.

Peaches soaked in Brandy for two days.

Tuna Salad Sandwich Perfected

2009-06-22T19:21:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately, my photography is not as perfect as my sandwich, but you get the idea.

2 oz quality tuna (imported in olive oil)
1 t. mayo (just for looks)
1 t salt-packed capers, rinsed
1 scoop pickled onions -- see recipe below
1 t. chopped parsley

mix it all together and eat it on not-too-sour sourdough.

Pickled onions: (from the Zuni Cafe cookbook, mostly)
12oz small young red onions, sliced thin
1 cup water
1 cup vinegar
any spices you want (I used pink peppercorns, black peppercorns, 2 cloves, and 3 bay leaves)

Bring the water and spices to a boil. Throw in sliced onions. Cook for one minute. Transfer to jar and let cool. Refrigerate. They're good as soon as they cool...and just get better
the longer you keep them.

Do you know the melon man?

2009-06-20T16:54:00.000-07:00

Me either. He looks a bit like a melon himself, rotund with an orang-y hue to both his skin and facial hair. But he gave me a free melon (most likely because I was wearing a short pink skirt, but still...) He asked me not just which day I wanted to eat it, but what time. I thought he was joking, but I just cut it open and it was everything I could do to hold back from gobbling up the entire thing immediately instead of saving it to go with the anchovie pasta Lara and I are making for friends tonight. Unfortunately, I forgot to ask the name of the melon. Or the melon man.

Cream or Sugar with your Tetanus Shot?

2009-06-16T20:44:00.000-07:00

Generally, when I've been to a doctor's office, I've felt a bit herded. Sit here. Stand here. Do this. Tell me that. Though, logically I understand that I have the right to say yes, I want this and no, I don't want that, it doesn't ever occur to me to exercise that right. I do whatever they say, leave with a smile, and realize after I get home that I forgot to talk about ANY of the 4 or 5 issues I had been storing up in my head all year as "things to ask the doctor when I go."

Not this time. Oh, no. I went into Kaiser, knowing exactly my problem and exactly the medication I needed. The office visit, I thought, was a mere formality...a way for them to charge my insurance. But I was wrong.

"Hi honey," said the jolly and slightly overweight nurse after she called me in from the waiting room. "I'm Gloria. Would you like to be weighed today?"

"Well, um, okay."

"And what about your height? Should I write down 5'1" or 5'1 and 3/4"?

"Uh, 5"1' should be okay, I guess."

"Just a few questions for you now. Slip on over here so you don't announce everything to the world." She patted the seat next to her. "Now," she lowered her voice to a whisper, "do you smoke?"

More questions followed. Some loud and clear. Others whispered. "Busbar?!" she nearly screamed, "what's that for?" So, yeah, though luckily I was spared from the entire nursing staff thinking that I smoke, they do all know that I'm depressed.

"Okey, dokey. Would you like a tetanus shot today?"

"Well, um, actually I just came in with a UTI."

"OOOOOohh," she was almost yelling now. "Those are just miserable. You poor little thing. Do you have to pee right now? I'll put you in the room right next to the bathroom so you can just run back and forth. Anyway, we can give you a tetanus shot if you like. It's good to get one every 10 years or so."

"Does it say I need a new one on there or something? I don't remember when I got one last."

"Oh, well, if you think it was more than 10 years ago you might want to read up on it. You know, better than getting lockjaw. Let me see if I can figure out how to print this information for you. Darlene? Which one of these tetanus shot websites do you usually print out? Charlie, come fix this computer, it's not working. "

"So, but why are you suggesting a tetanus shot? Does my chart indicate that I need one?"

"Oh, no dear, you certainly don't have to get one. Okay, come right this way." She led me, true to her word, into the room directly across from the bathroom. "Did you want to be examined today?"

"I'm pretty sure I know what I have, but if the doctor needs to make sure, I mean, I don't mind..."

"Okay, well. If you like you can take off your pants or your top whichever you like and just wrap this one or this one (She held up a flowered "robe" and next to it a sheet) around you. See, if you like this one, just fold it in half and wrap it around you like this." Gloria demonstrated holding the sheet tight around her baggy scrubs. "That way everything's not just hanging out. Would you like to do a urine culture?"

"Oh, that's what I wanted to ask you. I started taking antibiotics already and I didn't know if that would mess up the urine test or not..."

"Okay, well, it's up to you. You can or not or you can just talk to the doctor. I'll just leave a cup right here in case you decide you want to. Is there anything I can get for you? Any other procedures you'd like today? A pap perhaps? Or a blood test? No? Okay, well, I'll just leave you to it then. The doctor will be in when she's ready."

2009-05-19T19:52:00.000-07:00

I made it down a run that said, "experts only". Yes, I did. On a snowboard. And there WOULD be pictures to prove it. 'Cept Linsey had to drop the camra, get down on her knees and spread her arms out wide to catch me as I came sliding, head-down-hill, down the steepest part at the top. I thought I'd take us both down, but she held her ground. Three cheers for LD. Anyway, I did manage to make it down the rest of the way inspite of the snow packed into my pants and jacket. I didn't realize until several runs later that I had a wheelbarrow full of the stuff still sitting in my hood.

More pictures on Linsey's blog:

Asparagus Risotto

2009-05-11T20:21:00.000-07:00

I haven't seen much good-looking asparagus at the markets this spring...until today. If you happen to find some good asparagus, I highly recommend this dish:

For the asparagus: cut off the tops and set aside. Cut again about 3 inches from the bottom of the stems. Set the middle pieces aside and mince the ends (all except for the very very woody last big on the end.)

1 T olive oil
1 T butter
1 small onion, finely diced
one bunch asparagus
1 cup arborio or carnaroli rice
1/2 cup white wine
4 cups chicken stock
1/2 lemon (and zest)
1 cup grated parmiggiano reggiano
black pepper cracked in a mortar and pestle or chopped with a knife
salt

Heat the chicken stock in a sauce pan. Heat another pot or pan (I use a skillet) over the fire, add olive oil and immediately add butter, onions, and minced asparagus bottoms. Cook until onions are clear and soft. Add rice and "toast" for about 1 minute. Add wine and pepper and zest. When wine is mostly absorbed, add chicken stock 1/2 cup at a time, waiting until the previous 1/2 cup is absorbed to add the next. Taste as you go adding a little salt.

Meanwhile...

Blanch and shock the asparagus tips and middles. Save the middles (the best part) to put on your baby greens tomorrow. Use the tips as garnish.

When the rice is soft (but still chewy) stop adding stock. Add parmeggiano reggiano (do not substitute another kind of parmesan....it will get stringy instead of melting into a cream). Serve in a pasta bowl garnished with asparagus tips. Squeeze a bit of lemon juice over the top and drizzle with olive oil.

St. Patty's Day Cupcakes

2009-03-14T12:26:00.000-07:00

Usually I steal Martha Stewart's decorating ideas and go around bad-mouthing her recipes...but this one turned out great. So, I eat my words. These mini cupcakes are a combination of three recipes. Just use the carrot cake cupcake batter (not the frosting or decorating) here. Then make this recipe from The Cake Bible for the frosting:

9oz white chocolate melted (carefully) and cooled to room temp.
4oz unsalted butter, room temp.
12oz philadelphia cream cheese, room temp.

Beat everything together. Pipe it on with a pastry bag/tip.

From yet another Martha recipe, steal the decorating idea: pick some clovers, wash them, and stick them on the top.

You can make 12 big cupcakes (put two clovers on top), or 42 minis out of the same recipes.

Enjoy!

Ode to Lebkuchen

2009-02-15T08:19:00.000-08:00

For Valentine's Day I got a blonde
as sweet as sweet can be
all round and plump and perfected by age
-- and I ate her with my tea.

Mmmmm...

2009-01-20T22:10:00.000-08:00

15 brussel sprouts shredded (like cabbage)
10 anchovy fillets
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 lemon
several cloves of garlic

Melt anchovies in hot oil until they fall completely apart and look like sand (about 2 minutes), add garlic and cook, barely, add brussel sprouts and cook on very high heat for just a minute, squeeze lemon over the whole thing. Eat.

The Accountant and the Librarian

2009-01-19T11:10:00.001-08:00

The accountant and the librarian lunched one day
on a sunny side street off Hollywood way
She cleaned her glasses he rattled his voice
they fell in lust. One chance, no choice

They sat together that evening come.
He rattled, she laughed, she prattled, he hummed
she led them inside, a hurt in her belly
he kisses it and turned that hurt into jelly
all better all happy she went out the door
a sweet beasty bird warning, "eyes on the floor."

A cliff, but she missed it and stepped into the air
no amount of accounting could hold her up there
when the next day calls came in and then not
the librarian crumpled a bit, then stood, taut

with her pencil to calculate and glasses on nose
about the accountant and her, she wrote prose
and armed with milk and black tea in a cup,
discovered: read carefully, things didn't add up.

Macallan 18 yr

2009-01-13T13:50:00.000-08:00

So, Orin and I went back for another scotch tasting. It just didn't seem right to have left without figuring out what my favorite scotch was: Macallan 18 yr, which turned out to be $30 a glass, regular price. So, we'll only be drinking on Sundays.

This is an actual glass, not a tasting portion. I swear. Look how my library-bling key lights up with the scotch hits my lips:

We were quite happy (and very wrinkly, please don't enlarge photo) at this point. 10 tasters between the two of us and one full glass.

Overall it was another thumbs up with the best part of the meal being one of the sausages from the house-made charcuterie and the molasses cookies with brown sugar ice cream. Insane. So good we forgot to get out the camera until it was all gone.

Chicken Liver Mousse/Paté

2009-01-13T13:38:00.000-08:00

I wouldn't exactly say mousse or paté is quite the right word, but this is the hot emulsification chicken liver spread that we've all had on a slice of bread. So, so so very very good! This made enough for about a week, unless I have Orin over in which case it will last about 15 minutes. I didn't follow a recipe or measure anything, so I'm pretty sure it's good no matter what, but here's a guestimate of what I did.

10 anchovies
1 onion
1 lb chicken livers
1/2 cup butter (!)
1/2 cup cognac
salt and pepper

Melt the butter and add the anchovies. When anchovies start to fall apart (you can help them with a fork) add the onions. Cook until translucent then add livers. Cook for about 8 minutes then add the cognac and let cook until a bit reduced. Put everything into the blender while it's hot and add salt and pepper to taste (remember you already have a lot of salt from the anchovies).

It's good warm, at room temp, and right out of the fridge.

First date: Red

2008-12-30T12:21:00.000-08:00

The worms crawl in and in and out
they crawl in cricles round about
eating holes in my delicate skin
acid resistant fortellers of sin.

Ladybugs inside my head
sing silly songs about the dead
they sing of heaven and afterlife
they sing of love of husband, wife

A moth flies round and round my heart
blush brushes brushing the blood dark dart
worry tickles the antannaed head
and turns his wing a crimson red

Red fire, red anger, red embarrassed, red hot.
Red love, red blood, red danger, red stop.

For Molly

2008-12-29T20:57:00.000-08:00

The moon grows heavy
on its string. I
consider the palm tree
on the label of my beer.
In Britannic Bold it sings
of Old Palms Ale like
pirates on a nightship
heading out to sea.
And I dream it is me with
the wind on my cheeks
and treasure just ahead.

Single Malt Sunday

2008-12-29T10:31:00.000-08:00

Last night, Cherry and I hit up the Viceroy in Santa Monica. A schmancy hotel near the beach. We were lured in by "Single Malt Sundays" which advertised single malt tastings, each vintage for $1. This sounded a little too good to be true, and indeed it was. We figured the catch was you had to order appetizers for a bazillion dollars each and then you got free scotch. But no. $1 per vintage meant if the scotch was aged 12 years, it cost $12. 30 years, $30. And so on and so forth. BUT, luckily there was a "flight" of five scotches together with an appetizer for $20. What they completely failed to mention was that the food was going to be so incredibly good that we would have to order twice. And the scotch just got better and better as the night went on. So good, in fact, that I haven't a clue what kind we had. Only that it started out good and by the time we made it to the last glass, the caramelly molasses-ness of it with our itsy bitsy diced apples soaked in a thin house-made caramel and used to garnish our apple frangipane tart with caramel ice cream was in every way a spiritual experience.

Our first appetizer was trout croquettes with an aioli and garnished with pickled radishes. The croquettes were insane. They had to have been fried in lard. They must have had some pork bits. They were divine with scotch. The pickled radishes were even better.

Next we had kielbasa with barely pickled cabbage and the most heavenly potatoes I've ever put in my mouth. Again, something to do with pigs and fat, I'm sure.

We then had our apple dessert which we chose from a list of dishes that were made out of that same kind of apple (it was the ingredient of the week)...hot apple cider with hazelnut ice cream, apple butter ice cream, and a few other things I can't remember.

By this time we were completely trusting the chef and would have ordered any odd sounding item on the menu (usually, I can't stand chefs doing stuff like chocolate bon bons with bacon. Eew.) So we ordered one more item: crostini with chicken liver mousse, mushrooms and ricotta. Unfortunately the ricotta was sour, but fortunately it wasn't mixed with the other ingredients. And very fortunately we got the entire dish for free. I appreciated that it said straight up chicken liver rather than trying to pretend it was something fancier. I knew that chicken-liver mousse could be quite good, but I did not know before last night that it could be good enough that I would actually consider picking up the plate to lick off the last bits. Or, I suppose that could have been the scotch.

We left after four hours having spent $30 each. My only regret of the evening was that my sister Gypsy was not there to share the experience with Cherry and me. Nothing's ever perfect. But that came pretty darn close.

Stuffed Dates

2008-12-28T11:59:00.001-08:00

Dates (the softer, sweeter kind are best)
Mascarpone cheese
Pecan halves, toasted
kosher salt

Pit dates. Fill each with a spoonful of cheese. Top with a pecan half. Sprinkle liberally with Kosher salt.

This can also be made with cream cheese instead of mascarpone. If using cream cheese, use the more firm textured dates and leave out the salt.

Blue Cheese with Hazelnuts and Honey

2008-12-28T11:53:00.000-08:00

1 wedge blue cheese (I like the really creamy soft kinds)
1 cup hazelnuts, chopped
2 sprigs rosemary
1/4 cup honey

Toast hazelnuts in a frying pan on the stove top with olive oil and rosemary until golden brown and smelling good (about 20 minutes, over low heat). Remove rosemary sprigs and add salt to taste (not too salty if the cheese is super salty).

Plate the cheese. Drizzle honey over the top and around the plate. Dump hot nuts and oil on top. Eat on crackers. I like it especially with those goat crackers...the sweet softish kind.

Stuffed Endives

2008-12-28T11:47:00.000-08:00

1 garlic clove, minced
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 lb parmesan cheese, diced (tiny)
1/2 cup celery chopped fine
1 cup toasted walnuts, chopped fine
1/4 cup flat leave parsley, chopped fine

5 endives, leaves removed.

Mix everything together. Put a spoonful of filling in each endive. Eat.

FYI, the amount I made for Christmas was this recipe doubled. Also, if you want to make it ahead of time, set aside the chopped walnuts and add them just before filling the leaves...they taste better crunchy.

2008-12-26T09:20:00.000-08:00

I didn't really think before I jumped
on the train last night and went out
from the house with my skin
unzipped and my insecurities
hanging out all over the place.

I didn't think about the fact
that the people I chatted with
were strangers.

And now they've seen me. Practically
naked. Waiting for the train in the freezing
cold.

I'm still here. Thanks for checking.

2008-12-21T18:29:00.000-08:00

I've been challenged to write a story. The rules are:

1. 1-1000 words
2. must include a dog
3. due December 24

Sylvie swallowed the last too-sweet drop of her tea and set the mug down on the dining table. She stared out the window that was surrounded by bright yellow, cottage cheese-textured walls. Across the driveway, she could see Edith and Joe Kettleman scooping snow off their walk. It would have been nice, to have married. To have someone to shovel snow with when she retired. Not some old guy she could meet now, but someone she knew since college. Someone who she'd fought with and had children with. Like the Kettlemans. Maybe like Nick. What was he up to now? Married with a family no doubt. Happy...he always was. She smiled and wondered if he ever thought of her.

Sylvie took her cup to the kitchen. If she'd married, there might be dishes in the sink. Someone else's dishes. Maybe the spices wouldn't be perfectly arranged in alphabetical order in the cupboards above the counter. Maybe the pickles would be on the top shelf where she had to climb her footstool to get them. Maybe she would wish she could just stay home and eat a scrambled egg for dinner and drink tea and read her book and have no obligations to anyone. She turned off the tap and carefully dried the mug and put it back into the cupboard. First shelf, right-hand side.

"Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, I made it out of clay, dreidel dreidel dreidel, I made it out of..." someone was singing outside, loud. But there were lots of transients in these parts and she was used to hearing oddities.

Sylvie hummed along as she pulled the trash out from under the sink and tied the top of the white plastic bag in a slip knot. She had a book home from the library about knot-tying and it amused her to practice while effeciently performing another task.

She slipped on her trenchcoat, buttoning it up all the way to the neck, then stepped into her rubber boots. Outside, the sun was sinking and turning the snow on the ground a delicious pink. Peppermint, she thought, and wondered how pink was first associated with the herb. She unlocked the trash gate and threw the heavy bag in. "Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel sang the man on the bench. Without thinking, Sylvie began to harmonize with the silly tune. The man turned to look at her. He had a long dirty beard and was wearing what appeared to be a very tattered Santa suit. He stopped singing mid-word, as did she. Behind the grey facial forest, his eyes looked kind. No. Familiar. She gave a tight smile and nod to the man and the Italian greyhound at his feet and headed back to the front door.

"Drei..." the man started again and Sylvie was, for a moment, 19. She was in Nick's mother's living room They were moving furniture here and there to make the Christmas tree fit. Someone had sent a greeting card and every time it was opened, it sang "dreidel, dreidel, dreidel...." That might have been the first time she'd heard the song. Nick was dancing around the room to the tune like a River Dancer on speed. Sylvie was surprised to feel a faint jab of pain still with her, as she remembered watching and thinking, I'll never be that fun. I'll never let go. I'll always be stuck inside this cell, surrounded by walls of self-consciousness.

Suddenly Santa stood up, he started to jump and fling his feet around around as he sang the dreidel song. His dog began to bark. And then she knew. Now or never. With hot tears flowing down her frozen cheeks, she straighted her arms at her side, and awkwardly began to jump and flail along with the man in the santa suit. She sang loud and off key. 3, 4 rounds of the song and she was winded. The man stopped. He looked at her with those kind, no, familiar, eyes and Sylvie, in her perfectly ironed trenchcoat, leaned her clean forehead up against the dirty chest of the tattered, matted red Santa suit.

She's baaaaack.

2008-10-26T19:11:00.000-07:00

I mean Linsey. She got home from Florida a few weeks ago and came to visit me last weekend. A whole three days of zero loneliness. It was awesome.

Day one, we did a little shopping (I got this sweater at Second Chance -- a sort of permanent sample sale store),

then out to sushi, and topped it off with some dancing at the Standard (a club on the roof of a skyscraper downtown). Lots of crazy pictures, but they're all on Linsey's camera.

Next day we hit up Ikea and I got some bookshelves (still working on filling them up.)

Then we had the BEST pasta (actually, Linsey's friend who met us for lunch ordered the best pasta, but Linsey and I eyed it like little puppies until we were finally allowed to finish it off). We were at Michel Richard's.

Anyway, it was basically a carbonara, but instead of having little chunks of onion, the onions had been strained out of the sauce. I tried it at home. HUGE improvement over my usual carbonara.

On our last day we went with my friend Sarit and her baby and her cousin to the Noah's Ark Exibit at the Skirball. It was AMAZING and I wanted so so so badly to have my nephews Nels and Willem there to enjoy it.

The ark and animals were all made out of "repurposed objects" and could be manipulated and climbed on. Here is linsey

moving this giant giraffe:

They truly thought of every detail kids love. Net walkways all around the ark that kids could climb up, ropes and pulleys for sending up food, a mini table, and fake poop for them to clean up.

Library Lady

2008-10-17T08:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I visited 10 classes at Gardner Street Elementary to promote the library. At the end of each class presentation, I always ask the kids if they remember my name and the name of the library I'm from.

Usually, they respond with some mumbled version of, "Ms. Hillary?" or "Ms. Libarian." Either that, or they don't remember at all.

But yesterday I got a couple of surprises.

One girl responded with complete confidence, "Ms. Harry!"

And later, Jordan (6), who knows me from the library already, answered, "Ms. Hillary. With two l's."

Barbaric Gourmet or Confessions of Eating Alone or Don't Come to My House for Dinner

2008-10-13T20:31:00.000-07:00

Tonight I chewed the fat off of my lamb ribs
(pan-seared with a spice-and-chili rub) and drank
from the liter Pelegrino bottle, grasping it's
neck like a forty.

My farmers market baby greens and
grape tomatoes having been
wolfed down, I tipped
the bowl to my face and
drank the dressing.

I swiped my tongue up
a gallon tin when olive oil
started streaming
down the side.

And then I ate my stove-top roasted
eggplant with my fingers.

From the pan.

Failed attempt

2008-10-12T20:40:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty much not a consumer of alcohol these days (unless I'm visiting Gypsy) but I had to go to Whole Foods because no one else carries Diamond kosher salt, and once I was there, I got adventurous and picked out a beer to try. I went to the section that sold single bottles and picked the one with the best lable: Biere du Bouranier. There's a pirate on the front with missing teeth. Très cool. Plus it says "superior class" on the top. Never mind that I had to dust the bottle off to see that label.

I cooked up some lamb and rice and made some salad, and pulled out my beer. One swig and my head started floating away. The pirate must have distracted me from the "11% alc. vol." written next to him. Woooeee. Beer is ok, but mostly tastes like alcohol. If you want my advice, stay away from pirate beer.

Putting my pretty dishes to good use

2008-10-09T23:30:00.001-07:00

Pommes de terre au gratin (Potatoes cooked in a lot of fat.)

I typed what's in my head

2008-10-08T21:21:00.000-07:00

Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. I didn't copy-paste.

2008-10-05T19:32:00.000-07:00

Off-meter, off rhyme: a poem about me

2008-10-04T23:20:00.000-07:00

Don't ask me why
I walk upside down
I walk with my breast
pressed to the ground

Almost every
part of me floats
my head, my arms,
my legs, my throat

My rear-end is full of air
between my ears I've not a care
I'm electric -
look at my hair!

My hands cook
my eyes look
my arms hold up
any good book

I'm smiley and wiley
and crafty and cruel
I'm really a silly and
lovable girl

Except for the weight
that remains in my chest
pulling me down
to walk on my breast.

Its heavy so heavy
but I don't dare
let it go lest I lose myself
up in the air

while the rest of me floats
right out into space
sadness--my friend--
anchors me right into place.

Random thoughts of a librarian

2008-10-02T22:34:00.000-07:00

X950 G435 in pencil
I get to write numbers on the title page.
I always thought
Whoever wrote those mysterious markings
In the front of books must be very
Sophisticated.

I’m sorry sir, but yes, you’ll have to
Replace the six books you accidentally
Gave to the Good Will. I understand we
Are charging you over $300 dollars, but
Giving your books away is not a valid
Reason not to pay, according to our policy.

No, no this cutest 7 year old red-headed girl who
Is whip-smart and sits behind the
Desk with me pretending to be a librarian
Is not my daughter. But it makes me happy
When people ask.
It makes me sad too.

I can’t think of a single thing to put up
On my gigantic walls. Something to beat
A 25 foot dragon, a life-size tree growing
Out of the corner with Silverstein to match.
A poem by Miss Nova (of the red hair previously mentioned)
With kites and a summer sky over green grass.
What two-dimensional wonder can I use next?

No one drew on my best-ever art challenge-of-the-
Day: Draw something you would NEVER eat. I
Drew a plate of eyeballs. Maybe I won.

Schools to visit, stories to memorize, craft supplies
To buy, craft materials to prep.
Books to be moved, books to be cleaned,
Books to be read and displayed, songs to
Be learned and all the motions. And publicity
So someone comes. Make sure to call
The dancers, and the art teacher and the teen
Volunteer, “you ARE on your way, right?”. And stats.
Don’t forget to keep track and write up all your stats.
And could you get people to fill out an evaluation too?

Also there’s the bank. And, shoot, that guy
Is sleeping again. And drooling now.
Cough cough I hope I don’t get tb.

I have a chair behind my desk but
It is not for sitting. Rather it is another
Surface on which to pile books, ghosts made
Out of spoons, construction paper spiders.

I suppose tomorrow I should wear heels.

Walnut Bread

2008-09-30T22:15:00.001-07:00

2 cups walnut pieces, toasted
2 1/2 t yeast
1/4 cup honey
3 3/4 C flour
1 1/3 cups water
2 T olive oil
1 1/2 t salt

Mix all ingredients together. Knead it for 10 minutes. Let it rise to double (1 hour or so) in a clean bowl covered with plastic wrap. Shape it into a ball and bake on parchment on a cookie sheet at 400 for 40 minutes. If the crust gets dark too fast, turn the oven down.

2008-09-17T21:10:00.001-07:00

Today the man without a nose came into the library. A regular. His face below his eyes is flat, a little concave even, and his mouth is somewhere between where a nose and mouth usually go. It opens in a small "o" big enough, perhaps, for two pinky fingers. He wanted help getting on the internet. I showed him how. He wanted to look up flickr where someone had posted a photo of him and a poem.

I couldn't read much of the poem from over his shoulder, but I got the impression it was "tres cool, tres hip, tres pc" and didn't much care for the person whose face was on the internet open for all the world to comment on. I hoped he wouldn't notice you could click on the "comments" link and read them. He did. He stayed for two fifteen minute sessions before getting frustrated with the mouse.

Anyway, I might have written that poem and even felt righteous about it. And maybe by posting this blog I am like the poet. I don't know. But it made me think.

In 2008 I took a little trip...

2008-09-07T07:57:00.000-07:00

Summer, for librarians, is somewhat akin to Fall for winemakers. Our harvest comes in and it's ripe for the picking, but we only have 2 short months to gather it all up. After 10 weeks of of programming and half a year of preparation, it was time to take down the 25 foot library dragon, each of it's scales naming a child in the summer reading club and his or her age (Melanie, 6 1/2 Ryan, 8 3/4) and time to pack up for a visit to the fam.

My mom picked me up from the airport with chicken salad, crackers and cut up cantaloupe all prepared and stored in disposable tupperware containers. Luckily, she didn't tell me until several days later that the chicken was precooked chunks that came in a can from Costco. We headed straight up to Camas, Washington to visit Gypsy, Shaun, Willem, and Nels. The boys were much more appreciative of my newly learned pirate songs than were my storytimers at the library. Willem immediately donned the pirate patch, hat, and face before I was even allowed to begin the first shanty. I stole all of the songs from a librarian blogger.

The next morning we visited Fort Vancouver. The day was rainy and sunny and cold and warm all mixed up and so was my mood, so it's a bit of a blur in my memory. We saw (well, heard, really) a cannon being shot, pet some furs -- mink, bear, beaver, peered down a well...

and checked out some really cool ovens. Unfortunately, they seem to have been used for preparing sea biscuits. Something I'm glad I was not around to eat.

Mom wanted to know why the wood poles that made up the fence surrounding the fort on one side were sharpened like pencils and why on the other side they were cut at an angle. No one knew. Turns out they didn't even know what the real fence would have looked like. Everything was a reproduction, but apparently there were a few details missing.

My mom and I returned to Bend, OR the next day. We went for a hike and then to lunch at Black Butte Ranch, where we ate a delicious sea food chowder. Chunks of good sea food doused in a buerre blanc, I think. (i.e. butter, cream, wine, seafood. Yum.) Mom then proceeded to water the plants in the restaurant (this is her job) and I sat out on the lawn and read. The view wasn't bad.

I visited the Bend Farmer's Market and found some peaches to reproduce a peach cobbler I had made on a previous visit.

The reproduction was so successful we ate one cobbler for breakfast and the other for lunch.

Along with some hand-made tortellini filled with mushrooms, shallots, wine, and cream. Yes, they are made from aproximately 1" x 1" squares of hand-rolled pasta. Yes, I will never make them again.

It was back to the library the next day. I called an officer in when neither I nor another, much louder librarian could wake a sleeping patron up. He seemed to be breathing okay, so we held off on the ambulance. When the officer arrived, the sleeping man's girlfriend told the officer not to bother him since he was just sleeping off a 1/2 gallon bottle of Vodka. A 7-foot tall man who walks around very very slowly and somewhat creepily, walked back and forth and back and forth to stare into a woman's purse. The next day the green man ( a man so covered in tattoos he is green) pushed and spit on one of our staff members. His friend then spit on him and they both left.

Home, sweet home.

Pink Pasta

2008-08-17T10:40:00.000-07:00

I made this out of desperation...not a lick of food left in the house the day before the market. It may not be the most nutritious dish, but I ate about half a box of pasta it was so addictive:

1 onion, finely diced
1 red pepper (or a pinch of red pepper flakes, or just black pepper...something to add spice)
1/4 cup white wine vinegar (any vinegar or old wine will do)
1 T tomato paste
1/2 cup cream
1/4 cup grated Parmesan (optional...only use if you have Reggiano on hand, the other kinds get clumpy when you melt them instead of turning into a cream that will coat the pasta.)

1/2 lb penne or other pasta

Cook the onion in a bit of butter or olive oil until clear, add the pepper and vinegar, reduce until almost dry. Add tomato paste and cook for just a minute. Add cream, let it come to a boil so that it reduces a bit and gets just a little thick (maybe 1-2 minutes). Add dripping wet pasta (and Parmesan if using)...and toss to coat. The dish would look prettier with some chopped parsley thrown in, but I didn't have any, so I didn't try it.

2008-08-15T21:28:00.000-07:00

Loïc introduced me to some new music...probably stuff everyone else knows about, but I'm completely out of the loop (just try explaining this expression). My favorite was this group. I hope you like it too.

Many happy returns of the day indeed...

2008-08-12T22:47:00.000-07:00

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of the birthday calls. Loïc is visiting from Paris and he and I spent the day tromping around LA. He showed me some of the famous sites in Hollywood I am supposed to know about as a resident, and I took him to the Getty museum where nearly everyone but me turned out to be French. We did a lot of driving and so I watched my cell phone buzz with new calls while I couldn't answer it, but all the messages made me very happy anyway. I promise to call you all back soon.

Dinner

2008-08-02T19:45:00.000-07:00

Polenta with fresh corn and gruyere

1 cup water
1/2 cup polenta
1 ear fresh corn (removed from cob)
1/4 cup grated gruyere cheese
1 sprig rosemary
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1 Tablespoon butter

Boil the water in a saucepan with the rosemary sprig , then add the polenta. Cook until thick. Remove the rosemary. Mix in butter, cheese, fresh corn, and walnuts. Season to taste.

Variation on a theme (not duck fat)

2008-07-28T23:01:00.000-07:00

I bought plums. Perfectly ripe delicious red red plums. And left them in my hot hot car all day. When I got home I had a bag of juice and split open fruits. I decided to boil them in a simple syrup (just threw the whole plums in some water with some sugar. When it had boiled for a while, I steeped some mint leaves in the liquid for a few minutes. Then I strained it into a pie plate and froze it (doesn't freeze all the way because of the sugar). A few hours later I scraped it up with a fork and made this parfait like thing with cream between layers of granita (a copy of the coffee granita recipe I posted from the Zuni cafe cookbook earlier.) I'm very happy with the intensity of the plum flavor (and color) considering I strained all the plum out of the liquid. I bet this would work with just about anything. Broccoli granita, anyone?

(KIDDING...sheesh.)

Comfort Food

2008-07-26T17:44:00.000-07:00

French Class

2008-07-24T21:58:00.001-07:00

When you make your French teacher laugh so hard he snorts, I'm pretty sure it doesn't mean your doing terribly well. Sigh.

Arg

2008-07-18T22:15:00.000-07:00

But I still can't make it like this.

Brave

2008-07-18T22:11:00.001-07:00

Alright, this is not only my first attempt at putting up an audio file, but also my first encounter with garage band. Don't laugh.

Snow upon root.aif

Grilled Cheese

2008-07-18T20:25:00.000-07:00

I rarely have pre-sliced bread on hand. When I try to slice my baguette or rustic loaf thin enough to get a sandwich I can fit my mouth around without scratching up the gums and roof, the bread falls apart. This, I believe, was why the panini press was invented. And furthermore, the reason it was invented in a country that generally doesn't eat pre-sliced bread. Anyway, you can cut the slices as thick as you like, and still end up with the most deliciously mouth-sized, crunchy, buttery-all-the-way-through sandwich.

All it takes is some butter, bread, cheese (I like gruyere) and a panini press (or something):

2008-07-16T21:34:00.000-07:00

I've always heard horror stories about men and toilet seats, but I thought they were mostly myth. Until now.

"Roei, come here for a minute."
"Okay, just a second. What?"
"See that?" I point to a large dry yellow splotch on the little porcelain piece between the toilet seat and the tank.
"What?"
"And that?" I lift the lid. Yellow stripes that end in puckered yellow dots adorn the bottom of the toilet lid.
"I know I know, this is because the mens have to...how do you say" (he shakes his hand up and down to demonstrate) "after they piss. What, you want me to do this in the bathtub?"
Well, no actually, I don't prefer pee stains in the bathtub to pee stains on the toilet.

I'm not sure what other men do to shake dry without decorating the bathroom, but he better figure it out. Quick.

Bastille Day

2008-07-15T09:07:00.000-07:00

Well, not much to write about here, but I did make it to a little Bastille Day celebration in West Hollywood Park. I forgot to take pictures of the people (good company with Cherry and John and Roei's sister's family--Sarah, Tomer and baby Nathaniel, who has hair like Elvis.) Darn, I wish I could show you. Anyway, I remembered to take pictures of the food. A quiche to be in the French spirit, a fresh black-eyed pea and tomato salad, and apricot cobbler (originally going to be apricot tart, but I thought with the quiche crust it might be a bit much...it was still a bit much.) Cherry and John got wild and performed a little covert operation sneaking out a cup each of wine and pastisse through the yellow "Do not enter" tape. The weather was perfect, and once the super-soaker war going on around us ended, it was quite peaceful too. It was the perfect way to spend a Sunday...short of being in Paris.

Only in Korea town...

2008-07-08T22:22:00.000-07:00

do you get carded when you buy maple syrup.

Yakitoriya

2008-07-04T10:18:00.001-07:00

Last night Cherry introduced me to a yakitori restaurant on Sawtelle called Yakioriya. We decided to be adventurous and order things we'd never tried before. The minimum requirement was 5 skewers each, so it was really more a matter of deciding which four we weren't going to order. We couldn't resist asking about the special on the wall listed as "soft bone." We were no better off after the waitress explained the dish to us, but in our adventurous state, we decided to try it anyway. After we ate it, we still didn't know what it was. Chicken, definitely, but which part(s)? Anyway, the meat around the "soft bone" was delicious. The "soft bone" not quite soft enough for our western palates.

Cherry did a little internet research and sent me this quote from a New York yakitoriya:

"Try as we might, we never got to sample “soft knee bone” (only two per chicken, after all) or the enigmatic “soft bone,” which, the waitress explained, requires three chickens per serving. Where was this bone? The waitress turned and pointed at her bottom. "

Our other adventurous skewers were liver (I prefer it blended into paté, but it was tasty with the really really spicy mustard they served on the side) and gizzards (good flavor, crunchy texture...like cartilage. Wouldn't try it twice).

We also had a side of skin served on green onions shredded super fine and soaked in ponzu sauce. My favorite dish was a side of rice which I've forgotten the name of. It was served with pickled ginger and seaweed and was so cute with a little quail egg cracked over the top.

We did not feel adventurous enough to try the "premature egg," nor did we ask about the "toriwasa" which Cherry just informed me is raw chicken.

To finish off we had their homemade ice cream: black sesame and blood orange. Delicious.

A few good things

2008-06-29T20:28:00.000-07:00

The flowers I bought at the market today:

My desk. Each day is a battle to get through all of the piles. By the end of the day, I've generally created new ones. But they're fun piles.

Coco. Roei's sisters dog.
Me and Grandpa stylin' in our specs at the Katella deli.

A breath of fresh writing

2008-06-26T22:40:00.001-07:00

I just read the most beautiful book. A new one, by Eileen Spinelli, for probably second grade and up. It's called "Where I Live" and it's the first example of a novel written in poems that actually works without any strain. It begins like this:

This is where I live--
in the yellow house
with the white shutters.
I'm the one who helped plant
the maple tree in the front yard,
the one who waters
the daffodils in the spring,
who rakes the leaves in autumn.
My room is on the second floor.
See my window?
This morning I looked out
and saw my best friend, Rose,
waving to me.
"Wanna ride bikes?" she called.
The sun was shining,
the sky was so blue,I thought I could swim in it.
My heart was happy.
It's a good day when the sky is blue
and the sun is bright
and Rose and I have plans.

And the illustrations by Matt Phelan
are just right.

I love being a librarian.

More food

2008-06-23T21:25:00.000-07:00

This is the goose egg I bought at the farmers market. The picture doesn't really show you the size, but the yolk unbroken was about the circumference of a coffee mug. I made an entire omelet from just the one egg. Cool. (I couldn't taste any difference though between it and a chicken egg...not sure why since some duck eggs I've had DO taste different. Maybe it depends on the duck/goose/chicken.)

This is another Zuni Cafe cookbook recipe (so are the lentils, below). Again, I am impressed by such simple recipes turning out such good results. To make the granita parfaits, melt one cup of sugar in two cups of coffee, put it in a shallow dish and freeze. I didn't try it, but I bet khalua would be a good addition....When it is frozen, chop it up into bits and layer it with sweetened whipped cream. True to Zuni's word, the cream that touches the ice freezes just a little and gets the most amazing chewy texture. So good for the hot weather we've been having!

This turned out really really good. Not flashy, but just plain good. Chop up about 1/2 cup each celery, onion, and carrot. Cook them just until they sweat in a few tablespoons of olive oil. Add 2 cups beluga (black) lentils, a bay leaf, and a cup of red wine. When the wine is almost all absorbed add 1/2 cup chicken stock. Add a pinch of salt. Add another 1/2 cup after the first is absorbed. Continue adding stock 1/2 cup at a time--as if you were making risotto--until the lentils are tender. Add more salt if necessary and dress with a few more tablespoons of olive oil. Adding the liquid slowly helped the lentils absorb lots of flavor without getting mushy.

New Recipes

2008-06-22T09:33:00.000-07:00

McDonald's boy ate ricotta gnocchi with sage-butter and carrots...and liked it. We're making progress. Of course, he still ordered a Papa Johns pizza after. I was probably the last person left in LA whose number was not in the system at any fast-food pizza joint. Calling around for a pizza delivery, we got a lot of confused workers asking over and over, "can you repeat that please?" I think we've got just about all of them covered now, so bring it on over Dominoes.

I've been cooking a few things out of the Zuni Cafe cookbook Sam bought me a while back. So far, the recipes have been simple and successful. A difficult, but useful combination to find.

I made the ricotta gnocchi (this is a photo of the page because I did not take a picture of mine). I did the little carrots just the same (and they were really good rolled in the sage-butter) and I used sage instead of chervil cuz that's what I had. The recipe's simplicity depends on getting good ricotta, which I can, but I doubt it would work with the stuff in those little tallish plastic containers at the grocery store. So if you have a good Italian market nearby, I highly recommend making these.

1 pound ricotta (blended until smooth)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup grated parmesian
a bit of nutmeg

Whip it all for a bit with a whisk or in a kitchen aid, then shape ovals using two spoons. Coat them in flour and cook them in boiling water for about 5 minutes. Drop them in a pan of melted butter with herbs. Serve immediately. The carrots I just blanched and shocked and then rolled them in the same butter.

The other recipe I tried got really good after it sat in my refrigerator for a few days. Slice two pounds of sweet onions (like maui or vidalia) and put them in a bowl. Add olive oil, a little white wine, some salt, very thinly sliced lemon rounds (with the rind still on), chopped fresh mint, and olives. Lay that in the bottom of a large baking dish. Arrange artichokes cut in half and trimmed then doused in olive oil and salt among onions. Cover the whole thing with parchment paper and then with foil and bake until artichokes are tender, about an hour and a half at 375. I trimmed my artichokes a lot thinking I'd be able to eat them without using the "scraping" method, but I still had to scrape, so I recommend not going to all the trouble to trim them that much. Here's mine:

And here's the book's:

One Day Vacation

2008-06-19T21:53:00.000-07:00

Tuesday was my last day off until the 4th of July. Thanks goodness for holidays. And holiday pay. SO, Roei and I decided to get out of boiling hot LA and take a little trip to Carpinteria.

Of course, we stopped by the Duddridge garage to pick out our toys: a beach umbrella, a gargantuan towel, some sunscreen, and snacks.

Then it was off to Summerland beach. Which was gorgeous. But I left the camera in the car. So, as we were pulling out we decided to stop and make two old ladies walking their dogs together take our picture. They were so cute and obliging I almost decided to take them home with me. They even managed the digital camera.

After a long nap on the beach (under the umbrella for me, under the sun for Roei) we drove up to Cold Springs Tavern. If you look above Roei's arm, you can see a piece of the view. Hard to get from the passenger's seat.

I figured Cold Springs Tavern was the perfect place for my hamburger-loving boy. But, alas, the dinner menu was quite decadent with all kinds of game meats. Perhaps he trusted me that a New York Steak was cow, but he called his sister and got the entire menu translated, just to be sure.

That was a lot of driving, so we took Terry up on her offer of a bed for the night. When we got back to the Duddridge's, we opened the front door to find the familiar smell of boysenberry pie wafting out at us. The Duddridge household, thanks to Terry, always has either the smell of bright, clean laundry detergent, or pie. They always tease me that I have a knack for coming over when there's pie, but I have a feeling someone is fixing the cards.

A dunk in the jacuzzi finished the night off.

We drove back to LA at 7am on Wednesday morning so I could make it to work on time. First, though, tea and pie in the garden. For the bazillionth time I was grateful to have one of my childhood homes still feel like home.

Orin's Place

2008-06-15T22:41:00.000-07:00

I guess I'm actually going to have to try my hand at writing since I forgot to take pictures of the food at Orin's bbq/house-warming party/concert. Roei and I arrived at the new Highland Park place around 6:30 to find a shrimp -kebab assembly line working at the kitchen table. The shrimp were rubbed in curry, jalepenos, and lime juice before they were skewered and cooked on the grill. Next to them stood a heaping platter of veggie kebabs with red and yellow bell peppers, purple red onions, and mushrooms all cut precisely the same and putting many a Bon Appetit cover to shame. Not realizing beforehand that it was a house full of vegetarians (minus Orin, of course) I brought lamb chops marinated in oregano and lemon juice. They weren't nearly as colorful as the shrimp or the veggies, but they were mighty tasty.

I actually managed to have a good time in spite of the fact that I only knew Orin and one other person, barely, when I arrived AND in spite of the fact that Roei left for a few hours in the middle of the bbq to go eat at McDonalds.

Orin's cupboards, as always, contain all sorts of fun stuff. If you dig deep in his alcohol cabinet, you'll find non-alcoholic black currant syrup. In his fridge were mini bottles of Pellegrino. It didn't take me long to get the two together and I found the perfect drink. Here's the recipe:

Open individual sized bottle of San Pellegrino. Take three medium-sized sips. Fill empty space with Zergut black currant syrup. Drink.

FINALLY for the first time last night, I heard Orin play violin when he wasn't at a wedding. I managed to stay until midnight when the concert actually started. And, though I'm not capable of appreciating the type of music they played, I couldn't get over how amazing it was to go to a really easy going barbecue where no one was cool, everyone cooked, and everyone sat around til the wee hours playing music for each other.

AND Orin's new place is great. It even has an avocado tree.

Excuses

2008-06-14T10:14:00.000-07:00

I'm not exactly sure what to write about since I haven't been cooking. But I've been getting snide little comments about my blog not being updated, and I'm so glad to know people are still reading it that I feel I better write something!

I haven't been cooking for three reasons. First, I've been working my rear-end off trying to make a little extra money, so I put in a night at the cooking school and two days at the Santa Monica library on top of my regular 40 plus hours. I haven't been home a lot. Reason number two, I seem to have acquired a new family. A family that is full of wives who cook and invite Roei and I over for dinner and send us home with three-days worth of leftovers. Luckily, they all seem to be very good cooks and I'm looking forward to expanding my repertoire to include Israeli food. As of yet, I'm not even well-versed in it enough to tell you what I ate other than it's all tasty and it's all brown. Lots of grains, lots of fat. Third, I have been so discombobulated by the rice-a-roni and cans of coke and Kraft macaroni and cheese that have shown up in my house, that I've almost been too out of sorts to eat at all.

I have high hopes for market day tomorrow though, so check back.

Tomatoes and More Armenian Attempts

2008-06-07T22:34:00.000-07:00

All recipes I've ever seen tell you to peel tomatoes by scoring the skin then blanching and shocking them. I, however, hate scoring the tomatoes because my knife is never sharp enough (no matter how sharp it is) to score the tomato skin properly and I end up cutting a huge gash in the bottom and losing half the tomato in the boiling water. So today I decided just to boil the tomatoes without scoring them. It worked perfectly. I boiled them for about a minute still on their stem and everything, then dunked them in cold water and they peeled MORE easily, and stayed in one piece. Beautiful.

This is a stuffed zucchini recipe from the Armenian cookbook I previously mentioned. Carving out the middle of the zucchini proved to be a lot harder than I anticipated, but by half number 8, I was getting a system down. The filling is ground lamb, finely chopped onion, parsley, salt and cayenne pepper. First they are fried on the stovetop:

And then you dump tomatoes over them and cook them in the oven at 350 for 45 minutes. The best part was the tomatoes. They dried out a bit and became super intense (kind of like sun dried tomatoes). I accidentally spilled a bunch of cayenne into the filling, so they were pretty spicy. Good.

With the unused part of the zucchini, I made these pancakes. They are zucchini, onion, egg, flour, cumin, mint, and parsley mixed up and fried in olive oil. So far I've learned that Armenian food requires a lot of chopping.

Plum Clafouti

2008-06-06T08:14:00.000-07:00

This is a recipe that 14 year-old Julian brought in to the pro II cooking class. It's his French grandmother's recipe. It takes about 10 minutes to make and it's delicious...a little bit mochi-esque in texture. Mine is not puffy because I accidentally quadrupled the sugar! Oops.

1/4 C plus 1 T sugar
3/4 lb plums, halved and pitted
3/4 C light cream (half and half)
3/4 C flour
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
1/8 t salt
1 t vanilla

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and butter the pie plate well.

Sprinkle the pie plate with the 1 tablespoon sugar and distribute the plum halves over the sugar, skin side down. In a blender blend the milk, light cream, flour, eggs, egg yolk and salt for 2 minutes. Add the 1/4 cup sugar and the vanilla. Blend the mixture for a few seconods and pour it over the plums. Bake the clafouti in the middle of the oven for about 30 minutes or until puffed and golden. Dust the clafouti with vanilla sugar and serve at once.

2008-06-01T14:58:00.000-07:00

I know, I promised to write about my Korean and Thai food experiences. But, the idea practically bores me to death. Now I remember why I hated food writing. I hate paying attention. I hate trying to remember the names of everything. I can manage photos at home, BEFORE I start eating. But to pull out a camera at a restaurant each time something new is served just kills the fun for me.

Instead I'm going to show you the lovely (and lovely smelling!) peony I bought at the market today:

And fillo triangles I made. They look exactly the same, but there are two kinds: one stuffed with ricotta cheese mixed with parsley, an egg, and a teaspoon of baking powder, the other filled with finely chopped walnuts mixed with cinnamon and sugar with an orange-flower water syrup on top. I got these recipes from an Armenian cookbook we have at the library. The cheese was supposed to be mixed with munster, but I just couldn't see how this was authentic and left it out. The syrup is supposed to be lemon. Yawn.

The fillo is store-bought. I've tried to make it before, but I can't get it anywhere close to thin enough (puff pastry is worth making at home, but not fillo, I've decided). You just spread some melted butter in between each layer and the stuff is amazing, no matter what you put in it. I had some left-over orange-flower syrup and mixed it with sparkling water for a tasty little soda.

I went a little nuts shopping today. Food is the only area I really have a lot of trouble controlling my budget on. First, everything looked so good at the farmers market. All of the stone fruit is out...and it's not cheap. I had to buy plums and peaches, bare minimum. Then, I couldn't pass up Harry's Barrys strawberries. They are outrageously expensive : $4.75 for one basket. However, they are the only people in the universe who pick their strawberries already ripe. I stopped by Ralphs and bought Organic Valley cream and have been eating my strawberries with it all day.

Later in the day I realized I had most of the ingredients for another Armenian recipe, but was missing scallions. So I went over to the Korean market. And next to the scallions, they had sesame leaves, three bunches for a dollar. I haven't a clue what they are for, but I couldn't pass them up. I made the mistake of wandering the isles after that. I had just been talking to Annalaura who taught me to make sticky rice and eat it with mangoes and cream. And when I got to the isle with 500 different kinds of sticky rice, I had to get a bag, since I already bought cream at Ralphs for the strawberries. So I went back for a mango and ended up finding some interesting green tea. I did FORCE myself to put the salmon roe back even though I had just read a recipe with cannellini beans and caviar and I had already-soaked cannellini's on my counter.

Now I have food for about 20 at my house. If anyone's free for dinner, you're invited.

Please don't laugh...

2008-05-28T22:23:00.000-07:00

But vowels seem to be difficult for my Israeli. And I'm pretty sure that he is not being crass when he ends our nightly phone call with "Good night, Boobie."

Pizza Party Part II

2008-05-27T14:40:00.000-07:00

We had a lot more pizza eaters than bakers for PPPII. Cherry came at the appointed 10AM hour and we whipped up three batches of dough (18 pizzas). The kitchen wasn't pretty:

But the little dough balls were:

Our three batches were: 00 pizza flour imported from Italy, a mix of AP flour and farro flour, and whole wheat mixed with bread flour. We discovered that the 00 flour (what is used for pizza and pasta in Italy) really DID make a difference all the way from making the kneading of the wet dough easier to rolling out easier, to tasting better once it was cooked.

We left our dough to rise and set off to the farmers market. Our biggest score was delicious and cheap tomatoes. FINALLY, tomatoes that actually smell like the ones on the vine in the garden when you are a kid. And it made a huge difference in the sauce...the most delicious I've had in a long long time. At the market we also found early apricots and white peaches for a tart. After that we headed off to Sorrento's. It is an Italian market straight out of the 50's, meatball sandwiches, prepared salads and all. We got prosciutto and brasaola and buffalo mozzerella and ricotta and Parmegiano...and they advertised "sweet European Butter" but were all out when we asked. We sat down for a quick nibble on a ricotta cheese canolo before heading home.

Just plugra, but still beautiful. Use about this much for a large galette.

We mixed the apricots and peaches together and let them sit in a bowl with sugar, lemon verbena and mint. We took the herbs out before we baked the tart, but they made a delicious syrup which I later burned. (Pizza cooks at 550, not tarts).

For appetizers we had brasaola with wild arugula and mustard greens dressed with lemon juice and olive oil.

Though we made artichoke and goat cheese pizza, prosciuto and arugula pizza, egg and anciove pizza, potato and rosemary pizza, and ricotta and spinach pizza, the margherita was the best. As always:

See, I really did burn it. Once it was off the burnt pan and covered in lots of cream, it was actually fairly tasty.

Luckly Oleg turned the camera around at some point. As our resident photographer no one might ever know he was here. Or that he had a pizza named after him (prosciutto, spinach, bechemel, and potatoes) aka the tv dinner pizza.

Wok, bread, and cherry tarts

2008-05-24T19:14:00.000-07:00

I've missed posting a few things, so I'll have to catch you up. Last week, I assisted a cooking class for a teacher at the New School of Cooking who I've never worked with before. It turned out to be great. He was teaching a class on how to use a wok. I've never really cooked with a wok before and I learned a lot.

First, everything should be cut to a similar size so it cooks in a similar amount of time. This even includes not chopping the garlic up into microscopic peices (cus they'll burn).

Second, there is a specific order in which you add ingredients.

Fat (high burning...like peanut oil or lard)
Aromatics (garlic, onions, lemongrass, etc)
Protein (meat, fish, or tofu)
Vegetables
flavorings (soy sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil...)

The teacher also happens to belong to the family that owns the Bangkok Market, so part of the class was that everyone got to take home a wok. He had one left over for me. I didn't have any Asian ingredients at home (must fix this seeing as I live in Korea town) so I decided to try the method with my own ingredients.

I couldn't decide if pancetta was a "fat" or the "protein" or the "flavoring." I finally put it in as fat.

You should heat the wok until it is smoking, but only white smoke. As Jet said, "Black smoke means start over."

Next I added some aromatics (leeks), and then my vegatable (since my protein and fat were one in the same). These are sugar snap peas cut diagonally as we learned in the class.

Last, I put in my flavoring...uh, salt and pepper.

I ate this mixture on top of a bowl of farro. It was delicious. But you really can't go wrong with pancetta.

Later in the week, I had some left over pizza dough that needed either to be frozen or cooked. Since I was too lazy to wrap the little balls for the freezer, I combined them all into one and made focaccia. It really was amazing. The outside was super crusty, the inside super chewy.

And check out those air bubbles!

Last night I decided my cherries were getting a bit sad for eating fresh and I baked them in tarts. I was imagining a corn-meal sort of crust so I added some semolina to my flour when I made the crust. I don't recommend it. I think for the grany cornmeal crust you need more of a short-bread style crust, which you need a mold for. I had to add too much water to hold the dough together, so it came out a bit cracker-like. However, make these with my recipe from a few weeks back (blackberry pie) and they would be heavenly. The cherries were really sweet and tasty with just a little sugar mixed in.

2008-05-23T00:00:00.001-07:00

I've been too afflicted with love-sickness to do much cooking lately. BUT, tonight I went out with Cherry to a bunch of John Cohen films on American folk music. I can't even begin to describe the strange time and culture and language warp I saw. One of the films was shot in the Appellations in the 1970's but it might as well have been the early 1800's. People still using a hand plows, missing a lot of teeth, heads like those rotten apple-dolls. And I could have used subtitles to help me out with the accents. But it gave me a bit of appreciation for growing up singing all the time. And for having gone to church and learned songs that lots of other people knew. I even knew some of the rsongs like, "keep on the sunny side" and had a hard time not singing along.

It also brought up a couple of questions about my childhood. For example: how did we come to own an auto-harp? And, do I remember correctly that Grandpa George played a gut-bucket and also had an electric bass in his house?

New Identity

2008-05-18T21:42:00.000-07:00

It's not every day that I get mistaken for Cinderella. But, truth be sworn, as I was walking toward my apartment manager Irene and her granddaughter Emma, Emma said something in Spanish to her grandma. "She wants to know if you're Cinderella" Irene relayed. Apparently, she thought I had walked out of the new apartment building at the end of our street, that does, indeed, look like a castle.

Ah, the world through the eyes of a little girl. :)

Here is the P. Charming you've all been hearing about...
(still can't figure out how to rotate pictures).

From The Man Who Ate Everything

2008-05-18T20:01:00.000-07:00

"God tells us in the Book of Genesis, right after Noah's flood, to eat everything under the sun. Those who ignore his instructions are no better than godless heathens."

Amen, brother.

Surprise!

2008-05-14T22:33:00.000-07:00

I don't always plan my meals perfectly (gasp!) Often, I miscalculate and end up with odds and ends that all need to be used up instead of something to put in one cohesive dish. Alas, I ended up with a bag of brown mushrooms that were starting to dry out and NOTHING to put them in! No pasta, no cream, no cheese, no bread....so, I sweated part of the gigantic sweet maui onions I have, threw in the mushrooms, and then sprinkled cilantro and lime juice in. I can't tell you how unexcited about eating this I was. But it was delicious! Mostly due to the lime juice...really good on cooked mushrooms. Who knew?

This Greek salad, however, I was very excited about. I had some good tomatoes, and some dill, so I bought a cucumber at the market and then made a special trip to the Greek grocery store to buy really good feta and oil-cured olives. But by the day that I made my salad, the tomatoes had begun to get the slightest big mushy. It COMPLETELY ruined the entire salad. Totally inedible. And they didn't even look that bad! So, it turns out that the best recipe for Greek Salad is the same as the best recipe for any salad: only ingredients in tip top shape are allowed. Ingredients not in tip top shape must be cooked. Hmph. And I waisted so many olives!

Pizza Party

2008-05-13T21:57:00.000-07:00

Maureen and Erin came over for the Pizza Party Part I (Part II to follow on the 25th). We started out with watermelon, mint, and feta appetizers:

Then moved on to pan-roasted garbanzo beans. Cherry and I were sympathizing with each other because we both bought gargantuan bundles of fresh garbanzo beans which are fun for the first few hours of shucking, but not so fun after that. Luckily Cherry found they could be pan-roasted and served like edamame. Leave two cups garbanzo beans in their pods. Rinse, and shake off excess water. Put in a hot pan with a tablespoon of olive oil. Cover. Roast for 5-8 minutes, shaking pan occasionally. Put them in a bowl and toss with lots of salt. Mmmm.
One of our pizza toppings was bechamel, ricotta, and spinach. I just wanted to remind you what good spinach looks like:
First out of the oven was our margherita pizza. The crust was the most perfect I've had it from a home oven. I tried a new recipe from the bread bakers apprentice that calls for far less yeast and a much longer proofing time than anything I've tried before.

Mix 4 1/2 Cups AP flour with 1 teaspoon yeast and 1 teaspoon salt. Add 2 cups of water. Using your hand like a dough hook (or an actual dough hook) knead the dough for 8 minutes. It is really sticky, but that's okay. Shape it into six balls.Roll the balls in oil and put them on a half sheet pan covered with parchment paper. Put the whole thing in a plastic back (i used a garbage bag) and refrigerate overnight or up to 4 days. You can also freeze the balls at this point. I put my oven at 550 and let my pizza stone preheat for two hours. I did not put it directly on the bottom of the oven, as most books suggest, because I've had bad results doing that in this oven (though it worked fine in my last oven) so I put it on a rack on the lowest setting and it worked perfectly.

Maureen and Erin tried their hand at it:

Erin spent a good portion of dinner climbing up and down this chair to man the fire alarm. Who puts a smoke detector right above the oven????
My favorite topping was tomato sauce, fresh mozzerella, jambon serrano, arugula dressed in olive oil and lemon, and Parmesan cheese.

But they were all good.

My neighborhood today...

2008-05-11T16:15:00.001-07:00

is full of kids passing by decked out. Boys are wearing slacks and button down shirts, girls, their frilly dresses. This is pretty much every Sunday, but especially for the holiday. I looked out my window to see what the frequent screams were coming from the street. A full on Soccer game is going on with goals set up in the street. The men are playing in their undershirts. They have their dress shoes and slacks on, and their button downs are draped over cars parked on the side of the road. I can hear the faint screeching of the chickens that live in the apartment above mine. Why exactly these things make me feel so happy, I cannot quite say.

Chicken Tacos for Me and Mom

2008-05-10T23:20:00.000-07:00

Like mother, like daughter, so they say. Mom called me up tonight to tell me about the delicious chicken tacos she had just eaten for dinner, WHILE I was making chicken tacos for dinner. Not only that, but we were both having mango/cilantro salsa on them. She did a variation on the usual salsa (see earlier entry) and added cucumber. Since I just happened to have a cucumber, I decided to try it. Delicious. Nice and crunchy. I also added onion (which I usually find overpowering), but those gargantuan spring Maui onions (last sunday's entry) are so sweet you can bite into them like an apple.

A few weeks ago, when I was sitting in Orin's apartment with nothing to do (waiting for my door to be removed so I could get into my own house) I picked up a Cook's Illustrated he had lying around and read all about pulled pork. They discovered that by using a Mexican method of first braising and then frying pork in previously cut off and rendered pork fat, they got the perfect shred and flavor. Well, I think I accidentally discovered this once a long time ago while reheating chicken for tacos. The chicken was dry and sticking to the pan, so I added oil, and it came out a little crispy. SO, tonight I decided to try frying up my already cooked chicken (I pulled it off a roasted bird I hadn't finished) in....you guessed it...duck fat! DELICIOUS! It came out still moist but with a crusty outside, so crusty that it almost appeared to have a batter on it. Great in the the tacos.

I've been discussing having a pizza-making party with the Children's Book World gang for some time and decided to read up on pizza dough. I got so inspired reading about the most authentic way to make pizza as it has been made in Naples forever, that I went to the Italian grocery store and drove all the way to the Santa Monica farmer's market to go shopping. I haven't bought such great food in a long time. A giant jar of really good anchovies, fresh ricotta, mozzerella, pecorino, Parmesan, farro flower, jambon serrano, olives, a very good loaf of bread. I was in heaven. I'll be showing off more of the ingredients after our pizza party tomorrow, but here is a little preview. A sandwich on a crusty loaf (but not so crusty that you pull your teeth out trying to take a bite) with a generous amount of olive oil drizzles on the bread, fresh ricotta cheese, a slice of jambon serrano, and wild arugula. Below, my very favorite style of olives, Cerignola.

For Chris: Varaitions on a fava bean theme

2008-05-09T22:33:00.000-07:00

The salad I invented while emailing you sounded so good that I decided to make it. This is slices of pink grapefruit with sliced fennel on top, fava beans, and basil. I doused it with a dressing of shallots, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. Would have been good with mint or tarragon too.

This pasta looks a little dull, but it was anything but...I sauteed green garlic and a hot pepper in olive oil and butter, then added fresh garbanzo and fava beans, salt, added the pasta and put in some cold butter (to make up for the Parmesan I didn't have.) Really quite tasty.

At the Library...

2008-05-08T20:45:00.000-07:00

I like to think of myself as an atypical librarian. But yesterday, after waking up late and throwing on the first thing in my closet, I found myself at work with a black shirt and black cardigan that has a hook and eye at the top. The combination did a good impression of a sweater-set. On the bottom half, I had on straight-leg khaki pants and black and white two-tone (rounded wing tips) shoes. My hair, quickly pulled back and secured with a pencil, resembled, yes, a bun. Now, I'll admit there are days when I wear a pencil skirt and heals and play up the librarian thing a bit, but it is rather disconcerting to subconsciously dress, not like the sexy young librarian featured in so many films, but as the baggy eyed, slightly butch librarian that is more often found behind the desk.

As if , in such attire, I wasn't already feeling insecure, a first grader named Nova (who was helping me make duck finger puppets) asked me if I had any kids of my own.

"Nope." I said.

"I know why you wanted to be a librarian! So you could be with kids." Nova exclaimed.

I didn't know weather to be impressed that a first grader had such insight into the adult female psyche, awed by how instinctual reproducing is to us that even in first grade we are aware of it as a "deepest desire," or insulted that I looked so old to her that she automatically assumed I would never have any kids if I did not have them already. I was, though, flattered that she saw me as human. Most of the kids think I live in the library.

"Yep," I said. "That's exactly right."

So, in addition to the sweater set, the kahki pants, the butch shoes and the, uh, bun, I was also old.

Today I wore white pants, tennis shoes, and a hot pink hoodie and felt much younger. Until around 4:00 when our volunteer reader (Chris, 45) asked, "How old are you? 35?"

Sunday...

2008-05-05T21:12:00.000-07:00

is market day as you all know. My friend, neighbor, and former co-worker Luke came along this week. Thanks to his manliness, I got a bundle of fresh garbanzo beans which then had to be hauled around the crowded market. In fact, we could hardly walk down the street so many people stopped to ask what they were. No need for a dog or a baby, just carry around garbanzo beans and you'll be dating in a jiffy. They were well worth Luke's muscle-work. So sweet, I've been picking them off and eating them raw. Though, I do intend to make something out of them at some point.

The onions were on steroids.
Luke and I decided to make pea soup. With fresh peas. Luckily, Luke did most of the shelling while I dealt with my laundry. I like having a prep chef around.

Later, I made the soup with leeks, tarragon, vegetable stock, and peas. Luke and his beautiful girlfriend Sarah came over to share.

Not too shabby with grilled cheese on the side.

Ode to Duck Fat

2008-05-03T08:08:00.000-07:00

This is potatoes, an onion, salt, and duck fat cooked in the oven at 400 for about 40 minutes. Mmmm.

No, Gypsy, haven't read that book...but I will now.

Salmon with watercress sauce

2008-04-30T22:28:00.000-07:00

This is an old recipe from my Bon Appétit days. It's embarrassing, sure. But I like it. And don't even think of making homemade mayonnaise for this. I've tried it. Disgusting. Just stick with Best Foods and don't tell your foodie friends.

Put a hefty scoop of mayonnaise in a bowl. Squeeze in some lemon juice (just enough to make it saucy). Throw in some chopped watercress, add salt and pepper, and eat it on salmon. I also added dill, which might actually have been good in yogurt instead of mayonnaise, but...yogurt on fish? I think I'm still too much of a snob to try it.

2008-04-29T22:38:00.000-07:00

Okay, this sounds like one of those cheesey entertaining tips I used to make up for Bon Appétit, but this is actually worth doing. Buy some fresh herbs, stick them in your water. Pour yourself a glass whenever you wish. Because the water isn't hot, the herbs just barely flavor it, rather than making it like tea. In fact, if you let a few of the herbs spill over into your glass, most of the "taste" will come from smelling them while you drink.

I used lemon verbena, mint, and lavender. It makes me WANT to drink water. Something I often forget to do in between my hot beverages. Brilliant for the crazy-hot weather we've been having. I just kept filling the pitcher back up with the same herbs in it. They stayed fresh as long as they were submerged.

Monday, Bloody Monday

2008-04-28T23:56:00.000-07:00

What is one to do when he has to use the public restroom, but the stall is occupied? Well, if you are a patron of the Durant library, you might consider crawling under the stall door, throwing the person's belongings over the top, and beating the stall's occupant with a sharp object.

And, should you be attacked in a public bathroom stall, what is the best course of action? Why, to bleed all over the floor, tell a librarian, and then leave before the paramedics arrive.

Pie à la mode

2008-04-28T09:40:00.000-07:00

I have discovered a new use for duck fat. (Only about 5 pounds to go in my freezer). This was definitely the best tasting crust I've ever made. I put about 3/4 butter to 1/4 duck fat. The duck fat fried the flour to the crispiest flakiest it could be, but not even my secret taster (co-worker with uncommonly detective taste buds) knew anything was amiss. Better than pork fat, for sure. Anyway, I advise when using frozen berries, more cornstarch or flour or something. The blackberries were delicious, but soupy and, after a good long hour on several buses, I got to work wearing a good portion of the filling . Several people told me I was looking more fashionable than usual.

2 cups flour
3/4 cup butter
1/4 cup duck fat
1 t. salt
1 T sugar
2 T water (about)

Mix together flour, salt, and sugar. Cut in butter, then duck fat. Add just enough water to make it stick together. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour. Roll out dough. Because it's a double crust with a fruit filling, no need to pre-bake the crust.

Filling: blackberries (thawed if using frozen), sugar to taste. Take some of the juice and put it in a jar with maybe...a tablespoon of cornstarch (guessing, but a teaspoon wasn't enough) and shake until fully blended. Add to berries.

Bake at 400 for 30 minutes. If the crust is browning too fast around the edges, turn the oven down and cook 30 minutes more (but check on it sooner, this is only in my oven.) When it's about 20 minutes from being done, brush cream over the top and then sprinkle sugar over the whole thing. This will give you a shiny, slightly hard, shell on the outside. Pretty.

Stewed tomatoes

2008-04-27T08:18:00.000-07:00

Tomatoes are on their way back already in the 97-degree LA weather. Actually, tomatoes have been here all yere, but GOOD tomatoes are on their way back. I got a bunch of the little grape tomatoes last week, sliced up some green garlic (any kind you choose, see below), added a red pepper (flakes will do if you didn't buy a bunch to dry over the winter...they'll be back late summer, I think) added lots of olive oil, a sprig of rosemary (whole, so you can take it out) and a bay leaf (same) and cooked it for about 45 minutes over a low heat. The result? Stewed tomatoes that are good on everything. I mostly gobbled the whole pot down on bread, but they're good on pasta, cottage cheese, with meat, even on eggs and they will last for a good long time in the fridge, so make a bunch. The Fantastik is not part of the dish.

Green Garlic, Green Garlic, Green Garlic

2008-04-25T20:48:00.000-07:00

From right to left. Or left to right.

The closest one is obviously a little older than the other two, this is actually my favorite stage of green garlic...almost as strong as the dried we use the rest of the year, but without even a trace of bitterness. The middle one is baby elephant garlic, which is always more mild than regular garlic, but very very mild as young as this. I wasn't as impressed with it as I hoped to be. Last is very young regular green garlic. So mild you can put that whole bushel in just one dish.

Dinner

2008-04-24T23:16:00.000-07:00

Pour cereal into bowl. Add milk.

Quite the week...

2008-04-23T20:40:00.000-07:00

It started out Friday. I parked in the lot where the security guard told me I could. Only to find, the next morning, that my car had been towed away. A kindly ride from a co-worker and two hundred dollars later, I had my car back.

But alas, as I was driving to Santa Monica to work on Sunday, a disappointing clunking noise startled me out of a driving coma. The car didn't want to accelerate and all of those pesky lights on the dashboard started blinking at me.

I hoped maybe the gas gauge was off...it showed about 2 gallons left. So I filled her up. To no avail. She just clunked away.

I made it home but have been taking the bus ever since. Which has been fine, except for last night, when the metro broke down and it took me over 2 hours to get home. I could have walked it in an hour and a half (I have). But I kept getting hopeful that the bus was still coming. Besides, on the way to the metro station yesterday morning, I walked by the body of a girl who had just been killed so walking around after dark wasn't sounding terribly appealing.

Tonight I came home to find someone had tried to break into my house. They almost got the entire door jam off and bent through both of the metal plates surrounding my locks. Luckily, they couldn't get in. But then, neither could I. So, someone came and forced my door open and is, at the moment, rebuilding half my wall. Tomorrow they will give me a metal door outside of my wood one. You know, those doors that immediately make you think "bad neighborhood."

And it's only Wednesday. Sigh.

Green on Green

2008-04-22T22:47:00.000-07:00

I like the what-did-you-bring-for-lunch theme, so here's the latest. We have a full kitchen at the library and me and some of my co-workers have been doing lunch time family style. Daniel has been the main source of our Friday meals, but Monday, being the day after the market, I am always loaded up with vegetables. Yesterday, I had chickweed (we decided it tasted like unsour sour grass, or dirt, but in a good way), amazingly sweet sugar snap peas, an avocado, and garbonzo beans. The dressing was shallots, lemon juice, and olive oil. It's hard to tell from the pictures, but all of the different colors of green were very pretty mixed together. And the salad was delicious. Chickweed warning: chop it up. It was a bit like eating spaghetti...all the little weeds were so entangled, the whole bowl tried to jump into our mouths at once.

Daniel's a bit skeptical....

So we take a closer look...

Ah, a smile...it must be good.

2008-04-17T00:11:00.000-07:00

Snow upon root
dove against sky
under my window
love passes by

No snow upon root
no dove against sky
under my window
love passes by

The snow will return
as will the dove
and since hope lives forever
so will my love.

-- Charlotte Pomerantz

Whao Nelly

2008-04-16T22:52:00.001-07:00

Be warned, there's a lot of food here...the last couple of days seem to have been a complete blur, so I'm just shoving them all together here, in a blur.

I happened to use three ingredients I often get asked about in a single dish: artichokes, green garlic, and fava beans.

Now, in order to enjoy artichokes and fava beans, you have to look at them the right way. Don't think tedious labor. Think shelling beans on your front porch in a rocking chair listening to the sounds of summer and chatting with your neighbors. One of the only manual skills we still acquire is typing. And look how efficient we are at it! If we could be so efficient at cutting artichokes. The way to achieve efficiency is practice. And practice requires concentration. And so, for a few minutes I get to be ONLY cutting an artichoke. I don't have to worry about my bills, or what so and so said at work or if I'm going to be late or what I'm going to wear tomorrow. It's a break from myself. And, believe me, I can be a lot more tedious than an artichoke.

So, there's no one way to do it, but for this dish I wanted little slices. It starts out looking like this:

Then I peal most of the leaves off:

and cut away the bottom leaves and outer part of the stem. Then I cut it around the circumference about half way down (ie chop the top off), then cut it into 8 little wedges. (Sorry, I forgot to take a picture). Then I blanched the slices and put them in the fridge until I was ready to use them the next day. As you are slicing, put the slices immediately into acidulated water or they'll turn black.

On to the favas. They start out in these pods:

You take out the beans:

You blanch them for about a minute:

You peal them:

Now they are ready for the fridge.

Green garlic is really worth buying every single week that you can get your hands on it. It doesn't last long...only a few weeks in the spring before it turns into the bulbs and cloves we are used to using. Green, it has a much more mild flavor. It looks like this:

I cut off the tops and very bottom and cut it in half so it lies flat:

Then I slise it as if it were a green onion.
For this dish I heated up a skillet, added a teaspoon or so of olive oil and immediately a slice of butter and some chopped mint. Then I threw in the beans and the artichokes. I mixed that with some lemon zest and pasta and grated Parmesan over the top.

NOW, this was my Sartorialist moment. I was visiting the bookstore, and there I spied a stylish lunch. Cherry was eating soba noodles with arugula, peas and shitake mushrooms:

Next to that she had a plate of ground chicken mixed with shizu leaves and a few other things I forgot...
Just a typical day at the office for Cherry. Don't you all bring lunch like this?

And just in case I scared you with the labor-intensive fava beans and artichokes...I just wanted to show you this. I came home, called Orin to see if he wanted dinner. He said yes, but he had to leave in 15 minutes. SO, I sliced up some green garlic, cooked it with fresh eggs with cream, scooped that out of the pan and threw in some bubbly heirloom spinach for about 30 seconds, sliced a piece of La Brea Bakery multi-grain bread, and we were done in a flash!

No Kidding

2008-04-13T22:53:00.001-07:00

I cooked the clams in about a cup of white wine with some fresh garlic, thyme, and a bay leaf. Throw out any that don't open, of course. In a separate pan, I cooked some more fresh garlic in olive oil (obviously I'm not anticipating any dates until garlic season is over) and tossed the cooked pasta in that and added a bunch of finely chopped parsley. Throw in the clams and eat.

Yum.

OH! And don't throw out the clam stock you just made while cooking the clams. Strain it, add some cream, and have the left-over clams in it later. Or just sop it up with bread.

Thank Goodness I made it to the Market

2008-04-13T15:19:00.000-07:00

If there be medicine in this world for me, it is the market. There was green garlic and fava beans and artichokes and berries. And the flowers!Beautiful. I had a lovely walk up to the market feeling safe from sunburn with my wide-brimmed hat. The 98-degree weather did eventually get to me though. In the subway on the way home I suddenly started feeling extremely nauseated. I got off at the next stop and made for the closest bench which was contained by a smaller and smaller circle of light as I drunkenly wavered to and finally onto it. Somehow, I managed to sit down just as the darkness closed in. Talent, I know.

I did eventually make it home with my many beloved bags of fruits, vegetables, fresh clams, raw cream, and eggs. Deciding I needed to be well fed and watered before I attempted afternoon yoga, I made a little wild salmon left over from the cooking school for lunch. I know it's boring, but when you have high-quality fish, cooking it in a really hot cast-iron skillet with salt and pepper seems to be the absolute best way to prepare it. Next to the fish, is an herb salad...mostly chervil, with a few basil leaves cut very fine, some parsley, mint, and chamomile. I made a balsamic vinegar dressing with shallots cut to an almost microscopic size (thanks to my ceramic knife from Antsy Nancy.)

I'm proud to say I got through yoga without blacking out once. For dinner? Spaghetti alla vongole!

Dreams in Perfect Metaphor

2008-04-11T07:25:00.000-07:00

Last night I saved you from a crocodile. I heard your terrified scream from the living room of someone else's house. One word, "crocodile." I waited for more. Nothing. Running to the bathroom I found a giant lizard--no, a small dinosaur--half way out of the toilet with your leg, gray jeans and all, in its mouth. You did wheelbarrow on your hands. I screamed a silent scream for help, but none came.

I looked up to find your head in its mouth. With my hands, I pulled its teeth apart. You wiggled free. In my voice that didn't work, I told you to get out. I let go of the jaws and ran toward the door, bumping into you. I tried to slam it shut behind us, but the croc got out and started nipping at my legs. By this time he was considerably smaller. More giant lizard, less dinosaur. Only slightly less terrifying.

The whole time, you never said a word. Not a single word. Except that first crocodile scream.

oops

2008-04-10T08:21:00.001-07:00

In case you were wondering what happens to chocolate chip cookies if you forget the baking soda:

The same dough with baking soda added after the fact:

But they tasted more like baking soda than cookies. Gross.

2008-04-07T22:09:00.000-07:00

I just discovered that the song my dad sang to us as kids that went like this:

Bone swar my dam, my dumfy my doo

Actually goes like this:

Bonsoir Dame, Madame Fais dodo

Now, I do remember asking what dumfy meant, but I was just told it was French.