Snackish

About Making New Food Choices

2011-12-27T08:06:00.001-08:00

I'm not on a diet.
This is a choice.
I'm not feeling deprived.
There are not foods I "can't have."
I am choosing to eat a certain way.
I am choosing to change my life.
I don't miss cheesy pizza.
I don't miss pecan pie.
I don't miss feeling stuffed and kludgy.
I have more energy.
I have fewer mood swings.
I do feel hungry sometimes and that's ok. It's normal. And I will survive.
I want to have a better life and I'm making choices to make it better.
There's no way to "cheat" because then I would be the cheated-upon.
I don't care what you eat or don't eat.
I just want you to understand that you don't have to feel bad for me, hide what you're eating from me, or express pity for me.
I'm fine. I feel happier about food than I have in a long time. This is a path I want to be on.

PS Down 13 pounds in 5 weeks.

Dump Cake: Food of the Gods

2011-12-15T14:08:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Duncan Hines for sponsoring my writing. There's no limit to the baking possibilities, so grab your favorite Duncan Hines mix and Comstock or Wilderness fruit fillings and Bake On! www.duncanhines.com.
******
Oh, yes, the irony of being selected to write a post about dessert just after I joined Weight Watchers. I KNOW.

When it comes to dessert, I'm all about the butter. A good shortbread cookie can make me buckle at the knees. One time Angela from Fluid Pudding brought me a Gooey Butter Cake from St. Louis and I ate most of it with my hands in a San Francisco hotel room.

The other day at work was the first time I felt a twinge of regret at trying to lose weight because someone brought in Dump Cake and the delicious smell permeated the office, all buttery and warm and oh my. I love me some dump cake. You know what it is, right? The simplest thing on earth. Powered by massive quantities of butter.

You put a can of crushed pineapple with juice into the bottom of a 9x13 pan, put a can of Comstock cherry pie filling in, spread a box of (of course) Duncan Hines yellow cake mix on top, put two whole sticks of cut up butter on top, toss some chopped pecans or walnuts on if you must, then bake the weird looking mess for an hour at 350 degrees. Voila. Dump Cake. The top gets all crusty and buttery and the pineapple juice bubbles up throughout and caramelizes and it still looks a little lumpy and misshapen.

Is it good? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I'm not just putting this recipe here because it involves both a Comstock product and a Duncan Hines product, even though that works out pretty nicely, doesn't it?

No. I am putting this recipe here because if you make it for any holiday party you go to - party at a friend's house, church or work potluck, a little get-together - people will rave. You will be the star of the show.

You invest 10 minutes of work time (if you're slow), a few bucks in ingredients, and people will love you more than if you brought the strawberry shortcake pictured above (which was a little dry, if you ask me).

It's all about the butter.

I'm pencilling in a piece of dump cake for Christmas 2012. Until then, I'll be over there by the vegetable tray, dreaming.

*****
Remember to check out Duncan Hines' website www.duncanhines.com to find some great recipes for your holiday get-together! I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective.

Adventures in Cuisine with Mom

2011-11-10T18:37:00.000-08:00

Cross-posted from Suebob's Red Stapler

Mom needed nutmeg and I needed cinnamon, so I placed a Penzey's order. If you like to cook and you don't know Penzey's, you NEED to. They have the best, tastiest, freshest spices at really reasonable prices.

No, they are not paying me.

ANYWAY - Penzey's sent me some free stuff in the order, including some salt-free spice mix. I gave it to Mom and she said it sounded delicious and that she could not WAIT to try it.

Cut to the next day.

Now is where I should perhaps mention that my mother is a terrible cook. I don't know how she does it, but she has the culinary equivalent of tone deafness.

So. She says "Do you want to taste the carrots I cooked with the new spices?"

Sure, I say. I take a taste and LIKE TO DIE.

Mom didn't use the salt-free spice blend. She used the cinnamon and nutmeg. She threw in some honey for good measure. What on earth, people.

"Gack!" I spewed.

"You don't like it?" she said.

I don't know how she does it. It's horrible. It's like me trying to sing or something. It just should not be done.

Photo from Flickr by Funadium (Marco Bernardini). Used under a Creative Commons license.

Perks

2011-10-31T14:12:00.000-07:00

Shao Bing at Buddha's Belly

One of the perks of being a food blogger is that sometimes you get asked to go to fun events, like a blogger dinner at Buddha's Belly in Thousand Oaks.

When you get really lucky, you get to do it with bloggers whose company you enjoy a lot. Look at these beautiful women:

Margaret of Nanny Goats in Panties and Kim of House of Prince.

If you go (it's in the Oaks Mall, next to the Cheesecake Factory, on the side away from the freeway) have a Zen Garden drink - refreshing and fruity and made with gin. These are a few of my favorite things.

Defeated

2011-10-26T20:23:00.000-07:00

I tried my best, but the wet chile relleno burrito defeated me. I thought I had it vanquished, but then the tortilla chip and salsa assist pushed it over the top.

Until next time.

Bad Omens

2011-10-25T10:26:00.000-07:00

The other night my pal C.C. and I went to a pub for a beer after seeing "The Ides of March." It was a depressing movie and we needed to recover a bit. I ordered a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and C.C. got a Coors Light.

Our waitress was pretty rude. She brought our two beers and sat them down right in the middle of the table.

"Which is which?" C.C. asked.

"The Coors Light," said the waitress, with an undisguised sneer in her voice, "is the lighter one."

I looked at her over my glasses. I don't normally look at people over my glasses because I'm not really looking at that point, since I absolutely cannot see more than a few inches unaided, but I felt in this case she needed to experience the Mean Lady Glare.

I mean, come on. If you're selling the damn beer, don't try to make your customers feel bad for ordering it. Is that too much to ask?

We picked up the food menu and began flipping. C.C. dropped hers about 15 seconds later.

"Mozzarella sticks," she said, and I understood the shorthand. She wasn't going to eat anything there.

Mozzarella sticks are where C.C. draws her line. She says that restaurants that serve mozzarella sticks are just pushing food that comes frozen in a box. Seeing that one item on the menu is a signal that they don't really care about food.

I get it.

I draw the line at the whiff of old grease. I have a nose like a bloodhound and if I walk in a place and catch the smell of stale oil, I walk right back out. I have learned the hard way to not eat there, lest I risk disappointment and/or food poisoning.

Where do you draw your line? What tips you off?

Photo by Jumbledpile. Used under a Creative Commons license.

On Not Having A Fridge

2011-08-21T12:44:00.001-07:00

I know this is ostensibly a food blog, but bear with me as I veer off into food politics a bit. I was watching The Daily Show and found this clip from their continuing series on Class Warfare. The quote about the poor beginning about 4:30 in floored me:

"Whe you look at the living conditions of the 43 million Americans that the census says are poor, you see that they in fact have all these modern conveniences...99 percent of them have a refrigerator."

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

World of Class Warfare - The Poor's Free Ride Is Over

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

So now people apparently aren't considered poor if they have a refrigerator. A REFRIGERATOR!

It started me thinking about the last time I had to live without a fridge. I moved into a house with no fridge and had to buy a new one. I'm not poor, or I would have gotten a 30-year-old used one that sucks up $300 in electricity every year like I had back when I made minimum wage.

I bought one at Sears and they said it wasn't in stock and would take a week to deliver. No problem, I thought. I can survive a week without a fridge. I can eat non-perishable food and eat out, because I can afford that.

But if you don't have a fridge and you do want some perishable food, say something nutritious like milk, cheese or eggs, you'll need ice.

I didn't have an ice chest, because I was only missing a fridge for a week, so I just put the ice and small cartons of milk in a dish pan and covered it with a baking pan with newspapers on top for extra insulation. Still, I had to buy ice every day. It was messy and inconvenient and expensive, but for me, with my income, it was a short-term problem and I could easily survive.

If you're poor, you don't have the same luxury of eating out and wasting money on small sizes of food. You also don't have the comfort of knowing a brand new fridge will be delivered at the end of the week.

Ice is expensive. And heavy. So if you don't have a car - which I'm assuming you don't, if you're too poor to be able to afford a $50 yard-sale fridge - you have to schlep 10-pound sacks of ice. Heavy, cold ice.

Hope you're not old or disabled or live more than a few blocks from a grocery store! And I hope you don't need any other groceries, because once you have a couple sacks of ice, it's pretty hard to carry anything else.

I also hope you have the spare $3 a day you'll need to buy 2 bags of ice. You could make ice almost for free but HEY, THAT'S RIGHT, you don't have a fridge SUCKA. So that's $3 a day - or about $1000 a year you'll need to support your non-fridge habit. And since the federal poverty level is $22,000 a year for a family of FOUR, I'm sure you'll miss that $1000 pretty badly.

You could have bought about 750-1000 pounds of dried beans with that same amount of money, but that would be ridiculous. You're poor. You don't deserve a fridge!

And if you do want to cook perishable food, you'll have to buy it in small quantities you can use right away. So instead of buying a pound of margarine on sale, you'll have to buy it by the cube at the corner convenience store, because the market doesn't sell it in tiny quantities. It will cost you about as much as a whole pound, maybe more, but that's the way it goes, right?

You'll probably waste a lot of food, too, from spoilage or getting soaked by water from melting ice, food you can ill afford to lose. But waste is part of the American way! Learn to embrace it.

As you can see, I'm being sarcastic. I'm just hiding the fact that I'm so furious at the numbskulls who think poverty is easy, that it doesn't take cleverness and flexibility and constant scrambling to just get by. They sit up in their studios and have their lattes brought to them by production assistants and talk about how poor people have refrigerators and how that makes it almost like not being poor at all. I have two words for them, and they aren't "Bon appetit."

The Art of the Proper Cheese Plate

2011-08-19T19:12:00.000-07:00

Here's the thing with a cheese plate - it's not just about cheese.

Sure, you can slice up some colby and mozzarella and call it a cheese plate, but give me a break. That's cheese on a plate, not a cheese plate.

A cheese plate is a work of art, a fanciful exploration of possibilities. It can go many directions, but to be correct, must remain balanced and pleasing in every aspect. The preparer - for no cooking is involved - must carefully select the cheese plate items for an experience of salty, creamy, sweet, crunchy, fruity, simple and complex.

There must be at least two cheeses, preferably three or more, of good quality and of a variety of flavors and textures. It helps if they aren't all cow's milk. One cow, one goat, one sheep is an interesting mix. Or one creamy, one semi-soft or firm, and one dry and crumbly.

My favorite would be either one brie or blue, one aged cheddar, and some kind of Pecorino or Parmesan.

The classic accompaniments are bread, fruits (fresh or dried) and nuts. Neglect not olives, though. A development I've seen recently is a blob of honey with comb served with a blue cheese. I like that.

At home, I get creative with different types of crackers, hearts of palm, several different olives, little pickles or cornichons, sliced sweet peppers, dabs of hummus. Dried fruits like raisins or apricots, a thinly-sliced apple.

Tonight's cheese plate featured:
Goat cheese gouda
A strong American blue cheese
Triscuits
Lucques Olives
Plain hummus
Hearts of Palm, sliced lengthwise
Walnuts coated with cocoa and chipotle powders
Apple, sliced thin

The lovely thing about making a cheese plate at home is that it turns cleaning out the fridge into an artistic, creative experience. The fridge and cabinets become sources of hidden treasure. Before, it was a just tablespoon of leftover walnuts. Now it is a cheese plate accompaniment! I am a culinary genius!

Another one off the list

2011-08-16T22:13:00.001-07:00

This was not the pizza. This is really good butternut squash pizza.

I go out to lunch on Mondays when I am in the office because I am too lazy to take my lunch. I try to go different places and see what is out there. Culinary adventure. I'm a real Indiana Jones that way.

I checked Yelp and found a pizza place I hadn't been. I found the little place hidden in a non-descript strip mall back off the street. A crap location to be sure.

I was the only customer. I figured Monday lunch, a little late, in a crap location. Ok.

I ordered my food and got an iceberg lettuce salad topped with a those pink unripe tomato slices and a handful of shredded mozzarella cheese. Not so good.

But here's the really bad thing. The old dude that ran the place came over, saw I was reading the newspaper, and began shoving the newspaper aside in an irritated fashion as if he were pissed that I was reading the paper where he needed to sit his salad. I picked up the paper and moved it out of the way. Started eating salad and reading the newspaper again.

Back he came with the pizza plate holder thing and the pizza plate. He again harumphed around as if I were messing with his game. I couldn't believe it. I wanted to have a nice lunch and now some jackass is mad because I dare to do what I want while I'm eating (at a 4-top, which had plenty of room to just put down the food and leave me to my stupid newspaper).

Then he went over and turned on Fox news LOUD despite that Sinatra was also playing loudly. I stuck my fingers in my ears and kept reading. Do you know how hard it is to eat pizza with your fingers stuck in your ears?

Anyway, Fox News was the final straw that convinced me to never go back. It should never be played at mealtimes. In fact, that channel should come with a warning: may induce nausea and vomiting.

Public Service Announcement: Salad

2011-08-14T14:15:00.000-07:00

Vegetable Charlotte - now THAT's what I'm talking about

I am a vegetarian and have been since 1986, yet I can count on one hand the times I have thought "Going out to eat? Yay, I can get a SALAD!" I may not even need any fingers to do that.

It always takes me aback a bit when my non-veg friends muse "Is there anything at Restaurant X you can eat? Oh, they have salad!" as if that solves the problem.

Maybe non-veg people look forward to having a nice salad as a meal out. Then again, their salads are usually topped by grilled shrimp or a breast of chicken.

I suppose it is the idea that vegetarian = vegetables and the fact that many non-vegetarians eat vegetables reluctantly, if at all, and often in the form of salads that gives rise to the belief that vegetarians are big salad eaters.

I'm not. I rarely eat salad. My greens usually turn to bags of pre-compost green liquid in the crisper drawer before I ever get around to eating them.

I do love vegetables. I love 95% of all plant matter (the only exceptions I can think of are bitter melon, starchy big lima beans and...that's pretty much it). I love plant matter prepared creatively as soups, stews, curries, stuffed vegetables, tartes, tortas, with pasta and noodles, on sandwiches, tagines, gratineed, roasted, fried, sauteed, steamed and put on pizza.

I even love salad sometimes, just not as the main course. So - here's the PSA part - if you're choosing a restaurant to take your vegetarian friend to and the only non-meat item they have on the menu is a salad, go somewhere else.

I remembered my password!

2011-08-12T16:02:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted on this blog in almost a year! About eight of those months have been spent occasionally wondering what email and password were connected to this blog, and being unable to remember.

It came back to me! Glory hallelujah.

Who knows if I will start posting again. I still love food, but I have fallen into culinary bad habits like eating cheese plates for dinner (cheese, crackers, olives, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, maybe a couple slices of Tofurkey lunch "meat") and not cooking anything real.

Here's a food pic that cracked me up. I love Baken!

Thanks for stopping by after all this time. I'll be better, I promise!

Hot Carrots!

2010-08-15T17:47:00.001-07:00

I expanded my little urban garden this year.

I grew
4 kinds of tomatoes
Bananas
Green Beans
Herbs (dill, mint, chives, basil)
Strawberries (pretty stupid, considering strawberries are $5 per half flat here)
Tomatillos
And this pretty "Hungarian Carrot" chile plant:

I assumed it would be sweet like orange peppers from the grocery store.

WRONG. I bit off a piece today and it brought tears to my eyes. I actually went over to the mirror to see if I had blisters on my lips and tongue.

I like spicy food - in fact, last Sunday I was making fun of LaurieWrites, Goon Squad Sarah, Suzanne, and Clumber Kim for not being able to handle the "medium" hot guacamole at Rosa Mexicano restaurant. (They seemed to handle it better after a few Bloody Marys).

But this. This was different. I always thought of the Hungarians as mild-mannered people, spice-wise, based, I suppose, on their love of sweet paprika.

They fooled me. The Hungarian Carrot pepper is hotter than a Serrano, not as hot as a Habañero. But plenty hot enough. I have quite a few. Any takers?

The Right Thing At the Right Time

2010-04-19T08:50:00.000-07:00

My friend Grace Davis decided to start a review blog late last year.

More Women (or, as Laurie White dubbed it in a nod to both LOLcats AND radical feminism "MOAR WOMYN") was a short-lived project, as medical issues in Grace's family intervened to make balancing one more project impossible.

More Women didn't pass from this earth without providing an invaluable benefit to me, though. Grace convinced the people at Cuisinart to send me a rice cooker to try out.

I have to admit it took me a while to make friends with the complicatedly named Cuisinart Rice Plus™ Multi-Cooker with Fuzzy Logic Technology.

I was used to my old Zojirushi rice cooker that had one button that you pushed down to start rice cooking. One. That was it. The same button popped up when the rice was done. My kind of operation. A simple rice cooker for simple people.

On the other hand, the Cuisinart Rice Plus™ Multi-Cooker with Fuzzy Logic Technology (I just have to put that in bold because a name that long sort of deserves boldness, doesn't it?) has a big glowing blue screen on front with a bunch of choices of everything from White Rice Soft and White Rice Hard to Risotto and Oatmeal.

For the first few weeks, the instruction manual was my best friend. Then the pages got all stuck together from sitting it on the wet counter and I just had to wing it.

I also have to admit that I never figured out what "Fuzzy Logic Technology" was, either. Onward.

I believe that the Gods must have wanted me to cook a lot of rice, because they not only delivered this rice cooker to me, they also delivered, in the form of a gift from my nutty friend Ish, a 20 pound bag of very fine white rice - Koda Farms Kokuko Rose Heirloom Varietal. It is gorgeous rice, with every grain fat, uniform and perfect.

Did I mention I don't usually eat white rice? And that 20 pounds is a LOT of rice?

Thankfully, I have some rice-loving friends who helped me by taking a lot of it off my hands. It's nice to share.

The cooker claimed it had a short cord, and I was worried because I have a an old, weird kitchen with almost no counter space and even fewer electric outlets, but it reached:

I tried cooking the white rice: perfect.

I tried cooking brown rice and it, too, turned out perfectly. It takes almost 2 hours, which seems really long.

I don't remember the old rice cooker taking that long, but I also lost the little measuring cup for that rice cooker, and the instructions were impossible to remember for brown rice without it, so it had been a long time since I made brown rice in anything but a pan on a stove.

I made risotto. Eh. The machine has a feature where you can first saute, then put the rice in to finish the risotto. I'm too much of a control freak for this. The saute didn't seem hot enough or fast enough (I remember my cooking school chef instructor yelling "Sauté means TO JUMP!") for me, and I like adding the stock bit by bit and stirring on the stovetop, so I could live without this.

My risotto with red wine, carrots and shallots came out tasting good, though. Not as starchy and glistening as I might like, but very edible.

Where this machine shines, though, is scheduling. You can put ingredients in, set a finish time, and it will start cooking at the appropriate time to finish on schedule. How cool is that?

I eat oatmeal every single day but have never made steel-cut oats because I don't like to cook and stir for half an hour before I have had coffee. That's just the way I am.

But now I can put the steel-cut oats and the water in the night before, set a finish time and wake up to breakfast! Yessssss. Now THAT is a feature I can get behind. It will also hold finished food up to 24 hours.

The other thing I like about this is the dark-colored, non-stick cooking pot. The dark color allows the light-colored markings inside the pan to show up so you can see them to add water, and the non-stick is, well, non-stick. After many late-night bouts of scrubbing crusty rice out of the old rice cooker, I really appreciate easy clean-up.

You can also use it to steam veg, make soup etc, but those are features I admit I will probably never take advantage of. A pot on the stove vs. a pot on the counter - it's kind of a toss-up and I can keep a better eye on the stove. But if you are a regular crock-pot user, you might be able to consolidate appliances here to save counter and storage space.

It is easy to use, easy to clean and retails for about $149. It was definitely the right machine at the right time in my life.

I use it pretty much every day because I make a LOT of rice, mostly brown, for my dog Goldie's food and because brown rice is a great thing to eat when you are funemployed and are trying to conserve money.

It would make a great wedding gift or foodie birthday present for somebody you like enough to spend $149 on.

Thanks, Cuisinart. Send more free stuff.

Ooh, a blogger junket! Or: how to do social media PR correctly

2010-04-03T19:46:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, I wended my way down the coast on a sunny, windy day to the Fresh & Easy neighborhood market headquarters in El Segundo.

The Fresh & Easy folks are launching a new line of prepared meals called "Eat Well" and wanted to show them off to me and a bunch of other bloggers. About 25 of us arrived, awash in digital cameras, iPhones and social media credibility.

I have to say that Fresh & Easy gets social media PR the way few companies do. They tweet often, Facebook well and do fun events like a wine-taste-along on Twitter. They also did something amazing for the 20 or so bloggers who were invited to the HQ: they read our blogs.

GASP.

Not just one post. No. These people aren't the type to address invitations to "Dear Mom Blogger." They took the time and sampled posts stretching back several months, so when we showed up on their doorstep, they knew who each of us were and what we were all about.

The Fresh and Easy people:

They have about 150 stores in California, Arizona and Nevada and are spreading faster than crabgrass in a summer lawn.

Their head of "product," John, is, despite his humble attitude, Kind of A Big Deal. He tossed out facts from all of our blogs as he spoke to us. Dang. I was impressed.

This is John:

Seeing fellow bloggers was great. One of my twitter faves,Sweatpants Mom was there and there were even some women who write a blog ALL about Fresh and Easy called The Temple of Fresh and Easy. Way to ensure an invite, ladies. Good work.

I also got to reconnect with Fresh and Easy spokescutie Stephanie, who I met when I covered a Fresh and Easy store opening for the local newspaper.

The Eat Well products we sampled were really, really good. Katie, the chef who creates them and...hm, can't remember her name - Kate? - the woman who magically scales up the recipes by a factor of 1,000 or more were there to explain their process to us.

As bloggers, we could relate to part of their jobs: you can never make everyone happy. If they make their food spicy, people complain that they can't eat it because it is too hot. If they leave the spice out, people say it is bland and boring. Sounds like our comments sections some days.

The meals are all low in fat, sodium and calories and have no trans-fats. They are also very pretty to look at. As they used to say in cooking school "You eat first with your eyes."

They'll be available in stores on April 7, 2010 and yeah, I plan to pick some up every once in a while.

I took the info booklet home to my mom and she immediately began picking out things she wanted to try, too - she was super curious about the mojito shrimp bowl. Since she and Dad eat many, many boxed frozen dinners, I was delighted to hear that she wants to try something fresher and healthier.

The big hit of the night was a spicy tuna sushi square that has a layer of spicy ahi, a layer of roasted edamame and a layer of brown rice. The teriyaki salmon meal also went over especially well.

Me, little Miss Vegetarian, loved the lemon cilantro hummus salad dressing. Super good, zippy and flavorful.

They also do a nice veg and hummus wrap that is healthy and tasty.

If their HQ were closer to home, I would be begging for a job, because it looks like a great company to work for, and you know how I love all things food and grocery.

Full disclosure: In addition to wining and dining us, at the end of the night, we got goodie bags with a bottle of wine, a canvas shopping bag and a store gift certificate.

The Perfect Cream Soda

2009-11-20T09:59:00.000-08:00

I don't drink much soda.

Not Coke, not Pepsi, not 7-Up or Sprite or Root Beer or Ginger Ale. They are just too sugary and not refreshing to me. I stick to unsweetened iced tea and iced coffee instead. (I don't know what it says about me that I prefer bitter over sweet, but let's not go there, m'kay?)

There is only one kind of soda I crave every so often. The smooth sweet deliciousness of cream soda can make me break my soda fast.

I have tried many, many brands, and most are okay, unless they are too sticky-sweet or have a fake vanilla flavor.

The other day, though, I found The Perfect Cream Soda, the One, the Champ. Behold:

Waialua Vanilla Cream Soda from Hawaii. Mmmmmm....It has real, true vanilla flavor and the perfect amount of sweetness from real cane sugar (would you expect anything else from Hawaii?) and a bit of Hawaiian honey.

It is smooth and a nice sunny gold (the photo is a bit dark) and comes with a fetching Hula girl on the label. The carbonation gives it small, champagne-like bubbles, not big nose-ticklers.

I have tried a lot of cream sodas in my life and this one, as Hawaiians might say "No ka oi" - it is number one.

I found it at my local Rocket Fizz shop, a place that carries 400 kinds of soda. You can also order online direct from Waialua Soda Company.

Looking at their site, I see they also offer Lilikoi (passion fruit) soda. I may have to branch out in my soda-drinking adventures.

Desperation Sauce

2009-10-23T13:57:00.001-07:00

Since I am on the West Coast and most of my co-workers are in the Eastern time zone, our calls inevitably end up being right in the middle of the day - usually during the lunch hour.

Thus, one needs something to stave off the hunger demons until lunch can be had. It's usually a Clif or LaraBar, but the other day, in a fit of creative fridge-purging, I brought a cold artichoke.

The only problem was that I forgot the mayo, and an artichoke without sauce is almost not worth eating, a pale green imitation of itself. I had thought I could skip down to the company cafeteria, but time ran short.

With the clock ticking toward the start of the call, I knew I had to think fast. Desperation set in.

I raided the condiment package stash we keep over by the coffee pot.

Mmmm...no mayo, but there was mustard from the sub shop...soy sauce from Chinese takeout...parmesan cheese and those little dried peppers from a pizza run.

A dash of fake maple syrup from the last time we had Frozen Waffle Tuesday, and I was good to go.

(What, you don't have Frozen Waffle Tuesday? A package of Eggos, some syrup, a toaster and suddenly EVERYONE is happy. Try it sometime.)

I mixed it up and voila! Black, salty, tangy, spicy, tasty sauce! Well-balanced. Even piquant. Whatever "piquant" means.

Not bad, if I do say so myself. In fact, if someone served it to me in a restaurant as "dipping sauce," I would have been very, very happy. I don't know if this says more about my terrible palate or about my amazing kitchen alchemy skills. Check it out.

Chestnut Flour - Strangle, Fart, or both?

2009-10-20T13:42:00.000-07:00

I cleaned out the cabinets recently. This brought up some interesting questions:

Why do I buy so many packages of golden raisins when I obviously never actually eat golden raisins?

What does "Best by August 2006" mean, anyway? I mean, it may not be best anymore...but it's still good, right?

Are whole grains helping my health just by sitting there in little storage containers? Because I am sure not cooking and eating them.

I also found a package of chestnut flour that I had purchased at Corti Bros. on my trip to Sacramento in January. I thought I had probably better use it some time this year and looked up recipes on google.

The first one sounded great: Chestnut Flour Gnocchi. Mmmm gnocchi. Then I read the description:

How long until they are cooked? There lies the rub. For after the 20-minutes-or-so recommended...they certainly weren't cooked through. Nor after 40 minutes. At some point a man has go to eat, so when you can't wait anymore, take them out and serve on a hot plate with shreds of cheese and pepper.

These certainly could be called priest-stranglers or strangleanyones.

Ok. Maybe not.

Moving on, I found a recipe for a chestnut flour cake with pine nuts and rosemary...mmmm, intriguing. No mention of strangling here, but this charming warning set me back a bit:

Chestnut flour is completely unknown in some provinces of Italy, and I doubt that anyone's ever tried to introduce it, despite it's being an inexpensive, healthy, and nutritious food suited for the poor and those unafraid of wind*.
Re wind: Chestnuts rival beans in this respect.

Strangle or fart? It's up to you. The second recipe also warns against using chestnut flour that isn't "perfectly fresh." In this case I may be glad that my flour is probably past its "best by" date.

Updated to add
I chose "Fart" since I had a fresh supply of Bean-o on hand and figured I could stave off any ozone-layer-destroying results.

The Migliaccio chestnut cake is odd. It looks a bit...ok, a lot, like something unfortunate.

Both light-textured but very hearty. The oil I drizzled on top STAYED on top, so I poked some holes in the top to get it to ooze down. It seems entirely cooked in some spots and entirely uncooked in others. I can't say I give it a thumbs-up. If I ever get my hands on some more chestnut flour, I will try a different recipe.

Handy Kitchen Hint - Yogurt Cheese

2008-06-17T11:23:00.000-07:00

I don't believe in low-fat yogurt. Or worse, non-fat yogurt. It is a tool of the devil.

The only yogurt that enters my home is Straus Family Creamery Organic Whole Milk Yogurt or its not-so-secret cousin, Trader Joe's European-Style Thick & Creamy Oraganic Whole Milk Yogurt.

As a secret member of the amazing Margaret Fox's (Cafe Beaujolais Cookbook)Lily Gilder's Society, I can't leave my fabulous whole-milk yogurt alone, but must further creamify it by draining off the water.

You can do this any number of ways - tying it in cheesecloth and hanging it from the sink handle (bad in warm weather), or putting it into a cloth in a colander in a bowl in the fridge, but I have a super-easy tool for making labneh, or thick yogurt: the salad spinner.

I line the spinner basket with a clean cloth dishtowel, dump the yogurt in, and let it drain into the bottom of the salad spinner in the fridge. This has the advantage of fitting together well and having a lid.

6 to 12 hours later, yum, there's your yogurt "cheese." Now just add some thin-sliced cucumbers and snipped fresh dill and you have a tasty tzatziki.

More specialized dishes - aceitunas

2008-06-01T19:05:00.001-07:00

My love for olives is unbounded.

Nicoise, picholines, arbequinas, kalamatas, manzanillas...I love them all.

Knowing this, my friend Stacy got me this nifty snack dish at the Oakland Friends of the California Museum sale, an annual treasure bonanza.

The painting on the bottom says "Aceitunas," which means "olives" in Spanish. I had always thought it was "Olivos" because my dad is from Los Olivos, but that means "olive trees."

The larger vase-shaped thing on the side is labeled "Huesos" or "bones" for the pits. Ah, the wonderful economy of Spanish. The annoying hard thing in the middle of a fish is a bone, so why not call an olive pit a bone too? Makes sense to me.

The smaller thing says "palillos" or "little sticks" for used toothpicks. This is a party dish!

I don't have parties very often, but I eat olives all the time. I put them in the dish, toss some crackers and a few nuts and maybe a piece of cheese in, too. Then I have myself a little party and pretend I am watching the sunset in Spain.

Book Review: Grilled Pizzas and Piadinas

2008-05-27T14:44:00.000-07:00

So the nice people at DK Publishing sent me a free copy of "Grilled Pizzas and Piadinas" by Craig W. Priebe and Dianne Jacob to review.

(I wanted to add an image of the cover, but for some evil reason, it won't upload).

First of all, I learned something: a piadina is an Italian sandwich kinda like a pita sandwich, but using a folded-over thin pizza crust as the bread. Looks like yum.

In fact, most of the recipes look like yum, too. Priebe obviously knows his way around a pizza, having owned C.K.'s Grilled Pizza in Chicago for 7 years. His recipes are inventive and fun, running the gamut from traditional (Pizza Margherita) to the exotic (The Venezuelan pizza - chicken and plantain with coconut sauce).

He has perfected a technique that I am sure yields great pizza. He gives dough-making instructions and then has an extensive section of dough-grilling possibilities using a barbecue, panini maker, even a fireplace grill.

Basically you grill the dough, top it, grill some more and then finish in the broiler to cook the toppings just right.

I admit that I have not tried these recipes yet because I am waaay too lazy. The chances of me making dough, making toppings (many of which require pre-cooking, marinating or other steps) making a fire, (first I would have to buy a BBQ) waiting for the right heat, grilling the dough, moving the coals to one side, topping and grilling the pizza, THEN broiling it....It is all too much for me.

Maybe when I have that cute little soiree on the patio for a dozen friends. First I have to build the patio, though.

(To Priebe's rvedit, he does give alternatives to make the technique easier - buying prepared dough, for instance - but you can tell he is really in love with doing it his super special way).

This book would be great for an obsessive barbecue hound, that brother-in-law who is always trying to perfect the most delicious party food. If you get it for him, invite me over. This stuff sounds great.

The necessity of a good asparagus platter

2008-04-20T11:36:00.001-07:00

I have a small kitchen and don't have much specialized cooking equipment or dinnerware. But one thing I always look forward to getting down from the high shelf is the asparagus platter, for that means that spring is here!

The plate is designed for steamed asparagus. The little impressions of asparagus on the plate allow any clinging water to channel away from the spears. And the pocket on the side is for delicious sauce.

My favorite way of making asparagus is to roast it under the broiler or in a hot oven. Coat the spears with a little olive oil, put them under the broiler and turn them as they start to get brown and spotty. Take them out when they have a few brown spots all over. I like the big fat juicy ones.

For sauce I have recently become addicted to mayo with a little Smoked Spanish Paprika mixed in. Ok, a lot of Smoked Spanish Paprika (I use about 1/2 tsp to every 2 tbsp of mayo). It tasted better if you make the sauce a few hours before so the paprika can meld with the mayo. It is also a pretty pink red color.

They don't make it like that anymore

2008-02-12T21:32:00.000-08:00

The other day I was going through the cookbook shelf (already I'm lying - as if I have ONE cookbook shelf) and found this hideous old cookbook that my friend Stacy gave me a long time ago.

I scanned some of the pages and put them up as a flickr set for all to enjoy.

As a preview, just in time for Easter preparations, here is one of my favorites:

That's afternoon tea to you

2008-02-09T20:02:00.000-08:00

Oh, yes, doesn't "high tea" sound elegant and refined?

The problem is that the thing we do where we spend too much money on a pot of tea with finger sandwiches and scones with our lady friends is NOT "high tea." If you're an American, strike "high tea" from your vocabulary because it is unlikely that you will ever have high tea, or at least if you do, you will probably call it "dinner" lest you confuse people.

The thing pictured above? With the impossible beautiful little scones, pot of clotted cream, homemade marmalade and 6000 calories of sweet treats? That's afternoon tea.

I'm just telling you so the waiters at the Ritz don't talk about you behind your back when you use the wrong term. I'm a giver, that's what I am.

Glad we got that straight.

*********
The tea pictured above was at Jin Patisserie in Venice, California (sadly not Venice Italy). They have a lovely calm patio with a squat murmuring fountain and bamboo growing around the edges, quite calming and nice.

The tea included a pot of your choice of 36 (I think) teas, two egg salad finger sandwiches, two little tangerine scones, a mini quiche, a little piece of blueberry bread topped with a chocolate, clotted cream, homemade lemon marmalade, and sweets including green tea, passionfruit, and white chocolate. The sweets were all light and not horribly sugary.

There was so much food that I only could eat part of it there. I hate egg sandwiches so I skipped those. The rest I packed up and ate in the car on the way home. See how I am?

A Tale of Two Trade Show Booths

2008-02-06T06:05:00.000-08:00

While we’re on the subject of drinks I tried at the
NASFT Fancy Food Show, I want to mention other two non-alcoholic beverages I tried besides my beloved Dry Soda.

Vignette Wine Country Soda is sweetened only with wine grape juice and comes in Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Rosé flavors. The flavor is not at all like wine, but rather a refreshing, fruity, but not overly sweet soda.

My friends and I walked up to the booth, which was small and out of the way, not one of those big glossy monsters on the end of a aisle.

We were greeted by the founder’s brother, who, after giving us tastes of the product, talked warmly and effusively about Vignette. I could just feel the pride and excitement he had for the business. He didn't care who WE were - he cared that he had a product he loved.

We complimented the flavor and the labeling, and he thanked us and gave us promotional materials. It was a short, simple trade-show encounter, but we left impressed by both the product and by the guy we had talked to.

Contrast that with another non-alcoholic beverage, Bionade, which is made in Germany.

The product was tasty, another not-too-sweet bubbly beverage. Their booth was big and on the end of an aisle. They had such impressive-looking packaging, all modern and cool, and they were serving their tastes in screen-printed glasses, not plastic cups.

But they wouldn’t talk to me, wouldn’t interact with me. At first I thought the guy couldn’t speak English (a problem at a few of the French and Italian booths) but then I thought “Hey! Doesn’t everybody in Germany speak pretty good English?” And if they don’t, why are they sending them to rep their product in San Diego?

I know I’m not a trade-show big fish, but being a rep at a trade show is kind of like being a politician. You should really try to be at least polite and efficient with everyone because you never know who you are dealing with. It's a trade show fergoodnesssake, so put your game face on.

And there was another booth that I won't even mention by name. Let's just say they were selling tea products. The problem is that they wanted to control their image so tightly that, when they found out I write about food, they freaked out a bit. Um, nameless tea company - consider your image controlled. Thx.

My small-fish recommendation - If you want some flavorful, non-alcoholic beverages made by super nice people for your next event or for your restaurant, check out Dry Soda or Vignette Wine Country Soda. Those are my recommendations and I’m sticking to them.

Dry Soda

2008-02-01T14:30:00.000-08:00

My very favorite new product from the NASFT Fancy Food Show in San Diego a couple weeks ago was Dry Soda.

Not only did they have one of the most stylish booths, their product rocked my tastebuds like a hurricane.

Let me state for the record: I want to have a long-term, meaningful relationship with Dry Soda. I want to have a Dry Soda fountain in my house. I want to have a Dry Soda megachurch with 5,000 members.

Did I mention that I never drink soda? If ever ordered a soda when out with friends, all conversation at the table would stop.

But this is different...better.

It is "lightly sweetened." About 50 calories a pop, instead of 120 for your average carbonated beverage. In other words, it isn't like drinking candy.

The flavors are different, too - kumquat, lavender, lemongrass, rhubarb. Did I hear you making gagging sounds? Shut up! They're GOOD. Well, I didn't try the lavender because I have a strong aversion to All Things Lavender, but the other flavors made my mouth very, very happy.

It is available at BevMo, but I am going to start nagging more places around here to carry it because it is such a delightful, adult-style beverage.

Added bonus: their packaging rocks, too.

Swiss Chard and Tomato Casserole

2007-10-28T19:45:00.000-07:00

I buy a lot of Swiss Chard because it is so pretty. The big green leaves and the colorful stems - the rainbow kind is especially festive.

Then I don't know what to do with it. There is only so much pasta fazool one girl can eat, and I don't really like it by itself.

I found a recipe for Swiss Chard, Tomato and Cheese casserole on Epicurious.com and thought the late-summer combination of big ripe tomatoes and rainbow chard would be perfect.

I should have chosen slightly less-ripe tomatoes than I did, because it is hard to make nice, neat slices out of large soft tomatoes. Live and learn.

This is also one of those recipes that takes every pot and pan in the house - wash the chard, stem and chop it, wilt it, saute onions and peppers, shred cheese, put it all in a baking dish...your mileage may vary, but my kitchen looked like a disaster area.

The results were really good, if a little too cheesy for my taste. Next time I'll cut back and I think it will be just as tasty.

What Am I Eating?

2007-09-11T12:52:00.001-07:00

I am serious. I really DON'T know what I am eating.

I had lunch at Jay Bharat on Pioneer Blvd. in Artesia, CA - the street known as "Little India." After lunch I decided to buy a snack and this is what I ended up with.

It is spicy puffed rice and nuts. I remember it had "Poha" in the name, which I have found means "flattened rice." But there was another word that began with P in the name, and it is not printed on the packaging.

All I know is that it is wonderful and addictive. I am eating it just like it is, out of hand. Should I be doing something else with it?

Book Review: Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking

2007-09-03T07:55:00.000-07:00

Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking
Masaharu Morimoto
DK Publishing 2007
272 pp, hardbound, $40 US, $50 Canada

Everything about this book is as beautiful and stylish as you would expect from something connected to Iron Chef Japanese, Masaharu Morimoto.

The plentiful photos, the clever printing on the cover, the typeface - all of it makes a gorgeous, impressive package that would make a great gift for a foodie in your life.

Morimoto explains his philosophy of food and shows the exceptional attention to detail that has made him world-famous.

His section on sushi should be a must-read for any American commits the trifecta of sushi faux pas - mixing wasabi into the soy sauce, dunking the rice into the resulting mixture and letting it soak.

This is more of a cook's book than a cookbook, however. Many of the explanations - preparing salmon roe, milling sushi rice - are for procedures that even the most obsessive home cook is unlikely to try.

The recipes given rely on ingredients that most people outside of Asia will have a hard time finding - lotus leaves, sweetfish liver, Japanese soy lecithin sheets. Yuzu is a common ingredient, and even here is southern California with our plentiful Asian population, I only see that fruit on rare occasions.

Vegetarians won't have much luck finding anything to eat in here. Even one of the ice creams has squid (Squid Strawberry Ice Cream) in it.

This is a book for those who love Morimoto, who want to know more about East-West fusion gourmet cuisine, or who have dined with Morimoto and who want to relive the experience through his words and photos.

Lazy Girl's Lunch

2007-01-01T18:08:00.000-08:00

I used to call this "canned stew" but it only confused people. Read the recipe and you will see why.

This pairs well with cornbread and a handful of shredded cheese.

Lazy Girl's Lunch

1 onion, diced
Coupla cloves of garlic, cut into small chunks
Oil
2 carrots, if you are feeling enthusiastic, diced
Chili powder, salt and cumin to taste
1 can kidney beans, drained
1 can garbanzo beans, drained
1 can corn kernels, drained
1 can diced tomatoes

Saute the onion in the oil for about 5 minutes - enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan generously. If you are using the carrots, throw them in and saute them for a while, too - maybe 5 minutes or while you are opening all the cans. Toss in the spices and saute for 2 minutes or so.

Add all the cans of ingredients. Bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer until most of the liquid is gone.

Voila. Now you have enough lunch for several good-sized meals, plus some extra to give to a friend.

Thanksgiving Faves and Pans

2006-11-23T19:50:00.000-08:00

I hope your Thanksgiving went well. Mine was a bit odd - no traditional feast. That is okay, because here is my family's usual menu:

Turkey (I'm a vegetarian)
Stuffing with raisins in it (why, God, why?)
Canned julienned green beans with canned cream of mushroom soup and Durkee canned onions (what did green beans ever do to my mom to deserve this?)
Mashed potatoes. I am okay with this.
Sweet potatoes from a can (I am not okay with this)
Brown and serve rolls (all right, I'll give you that).
Canned cranberry sauce with the little can lines in (ditto)
Jello ribbon salad - a layer of green, a layer of yellow mixed with mayo and canned pineapple (no, I am not making this up) and a layer of red. Pretty. But no.
Pumpkin pie from frozen (ick)
Apple pie from frozen (I am not a big pie fan)

Sorry to sound like a food snob, but let's face it, I am. If I lived in something larger than 500 square feet, I would invite people over here.

I wonder what next year will bring.

I am very sorry

2006-09-24T21:20:00.000-07:00

I made my favorite curried peas and eggplant dish. I love it because it is very simple - chop up the eggplant and toss it and the peas in a pot, add some stock, spices, butter and cook until the liquid is gone.

The recipe calls for a couple whole chiles. I picked a couple jalapenos off my plant and tossed them in. At the end of cooking, you remove them.

Except I didn't.

Blogging and eating, I ate one of the very hot, late-season jalapenos.

I am very, very sorry.

Time flies!

2006-07-08T15:24:00.000-07:00

Three months since I posted! THAT doesn't seem quite right. But I have been subsisting on frozen pizzas and steamed veg, so I haven't felt like my membership in the food blog world was up-to-date.

Why the hiatus? I dunno. Lazy. I live by myself, cook for myself...not that inspiring.

I do have a discovery, completely by accident - cherry tomato raisins!

This requires tiny cherry tomatoes (I used the yellow ones), a hot place, and a ventilated surface.

I had some little yellow cherry tomatoes sitting in a colander in a single layer in my kitchen, which gets very hot in the afternoons. After a few days, I noticed some beginning to shrivel and was about to throw them out when I thought "What the heck?" and stuck one in my mouth.

Pure sweet concentrated tomato heaven. Kind of like sun dried tomatoes, only a little softer and sweeter.

Give it a try. I would post a photo but Mr. Snackish is busy taking guitar pictures, so I don't have the camera today.

Cara Cara, the pink orange

2006-03-25T10:39:00.000-08:00

These Cara Cara oranges are beginning to appear at Farmer's Markets here in Southern California. They are sweeter and less citrusy than other oranges, and their flesh can range from a medium to a dark reddish orange. I'm not a big fan of regular oranges, but I love these.

Melissa's Produce has the whole scoop on where they came from, how to pick a good one, and nutritional values.

Rainy Day Roasting

2006-02-18T19:13:00.000-08:00

After a week with temperatures in the 80s and 90s (yep, that's what I said), it suddenly got cold and rainy here just in time for the weekend.

So today we take on another much-hated vegetable - turnips! The key is to buy small turnips, not those softball-sized purple and white jobs.

I had a bunch of pretty white Japanese turnips in the fridge just waiting for the weather to turn. I had thought of a recipe that worked out stunningly a few weeks ago and that I wanted to try again, and it involves roasting, which heats up the house - a win-win situation.

Roasted Turnips with Honey Butter
1 bunch of turnips, the smaller the better, by no means over 2 1/2 inches in diameter.
3 Tbsp butter, more or less
1 Tbsp honey, the darker the better

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and get out a big baking sheet.

Remove the tops from the turnips. If they are tiny and lovely, reserve them to make a vitamin-packed turnip greens recipe with. If they are large and spiny, put them in your greenwaste or compost container. If your city does not provide a greenwase container, call them and ask why.

Peel the turnips, even if they are tiny. Yes, you must. Because I have tried it both ways and it only works well with peeled ones, that is why. If they are unpeeled, they are too moist and get mushy.

If the turnips are larger, cut them in half and each half into four wedges. If they are small, just cut them into about 1 inch chunks.

Melt the butter and honey together in a saucepan over low heat. Add the turnips and toss to coat, then spread in one layer on a baking sheet. Bake at 400 degrees for 40 minutes or so, turning every 15 minutes or when you remember. When they are done, they will be golden brown with some darker brown spots.

Try not to eat them all yourself. I did.

Easy to Love

2006-02-17T16:05:00.000-08:00

John and Kira's Chocolates

Mr. Snackish did good for Valentine's Day, and since I love what he sent me so much I thought I would tell y'all about it in case you are in a gift-giving or self-treating mood.

At about 10 a.m. on Valentine's Day I got a call from Roger the security guard at work (the nice morning guy, not the kinda trippy afternoon guy) telling me there was a package for me.

"Is it heavy?" I said, thinking of the copier paper order.

"Oh, no, Miss Sue," said Roger (he has the most charming somewhere-in-the-Pacific accent), "I think this box has gooooodies in it."

And right he was. A nice wooden box, tied with a pretty dark red mesh ribbon, filled with chocolate squares from John and Kira's Chocolates. (I must say, though, that picture of whom I assume is John on the front page of the website is rather ominous and scary. It looks like he might have been sampling the coffee-whisky mixture on picture day.)

Like old-fashioned chocolates, the squares are marked with symbols and there is a little map to the flavors inside the box. The flavors include bergamot, lavender, ginger, coffee-whiskey, raspberry, strawberry and mint.

They are all good, even the lavender, which is a flavor I normally abhor in food (and in anything else for that matter).

They are not too strong, not too sweet, lovely and creamy. I am holding myself back with great difficulty from eating more than two per day.

Thank you, Mr. S. You are a champion among men.

Vegan?

2006-02-10T21:31:00.000-08:00

I took a disappointing cooking class the other night. Why?

Two words: vegan cheese.

The class was a hands-on vegan demo, led by Ann Gentry of the very popular Real Food Daily vegan organic restaurants in Los Angeles.

That's Ann on the left

I was not afraid - as a vegetarian of two decades, I am fully conversant with vegetarian/vegan food and it doesn't seem at all odd to me.

My classmates, about 20 eager would-be cooks, were very welcoming and congenial, which is far more than I can say for most people in the nouveau riche my-new-facelift-is-better-than-your-new-facelift Westlake Village area.

The hands-on part of the class was kinda fun. We cleaned, chopped, sliced and diced (though most people in class, I am sorry to say, had scary knife skills) while our faithful helpers from the cooking school did the dishes. All good.

But when we tasted the dishes a pall fell over the class. They were uniformly horrible. The tempeh and potato salad was sharp and pointy from too much vinegar, the barley salad was mooshy and tasteless. The broccoli ( I saw it spelled "brocli" at Farmer's Market the other day and am tempted to adopt that spelling) soup was beyond boring, with fibrous bits of brocli throughout

The lasagna had tough noodles and undercooked veggies as well as that damned salty-yuk so-called vegan cheese. Why are vegans possessed to try and copy foods like cheese that are all but impossible to copy?

To top it off, the restaurant's famous chocolate chip cookie (some kind of non-wheat flour - I don't care enough to look up the recipe, but it contains maple syrup, etc) was bitter and inedible. A chocolate chip cookie that I could not eat?!? Now, that IS shocking.

What is so weird to me is that Suzanne Goin's (see previous post) curried pea soup was vegan and her salad could have been vegan without the parmesan chunks, and both dishes were perfect and glorious.

Is wearing a culinary hair shirt part of being a vegan? Just wondering. Hit me with the comments.

Goin to town

2006-02-06T20:34:00.000-08:00

About 45 food lovers met to worship at the altar of genius chef Suzanne Goin Wednesday night at Let's Get Cookin' in Westlake Village, California.

We were packed into the demo kitchen area of the combination cooking school/gourmet shop/bookstore almost cheek-to-cheek, so to speak.

The reason for the crowd was that Goin is the chef/part-owner of two well-respected - one might even say beloved - restaurants in Los Angeles, Lucques and the trend-setting small-plate place, A.O.C.

She was in town selling her new cookbook "Sunday Suppers at Lucques,"
a collection of recipes based on the restaurant's weekly prix fixe three-course meals that change with the seasons, as all good menus should.

Curried Pea Soup

Goin was a bit reserved at first, maybe nervous, launching into a recitation of the steps she was performing to cook the demo meal, but warmed up as the audience relaxed and began tossing out questions.

Because she had said her first cooking job was as a pastry assistant at Los Angeles (now-defunct) institution Ma Maison, I asked "When you started out, did you want to be a pastry chef?"

The question launched an extended job history - a student internship followed by a job at Ma Maison at 17, Al Forno in Rhode Island during her years studying history at Brown University, a stint at Chez Panisse, time in France, first at an awful restaurant whose owner assumed she only knew how to cook hamburgers because she was an American, then a thankful escape to the temple of cuisine L'Arpege.

Blood orange, arugula and date salad

I don't know how old Goin is, but doing the math, she may be closer to 40 than she appears - she has the kind of understated upper-class beauty that has a certain timelessness.

For someone who loves food as much as she does and it is obvious from the confident, attentive way she moves in the kitchen that she loves food, she is very thin. She explained her weight when someone asked, saying that she rarely eats meals because she needs to taste things at work all the time, and truly tasting food when you are full is difficult and "kind of gross."

Her demo meal was like a poem to Spring. She made:
Curried english pea soup with creme fraiche and mint
Salad of arugula, blood orange slices, dates, thick-sliced parmesan pieces and almonds with a toasted almond oil dressing
Saffron chicken with parmesan pudding and snap peas, green onions and pea shoots
Meyer lemon tart with a thin layer of chocolate

It was all truly, truly good. I especially loved the salad, and the Meyer Lemon Tart, which had more butter in it than one would care to divulge in public.

As a special celebrity-spotting bonus, a lovely young actress, Camilla Belle, attended the class with her mom. It wasn't like she was standing up and saying "I'm a movie star," - most of us wouldn't have noticed her, but a crew from the New York Times was there doing a feature on her, so the camera action got a little intense at times.

Belle starred in the kind of creepy "Ballad of Jack and Rose" with Daniel Day Lewis last year and will play the lead in the soon-to-be-released remake of "When a Stranger Calls."

Saffron Chicken. Not vegetarian, but Mr. Snackish gave it his thumbs-up

I'm going to be a Mommy!

2006-02-04T22:54:00.000-08:00

A big shoutout to the Evil Fruit Lord - check out my banana crop. I am so excited to live in a banana-growing microclimate so uncommon in the United States.

I didn't do anything to make this happen - the flower just spontaneously appeared one day, then the petals started spreading out, then oozing sap, then falling off to reveal...tiny bananas!

I don't know what variety this is. Probably Cavendish. I looked up banana gestational periods and they vary wildly, but Cavendish (supermarket bananas) is one of the shortest at 6 to 8 months.

If I am lucky, I will be slicing homegrown bananas on my cereal by September.

p.s. Evil Fruit Lord - why don't I have access to your site anymore? Is it something I said?

I promise this is the end of the Fancy Food Show

2006-02-03T21:37:00.000-08:00

I can't write more about the NASFT Fancy Food Show after this because I am in serious blogging trouble - I have a new post, complete with photos, ready to write, but I haven't finished the previous subject yet. So let's put an end to the Trade Show of My Dreams with a post about one of my favorite foods: cheese.

In a word: farmhouse cheddar.

My first favorite Farmhouse (why a farmhouse? Maybe because it sounds better than "Factory, but a rather small cozy factory") Cheddar was from the Fiscalinis of Modesto. They make a bandage-wrapped cheddar that is out of this world, despite the fact that "bandage-wrapped" conjures some up some rather unfortunate images in my brain. The cheese itself is white (why Americans insist on Safety-orange cheddar is beyond me), flaky and tangy andjust the best. I could eat this cheese al day long. They also make an interesting, nutty cheese called "San Joaquin Gold" that is very fine, too.

Grafton Village Cheese Company makes a 7 year old (ok, maybe it was 6 or 8, things were a little fuzzy at this point) cheddar that rocked me back on my heels, it was so good. A blast of pure cheddar power. This is a great cheese to eat when you want to KNOW you are eating cheese - this is a flavor you can't ignore. If you ever get the itch to send me a gift basket, make sure it has a chunk of this cheese in it. You can skip the beef log, thank you very much.

And then there was blue. I didn't taste much blue cheese at the show, but I am glad I stopped by the Rogue Creamery booth. Their Rogue River Blue and Oregon Blue Vein cheeses were as fine as any blues as I have ever tasted. Their highly-touted Smokey Blue, smoked over hazelnut shells, was a bit much for me, but if you are a member of the Lily Gilders Society, this may be the over-the-top flavor bomb for you.

One last crispy tidbit: if you need something to eat with your cheese, strongly consider picking up some E.A.T. flat breads from Eli Zabar. .I loved the Parmesan and Not-Quite-A-Chef Stacy swears by the cinnamon pecan (or was it the cinnamon raisin?) crisps. Really a rocking product. Everything a little tasty crackery thing should be. I could eat these every day, except that they are rather expensive.

All of the recommendations in these past zillion posts about the NASFT Fancy Food Show come from the merit of the products, not from any commercial endorsement deal. Though if you have a product and need a shill I might consider it...

Fancy Food Show Part 4- Chocolate

2006-01-26T21:14:00.000-08:00

Only two more posts about the Fancy Food Show, then I will shut up about it. I am sorry about the serious lack of photos, but no photos were allowed on the show floor. Of course, no wheeled carts were allowed, and no removing samples from the premises, but we saw plenty of both those things going on...in fact I just finished the last of my chocolate samples tonight.

I tasted some BAD chocolate, let me tell you. There are a lot of people out there who seem to think "Hey, if that Scharffenberger dude can make chocolate, so can I!" Wrong. Those Scharffen Berger guys were chocolate geniuses, and most people aren't. Put down the cacao beans and step away from the grinder.

But the good news is I tasted some stunning chocolates, too. Godiva and Valrhona were not among them - I passed by both booths, sated by five hours of sampling other things. Besides, I already KNEW how they tasted.

My favorite for both flavor AND packaging was the lovely Mariebelle. . The Aztec Dark hot chocolate was unbelievably rich, even when made with just water, not milk. Perfect chocolate flavor balance. I think this will be my mail-order gift of choice for a long time to come.

The beautiful almost-Tiffany blue and brown tins don't hurt, either.

Venchi Chocolates come in some interesting flavors like Spicy Chili Pepper and Absinthe. The Spicy Chili is spicy indeed, and the Absinthe has a unique, intriguing fennel-like flavor. Their chocolate is very good, and the odd flavors just added to the fun. I tried their 85% cacao Cuor di Cacao, which I probably wouldn't eat every day, but for a real cacao lover, it just might do the trick. Also full of those antioxidants everyone is always talking about.

Fancy Food Show Part 3 - Olives

2006-01-25T21:13:00.000-08:00

I was surprised to find not a single olive to knock my socks off at the Fancy Food Show. None were truly awful (unlike some of the chocolate I tasted) but nothing stood out as something super-special.

I guess I will stick to my old standbys, like the superb Divina Mt. Athos Red Pepper Stuffed olives.

I did, however, taste two great olive oils. I have always been partial to Spanish olive oils over the Italian ones, and the Valderrama Olive Oil did not disappoint. The suave Spanish sales guy (see coffee post below) explained that these oils were extracted within 45 minutes of picking to maintain all the fresh olive flavors. They sell a variety of single-varietal oils, and the three I tasted - arbequina, hojiblanca and something else - were all wonderful, each with its own flavor profile.

I didn't realize our friends down under were getting into the olive oil market but it figures - Australia has a nice Mediterranean climate, just like California, so it is only natural that they should want to grow olives as well as wine grapes.

I tasted some really fine oils from Silvertree of New South Wales. Like Valderrama, they take pride in processing the oils soon after picking. These oils tasted fresh, green, grassy and full of life. They were significantly different than either Italian or Spanish olive oils, a whole different animal. I liked them a great deal and look forward to trying more Aussie olive oils.

Fancy Food Show Part 2 - Coffee

2006-01-24T19:26:00.000-08:00

One thing I learned at the Fancy Food Show - If I ever go on a culinary vacation, I'm not going to France. I'm not going to NYC. I'm going to Spain.

The best food I tasted was from Spain, but that was only part of it.

Adding to the pleasure was meeting the suave men who were the sales reps. When was the last time you met a suave guy in the United States? Funny, yes, friendly, yes - but suave? Not since Cary Grant.

The Fancy Food Show was full of Spanish men who not only knew their products, but who also had the ability to make a gal suddenly begin to feel the estrogen flowing through her veins or wherever estrogen flows...all the while describing the wonders of single-varietal olive oil. EVOO never sounded so good.

Ahem. Back to the products. Is it hot in here, or is it just me?

Let's talk coffee first because of its place in my heart and my life. I go through a couple quarts a day, so I should know my beans. Lately I have been roasting my own, but that is for another post.

The best coffee I tasted, hands down, was Tarrazu Sustainable Coffee . My new best friend Javier brewed me a cup of the smoothest espresso I had ever tasted while laying that warm Spanish charm on me and Chef Shirley. At the end of the day, she and I agreed this was one of our favorite products at the show, and that Javier was one of our favorite men of the past 20 years or so.

I also loved the people over at Gavina Coffee . I got so busy talking to Jose Gavina about roasting coffee that I forgot to taste his, but he clearly had a passion and love for his craft. I was impressed that someone who had been in the coffee business his whole life still had such excitement about it and generosity enough to talk to me for so long at such a busy show.

I had another fine cup of espresso over at 30 West Coffee. Their website My Best Coffee is rather undeveloped, but they are worth keeping an eye out for. Good stuff.

I won't tell you about all the bad coffee I drank, mostly because I didn't take brochures or keep notes on the stuff I didn't like. But be assured I did choke a lot of it down because I care about my readers and wanted to give them valuable information. I'm a giver, that's what I am.

The Fancy Food Show

2006-01-23T18:04:00.000-08:00

I just got back from a long day at the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco. Did I enjoy it? Let's just say it's a good thing I wore my fat pants.

The Fancy Food Show is a trade show with several million exhibitors that covers several thousand acres in San Francisco. Ok, I exaggerate, but only slightly. I think the real tally is (let me check my show directory) 1,100 exhibitors and 80,000 products.

My friends Chef Shirley and Not-Quite-a-Chef-But-Damn-Near-Indespensable-to-a-Very-Fine-Restaurant-Anyway Stacy and I paid our $35, put on our comfy shoes, and hit the show, ready to see all the fancy food world held for us.

The first question we had to answer was "What makes food 'fancy'"? It seems that fancy food is that which you are more likely to find when you are on vacation at the quaint little tourist gourmet shop that at the Safeway, but even that definition could be stretched.

The show is open to the trade only, by which they mean anyone who will pay the entry fee. No, I am sure the requirements are stricter than that. Or not. Let's just say I didn't see many people getting stopped at the door and quizzed about their culinary credentials.

There are samples of everything, which, in my mind, puts this in the pantheon of trade shows. It sure beats the hell out of those printing trade shows I used to attend, where you would end up with a goody bag full of pens that quit working after two weeks and beautiful posters that said things like "The Next Wave in Kiss-Cut Labels!" on them. No, here you could sample wines, cheeses, caviar, prosciutto, tea, chocolate, jam, olives, and on and on.

To narrow down the field, I tried to stick to sampling only chocolate, coffee, olives and cheese, but even that was overwhelming. I wanted to sample everything, but by hour five was wearing out. You know when you pass the Valrhona chocolate samples and say "Eh, I don't feel like it," that it is probably time to head home.

In coming days I will post information about some of my favorite finds. I can't wait to get my hands on some of the chocolates and cheeses I tried. Until I can place orders online, I will be stuffing my face with the samples I brought home.

There are Fancy Foods shows coming up in Chicago in May and in NYC in July. Mark your calendars and invest in some loose-fitting clothing. You're going to need it.

Hating what is good for you

2006-01-02T20:17:00.000-08:00

What is your most hated food? For some reason, certain vegetables seem to top most people's lists. Lima beans, beets and brussels sprouts are some of the foods with the highest yuk factor.

Not for me, of course. I save my bile for abominations like Cool Whip, that plastic orange Nacho cheese goop and Jell-O with chunks of things embedded in it (celery does not go with ANY flavor of Jell-o, people. Nuts do not belong in Jell-O. Meat or fish products DO NOT BELONG IN JELL-O. (Note to PETA people: yes, I know what Jell-O is made of).

I used to hate lima beans, but then I met a guy at Farmer's Market who was selling shelled zip-locs full of tiny, fresh green limas. Sauteed with a little butter, some green onion rings and a dash of salt and pepper, they made me a convert to the Lima Bean cause.

I have loved beets and brussels sprouts ever since I was a kid. Weird, I know. And I never liked steaks or hamburgers. I guess I am a natural-born vegetarian.

I really want to know: hit me in the comments section with your three least-favorite foods. I will post results Jan. 15.

Sweetnicks has a new meme: ARF Tuesdays. Anti-oxidant Rich Food Tuesdays. Here's the rules: Pick a high-anti-oxidant fruit or veg, cook it up on a Tuesday, post, and let her know.

Here is my first contribution - my favorite recipe to fool brussels sprout haters. It is modified from Margaret Fox's small but mighty book "Cafe Beaujolais."

Brussels Shreds
Brussels Sprouts
Butter
Lemon juice
Grated Parmesan Cheese

Trim the bottoms off the brussels sprouts and remove the outer, loose leaves and any buggy parts (brussels sprouts attract aphids like computer keyboards attract spilled coffee).

Cut the sprouts in half through the stem. Lay them flat side down, and using your best knife skills and a good, sharp knife, slice them into very fine shreds starting at the top (parallel to the root) and working your way down.

Melt enough butter to coat a non-stick frying pan over medium heat. Throw in the brussels sprout shreds, toss a bit, squeeze a little lemon juice over, and slam a lid on for about 3 minutes. Remove the lid, toss on some grated parmesan, and put the lid back on for another three minutes or so.

This makes the sprouts tasty but so un-sprout like that your victims - I mean guests - may not recognize what they are eating. The bitter flavors that people hate are less concentrated, and they don't have that mooshy texture that sprouts get when you cook them long enough so that the middle is soft.

Creative Granola

2006-01-01T14:42:00.000-08:00

Sure, you can buy granola. But it always has either too little of what you like or too much of what you don't like. Making granola gives you a chance to mix and match your favorite ingredients.

Here's my recipe:

4 cups old fashioned oats (not quick-cooking)
1/2 cup light vegetable oil
1/3 cup honey
1 cup chopped raw nuts (sometimes I use pecans, sometimes almonds or cashews)
2 tsp ground cinnamon. Lots of cinnamon is key to making this taste great.
Optional: 2 Tbsp. each sesame and flax seeds for crunchy goodness
1 cup dried fruit or dried fruit pieces (usually cranberries but sometimes raisins, cherries, strawberries or blueberries)
1 cup unsweetened toasted coconut strips or shredded coconut

Mix the oats, nuts and cinnamon in a large bowl. Mix honey and oil together and pour over oat mixture, stirring. Don't worry if it clumps up - when it is in the oven, the clumps will melt in the heat.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Spread oat mixture on a large baking sheet and cook for an hour, stirring every 15 minutes or so. If your coconut is raw, you can put it in about 15 minutes before the granola is done so it cooks with the other ingredients.

Remove from oven, add dried fruit (and coconut if you haven't put it in already). Voila. Granola how you like it. It makes a good snack as well as a breakfast cereal.

The truth about junk food

2005-12-30T18:26:00.000-08:00

Clearly, some time ago makers and consumers of American junk food passed jointly through some kind of sensibility barrier in the endless quest for new taste sensations. Now they are a little like those desperate junkies who have tried every known drug and are finally reduced to mainlining toilet-bowl cleanser in an effort to get still higher.

-Bill Bryson

My new neighborhood

2005-12-22T20:58:00.000-08:00

In addition to a cool new stove (literally - it has no door springs, so everything takes twice as long to bake. But the kitchen is nice and warm) - I live in a cool new neighborhood.

One of the great things about living here is that it is heavily Latino, almost Mexico norte. For instance, we have street food vendors, something that NEVER happened when I lived in gringo-land on the other end of the county.

On Thursdays we have the tamale man. Unfortunately I have missed every visit so far, but I am living in hope. Yes, I know about the lard. I love tamales so much I may have to pretend it doesn't exist.

And last weekend, on a cold Sunday, I heard a bicycle horn honking up and down the street. Paletas? I wondered. But it seemed too cold and grey for ice cream bars.

I walked out to see. Elotes! A small woman in a plastic rain poncho was pushing a cart that had a pot of hot water on it. If you wanted, she would use tongs to pull out a large ear of corn on the cob and then add the condiments you like to it, all for $1.25.

Perhaps you are thinking of corn on the cob with butter and salt. Change your thinking, my friend.

I was unfortunately not hungry, but my neighbor got the works - first, a thick smear of mayonnaise. Then a container full of crumbled salty cotija cheese was flipped open and the cheese tossed in a flurry over the mayo.

THEN a drizzle of liquid margarine. Were we done yet? Hell, no. A quick spritz of lime juice from a sprayer bottle and a hot red coating of chile powder completed the masterpiece.

Now, don't you wish you lived in Mexico norte? A treat like that, eaten in your driveway on a cold Sunday afternoon, makes life worth living.

Como Mexico, no hay dos!

Deepest apologies

2005-12-05T21:59:00.000-08:00

Sorry for my extended absence. I have been in the process of moving, and you know how that is.

The good news is that I am the proud owner....er renter....of a genuine 1940's O'Keefe and Merritt stove with the griddle in the middle.

It looks like this:

Except not quite that clean or shiny.

It also has the added little problem of having no door springs so baking takes, oh, twice as long. But the Good Landlord promised to fix that soon. I hope so. It is Christmas cookie season!

In any case, I am delighted to have the same stove we had when I was a kid right in my own kitchen. Now I can do like my dad did - come home from work, prop the stove door open, warm my feet with the pilot light and eat saltines and cheese and pieces of oily smoked bonito fish sliced off with my pocket knife. Maybe I won't actually do it - but that stove sure brings back those good memories.

Desserts with Nick Malgieri

2005-11-17T21:47:00.000-08:00

Let's Get Cookin' gourmet store in Westlake Village is the center of a cooking subculture. It doesn't look like much from the outside - small, with windows crowded with cook books and cooking supplies - but inside it opens up into a surprisingly large yet snug shop with a nice demo kitchen in the back.

So there are always passionate cooks stopping by to pick up some gadget or cookbook they need, or to take cooking classes. I love going there because I am among my Tribe. I know no one will think I am insane for needing a green bean slicer, a Le Creuset pan shaped like a red bell pepper, and some balsamic vinegar priced like a fine Cabernet.

There is desk space for about 25 class members. During the day and on weekends, they offer hands-on classes. During the evenings, there are demonstration classes by famous and semi-famous chefs and authors. The walls are lined with photos of the unflappable owner, Phyllis Vaccarelli, with some of the biggest names in cooking today and in the past. I always love to see Julia Child smiling down at me from that wall.

On Nov. 17, 2005 cookbook author and cooking teacher Nick Malgieri taught a dessert class. His most recent book is A Baker's Tour: Nick Malgieri's Favorite Baking Recipes from Around the World."

He prepared, from scratch, 5 recipes, including a Norwegian Princess Cake, complete with bubble-gum pink marzipan (again from scratch) topping. Pretty impressive for a 2 1/2 hour class.

Malgieri is not a flashy teacher - think of him as the anti-Emeril. But he makes up for in substance what he lacks in showmanship. He has the sort of calm, measured demeanor you expect from someone who has the patience to be a great baker. Cooks can be wild and flighty, but bakers had better have their ingredients in order.

His talk was sprinkled with useful tips and he even took time during the break to give a student a long description of how to make the caramel topping for Dobosh torte, complete with diagrams. (One hint: place the caramel layer on a bed of granulated sugar, which acts like tiny ball bearings, so you can scoot it around easily.)

Princess Cream Cake

The five things he made were a caramelized Swiss nut torte, the aforementioned Princess Cream Cake, A Viennese Bishop Torte, Torta Caprese Bianca and Jan Hagel Shortbread Cookies.

The Torta Caprese Bianca was not made with goat cheese (as the name "Caprese usually suggests), but rather was from the isle of Anacapri. Malgieri warned us that the flavor was subtle, so I was worried that I wouldn't like it. I usually crave those kind of hit-you-over-the-head flavors like chocolate and chile and rosemary. This was made with white chocolate, lemon and almonds. The white chocolate gets melted and gives the batter a lovely richness. The Torta was my favorite thing of the night - a fabulous texture and a light flavor.

My second preference were Jan Hagel Shortbreads, which Malgieri is shown making in the top photo. A very sandy-textured dough - more of a powder than a dough, really - is pressed into a parchment-lined pan. Sliced almonds are pressed on top, it is baked, and voila. Crisp, buttery cookies with just a small warm hint of cinnamon. These are the kind of cookie that I dare not make, lest I eat most of a pan at one sitting. Delicious.

The Bishop Torte was a pannetone-like cake leavened only by whipped egg whites. It is studded with chunks of chocolate and usually candied orange peel, though in this case Malgieri used candied pineapple. It is much better the second day when the flavors have had a chance to come together and the texture has tightened. I know because I ate it for breakfast.

The nut torte knocked me out, too. The filling of big chunks of walnuts in a caramel base with just a dab of honey was made for my palate. The rich buttery crust wasn't so bad, either.

I was surprised that the most spectacular dessert, the Princess Cream Cake, was the one I liked least. Layers of sponge cake are filled with whipped and pastry cream and the whole thing is encased in marzipan. One of the audience members said that she had had it with a raspberry filling, which Malgieri said he had never seen on his travels in Europe. I think it might just - pardon the expression - kick it up a notch.

Here is the complete assortment for your viewing pleasure. If you want to taste, you will just have to bust out the $35 and buy the book. Believe me, just for these recipes, it is worth it.

From the Pink Princess Cream Torte clockwise: Swiss Nut Torte, Torta Caprese Bianca, Jan Hagels, and, in the middle, Bishop Torte.

You Do What You Eat

2005-11-10T20:16:00.000-08:00

Despite my extensive training in nutrition (2 big classes at Cal State University, Northridge), I usually hesitate to use this blog to delve into the world of vitamins and minerals. I proceed to eat whatever I feel like and ignore the dietary consequences. I figure "I'm a vegetarian - what more do you want from me?

But this article I found on Alternet.org relating behavior to nutrition was so amazing that I felt I simply must post an excerpt and a link:

You Do What You Eat
by Marco Visscher

Bernard Gesch, physiologist at the University of Oxford, decided to test the anecdotal clues in the most thorough study so far in this field. In a prison for men between the ages of 18 and 21 in England's Buckinghamshire, 231 volunteers were divided into two groups: One was given nutrition supplements along with their meals that contained our approximate daily needs for vitamins, minerals and fatty acids; the other group got placebos. Neither the prisoners, nor the guards, nor the researchers at the prison knew who took fake supplements and who got the real thing.

The researchers then tallied the number of times the participants violated prison rules, and compared it to the same data that had been collected in the months leading up to the nutrition study. The prisoners given supplements for four consecutive months committed an average of 26 percent fewer violations compared to the preceding period. Those given placebos showed no marked change in behaviour. For serious breaches of conduct, particularly the use of violence, the number of violations decreased 37 percent for the men given nutrition supplements, while the placebo group showed no change.
The experiment was carefully constructed, ruling out the possibility that ethnic, social, psychological or other variables could affect the outcome. Prisons are popular places to conduct studies for good reason: There is a strict routine; participants sleep and exercise the same number of hours every day and eat the same things at the same time.

Fascinating to consider, no?

Two-Day Egg Custard

2005-11-04T20:31:00.000-08:00

How is it that I can make something like dried ancho chiles stuffed with potatoes and chorizo in a chile-seed tomato sauce, yet a simple thing like egg custard defeats me?

Perhaps I never got around to making it in my 40-plus years of existence because of the name. "Egg custard." Are there two more ugly-sounding words in the English language. Say them. They just die on the middle palate (ok, that is one of my favorite wine-snob pronuncements (because it is pretty much undefineable and therefore unarguable)) but you get what I mean. Plah. Egg. Custard.

The other night Mr. Snackish requested egg custard. I flew into action, checking the internet for recipes because the infamous recipe bookcase was blocked by the furniture, which had been moved (and never replaced) for carpet cleaning.

Voila! A recipe for MICROWAVE egg custard. No stirring. No baking. No splashy dangerous bain marie!

I stirred together the few simple ingredients (eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla) and popped the things in the micro.

What emerged seven minutes later looked less like custard than thick, wet omelettes. I, not being too familiar with egg custard quality control, showed them to Mr. Snackish for his approval.

"What did you DO?" he wailed. "How can you screw up an egg custard so badly?"

Fortunately for me, the dog loves thick, wet omelettes.

Not to be deterred, I unwedged the Betty Crocker Cookbook from behind the couch, which was resting on its side in front of the bookshelf.

The only recipe for egg custard in the index was a custard you make for some kind of alcoholic beverage. Ok. It required cooking but no baking.

I assembled the ingredients and cooked, stirring constantly. And kept stirring. And kept stirring, long past the 20 minutes it said it would take to coat the back of a spoon. The Daily Show came and went, as well as most of the brilliant Colbert Report. It thickened, somewhat. I figured it would finish in the fridge.

Wrong.

The next day Mr. Snackish proclaimed his outrage at my having screwed up the recipe again. He said it was still thin and watery.

"Did you bake it?" he asked. "You have to bake it!"

So I suggested baking the custard I had already made. "It's the same ingredients that the baked custard recipes call for," I reasoned.

He finished the dish by baking it for 40 minutes in a bain marie. He took the dish out, as proud as if he had made it all himself.

"Now THAT," he said, "Is egg custard."

I would give you the recipe but I am sure there are better and easier ways to make egg custard than my 2-day method.

Or maybe the two-day method is just a family secret. My mom has an infamous 2-day potato salad that she makes. Take ordinary potato salad and mix in about 10 phone calls and a medical emergency and there you have it - 2-day potato salad.

If you have any one-day egg custard recipes, will you let me know?

Squashaladas

2005-10-18T21:12:00.000-07:00

Enchiladas in Mexico were a revelation. If you are an American, you probably know enchiladas as I do - tortillas stuffed with some usually meaty filling, rolled up or folded over, and baked in a dish, covered with a mildly spicy sauce. A topping of melting cheese completes the picture.

Growing up, Mom's enchiladas were flour tortillas filled with a mixture of ground beef browned with onion. The tortillas were dipped in Las Palmas mild enchilada sauce. They were topped with shredded American cheese. We loved them. A popular present to take when visiting sisters who had moved away from California was a case of Las Palmas, so they could make enchiladas just like mom's.

In Oaxaca, enchiladas were a different animal. Corn tortillas were dipped in a thick coating of enchilada sauce, folded in neat quarters like a hanky and served three to a plate. They were garnished with a tiny piece of fresh cheese and a few whispers of onion slices.

Similar dishes were enmoladas - tortillas dipped in one of the region's 7 famous mole sauces - or enfrijoladas, tortillas dipped in a thinned-down paste of refried beans. Are you starting to see a pattern? I guess you can pretty much en[dip]alada with anything.

At this time of year, I make an enchilada that bears no resemblance to anything traditional. They are delicious, vegetarian and easy to make. I have fed them to everyone from captains to kings (ok, maybe not kings, but my pre-teen nephews ate them happily) with compliments all around.

Butternut Enchiladas
1 medium butternut squash, halved , seeded, and baked until soft
Cream cheese - from half to a whole package, depending on how fat-friendly you are
1 bunch green onions, sliced in thin rings, including some of the green part
Some shredded monterey jack or queso quesadilla cheese, amount to your taste
12 flour tortillas
1 large can Las Palmas mild enchilada sauce

While the squash is still hot, combine it with the cream cheese and onions. Stir until cream cheese gets melty.

Oil a 13x9 baking dish or spray with cooking spray. Use a lot - this WILL stick to the pan. Pour enough sauce in the dish to coat the bottom with a thin layer.

Put rest of sauce on a flat plate or pan. Dip tortillas in sauce on one side. Place them, sauce side down, in the dish. Put a blob of squash mixture on them. Roll up. Do this until you run out of tortillas or squash, which will vary depending on how crazy you get with the squash mix.

Pour any remaining sauce over the assembled enchiladas. Top with shredded cheese - as much or as little as you like. I like a little. Cotija cheese crumbles would also work, come to think of it.

Bake for about 25 minutes in a 400 degree oven, covered if you like them soft or uncovered if you like crispy crunchy edges.

Serve with rice and a nice green salad.

Agua de Tuna

2005-10-11T14:45:00.000-07:00

If you have some rudimentary Spanish skills, you are probably thinking "Tuna water? Yuk!"

Fooled you. "Tuna" is the Mexican name for the fruits of prickly-pear cactuses. The red fruits are sweet and filled with tiny black seeds.

Tunas are good to peel and eat, or you can make a drink out of them.

I had my first Agua de Tuna outside a church in Zaachila, Oaxaca one hot Sunday afternoon last summer. A tiny woman was selling cups full of the magenta liquid out of a plastic bucket. The drink was sweet and refreshing, perfect.

When I saw tunas at Whole Foods the other day, I snapped some up and made this:

Agua de tuna y naranja (Cactus-orange drink)
3 red ripe tunas
3 cups of water
Juice of one orange
Sugar to taste - just a bit

Peel and chop the tunas fine. You can strain the seeds out if you want but they add texture and mostly sink to the bottom, anyway.

Juice the orange. Mix the tunas and orange juice with the water and sugar, stir and refrigerate. Simple.

When I heard that La Dolce Vita was sponsoring a food meme called "In the Pink" to raise breast cancer awareness, I was sad to miss the entry deadline. But in the spirit of Mexico, where time isn't so important, consider this lovely pink drink my entry.

Fairview Gardens "Fields of Plenty" Festival

2005-10-09T20:55:00.000-07:00

Fairview Gardens in Goleta, California, just north of Santa Barbara is a tiny jewelbox of a farm wedged between subdivisions on all sides.

Michael Ableman and a crew of workers and volunteers have created a thriving organic farm in a most unlikely place and have turned it into a demonstration and teaching center as well as a source of impeccably fresh produce for people in the surrounding area.

My new pal Martha and I took in the "Fields of Plenty" festival there this afternoon. We ambled the fields, tasted about 10 different varieties of squash, and feasted on a meal of tamales, fresh tortillas, beans, rice and three tremendous salsas.

The squash tasting may not have been the best idea. They had roasted about 10 different kinds of squash plain and were serving them at room temperature on toothpicks for $5. Hm.

Most people are already not THAT crazy about squash, especially when it isn't hot, and the $5 price was assuring that there weren't many takers. We went for it. I am a big proponent of side-by-side tastings and I figured "When am I ever going to get a chance to taste squash side-by-side again?" It just doesn't come up every day, you know. My favorites were the dense sweet squashes like butternut and kabocha. Martha preferred the lighter, more subtle delicata.

The cool part about the squash tasting is that it took place under a big old mulberry tree that had branches that reached all the way to the ground, making a green room to stand in.

Martha

1890 Farmhouse built by the Hollister Family. This is the band doing a sound check.

Me hanging out under the tree

Walking the fields on a warm fall afternoon was idyllic. The farm have lovely big chickens in a pen out in an orchard, brown ones and my favorites, the black and white ones that look checkered. An organic farm is so interesting because they grow a mix of crops to confuse the bugs and to improve the soil. I don't know how many crops they had there, but we saw lettuces, broccoli, onions, garlic, flowers, guavas, cherimoyas, citrus, squash, pumpkins, avocados, stone fruits, passion fruits, beets, basil, carrots, fennel, oh gosh, what else? A lot.

At lunch we sat with the nicest family. Or group of friends. I was never sure of everyone's relationship, but they were a bunch of Latino musicians who had come from Fresno and San Francisco to play there under the big pepper tree. One young man, Javier, sat down at our table, then more and more people kept coming and greeting each other, talking, laughing, telling stories, kids crawling on people's laps, giving hugs, sharing food. It was just a happy scene full of love and caring and I know Martha and I both felt lucky and charmed to be included.

Pakistani Cooking Class

2005-10-01T17:37:00.000-07:00

The Ojai area about 70 miles north of Los Angeles is never more lovely than on a fall afternoon. It is always lovely, of course -- that's why was used to represent Shangri-La in the movies -- but something about the fall, when the withering summer heat has passed and a soft breeze kicks up, is just magical.

It was in this setting that we eight eager cooking enthusiasts came to learn a bit about Pakistani cooking from the talented Dodo Mufti.

Two men well-known in the local food scene hosted the class in a sweet farmstyle hideaway on a hill outside of town. They have a fabulous kitchen that manages to be both professional and cozy at the same time - it features both an industrial-strength Viking range AND three Laborador Retrievers (one in each color).

Dodo is originally from Bombay (Mumbai) India and learned to cook at the side of her mother-in-law, a Pakistani.

Pakistani food has much in common with Northern Indian cuisine, explained Dodo and her husband Tariq. The garam masala spice mixes are ground exceedingly fine, dishes are served with a variety of chutneys, and usually, meals from the Muslim country are meat-based, unlike the more vegetarian Hindu south. But today's adventure was pure vegetarian, a perfect lunch meal for a warm day.

In fact, Dodo said, the eggplant dish would only be served as a lunch, never as a dinner. Like the musical ragas that are only played at certain times of the day, there are dishes that are inextricably tied to a certain meal. And they are eaten in a certain fashion: when rice is served, bread is not.

Onions for Tahiri

Dodo began by explaining how to slice an onion in very thin strips for Tahiri, a rice and potato dish. The onions need to be fine and even so they caramelize perfectly before potatoes are added to a pan of the cooked onions, oil and spices. The potato chunks are partially cooked, then put with the other ingredients into a rice cooker.

Potatoes, onions and spices for Tahiri

Very long-grain basmati rice is added and the whole thing simmers into a rich, tasty combination that Tariq described as a "lazy mom dish." Obviously Tariq didn't grow up in a place where Cheez-whiz and crackers are a lazy mom dish.

Dodo also made Borani, a dish of sauteed eggplant slices layered with yogurt that has been mixed with a lot of fresh, pressed garlic. Then that is topped with Anaheim chiles that have been cut into chunks and sauteed with lots of oil, cumin and carom seed (also called "ajwain" in India).

Preparing layers of eggplant for Borani

The finished dish

When the dish is finished, there are pools of oil on top of the yogurt, a sight you never see in the fat-phobic United States. Dodo explained that you could take as much oil or as little as you wanted when you served yourself.

"And when it comes to matters of food," she said, smiling, "I rather think that more is better than less."

The Tahiri was served with a garlic-and-chili powder-based Red chutney and a mint and chile-based Green chutney. Dodo also brought along some tomato chutney and a lemon pickle for us to taste.

The finished meal

The flavors of the food danced like fireworks on our tongues as we ate our lunch. With our meal, we drank a Rancho Sisquoc Riesling or a Santa Barbara Winery Pinot Noir, two fruity, not-too-dry wines to go with the spiced dishes. Good conversation made the food even tastier, and when we finally left about 2 pm, the warm feelings that a satisfying meal and pleasant company bring followed us out the door like a soft Ojai breeze.

The dish was good. The dishes were horrible.

2005-09-25T21:12:00.000-07:00

Ancho Chiles Stuffed with Potatoes, Cheese and Chorizo

How tough can cooking a dish with five ingredients be? That was the thought in my head when I read this month's Gourmet magazine "Five Ingredients" feature.

The five ingredients are: ancho chiles, potatoes, chorizo (soy chorizo, obviously in my case) cheese and tomatoes. The idea is that you soak dried chiles and stuff them with a variety of stuff, bake them with a sauce. Simple, non? Non! This recipe messed with my kitchen and messed with my day off. It did, however, have the virtue of tasting fabulous.

Let me give a dish count:
Bowl for soaking chiles
Plate for weighting chiles in the water
Cutting board for seeding chiles
Bowl to hold chiles
Baking sheet to toast chile seeds on
Pan to boil potatoes
Strainer to drain potatoes and rinse to stop cooking process
Measuring cup
Bowl to mix chiles, chorizo and cheese
Blender for making tomato sauce
Pan to reduce tomato sauce
Baking pan for assembled dish

5 ingredients, 2 pans, 2 baking pans, blender, spice grinder, 2 bowls, a strainer and a cutting board! Is there anything we forgot to get messy?

The dish was good, spicy and rich. But I am exhausted and there is still a pile of dishes in the kitchen. Next time I will make yet another quesadilla with some nice salsa and save a dish this complicated for a party, when I can at least impress someone other than just Greg & myself.

Chiles soaking (not something from CSI)

American Swedish Limpa Bread

2005-09-06T21:04:00.000-07:00

Ok, I promised that I would discuss the Swedish Limpa Bread I made with the wheatberry salad, and I know you have all been waiting on the edges of your seats to hear about it...it is pretty good.

I made this from a James Beard "Beard on Bread" recipe, slightly modified for my American taste. The original recipe calls for 2 1/2 cups of rye flour. I'm not big on that sourish rye flour flavor, so I used a mixture of white and wheat flour. Beard's recipe says cardamom is optional. I wanted this because I LOVE cardamom - then I found out I was out of cardamom. Oh well. It turned out great anyway.

1 pkg yeast
1 tsp sugar
1/4 cup lukewarm water
2 cups beer, lukewarm
1/2 cup honey
2 Tbsp butter, melted
2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cardamom
3/4 tsp aniseed, lightly crushed
Grated rind of one large orange
5 1/2 - 7 cups flour, a mix of white and wheat

Put the yeast and sugar in a large bowl and add the lukewarm water. Let proof for 5 minutes, then add beer, then the butter, honey and salt. It will foam up some. Add cardamom, aniseed and orange peel. Mix flours together. Add 3 cups of flour to the liquid ingredients and beat hard with a wooden spoon til smooth.

Cover and let rise for 45 minutes in a warm place. Stir down and add enough flour to make a firm but sticky dough. Turn out on a floured board and knead, adding more flour, until the dough is tacky but much smoother, about 10 minutes. Shape into a ball, put in a buttered bowl, turn dough until it is coated in a thin layer of butter. Cover and let rise until doubled, 45 minutes to one hour.

Punch down and split in half, form two balls, and put on a greased baking sheet. Put baking sheet in fridge, covered, for 2-3 hours. Longer is better.

Bring out for 15 minutes, then put in 375 degree oven for 45-55 minutes, until loaf sounds hollow when tapped on bottom.

Limpa bread is slightly sweet and delicious toasted with a little butter.

Kitchen Sink Wheat Berry Salad

2005-09-05T14:07:00.000-07:00

Wheat Berries make a good base for a cool end of summer salad when it is hot outside and the kitchen is full of ripe produce and fresh herbs. Making the berries takes a bit of forethought because they need to soak for 8 hours, but once they are prepared, pretty much any combination of vegetables, herbs and dressings can turn them into a meal.

Cooked wheat berries
1 cup wheat
3 1/2 cups water

Rinse the wheat berries and put them in a covered pot to soak in the water for at least 8 hours. Use the soaking water to cook them. Bring them to a boil, lower the heat to a simmer, and cook, covered, until tender, about one hour. Drain.

Kitchen Sink Wheat Berry Salad
Cooked wheat berries
3/4 cup cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
About 3/4 cup each diced bell pepper (orange), Persian cucumber, zucchini
3 green onions, sliced into thin rings
A big handful each of chopped mint and parsley
1/2 cup Kalamata olives, sliced into thin strips
1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
1/2 cup Bulgarian sheep's milk feta cheese

Dressing
1/4 cup roasted walnut oil (I would use EVOO next time)
1 Tbsp champagne vinegar
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 clove garlic
1 tsp Dijon mustard
Salt, Pepper

Smash garlic with blade of knife, sprinkle with salt, mince and smash with knife until mostly a paste. Scrape into a bowl, add mustard and vinegars, mix well. Drizzle in oil, whisking madly. Add pepper, stir. Pour over salad ingredients, stir well.

I served it with some homemade Swedish Limpa Bread from a James Beard recipe. I will talk about that more some other time.

Meme: Five food memories

2005-09-03T19:57:00.000-07:00

Mika at The Green Jackfruit asked me to contribute to the Five Childhood Food Memories meme a while ago. I am finally getting around to it.

My five favorite childhood food memories:

I grew up in the 60s and 70s on the California coast about 40 miles north of Santa Barbara. The "town" we lived in til I was 6 years old had a population of 99, with telephones with party lines (more than 1 family sharing a phone line, imagine. You could pick up the phone and hear what anyone was saying, though that was considered quite rude). When I mentioned Chef Boyardee in my profile, my mom said "I wish you would have said it was 40 miles to town and sometimes we ran out of things." Hey, mom, I'm not complaining - I loved Chef Boyardee, especially Spaghetti-Os. They were as much a dessert as a pasta, they were so sweet, but I did love eating them.

My mother was unafraid to experiment with ingredients, maybe because we lived so far from the grocery store and she had to. I remember a snack of crunched-up saltines drizzled with maple syrup. Crunchy, salty AND sweet - as a kid, that was a perfect trio.

Mom was president of the parent-teacher association for a while. So on the nights she had to preside over meetings, Dad prepared dinner for us 5 kids. As a child, nothing was quite as thrilling as having dad make pancakes in the shape of Mickey Mouse's head, or my initials. He also did other creative things with Bisquick - tiny flat muffins with dabs of jam inside. Pure heaven, a fabulous change from those nutritionally balanced meals Mom prepared.

We lived near the ocean and dad had a little boat and some lobster traps. He would catch California spiny lobsters and bring them home. I remember them alive and terrorizing the cat on the back porch more than I remember eating them. We also had fresh abalone and big scallops. We all loved sitting around the kitchen eating little pieces of salty smoked bonito that came wrapped in thick waxed paper (maybe because of the way it smelled - really strong and fishy, LOL).

I remember when we moved to the big city (population about 50,000 back then). I was 12 and for the first time we had Chinese food. The whole experience was so new and exotic for us. It wasn't fancy Chinese food - it was a standard Chinese-American Cantonese family-run place. But I loved the food so much I wanted to eat there all the time. All those great flavors and textures and you shared the food. Wild! Anyway, that wonderful food opened my eyes to the fact that there were amazing things out there that I had no idea about, and I wanted to go try all of them.

Hurricane Help

2005-09-03T10:56:00.000-07:00

Is that a gas leak, or a durian?

2005-08-20T14:36:00.000-07:00

I tasted a durian today for the first time. After years of hearing about the legendary stinky fruit, I finally met one in person.

I was at Whole Foods and right near the doors, there was a very tall, frighteningly thin woman handing out samples of durian. Well, she wasn't just handing them out - she was really sort of evangelizing about them. Her zeal for durian was of a manic level only usually seen in TV preachers and Ron Popeil.

Because she was by the open doors, the level of stink wasn't too bad, but it was definitely there - a funk that smelled like a powerful gas leak mixed with poo.

But I had to try the durian, so I forged on. She made me take a taste, which had a powerful gas-leak flavor. Not good. Then she MADE me take a second, which she said would be so good, sweet and creamy, it would erase the first. Not so. The second was about 30 percent better, but still nasty enough to make me look around for something else to sample.

She asked me how I liked it. I said "As long as there is cherimoya in the world, I don't need durian."

Oh my. Those were fighting words. She was outraged .

"This is BETTER than cherimoya," she shrieked. "Much better!! Cherimoya is nowhere near as good as durian, and durian is much better for you."

I scurried away to buy other vegetables and overheard her telling people, among other things, that the wonderful durian could raise your seratonin level. Whatever.

But there are many durian fans out there. Here are some links to durian fansites.

Durian On-Line Homepage. This one mentions farting in the first paragraph. Hm.

Durian Palace. With links to articles about durian-flavored condoms and a durian that sparked a terrorist alert in Australia.

Wikipedia has to weigh in, including some bits about how one can get killed by a durian if not careful (by one falling, not by consuming one).

A westerner tells his tale of converting to durian love, though he mentions another possible way to die by durian.

Los Angeles Tofu Festival

2005-08-16T21:41:00.000-07:00

Some of the day's offerings.

This photo would have been better, but I had to shoot around someone who just would NOT move...

My kind of event. Lots and lots of tofu and mostly vegetarian. A place where tofu is the star, not a dirty word.

The Los Angeles Tofu Festival kicks off Nisei Week in Little Tokyo (also known as J-Town) downtown Los Angeles. The event is a benefit for the Japanese Service Center. It is about 50 booths selling tofu-based or soy-based food items, plus entertainment and vendors. This year's theme was "Tofuzilla," so of course I had to buy the t-shirt.

Me, Mr. Snackish and food-loving vegetarian friend Martha met to take in the festival. It was a nice warm day, not blistering hot. We even got a little breeze a few times.

We walked around and sampled the food. We didn't have anything amazingly good, but a good time was had by all.

Smoked tofu salad with lemongrass was pretty good.

These folks were having a great time making onigiri sushi.

This guy was eating something that I didn't get to try, but looked great - really fresh tofu with strawberries, strawberry-orange sauce and sliced almonds.

2 creative items - tofu chili in a bread bowl and tofu spam musubi, a Hawaiian treat.

Dessert - red bean paste in a tofu crust.

Too funny to pass up

2005-08-04T21:04:00.000-07:00

Go to this Chowhound post and click on the link. The attached pdf file has some of the worst writing I have ever read on a menu or off.

By the time I was done reading the description of "Sweet Fire and Ice," a restaurant in New Orleans (hint: they have 25 different cheesecake-flavored martinis) I had lost my appetite.

Overblown, adjective-stuffed, repetitive - it is an English teacher's worst nightmare. Made me laugh. Your mileage may vary.

Slow Food LA Weiser Family Farms field trip

2005-07-31T19:53:00.000-07:00

What a wonderful day. Despite my early morning misgivings about getting up when the alarm went off at 6 a.m. on a Sunday, it was all worth it in the end...and even in the middle.

I joined the Slow Food L.A. tour to Weiser Family Farms in Tehachapi, which is about 2 hours outside of Los Angeles, up where the Sierras are thinking about beginning.

Weiser Family Farms sells a variety of organic produce at southern California Farmers Markets. Much of it is rare or unusual varieties. At our market in Thousand Oaks, they mostly carry melons and tiny potatoes in red, white, yellow and purple.

About 40 of us foodies piled onto a fancy Santa Monica City "Big Blue Bus" (unlike most city buses, it had a restroom, TV screens and high-back seats) at 8 a.m. in Santa Monica after standing around drinking coffee and eating croissants and muffins in the parking lot.

Chattering like a bunch of caffeinated parakeets, we made new friends and talked food on the way up. We passed through dusty, deserty towns like Mojave, Lancaster and Palmdale, but as elevation rose we began to see more trees and green.

Alex Weiser greeted us. He is a wiry, enthusiastic, dark-haired guy who, along with the rest of his family, started the farm in the early 1980s after his dad, Sid, retired from teaching.

His passion and love for his work came through in every word, and as he got more into what he way saying, his hands began to fly in broader and broader gestures.

We drank Evan Kleiman's wonderful agua fresca of melon, mint and ginger while we listened to Alex's story of the first few years of the farm.

The family first tried growing apples and peaches and selling wholesale, but realized they couldn't make a living with such a narrow range of crops and with the low prices they were getting at wholesale markets.

Selling at certified farmers' markets is what made it possible for them to keep farming. Alex thanked us for supporting the markets. He said that the interaction with customers gave them the feedback they needed to know what to plant. The willingness of Farmer's Market patrons to try new foods or varieties also gives them an incentive to grow test plots every year, he said.

Then we headed out to the fields to see what the Weisers were growing up here at 4300 feet elevation in a town Alex calls "The land of four seasons." He said Tehachapi has four true seasons, each lasting about 3 months. It doesn't get as hot up there as it does in their other farms sites at lower elevations.

We saw tomatoes, branching broccoli, peppers, carrots, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, berries, lilacs and all other manner of wonderful things on the farm.

People bring the Weisers seeds and cuttings from travels around the world so they can try new crops and introduce foreign foods to their customers. Alex revealed a few things he has in the pipeline to us, but I won't reveal his secrets, lest other copycat farmers get a jump on him.

We ate things that we harvested - tiny carrots, brocolli, tomatoes - standing out in the sun and enjoying tastes of pure freshness.

Warm melons were plucked from the vine, sliced up with pocket knives and shared. We had to bend over to keep the juices from running down our chins as we ate. It was a little taste of sweet heaven.

Someone said, "Notice how small everyone's vocabulary has gotten?" as everyone was reduced to saying "Oh wow," "Oh my God" or just "Ohhhhh."

We came in from the fields after about an hour and a half to find a feast that Evan Kleiman, chef/owner of Angeli Caffe in Los Angeles, who also has a fabulous radio show on KCRW, Good Food, had made.

There was grilled eggplant, griddle-cooked bread, rustic bread drizzled with olive oil and grilled (or maybe grilled and drizzled with olive oil), sauteed chard, a rich potato and pasilla chile dish, carrots, a beautiful salad of heirloom tomatoes, oil-cured black olives, cucumbers and feta cheese -- and those were just the vegetarian offerings.

Weiser's workers had made a huge pork and potato stew in big pot in an underground oven and simmered it for a long time, letting the rich flavors come together.

We all came to the table and stayed for hours, eating, drinking and sharing. We were outdoors under a big tent with the fields just a few feet away.

The Weisers joined us and we toasted and thanked everyone in sight. There was a lot to be thankful for. I felt like I was in one of those gorgeous Saveur magazine photo spreads.

Just when we thought we were done eating, we found out that Evan had been busy making ice cream during the meal. Mindy Pfeiffer, one of the organizers, handed out little plastic cups of pinky-purple ice cream and as soon as everyone took a taste, conversation stopped for a minute as we pondered the layers of flavors our tongues were experiencing for the first time.

Then we got busy playing "guess the ingredients." Finally Evan came out and revealed the secret combination: goat milk, mulberries and saba, a concentrated grape must. I can make a pretty confident bet that that was a new one for everyone there and that it is something most of us will never have again.

The wine and the heat and our full bellies conspired to make our eyes heavy and our thoughts grow slow. Just in time, we climbed back on the bus, cranked up the air conditioning, and took a nice siesta on the two-hour trip home.

I love the spirit of people who love good food. Everyone was unpretentious, giving, and eager to share thoughts, recipes and experiences. I hope to be able to attend more of these Slow Food Los Angeles events.

Cook next door

2005-07-28T17:55:00.000-07:00

You coax the blues right out of the horn, Meme,
You charm the husk right off of the corn, Meme!
(an ode to "Mame" in case you couldn't guess.)

Thanks to Megret at Morsels of Megret for tagging me for the Cook Next Door meme. I was in desperate need of some inspiration.

What is your first memory of baking/cooking on your own?
On my very own? I know I "cooked" plenty with my mom and my three sisters and brother. I remember one particularly messy (and good) jelly roll my sister PK made when mom and dad left us in her care. But the first thing I recall making on my own was meringue cookies, because they had the fewest ingredients of any recipe in my mom's huge cookbook. Eggs, sugar and maybe vanilla. I still love meringues.

Who had the most influence on your cooking?
Well, my mom is a trooper in the kitchen. She made meals for all 7 of us all the time. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. She tried her darndest to accommodate my very picky tastes, too. So she taught me about feeding people.

But for my entree into cuisine, I would say probably Stacy, my college roomie. Before her, I had never even seen ingredients like pine nuts, sun dried tomatoes, and basil. That was in 1985.

Do you have an old photo as "evidence" of an early exposure to the culinary world and would you like to share it?
I have one but my scanner is on the fritz.

Mageiricophobia - do you suffer from any cooking phobia, a dish that makes your palms sweat?
I am a vegetarian. One of the reasons I became a vegetarian was because I could not stand the thought of cooking meat, and I figured if it made me that ill to think of, I had no business cooking it or eating it. I thought chicken was the worst but the other night I decided to suck it up and try to cook some salmon for my BF and guest...and I found a fin and almost threw up.

What would be your most valued or used kitchen gadgets and/or what was the biggest letdown?
I admit I am an addict. Coffee maker and good corkscrew. Of course I love all the regular stuff. Good chef knife and bread knife. Citrus reamer. Big blue Kitchenaid. Zojirushi rice cooker. Ancient Osterizer blender.

Biggest letdown - zillions of tiny tart and other molds I keep buying at garage sales and never using.

Name some funny or weird food combinations/dishes you really like and probably no one else.
It's normal in Mexico, not so much here - melon with lime, salt and chile powder. I also like watermelon curry (see previous post). When I ate meat, I loved peanut butter, sweet pickle and bacon sandwiches, which my mom made up. She loves them too.

What are the three eatables or dishes you simply don't want to live without?
1. (I stole this one from Megret) Chocolate. I mean, a world without chocolate would be a sad, sad world.
2. Tortillas. Fresh handmade corn, yes, but I will settle for flour or whole wheat if I must.
3. Raspberries. They are too perfect.

Favorite ice cream:
I know it is gilding the lily, but Ben & Jerry's Phish Food (chocolate with caramel and marshmallow stripes, and tiny dark chocolate fish...that being said, I eat it about once every three years.)

You will probably never eat (again??):
I hate to say never. I have even eaten meat on some very odd occasions. But raw fish...it's a dread fear of parasites that keeps me away. And orange-leek soup. Nothing could be more horrible, since it tasted exactly like bile. Mmm.

Signature dish:
Butternut squash enchiladas:
1 lg butternut squash, baked til soft.
Mix hot flesh with as much cream cheese as you think is wise (1/2 box if you are low-fat, the whole thing if you are crazy and wild) and a bunch of chopped green onions.
Use the squash mix as a filling for enchiladas - at my house I use flour or corn tortillas dipped in Las Palmas red sauce, folded over, covered in a bit of Monterey Jack cheese or queso quesadilla. Bake until hot through or longer - 350 for 20 minutes or so.

Question added by Zarah: On average, how many times a week would you cook something to satisfy your sweet tooth? Zero to three.

Question added by Cathy: What do you usually eat for breakfast? Toast with jam and butter. Bread is just raw toast to me.

Question added by Alice: What are your stand-by dinner options when you don't have the time or the inclination to follow or create a new recipe? Quesadillas. Pitas with ajvar (see previous post) and a handful of olives. Boca burgers in a pita.

Question added by Karen: What would you like to cook someday that you haven't tried before? Vegetable pate.

Question added by the chronicler: Sweet or savory? Depends on many factors.

Question added by Snackish: Soup or salad? Salad

Question added by Grommie: Do you have any food quirks you'd like to admit?
Hm. Being a vegetarian should be enough...If I don't go to the market every other day, I feel like I am missing out.

And now, to debut the future bloggers who are tagged for this meme:

Beurre Monte
Pinoy Cook
Umami

Good luck, and have fun!

Good Korean cooking

2005-07-26T22:13:00.000-07:00

I knew Cecelia Hae-Jin Lee was a cool person because we are in WriteGirl together.

I also knew she had published a cookbook because the LA Times ran a rave review of it.

I didn't know what a good writer she was, though.

I picked up her book, Eating Korean at the library. I flipped it open there in the aisle and started reading.

Not only is it a cookbook, but it also has personal stories from Cecelia's life, some of which are incredibly sweet and touching and sad. I was crying within 2 minutes.

Check it out.

Matira - Yellow Watermelon Curry

2005-07-24T20:56:00.000-07:00

The photo is of yellow watermelon curry. You can make it with red watermelon, but I bought the yellow one unsuspecting until I opened it up.

This recipe is modified from a LA Times article in June of 2003, I think. They got it from "The Great Curries of India" by Camellia Panjabi (a great name, no?).

It is festive food because you can be pretty sure most people in the U.S. have never tasted it before. If you can get them to try it, they are amazed by the wild combination of flavors and textures.

Watermelon Curry
10 cups watermelon, seeds removed, cut into 1 inch dice (about 1/4 of a large melon)
1/8 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp chili powder or more to taste
1/4 tsp ground turmeric
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1-2 garlic cloves, pressed or minced
1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
Juice of 1/2 lime
1/2 Tbsp sugar

Puree 1 cup of the watermelon with the spices down ingredient list to salt.

Heat oil in a large skillet over high heat, add cumin seeds and fry a bit until they turn a little brown and fragrant. Immediately add the watermelon juice puree. Lower heat and simmer for about five minutes, until it is reduced by one-third. Add lime juice and sugar and simmer one more minute. Add the watermelon chunks and toss gently until warmed through.

You can serve hot, at room temp, or cold. It is wild and amazing whichever way you choose.

Crispy Crispy Parmesan Lavosh Crackers

2005-07-17T17:27:00.000-07:00

This depends on whether you can find fresh lavosh. Or lavash. Or lahvash. Armenian Bread. Whatever.

Just don't buy the Ak-Mak crackers in the box - you have to find a source for the fresh-baked kind.

I wanted parmesan crisps for my party but didn't want to pay $3.99 for 8-10 of the parmesan baguette things at Whole Foods. I am, above all, cheap.

This was my solution. Lavosh runs about $1.19 for three or four huge pieces where I am. I made enough crackers for 15 people with most of one package.

Crispy Crispy Parmesan Lavosh Crackers
One package of fresh lavosh
One half-cup egg whites (I used the pasteurized kind in the carton)
1/2 lb freshly grated parmesan

Brush the lavosh with the egg whites, one sheet at a time. Sprinkle with grated parmesan. Put under broiler just until cheese is light brown and before the whole thing has caught on fire (things happen!)

When cool enough to handle, break into lovely random cracker sized pieces.

I also made some sprinkled with sesame seeds and poppy seeds with a little salt and pepper. They were good, but people were picking through the basket to find the cheese ones.

The crackers will be thin and exquisitely crispy.

Shrimp and Mango with lime and mint appetizer

2005-07-16T19:01:00.000-07:00

Shrimp and Mango appetizer
.

A shrimp is not a vegetable, I know. But after making about a zillion tiny empanadas filled with potatoes and chiles or vegetarian sausage, I felt I had to give my guests at the Great Journalist Gathering of 2005 at least a little something with animals in it lest they rebel and write bad things about me.

I made this up out of my head and they all pronounced it fantastic. Your mileage may vary. When journalists are faced with free food, they can get mighty enthusiastic.

Shrimp, Mango, lime and mint on endive leaves
1/2 pound cooked shrimp, finely chopped
1 ripe mango, diced fine
1/2 sweet red pepper, cut into tiny squares
Juice of 1 lime
1 tbsp mint, chopped fine

A dash or two of Green Jalapeno Tabasco or a bit of finely minced jalapeno pepper
Salt
Pepper
Belgian Endives - eight or so

Combine all ingredients but endives. Peel endive leaves off and use for little edible dishes. You can only use the outer leaves of the endives, because they get small and soft inside.

Then, if you are a veg, you will have lots of lovely endive insides left for you!

A true taste sensation - Dry Brown Curds Snack

2005-07-14T13:48:00.000-07:00

I bought this at the Middle Eastern market. The people there are super nice and they have a zillion foods I have never heard of. This is one of them.

I know "Dry Brown Curds Snack" doesn't sound too appetizing to most people. But I am, as my BF says, the person most likely to order the weirdest item on the menu. If it is novel and doesn't contain meat, let me at it.

So this was right up my alley. It looks a bit like fruit leather and claims to be made of yogurt. So far, so good.

(Sour) it says on the label. They should issue some kind of stronger warning, I think, because this may well be the sourest item on the planet. Super sour gummy worms taste like cotton candy compared to this.

You can see from the photo the size of the sample I took. Unfortunately I tasted it while I was on the phone with the BF. I immediately began making weird noises and gasping, having lost the ability to speak.

Once the initial shock and pain of my salivary glands shriveling up passed, I was able to tell him what happened.

The stuff was so sticky and a piece stuck to my molar, but I was actually afraid to move it, lest the sour flavor blast start again.

This may have a use, but I am not sure. If Persians can actually eat this with joy and happiness, they are much better and stronger people than I.

Cafe de Olla

2005-07-13T19:03:00.000-07:00

This is my latest obsession:

Cafe de Olla
2 cups water
1 cinnamon stick
1/4 tsp anise seeds or a dash of anise extract
1/4 cup piloncillo (Mexican brown sugar pressed into cones - you can grate it off) or brown sugar

Bring to a boil in a 2 quart saucepan.

Add 1/2 cup ground coffee and remove from heat. It will foam up in a dramatic fashion.

Steep 5 minutes.

Strain through a fine strainer and drink straight up or with hot milk. It is best from little rough clay cups, in Mexico, but it ain't so very bad in a mug in California, either.

Oh Canada!

2005-07-01T18:37:00.000-07:00

Cookies in honor of Canada Day

To recognize our dear friends to the north, I made these Maple Shortbread cookies in the shape of a maple leaf and decorated them in a Canadian-flag theme.

This photo is kind of a funky cookie, but the rest of the photos were pretty bad. But you get the idea.

The cookie recipe is in 2 parts so it takes a while for the maple butter to cool enough to make dough out of.

Maple Butter
2/3 cup maple syrup
1 cup butter, softened

In a small saucepan, bring maple syrup to a boil and cook until it reduces by half, about 10 to 15 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool. Add the butter and stir until completely blended. Place in refrigerator until firm. Makes1 cup.

Shortbread - this is simple!
1 cup maple butter
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt.

Combine the ingredients in a food processor. Pulse using the steel knife just until well combined and form a ball. This should take less than 30 seconds.

Flatten into a disk shape. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate until the dough is well chilled. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Position rack to centre of oven. Remove dough from fridge and roll to 1/8-inch thickness. Cut dough into desired shapes. Place cookies on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake until slightly golden brown, approximately 10 to 15 minutes.
Makes about three dozen two-inch cookies.

I used a Betty Crocker white icing recipe with slightly more butter than Betty calls for (she actually called for margarine, pretty funny considering the recipe is labeled "White Butter Frosting" - 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, 1/2 cup butter, 1 tsp. vanilla and 1 Tbsp milk, blended with an electric mixer til smooth.

Spread icing on cool cookies. Place a strip of paper over the middle of each cookie and sprinkle with red sugar.

YOU MUST BUY THIS

2005-06-28T23:13:00.000-07:00

I don't give orders very often. I am sort of a "go with the flow" kind of person, probably due to my unconquerable laziness and California heritage.

But this item my cooking friends, is something you really really need.

The Messermeister Serrated Swivel Peeler is a wonder. It can skin a tomato. It can skin an apricot. It can make slices of parmesan thin enough to read through. YOU WILL LOVE THIS PEELER. Come on, it is less than 5 bucks. Just buy one and make both of us happy.

Besides, you needed to know about Surfas Online anyway.

Don't forget the Mystery Contest!!

2005-06-27T12:08:00.000-07:00

Scroll down a bit for Mystery Contest 2.

Email entries (don't comment!) to snackishblog@yahoo.com. The sign is in Chinese, so if you know someone who reads Chinese, you are in luck.

Chrysanthemum Leaves

2005-06-25T17:06:00.000-07:00

Chrysanthemum Leaves

I have had a soft spot in my heart for chrysanthemums ever since a hot and sweaty summer as an intern at Kono & Sons growers in Carpenteria, California in, oh about 1985. 20 years ago. Yeesh. I AM old.

But I have never, ever eaten chrysanthemum leaves or even seen them at Farmer's Market before this week.

I looked online and found some interesting stuff at the Hormel website, of all places.

I also dug up a recipe at Sweet baby media that sounds beautiful and interesting. It is a Korean dish.

I didn't buy any chrysanthemum leaves because I didn't know what to do with them. Next week I will pick some up and let you know how the recipe goes.

Vegetable Pancake

2005-06-24T17:48:00.000-07:00

I am a weird pancake eater. I prefer savory over sweet pancakes. I would rather find a slice of swiss cheese in my pancake than maple syrup on my pancake.

I made this recipe up, inspired by Japanese okonomi-yaki.

It is a kitchen sink recipe - anything in the veg drawer can go into it. I love fresh corn, a bit of onion, scallion or shallot, sliced bell peppers, shredded carrots or zucchini.

The raw

It is a lunchtime staple because I can make it in about 5 minutes. I usually eat it with dijon mustard, salsa, taco sauce or soy sauce, depending on my mood & what culinary region is tickling me lately.

You could add meat too - I never thought of that until just this moment! See what 20 years of vegetarianism will do to you.

1 egg, beaten
A couple tablespoons of flour
About 1/4 tsp baking powder
1 cup of vegetables shredded or in small dice
dash of salt

Blend all ingredients and cook over medium high heat in a lightly oiled non-stick frying pan. Flip when the bottom has gotten brown. That is it.

And the cooked.

Amaranth

2005-06-23T21:29:00.000-07:00

Amaranth

Isn't this the most beautiful vegetable? It was part of dinner tonight.

At Farmer's Market, they described it as "Chinese Red Spinach" but I am pretty sure, botanically speaking, that it is an amaranth, a green leafy vegetable and seed totally unrelated to the Order of the Amaranth (weird one, huh?)

I washed the leaves and sauteed a clove of garlic in olive oil for a minute, then dumped the leaves in and flipped them over a few times until they wilted a little.

They turned the garlic slices quite pink. Pretty.

The result was nice and tasted vegetal and green, a nice healthy side dish for my frozen pizza from Trader Joe's.

In Oaxaca, they make a delicious sweet of popped amarath seed called an alegria which means "happiness". Spending a buck on a big slab of alegria and chomping on it for the next few days always made ME happy.

The seeds are super high in protein - 16 to 18 percent. As my dad would say "Good and good for you."

Mystery contest item 2

2005-06-23T19:34:00.000-07:00

Mystery item 2

It is mystery item contest time again! I am talking about the reddish leaves, not the round squashes.

Email your guesses about what this is to snackishblog@yahoo.com and I will choose a random winner from the correct answers on July 1. The winner gets a $5 Barnes n Noble gift card. Woo hoo.

It helps, of course, if you read Chinese. If you do, the sign will tell you what this is. Give me either the english name or the chinese name sounded out - I can't read chinese characters and that would be, well, too easy.

My beautiful girl

2005-06-23T14:34:00.000-07:00

I know this isn't about food, but sometimes you just have to take a break from the kitchen, step back and admire your dog.

I got Goldie from the animal shelter three years ago on July 1, when she was 6 1/2 years old.

She is half greyhound, half lab. She can run like the wind, dig like a backhoe and wag like a maniac when she sees something interesting to chase.

Chasing? It is her favorite hobby. She sees a slight movement and her greyhound instincts kick in...and she's off.

We live in the Conejo ('Rabbit" in Spanish) Valley and she has sent her share of bunnies scurrying into the bushes in fear for their lives.

The tasty white Gaya melon

2005-06-11T19:02:00.000-07:00

Not as sweet as a honeydew; not as melony as a canteloupe; not as mushy as a Crenshaw.

The Gaya melon is small, white on the outside flecked with a few green splashes, white and fairly firm inside.

It makes a good background fruit for a fruit salad with raspberries and blueberries. The colors look beautiful together.

The only slightly annoying thing is that the outside and inside are the same color, so when you trim off the rind, it is hard to see where you have missed spots.

One day in the food life

2005-06-09T22:24:00.000-07:00

I haven't had time to cook lately. That is becoming a theme on this blog, huh?

In his personals ad, my old housemate described himself as an artist and a runner. He had last worked as an artist when he was 22. He had run cross-country in high school. He was 53 years old.

That is the kind of cook I am becoming. Someone who loves to cook. Loves to read recipes and buy ingredients. Loves to think about food. And someone who can't remember the last time she put a whole meal together and sat down like a human at the table to eat it.

More than cooking, I assemble.

At lunch I grab a whole-wheat tortilla, cheese and salsa for the 7,148th quesadilla of my life. Or chop up some fruit to put in yogurt.

Or stuff a pita with packaged baked tofu, arugula and ajvar red-pepper spread.

It's good food, high-quality food. It just ain't really cooking.

As an example I will list what I ate today, in case you were wondering (yeah, right).

Breakfast
2 bran muffins made with the recipe from one of my first blog posts, with blueberries added.
Coffee - Decaf Blue Batak with lots of milk

More coffee iced with, yes, lots of milk

Lunch at home
Mayoromo Oaxacan Mole from a jar, thinned with water & heated, with tofu chunks and torn up corn tortillas in it.
What the heck this is I don't know. Some Cal-Mex mutation on a plate, black and weird looking. But pretty tasty.
A roasted beet with balsamic vinegar and kosher salt. A classic combination.
A handful of Baked Lays chips

Afternoon at my desk, foraging in my drawer
About 5 squares of the demonically addictive Ritter Sport dark chocolate marzipan-filled candy. Why is it called "sport"? To make me feel athletic while I am sitting in front of a computer watching my butt grow??

The Coffee Run
Iced Peet's coffee, half decaf, half caf

Dinner Part 1
Here is where it gets pathetic. I had to go to a meeting where a "light dinner" was catered. When you see the words "light lunch" or "light dinner" on an invitation, what it really means is "we're too cheap to feed you properly" and "stick a protein bar in your purse."
A mini croissant, quite damp and soft, with thinly sliced cucumber, bell pepper, tomato and american cheese. I love how boring caterers can get when faced with the vegetarian dilemma. Can I suggest a roasted red pepper and arugula sandwich next time?
A pretty good chocolate chip and walnut cookie with plenty of cinnamon.
Another half decaf, half caf, because I was going to be sitting through 2 hours of talk about the municipal water district.

Dinner Part 2
The desperation snack at 9:15 pm - thank God for Whole Foods.
A slice of portobello mushroom and red onion pizza chowed down at the tables by the cash registers at Whole Foods Market. By then I didn't care about ambiance.

A cup of jicama slaw from the salad bar - diced jicama, shredded carrots, cherry tomato halves, micro-thin fennel slices, oranges, and oddly enough, way too many California black olive rings. Leave out the olives next time and it is all groovy and good.

Finally home after a 12 hour day
A vodka tonic. Ahhh.

That's it. I.m not sure about vitamins, protein and fiber, but I definitely got my 5 servings a day of coffee and met my alcohol requirement.

Traditional pico de gallo

2005-05-30T12:59:00.000-07:00

This is what Cristina on the Chowhound message board insists is real Pico de Gallo. I call melon with lime juice, chile powder and salt Pico de Gallo because I have heard other people call it that. She insists that is called "fruit."

In any case, this is a refreshing summer salad.

Pico de Gallo

2 cups jicama, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch dice
3 oranges, peeled and trimmed of white pith, chopped in dice
1/2 large red, orange or yellow bell pepper, diced
1 cup or more mild flavored cucumber, diced
Some people like paper thin slices of red onion, too
Some people like chopped cilantro
Juice of one lime
Your favorite chile powder to taste
Couple good pinches of flake salt if you have it, regular salt if you don't.
A nice drizzle of olive oil

Combine and eat. It gets better if it sits for a couple hours.

My newest blog

2005-05-29T12:29:00.000-07:00

Ever since I spent 3 weeks in Oaxaca last summer, I have been wanting to print my journal and photos, and I just couldn't figure a good, economical way to do it.

Duh! Yesterday it finally occurred to me: Who needs paper? Publish a blog!

So I chopped my word document up into chronological chunks, uploaded a zillion photos to flickr.com (which, due to my techno-incompetence took longer than it should have) and about 10 hours of screen time later, here it is:

My Oaxaca Journal.

It is quite long and quite detailed. If you have a lot of patience and a masochistic streak, you can read all of it. Otherwise, read part of it or just look at the pretty pictures. There are more photos later in the blog than earlier.

Good bye low-carb diet

2005-05-28T12:42:00.000-07:00

Of course I am lying about being on a low-carb diet. I would NEVER, both because I think it is a bunch of idiocy and because I am a carb-addicted vegetarian. A typical meal can be a bean burrito with a side of sweet corn and some carrots with a piece of fruit for dessert...bring on the carbs!

After about a year of holding myself back, I finally went into Sarai Panaderia at the corner of TO Blvd and Conejo School Road yesterday for some Mexican, Central or maybe South American pastries (I will ask next time I go in, maybe later today).

It was even better than I expected. They have lovely crumbly sweet empanadas in flavors from guayaba (guava) to cajeta to fresa (strawberry), the usual assortment of pan dulces and other pastries.

The two I bought, a cajeta empanada and a long, thin sugar covered cream filled pastry were both very sweet, especially the runny brown cajeta, and I ate them both before I remembered I had been meaning to take one back and share it with someone in my office...

The price? 50 cents apiece. That, my friends, is a deal.

Eat and Run

2005-05-25T18:59:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting much lately and I haven't been cooking much lately. I have been busy.

I have to tell you about one of my new staple lifesaving got-no-time-to-cook foods, Ajvar. Or, to be more specific, mild Ajvar, since the spicy version is a little much for me.

This middle eastern or Turkish dip has a smooth consistency and a flavor I don't get tired of. It is primarily red ripe sweet peppers, eggplant and tomatoes blended with some spices, including a few hot red peppers.

Thus, it is an almost miraculous 15 calories a tablespoon.

I eat it on crackers, on torn-up pitas, on bread, on quesadillas. The brand shown isn't the brand I buy, Zer Gut, but I couldn't find a photo and I was too lazy to get out the camera.

Cheese of the every-other-week

2005-05-25T10:35:00.000-07:00

I just can't eat that much cheese! I wanted to do cheese of the week but I can't keep up.

This is Queso Quesadilla, a Cacique product . They make a line of Mexican cheeses, cremas and chorizo sausage. Their website has recipes and descriptions of what the differents cheeses are like, which is handy because they look pretty much the same when they are in their little round packages.

This cheese doesn't have a lot of distinctive flavor. But it is very, very smooth and melts like a dream - the perfect quesadilla cheese. It is much much better for quesadillas than monterey, which tends to separate, or stringy old mozzarella.

A hilarious post about something weird

2005-05-21T08:36:00.000-07:00

I keep hearing about stinky tofu. Here from Deep End Dining, is the whole horrible tale, all laid out with details you may not want to know. But it is hilarious, so hold you nose and give it a read.

Minty lime coolers

2005-05-20T15:36:00.000-07:00

Mint syrup
Originally uploaded by suebobdavis.

We had dinner at Ciudad, one of the Too Hot Tamales' restaurants, the other night.

It is in downtown Los Angeles and was filled with beautiful hip people out having a beautiful hip time. But, surprisingly, they still let us in.

The food was good and the decor was very modern and fun with geometric shapes printed on the dishes and walls in warm colors like orange, yellow and brown.

My favorite part though, was the Minty Lime Cooler I ordered to drink. You know how much I like wine, but I was driving the 45 miles home and needed to have my wits about me.

I found the recipe online, but it didn't exactly make what I had at the restaurant.

The drink from the recipe is bright green with tons of delightful teeth-coloring mint flecks. The drink at the restaurant was clear, with just a couple tiny flecks of mint leaf.

I got busy at home today, trying to re-create the tasty drink without the annoying mint pieces. I figured they must have used a mint syrup, so I made a simple syrup with 2 cups sugar, 1 cup of water, and a big bunch of mint leaves. I just boiled it all together for about 10 minutes, then strained.

Well. The finished syrup is tan, not green or clear, and while it has a strong mint flavor, it is more of a cooked mint, not a fresh mint taste.

I put a couple teaspoons of the finished syrup in a glass with the juice of a lime and some sparkling water and ice.

It wasn't what I had at Ciudad, but it wasn't bad.

I am thinking next time I might cook the syrup, cool it a bit, then steep the mint leaves.

Any other suggestions?

Not roasted garlic

2005-05-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

I got this idea from Angeli Caffe in Los Angeles. That restaurant is owned by the wonderful Evan Kleiman, who hosts a Saturday morning radio show about food, "Good Food" that is so wonderful I suggest you tune in online and give it a listen.

Anyway, back to the restaurant. One of the appetizers we ordered was roasted garlic, and it didn't come out in the usual form of a head of garlic that you have to messily squish the cloves out of.

It was individual cloves in a little dish of oil, so they were easy to fish out and smoosh on the bread.

Yesterday I was thinking about making some roasted garlic and flashed back to Angeli Caffe.

I thought, "Wow! I could roast the individual cloves in a whole lot of oil!" Then I thought "Hey, it's 87 degrees, why don't I do it on the stovetop?"

I heated up some vegetable oil and threw in a bunch of garlic cloves. Slowly simmered them for 40 minutes or so. Voila. Wonderful soft, easy to handle cloves of oily, "roasted" garlic.

Mystery Item Contest Winner

2005-05-14T08:14:00.000-07:00

The mystery fruit is guava. Five people guessed right and Mika of the Green Jackfruit is the randomly-chosen winner of a big $5 Barnes & Noble gift card.

Congratulations, Mika, and thanks to everyone else who played.

Mika, email me your address and I will send you the card.

To answer the question, why is it brown on the outside, I don't know. Leaf scarring? Rattling around in my produce bag? I'm not sure.

The guavas we usually get here are actually feijoas, Feijoa sellowiana, also called the pineapple guava. But the one shown in the photo is a real guava, Psidium guajava. I have heard that they can grow ok in So. California but are better in warmer areas.

I have to admit the one I tasted wasn't quite ripe and the little seeds were hard as rocks. How do guava eaters get around those seeds?

The cookbook shelf meme

2005-05-12T16:51:00.000-07:00

Tag, I'm it.

Sweetnicks tapped me to be the next blogger to put my cookbooks on display. I have a modest collection. I got rid of about 100 cookbooks and 9 banker's boxes worth of magazines when I moved 3 years ago.

About a year ago, I sent my nephew Lyal a box of about 20 cookbooks while he was cooking professionally. And I have been trying not to keep magazines or to buy more cookbooks because I don't use most of the ones I have. The most used book on my shelf, besides my Tried and True binder, is Lord Krishna's Cuisine: the art of Indian vegetarian cooking by Yamuna Devi.

Having the internet really helps. I look up recipes online all the time instead of buying books and magazines. I also get recipe ideas from all the blogs I read.

Here are my answers to the questions:

1. Rationale behind what we're seeing?
It is as organized as anything else I own, which means not at all.

2. Most recommended?
That would depend on your taste. I have given away at least 6 copies of Jane Brody's Good Food Book. because I think it has good basic nutritional advice and because all the recipes work.

3. Cookbook that made you what you were?
American Wholefoods Cuisine - 1300 meatless wholefoods recipes, by Nikki and David Goldbeck
It was the first kind of comprehensive vegetarian cookbook I had ever seen, and I cooked obsessively from it for about a year, learning to cook. They have plenty of off-kilter tries at making vegetarian versions of meat dishes, so I learned a lot about what not to do.

4. Porniest cookbook?
I don't have any really big glossy books, probably on purpose. I am such a kitchen spaz that none of my dishes will ever look remotely like food porn.

A lot of my books are just plain text. The closest thing I have to food porn is Dessert University by Roland Messnier, but I bought it because I met him, not for the photos.

5. Sophie's Choice cookbook?
My Betty Crocker cookbook - inscribed from my mom - "Be patient. Good things take time." My first cookbook.

6. If you were a cookbook, which cookbook would you be?
Jane Brody's Good Food book. Packed with good nutritional advice and really tasty low-fat recipes. Not that I take the advice or cook particularly low-fat.

7. If your cookbook were extremely valuable, so valuable you might hide it with other valuables, where would that place be?
My most valuable cookbook is "Tried and True," a 3-ring binder with copies of every great recipe I have ever made, even those that I have in cookbooks. That way they are easy to find (it is the most organized thing I own) and I don't get my cookbooks stained while I am cooking.

It is right out there in the open.

And BTW, I really don't have many physical valuables. I think my real treasures are experiential, not physical. I wouldn't trade 3 weeks in Oaxaca or a walk through the Santa Monica Farmer's Market with Chef Tim Love for diamonds or gold.

My special cookbook is the Davis Family Cookbook. Each year everyone, including the kids, submits a recipe they like in their own handwriting along with a photo. We then make copies for everyone and distribute the updates. It is a fun way to see how everyone grows and changes. We have been slacking off for years, but I think it is time to start again!

This is a recipe of my grandmother's we found after she had passed away. Now all the great-grandkids have a copy.

And now I tag Nordljus. I hope she will go along.

Wine Blogging Wednesday

2005-05-11T20:11:00.000-07:00

It's Wine Blogging Wednesday, a meme of Lenndevours , hosted this month by Sam of Becks n Posh , and I have good news and bad news.

First, to get it over with, the bad news: the wine I tasted today, a White Merlot by J.W. Morris, was horrible. I barely got one gulp down before the cherry cough syrup taste made me gag. Good thing it only set me back $2.99 at Trader Joes.

The wine is a glowing nuclear pink, and I had a feeling it wasn't going to be good, but I was in a gambling mood.

To make up for it, I am drinking a 2001 L'Aventure Optimus, a red wine that has the potential to make me forget about anything bad that has ever happened.

The good news, though, is that I was so inspired by this month's assignment that I created a whole new blog, Queen of Roses devoted to Rose Wines. Lots of links and photos. Check it out!

Cheese of the Week - Mimolette

2005-05-09T12:15:00.000-07:00

I love this pretty orange French cheese called Mimolette! It is such a deep orange that it almost doesn't look like cheese. It comes in a really hard wax coating. The cheese itself is pretty hard, especially near the rind.

It is dense and tastes like the most perfect cheddar I have ever had. Not too sharp, not too mild, smooth, with a great nutty flavor.

Here is more information than you probably ever wanted to know about Mimolette.

Chicago, 1959

2005-05-08T22:07:00.000-07:00

I was looking though cookbooks this morning for a dessert recipe for Mom's Day (I ended up with strawberry shortcakes with a vanilla-orange sauce and whipped cream, very nice) and this menu fell out.

I bought it a few years ago at a junk shop -- oops, I mean "antique store.". I just loved the cheesy graphics and, of course, the prices.

Here is the cover.

And the wonderfully compact wine list:

Gosh, I do wonder what sparkling burgundy tasted like!

And then a section with tonight's specials and prices. Everything seemed to be about $3, but a Sirloin Steak would set you back almost $6 in June, 1959. I still think that's too much to pay for a steak. I guess that's another reason why I'm a vegetarian.

Pimping my other blogs

2005-05-08T13:46:00.000-07:00

I enjoy this blog, but it doesn't have a real focus to keep me on track. Food, wine, cooking, ingredients...Snackish does it all.

I created two more blogs dedicated to some of my favorite things. I linked them on the links sidebar, but here they are again.

Queen of Roses is all about Rose wines. Pink is one of my favorite colors, and it took Wine Blogging Wednesday #9 from Lenndevours to re-pique my interest in rose wines. News, reviews and links to other sites.

Beauty of Butter is all about butter, with butter news from around the world. No recipes yet, but I am sure it will come to that.

Kohlrabi - Sweet and Crunchy

2005-05-07T15:25:00.000-07:00

Green & Purple Kohlrabi

Kohlrabi are a great vegetable. They just look so weird that many people don't bother.

Buy the smallest kohlrabi you can find because they get tough and strong-flavored when they are large. Green or purple doesn't matter - they are the same on the inside once you peel them.

Kohlrabi and Watercress Saute
This is a nice vegetable side dish from Epicurious .

1 pound small kohlrabi bulbs (about 1 bunch)
1 bunch watercress
2 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Peel kohlrabi and cut into julienne strips. Remove and discard stems from watercress. In a large heavy skillet heat butter over moderately high heat. SautÃ© kohlrabi, stirring, 5 minutes.

Add lemon juice and sautÃ© kohlrabi, stirring, 1 minute more. Remove pan from heat and immediately stir in watercress. Season with salt and pepper.

I'm not that bright

2005-05-04T07:38:00.000-07:00

In my years of owning a rice steamer, I have been doing one thing with it: making rice. Then I use leftover rice to make vegetable fried rice, adding every veg I find in the refrigerator, eggs, ginger, soy sauce, herbs.

Last night I finally got the genius idea of just putting veg in the steamer with the rice. I used frozen peas, canned corn, frozen bell peppers, a handful of cumin seeds and some panir cubes - frozen Indian cheese.

The veg and cheese floated to the top and a nice crust formed on the bottom. Delicious!

Mystery Item Contest

2005-05-03T17:34:00.000-07:00

Mystery Item

This is a produce item that may be familiar to you, but I had never seen it before last Farmer's Market.

In the spirit of public participation, you are invited to take part in the first-ever Snackish Name That Mystery Item contest.

Email me with the botanic or common name of what this item of produce is.

I will draw from all the correct answers next Tuesday for and send the winner a valuable prize (a $5 Barnes & Noble gift card, if you must know).

Send answers to snackishblog@yahoo.com

Chateau Haut-Florin Bordeaux Rose

2005-05-03T08:20:00.000-07:00

Chateau Haut-Florin Bordeaux Rose

I got started on Wine Blogging Wednesday a little early. The theme this month is Roses, and I couldn't resist.

Roses (I have a Mac and the accents don't translate, sorry) speak of spring, with their beautiful pink color. With a glass of rose in my hand, I just want to be outdoors in the warm sun, having a picnic on the grass.

I found this Chateau Haut-Florin Bordeaux Rose in the Whole Foods wine fridge among about 5 other roses. I think it was $9.99.

It has a nose with more straw than fruit. Tasting, it first hits with a hint of strawberry, then a blast of kiwi fruit. Altogether enjoyable.

Palapa Azul Bars

2005-05-01T20:04:00.000-07:00

Palapa Azul Bars

Cucumber chile ice bars. Perfect for when you get that craving for a frozen cucumber-chile snack and just don't know what to do!

I first tasted these at the Natural Products West expo about a month ago. Some guys from Wisconsin stopped me in the aisle and said "You HAVE to try this!" They didn't even work for Palapa Azul - they were just enthusiastic eaters.

In Mexico, street vendors sell fruit ices known as "paletas." These are in that style.

They make a rainbow of flavors - mango, watermelon, strawberry, even a sweet corn - but I think these were the winner in the exotic category.

Unfortunately, though they are novel, I really don't like them. They are too spicy and the spice continues, so you never really get a break from it. The cucumber flavor is nice and strong but the chile starts to interfere after a while.

They would be fun at a party for people to try, but for everyday eating, I would buy the fruit flavors, which are really good.