A Celebration of Chefs

Bobby the Brave and his Potato Gallette

Brisket 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.

Dione Lucas Redux

I think there is a certain cautious thrill in serving dishes that are so out of style – so out of our contemporary taste aesthetic, that it may very well surprise and delight the senses. (On the other hand, it can also make for an early evening.)

This Dione Lucus recipe for Apple Soup with Camembert Cheese Balls offers such an opportunity. Taken from her The Cordon Bleu Cook Book, published 1947, it offers an excellent change of style and taste, and how can one go wrong with fruit and cheese – even as a soup!

In Traffic with Jacques Pepin

Although my commute is a short one, traffic puts me in a bad mood. I’m impatient and irritated, not qualities that make for a tranquil drive. My commuter’s grumpiness was recently soothed by none other than Jacques Pepin himself, master chef, teacher, and internet star along with the beloved Julia Child and others. He didn’t actually sit next to me flipping crepes in the passenger seat, but he did write the wonderful book The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen (Houghton Mifflin, 2003), and I borrowed the audio book from the equally wonderful public library.

Pepin does not do the narrating on the audio book himself, and I suspect his accent may have been one of the reasons. The lack of his own voice is perhaps the only issue I have with the audiobook. The narrator speaks with just a smidge of a French accent, so he is easy to understand, but he is not a skilled reader and sometimes lets the natural drama in some of Jacques’s stories fall flat. If you’ve ever seen Jacques Pepin on one of his television cooking shows, you know he has personality, and his energy and humor would have made the audio version of a wonderful read soar. Stories of childhood summers spent on farms during World War II and then years in his mother’s restaurant followed by grueling apprenticeships in classical French restaurants often made me wish my drive home was longer.

Adam Perry Lang Brings Serious BBQ to L.A.

There are many reasons great barbecue tastes so mouthwateringly amazing, but the main ones are experience, time and passion. Adam Perry Lang is bringing his extensive knowledge, years at the pit and love of all things smoked and grilled to Hollywood for a 6 week pop-up to showcase what authentic barbecue is all about. Not your usual temporary restaurant, Lang is lodging behind the El Capitan Theater in an open air parking lot thanks to his good friend and fellow food-lover Jimmy Kimmel.

As the author of "Serious Barbecue" which he's currently re-releasing himself, Lang is sharing his time-tested techniques with the people of LA and any lucky tourist who happens to be drawn in by the smell. His expertise with meat has been sought out by many other top chefs like Mario Batali and Jamie Oliver, but he's recently moved to Los Angeles with the hope of settling in for the long haul. The Backlot BBQ is a way for him to get in touch with the local community and learn the ins and outs of this sprawling city without having to commit, quite yet, to a more permanent location.

Real barbecue takes special equipment and a lot of time, so taking over an existing space was not an option. Here, just south of Hollywood Blvd. off an alley on Orange Street, Lang has created his own little sanctuary of smoky goodness with an Airstream to catch a few winks in the wee hours, along with his 2-ton, custom-built pit smoker and a Texas burn pit to make their own charcoal from cords of split pecan wood imported from the Longhorn State as well. Sleeping in a parking lot? Talk about devotion.

Celebrating Anne

There are times when I scrutinize my outfit before I leave the house, and find it absurdly, compulsively over-accessorized. It’s then, as I grab my keys and prance out with red sneakers, mismatched bracelets, and a brooch shaped like a turnip, that I’ll find myself thinking of her. Subtlety, in many things, is often advised; but I, heeding Anne of Green Gables, rarely listen. If at a dinner party, after I’ve gone on and on to someone about a book they’ll probably never read, ignoring every attempt they make to escape me, she’ll just appear in my mind. And often, when faced with a moral dilemma, like whether to leave the last bite of pie for the person I’m sharing it with, or to request that my upstairs neighbors stop rollerblading on the hardwood floor, I’ll ask myself:

“What would Anne of Green Gables do?”

A Celebration of Chefs and Others