Dear Chefs, kitchen staff, servers, and everyone who fed me in 2011;
I write to thank you for the wonderful memories, the delicious moments, and the extra calories this year. All well worth it and ready for more in 2012.
Chef Zarate, Picca Peru
Una cena en su restaurante me transporta a Perú, y me trae sentimientos de familia y cultura a travez de cada bocado de sus platillos Peruanos. Hasta lagrimas solté al comer el seco de pato por los recuerdos de mi abuelita. Le doy mil gracias por su talento, y que 2012 le continúe a traer éxito.
Chef Stan Ota, Takami
A delightful experience of wonderful dishes, unique presentation, and a fine dinning atmosphere. With my recent work location transfer to Downtown, I will surely be frequenting Takami more often… That carpaccio is calling my name!
A Celebration of Chefs and Others
A Celebration of Chefs
The Aside Apple Cake
This recipe, which originally appeared in the NY Times in 1973 in an article by Jean Hewitt, was featured by Amanda Hessler in her ‘Recipe Redux’ piece in the November 4, 2007 Times Magazine. It looked scrumptious and easy so I tore it out, as I do with many NY Times recipes, and put it aside. “Aside” is also where I put the card the secretary in my Dentist’s office handed me to remind me of my next appointment. It’s where the little yellow rectangular stub the shoemaker gave me without which I can’t get my shoes back went.
And it is also where the Gelson’s receipt, on the back of which I had illegibly scrawled the title of a song I heard on the car radio that would be perfection playing over a scene in the screenplay I was working on before we went on strike, was moved. You can pretty much take it to the bank that whatever is put there will never see the light of day again. Aside, as it turns out, is my own personal Bermuda Triangle.
The Allure of LudoBites
Though I am not a foodie, I like watching chefs on TV. They are the
new "rock stars" and their antics are often equal amounts amusing,
terrible and inspirational (in the kitchen, that is). It's hard to
imagine a city's food lovers more connected to a chef than Los Angeles
is to Ludo Lefebvre. Trying to get a reservation to his tri-annual,
6-week pop-up restaurant is harder than getting VIP passes backstage to
U2. (I'm guessing, but I don't think I'm far off.) When out dining in LA, the conversation, if you're with passionate
diners, inevitably turns to the hottest local chefs and eventually to LudoBites - how many you've been to (3),
which incarnations (3.0, 4.0 and 6.0) and how much time/how many
computers you had running trying to get one of the elusive reservations
on OpenTable…before it crashed for those trying to get into 5.0 and 6.0.
This last time for 007 (back downtown at Gram & Papas), it went off without a hitch – that is if you
got into the system in the first 2 minutes, which by the grace of God my
Man did.
It's probably unfathomable to those living outside our city – which is known for its over-hyping everything (see Carmageddon) – why people are so rabid to get into LudoBites. For all the great press he receives from local bloggers and a certain section of the food press, there's equal derision by more traditional outlets that seem to feel that if he is such a great chef he should have his own restaurant. That the "pop-up" thing is just a ploy to make him famous for fame's sake instead of for the quality and creativity of his food. All I can say to that is he's been cooking since he was 14 (he's currently 39) in some of the best French restaurants in the world, so the man has skills. Whether you like how he constructs his plates and flavors, well that's up to you.
The Pusher Man
The other day, my daughter Hannah and I stopped by Surfas. It always
surprises me when she wants to go there, since their prepared food is,
lets just say..um..esoteric. She ordered the 72 layer biscuit with ham
and cheese and drank a Bubble Up. Oh to be 13, 5’5” and weigh 98 lbs.
After that, as we crossed over into the store, a fellow cradling a
basket of hot baguettes narrowly missed running into me as he made his
way to his station or should I say ‘kingdom’, because this guy rules!
Hannah and I watched him set up the baguettes and tend to a customer at the newly established Cheese Bar. If you haven’t been to Surfas lately, there have been some delightful additions to the whole experience.
Preserves
There is a difference between jam and preserves. Jam is sweet fruit you spread on toast. Preserves are a frozen moment in time—a piece of summer that you can carry with you the rest of the year: high grass, long naps, warm evenings, your front porch…
My neighbor Mary Wellington makes preserves.
Mary is a farmer. And not only a single-family farmer--a single farmer. She works three acres of very diverse orchards of Glenn Annie canyon all by herself, on which she grows over fifty varieties of fruit.
Her preserves were so treasured and ubiquitous at local farmer’s markets that many people came to call her “The Jam Lady.” Her Blenheim Apricot jam is intoxicating. Her Blood Orange marmalade is insane. The red raspberry is well… indescribable. But Mary Wellington preserves more than fruit.
If you wander up Glen Annie you will find a two story clapboard farmhouse peeking out from behind the persimmon tree. Mary will greet you with her typical burst of enthusiasm and a clap of her hands. She will launch into an impromptu tour of her orchard and its latest bounty: You will flit from tree to tree sampling God’s offerings in a feast of the senses that is literally Edenic. (I know I get religious about food—but I was raised that way.) Taste the Santa Rosas… Smell the outside of this blood orange… Look at the color on these apricots... Oh don’t mind the bruise—just taste it.
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