A few good things

The flowers I bought at the market today:


My desk. Each day is a battle to get through all of the piles. By the end of the day, I've generally created new ones. But they're fun piles.


Coco. Roei's sisters dog.
Me and Grandpa stylin' in our specs at the Katella deli.

A breath of fresh writing

I just read the most beautiful book. A new one, by Eileen Spinelli, for probably second grade and up. It's called "Where I Live" and it's the first example of a novel written in poems that actually works without any strain. It begins like this:

This is where I live--
in the yellow house
with the white shutters.
I'm the one who helped plant
the maple tree in the front yard,
the one who waters
the daffodils in the spring,
who rakes the leaves in autumn.
My room is on the second floor.
See my window?
This morning I looked out
and saw my best friend, Rose,
waving to me.
"Wanna ride bikes?" she called.
The sun was shining,
the sky was so blue,I thought I could swim in it.
My heart was happy.
It's a good day when the sky is blue
and the sun is bright
and Rose and I have plans.

And the illustrations by Matt Phelan
are just right.

I love being a librarian.

More food

This is the goose egg I bought at the farmers market. The picture doesn't really show you the size, but the yolk unbroken was about the circumference of a coffee mug. I made an entire omelet from just the one egg. Cool. (I couldn't taste any difference though between it and a chicken egg...not sure why since some duck eggs I've had DO taste different. Maybe it depends on the duck/goose/chicken.)


This is another Zuni Cafe cookbook recipe (so are the lentils, below). Again, I am impressed by such simple recipes turning out such good results. To make the granita parfaits, melt one cup of sugar in two cups of coffee, put it in a shallow dish and freeze. I didn't try it, but I bet khalua would be a good addition....When it is frozen, chop it up into bits and layer it with sweetened whipped cream. True to Zuni's word, the cream that touches the ice freezes just a little and gets the most amazing chewy texture. So good for the hot weather we've been having!



This turned out really really good. Not flashy, but just plain good. Chop up about 1/2 cup each celery, onion, and carrot. Cook them just until they sweat in a few tablespoons of olive oil. Add 2 cups beluga (black) lentils, a bay leaf, and a cup of red wine. When the wine is almost all absorbed add 1/2 cup chicken stock. Add a pinch of salt. Add another 1/2 cup after the first is absorbed. Continue adding stock 1/2 cup at a time--as if you were making risotto--until the lentils are tender. Add more salt if necessary and dress with a few more tablespoons of olive oil. Adding the liquid slowly helped the lentils absorb lots of flavor without getting mushy.

New Recipes

McDonald's boy ate ricotta gnocchi with sage-butter and carrots...and liked it. We're making progress. Of course, he still ordered a Papa Johns pizza after. I was probably the last person left in LA whose number was not in the system at any fast-food pizza joint. Calling around for a pizza delivery, we got a lot of confused workers asking over and over, "can you repeat that please?" I think we've got just about all of them covered now, so bring it on over Dominoes.

I've been cooking a few things out of the Zuni Cafe cookbook Sam bought me a while back. So far, the recipes have been simple and successful. A difficult, but useful combination to find.



I made the ricotta gnocchi (this is a photo of the page because I did not take a picture of mine). I did the little carrots just the same (and they were really good rolled in the sage-butter) and I used sage instead of chervil cuz that's what I had. The recipe's simplicity depends on getting good ricotta, which I can, but I doubt it would work with the stuff in those little tallish plastic containers at the grocery store. So if you have a good Italian market nearby, I highly recommend making these.

1 pound ricotta (blended until smooth)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup grated parmesian
a bit of nutmeg

Whip it all for a bit with a whisk or in a kitchen aid, then shape ovals using two spoons. Coat them in flour and cook them in boiling water for about 5 minutes. Drop them in a pan of melted butter with herbs. Serve immediately. The carrots I just blanched and shocked and then rolled them in the same butter.

The other recipe I tried got really good after it sat in my refrigerator for a few days. Slice two pounds of sweet onions (like maui or vidalia) and put them in a bowl. Add olive oil, a little white wine, some salt, very thinly sliced lemon rounds (with the rind still on), chopped fresh mint, and olives. Lay that in the bottom of a large baking dish. Arrange artichokes cut in half and trimmed then doused in olive oil and salt among onions. Cover the whole thing with parchment paper and then with foil and bake until artichokes are tender, about an hour and a half at 375. I trimmed my artichokes a lot thinking I'd be able to eat them without using the "scraping" method, but I still had to scrape, so I recommend not going to all the trouble to trim them that much. Here's mine:



And here's the book's:

One Day Vacation

Tuesday was my last day off until the 4th of July. Thanks goodness for holidays. And holiday pay. SO, Roei and I decided to get out of boiling hot LA and take a little trip to Carpinteria.

Of course, we stopped by the Duddridge garage to pick out our toys: a beach umbrella, a gargantuan towel, some sunscreen, and snacks.

Then it was off to Summerland beach. Which was gorgeous. But I left the camera in the car. So, as we were pulling out we decided to stop and make two old ladies walking their dogs together take our picture. They were so cute and obliging I almost decided to take them home with me. They even managed the digital camera.


After a long nap on the beach (under the umbrella for me, under the sun for Roei) we drove up to Cold Springs Tavern. If you look above Roei's arm, you can see a piece of the view. Hard to get from the passenger's seat.


I figured Cold Springs Tavern was the perfect place for my hamburger-loving boy. But, alas, the dinner menu was quite decadent with all kinds of game meats. Perhaps he trusted me that a New York Steak was cow, but he called his sister and got the entire menu translated, just to be sure.


That was a lot of driving, so we took Terry up on her offer of a bed for the night. When we got back to the Duddridge's, we opened the front door to find the familiar smell of boysenberry pie wafting out at us. The Duddridge household, thanks to Terry, always has either the smell of bright, clean laundry detergent, or pie. They always tease me that I have a knack for coming over when there's pie, but I have a feeling someone is fixing the cards.


A dunk in the jacuzzi finished the night off.

We drove back to LA at 7am on Wednesday morning so I could make it to work on time. First, though, tea and pie in the garden. For the bazillionth time I was grateful to have one of my childhood homes still feel like home.

Orin's Place

I guess I'm actually going to have to try my hand at writing since I forgot to take pictures of the food at Orin's bbq/house-warming party/concert. Roei and I arrived at the new Highland Park place around 6:30 to find a shrimp -kebab assembly line working at the kitchen table. The shrimp were rubbed in curry, jalepenos, and lime juice before they were skewered and cooked on the grill. Next to them stood a heaping platter of veggie kebabs with red and yellow bell peppers, purple red onions, and mushrooms all cut precisely the same and putting many a Bon Appetit cover to shame. Not realizing beforehand that it was a house full of vegetarians (minus Orin, of course) I brought lamb chops marinated in oregano and lemon juice. They weren't nearly as colorful as the shrimp or the veggies, but they were mighty tasty.

I actually managed to have a good time in spite of the fact that I only knew Orin and one other person, barely, when I arrived AND in spite of the fact that Roei left for a few hours in the middle of the bbq to go eat at McDonalds.

Orin's cupboards, as always, contain all sorts of fun stuff. If you dig deep in his alcohol cabinet, you'll find non-alcoholic black currant syrup. In his fridge were mini bottles of Pellegrino. It didn't take me long to get the two together and I found the perfect drink. Here's the recipe:

Open individual sized bottle of San Pellegrino. Take three medium-sized sips. Fill empty space with Zergut black currant syrup. Drink.

FINALLY for the first time last night, I heard Orin play violin when he wasn't at a wedding. I managed to stay until midnight when the concert actually started. And, though I'm not capable of appreciating the type of music they played, I couldn't get over how amazing it was to go to a really easy going barbecue where no one was cool, everyone cooked, and everyone sat around til the wee hours playing music for each other.

AND Orin's new place is great. It even has an avocado tree.

Excuses

I'm not exactly sure what to write about since I haven't been cooking. But I've been getting snide little comments about my blog not being updated, and I'm so glad to know people are still reading it that I feel I better write something!

I haven't been cooking for three reasons. First, I've been working my rear-end off trying to make a little extra money, so I put in a night at the cooking school and two days at the Santa Monica library on top of my regular 40 plus hours. I haven't been home a lot. Reason number two, I seem to have acquired a new family. A family that is full of wives who cook and invite Roei and I over for dinner and send us home with three-days worth of leftovers. Luckily, they all seem to be very good cooks and I'm looking forward to expanding my repertoire to include Israeli food. As of yet, I'm not even well-versed in it enough to tell you what I ate other than it's all tasty and it's all brown. Lots of grains, lots of fat. Third, I have been so discombobulated by the rice-a-roni and cans of coke and Kraft macaroni and cheese that have shown up in my house, that I've almost been too out of sorts to eat at all.

I have high hopes for market day tomorrow though, so check back.

Tomatoes and More Armenian Attempts

All recipes I've ever seen tell you to peel tomatoes by scoring the skin then blanching and shocking them. I, however, hate scoring the tomatoes because my knife is never sharp enough (no matter how sharp it is) to score the tomato skin properly and I end up cutting a huge gash in the bottom and losing half the tomato in the boiling water. So today I decided just to boil the tomatoes without scoring them. It worked perfectly. I boiled them for about a minute still on their stem and everything, then dunked them in cold water and they peeled MORE easily, and stayed in one piece. Beautiful.


This is a stuffed zucchini recipe from the Armenian cookbook I previously mentioned. Carving out the middle of the zucchini proved to be a lot harder than I anticipated, but by half number 8, I was getting a system down. The filling is ground lamb, finely chopped onion, parsley, salt and cayenne pepper. First they are fried on the stovetop:

And then you dump tomatoes over them and cook them in the oven at 350 for 45 minutes. The best part was the tomatoes. They dried out a bit and became super intense (kind of like sun dried tomatoes). I accidentally spilled a bunch of cayenne into the filling, so they were pretty spicy. Good.

With the unused part of the zucchini, I made these pancakes. They are zucchini, onion, egg, flour, cumin, mint, and parsley mixed up and fried in olive oil. So far I've learned that Armenian food requires a lot of chopping.

Plum Clafouti

This is a recipe that 14 year-old Julian brought in to the pro II cooking class. It's his French grandmother's recipe. It takes about 10 minutes to make and it's delicious...a little bit mochi-esque in texture. Mine is not puffy because I accidentally quadrupled the sugar! Oops.

1/4 C plus 1 T sugar
3/4 lb plums, halved and pitted
3/4 C light cream (half and half)
3/4 C flour
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
1/8 t salt
1 t vanilla

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and butter the pie plate well.

Sprinkle the pie plate with the 1 tablespoon sugar and distribute the plum halves over the sugar, skin side down. In a blender blend the milk, light cream, flour, eggs, egg yolk and salt for 2 minutes. Add the 1/4 cup sugar and the vanilla. Blend the mixture for a few seconods and pour it over the plums. Bake the clafouti in the middle of the oven for about 30 minutes or until puffed and golden. Dust the clafouti with vanilla sugar and serve at once.

I know, I promised to write about my Korean and Thai food experiences. But, the idea practically bores me to death. Now I remember why I hated food writing. I hate paying attention. I hate trying to remember the names of everything. I can manage photos at home, BEFORE I start eating. But to pull out a camera at a restaurant each time something new is served just kills the fun for me.

Instead I'm going to show you the lovely (and lovely smelling!) peony I bought at the market today:


And fillo triangles I made. They look exactly the same, but there are two kinds: one stuffed with ricotta cheese mixed with parsley, an egg, and a teaspoon of baking powder, the other filled with finely chopped walnuts mixed with cinnamon and sugar with an orange-flower water syrup on top. I got these recipes from an Armenian cookbook we have at the library. The cheese was supposed to be mixed with munster, but I just couldn't see how this was authentic and left it out. The syrup is supposed to be lemon. Yawn.

The fillo is store-bought. I've tried to make it before, but I can't get it anywhere close to thin enough (puff pastry is worth making at home, but not fillo, I've decided). You just spread some melted butter in between each layer and the stuff is amazing, no matter what you put in it. I had some left-over orange-flower syrup and mixed it with sparkling water for a tasty little soda.


I went a little nuts shopping today. Food is the only area I really have a lot of trouble controlling my budget on. First, everything looked so good at the farmers market. All of the stone fruit is out...and it's not cheap. I had to buy plums and peaches, bare minimum. Then, I couldn't pass up Harry's Barrys strawberries. They are outrageously expensive : $4.75 for one basket. However, they are the only people in the universe who pick their strawberries already ripe. I stopped by Ralphs and bought Organic Valley cream and have been eating my strawberries with it all day.

Later in the day I realized I had most of the ingredients for another Armenian recipe, but was missing scallions. So I went over to the Korean market. And next to the scallions, they had sesame leaves, three bunches for a dollar. I haven't a clue what they are for, but I couldn't pass them up. I made the mistake of wandering the isles after that. I had just been talking to Annalaura who taught me to make sticky rice and eat it with mangoes and cream. And when I got to the isle with 500 different kinds of sticky rice, I had to get a bag, since I already bought cream at Ralphs for the strawberries. So I went back for a mango and ended up finding some interesting green tea. I did FORCE myself to put the salmon roe back even though I had just read a recipe with cannellini beans and caviar and I had already-soaked cannellini's on my counter.

Now I have food for about 20 at my house. If anyone's free for dinner, you're invited.