A Celebration of Chefs and Others

Cooking and travel shows make me angry. That's right, I said angry. For a very irrational reason. They make me hungry, which leads me to snacking which is making me fat. I usually have pretty good self-control, mainly because I don't stock snacks in my home to begin with; however, after watching Anthony Bourdain traveling the globe eating across country after country, Mario Batali delivering another delicious Italian dish and the Top Chef contestants turning vending machine food into gourmet treats, I want to enjoy what they're eating/making right at that moment and I can't.

Thus I get angry and find myself rummaging through my kitchen looking for anything to ease my phantom hunger pains. I'm not really hungry, they've just made me think that I am and when all I can conjure up is stale nuts or microwave popcorn, I get miffed. Sure, I could have more selections on hand, but that would not be helpful to my waistline. Nor would they be as delicious as what I'm seeing on the screen. Getting enough exercise when you work in front of a computer all day is hard enough without these talented kitchen wizards making it worse.

Alton Brown's 18-Carrot Cake

While the name of this cake is 18-Carrot Cake, there are not eighteen carrots in here, nor does it refer to gold in any way, Alton Brown just liked the name.

I make carrot cake every year for my husband's birthday, it's his favorite.  And every year, I make a different recipe for no other reason than to just try another variation.  Why not? This one was quite excellent with a very refined texture.  I love Alton Brown and the science background he puts behind every recipe.  His cookbook goes into deep explanations as to how and why we mix, stir, beat etc.  If you are interested, it's worth the read and gives you reason for doing the things we do in the kitchen.  I like that.

I have always believed many baking failures occur because of mis-measurement of ingredients and over-mixing errors.  I love that Alton's cookbooks give a weight and volume measurement for every ingredient.  I decided to even weigh my spices this time around and it was eye-opening to see how "off" measuring spoons can be in reference to what a certain ingredient should weigh.

My friend Bobby is a really good cook. OK I know, we all have friends who are really good cooks but my friend is also really, really, REALLY brave. He doesn’t just cook for family and friends the way a lot of good cooks are happy to do, just leaving it at that. No Bobby cooks for famous food critics. Who does that? That’s like inviting Joan Didion or Richard Price to come read my stories. I’d be physically ill.

But Bobby invites Merrill Shindler, editor of the Zagat Los Angeles Survey, host of KABC’s radio show, Feed Your Face, author of several cookbooks including “American Dishes” and thousands upon thousands of restaurant reviews, and his wife over with a few other couples quite regularly. They are neighbors and as friendly neighbors they are prone to eating together. Yikes!!

Bob and his brother Peter Kaminsky, the noted food writer, are east coast guys who grew up loving to eat. Their grandparents owned and lived above a candy store in New Jersey. Bobby remembers his grandmother cooking brisket on the stove upstairs and running up and down to and from the store to brown it, with the candy store smelling like roasting meat and onions! After Peter graduated from Princeton, he used his degree to get a cabbie’s license so the brothers could drive all over Brooklyn searching for ethnic dives to eat in.

When Bobby graduated college he moved to Boston and worked at Joe’s Blues Bar as a bartender / bouncer / fill in guitar player. He’d often invite some of the out of town bands back to his place for home cooked meals. Calling food a “social lubricant” he’d get to hone his guitar skills with some of the best blues guys around while feeding them pasta with home cooked red sauce or his grandma’s brisket.

It’s fortunate that the world’s largest atom-smasher shut down in Geneva, Switzerland this past week and had to be repaired after just ten days of operation.  Los Angeles’s own human particle accelerator 2003 Bon Appétit Chef of the Year Alain Giraud was gearing up to teach class at the always stimulating Chefmakers Cooking Academy in Pacific Palisades (Chefmakers.com) last Thursday and there is no way these two powerful kinetic instruments could work at the same time if planet Earth hopes to remain on its axis.  (Chef Giraud has a great new restaurant called Anisette Brasserie in Santa Monica and Alain thought he would take a breather from his 7:30 am to midnight duties and teach a class to 26 drooling citizens.  I’ve been there for breakfast and lunch and I can barely chew because I’m smiling so much after each bite.)