Summer

From the LA Times

summercocktailsYou know summer's here when your cocktail looks like a snow cone. Or a lassi. Or an ice cream float. Or a fruity soda pop that comes in a glass bottle, complete with bubbles and twist-off cap.

A wave of new cocktails that hew toward the playful not only puts us squarely in summer but also is helping to make L.A.'s cocktail scene uniquely its own.

The snow cones at Son of a Gun on West 3rd Street are tiki-inspired crushed-ice cocktails served in paper cones that rest in julep cups. A new cocktail menu at 1886 Bar at the Raymond in Pasadena features bottled fizzy cocktails. And at Pour Vous, the French-themed bar that opened on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood two months ago, the menu is punctuated with lassis and parfait look-alikes and drinks that resemble something from your favorite juice bar. What's up with all the fun drinks from serious bartenders?

"Our cocktail culture really reflects an evolution," says Lindsay Nader, part of the Pour Vous team that helped realize a novel take on French-inspired drinking. "There are [craft cocktail] pioneers in New York who are still kind of stuck in this rigid way of working and creating. They aren't breaking free of the handlebar-mustache, buttoned-up attitude. In L.A., we're moving out of that era, it's anything goes, we're having fun with cocktails and stripping away some of that seriousness."

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mozz-onastickI don’t know if I would really call this dish a “recipe”. No need for measuring cups, measuring spoons, tons of ingredients, or chopping. I cannot tell you how many times I have thrown some fresh mozzarella, heirloom tomatoes, and some basil together to enhance a meal. A little good olive oil, some balsamic, fresh ground pepper, and coarse salt creates a fresh, tasty, savory, and sweet dish.

Sometimes I will make a bruschetta and add a piece of burrata cheese. My motto – you can’t go wrong with anything that includes burrata. Even without the burrata, there is something special about this combination.

When I read that this weeks dish for French Fridays with Dorie was a salad that included a fruit, I wasn’t exactly overwhelmed. Generally, I don’t really like fruit in my salad. I can’t get into watermelon with my lettuce and PLEASE, hold the mandarin oranges in my chinese chicken salad.

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tc_vacation_026.jpgFor one week, I had an apartment in south Minneapolis. It was listed on a site that offers vacation rentals by owner. Up to this point, I hadn't spent much time exploring south Minneapolis. It turned out I was in for a real treat. Although I had my bike along (my apartment was just 3 blocks from one of the wonderful Minneapolis trails), several dark, cloudy, soggy rainy days prevented me from spending any time on my pedal-powered two-wheeler. As it turned out, that wasn't such a bad thing. By car, I was available to explore neighborhoods I probably wouldn't have gotten to by bike.

My discovery highlights wound up taking on unexpected themes of bakeries and farmers markets. I had planned to take in the downtown St. Paul farmers market, the oldest in Minnesota. It never disappoints with all of the fresh flowers, herbs to take home to plant, fresh vegetables, honey, meats and this time, even fresh-picked strawberries. The next morning, a Sunday, I paid a visit to the Kingfield farmers market, a relatively new but charming small neighborhood market. I'd read that a person could find plenty for breakfast at this market and it was definitely true. A strawberry-rhubarb turnover from Sun Street Breads was devoured before I could even snap a picture. 

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plumcrostadaPlums are such a special fruit with so many uses. For me their flavor is most unique: they are sweet near the skin but tart by the pit. The color too is deeper toward the skin and paler near the pit. All stone fruits are spectacular, in my opinion, but I adore plums for this uniqueness. I love eating plums when they're so ripe that their juices squirt right out when you bite into them and run down your arm. That's when I find myself eating them over the kitchen sink. Often when I buy plums in bulk, instead of waiting for them to fully ripen, I usually end up making jam or baking them into pastries, pies, and tarts.

Late summer always rewards us with beautiful Italian prune plums, recognizable for their egg shape, dark and bluish exterior, and green to yellow interior. They are typically available from August until September and can be found widely in the States, but more so in Europe. Often they are dried to make prunes, but more famously are made into the eastern European liquor slivovitz. Plums have always been a favorite in my family. Many Hungarian recipes make use of them: one dish in particular is gomboc, which are plums encased in potato dumplings, and rolled in a cinnamon-breadcrumb mixture. I like them, but I love plums much more in pastries like this crostata.

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From The NY Times Magazine

CrabWilliam Brinson for the New York TimesThere are two ways to get crab this season. One is beautiful, hard work. It requires only a chicken neck, string, a net and access to coastal Atlantic waters. Tie the string to the neck and dangle it into the shallows where you can see the bait. Here comes Mr. Crab. Here comes Mr. Net. Repeat until you’ve got enough for dinner. Children can do this — and will — until you’ve got enough crabs for two dinners. Steam them and start picking.

The other method is easier and more realistic for the majority of us who don’t live near coastal Atlantic waters: Buy some. For this weekend’s cooking, get picked blue crab — pasteurized, refrigerated Callinectes sapidus, known as the savory beautiful swimmer — at the market, jumbo lump or backfin meat, from an American harvester. The most famous blue-crab fishery in the world is in the Chesapeake Bay, but the crabs are caught north of there and South to Florida waters.

A pound will do for dinner for four, though there are those who can eat a pound alone. These people can catch their own dinner. Crab is expensive. It is also rich.

You might make crab cakes, stretching the meat out with ground crackers or bread crumbs, binding everything with egg. But a higher, better summertime use of crabmeat is to dress it simply and pair the result with greens in a salad, or to warm it in butter and cream, scent it with sherry and serve it with toast.

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