Benjamin Button Inspired Caviar New Year's

New Year’s Eve for me has usually meant a sit down dinner of some kind at my best friend’s house followed by karaoke into the wee hours after the clock strikes twelve. But this year, no longer single, it was time to do it up in style with my mate who had recently watched the movie Benjamin Button and was inspired by the “you only live once” attitude of the film wherein the subjects splurge on champagne and caviar. We both are avid foodies and were each quite embarrassed to admit that we had never tried the elegant combination of extravagant fish roe with bubbly. We decided to go decadent and spend time alone at home cooking blinis from DorieGreenspan’s Around My French Table cookbook upon which we would enjoy a tasting of various blends of roe and condiments and decide which libations paired best with each version.

We bought the caviar at Surfas in Culver City, a dream store for chefs and foodies where exotic bits from around the world are sold alongside utensils and equipment sought out by a world of adventurous cooks. We chose three varieties from the lowest priced to the highest priced. First was the least expensive Tobikko, or flying fish roe, followed by the smoky dark grey paddlefish roe of medium sized pearls and lastly, the hundred and thirty dollar jar of inky black Osetra. 

While cooking the blinis we prepared a plate of condiments: thin smoked trout and salmon laid across a plate and tiny bowls of minced red onion, sour cream, hard boiled egg and chives plucked from my mate’s garden.

We also set up an elaborate selection of drinks from a Blanc champagne and a Noir champagne to three types of vodka ranging from the cheap to the priciest. Our goal was to see what pairings tasted best regardless of price or preconceived notion.

Once all was chilled, cooked, diced and ready to go, we laid a table with our wares and embarked on a two hour mix and match-a-thon. 

Our findings were as follows:

By itself, the Tobikko Caviar, the lowliest of the fish roe, tasted smoky and popped delightfully in the mouth. Perhaps because it was the cheapest, it tasted best paired with the Belvedere vodka, which elevated the caviar stepchild to a higher plane of flavor and style. It also went well with the Blanc champagne, which provided a sparkling halo around the lowly roe. Red onion, salmon and egg provided enough peripheral flavor to do the same thing, although you needed a larger portion of the roe on the blini to make sure the essences of the caviar were topmost on the palate.

The medium priced Paddlefish roe tasted kind of musky and fishy on its own and the texture was mushy compared to the others. Being a midrange item, it paired well with the Chopin vodka and the Noir champagne, each finding equal ground to let the roe’s flavor shine through without being overpowering. This is also why the roe went best with the more subtle smoked trout as a bed, accentuated with just a hint of pepper brought in by the red onion.

Surprisingly, the ultra expensive osetra went best with cheap Russian Standard vodka chilled to icy perfection. Best not to have the world-class roe compete with a world-class drink; this was an example where we discovered that opposites do indeed attract. It also went well with the Blanc champagne, which danced electrifyingly with the large pearls on the tongue swirled down the throat in a wash of citrusy bliss. Again the smoked trout provided a perfect blander base than the salmon would with just a dab of sour cream to mingle the flavors.

Of course, by this time in the tasting we were almost as bubbly as the champagne and full bellied content enough from multiple variations on our fabulous buckwheat blinis that we barely even touched our dessert cheese plate. We managed to leave a small spoonful of caviar in each jar for an extra pure bite in the morning. A memorable New Year’s Eve in the spirit of Carpe Diem!

Life is Like a Box of Valrhona

Sitting in my front yard now a few days after the Christmas food coma has resided, I’m savoring a square of Valrhona Chocolates Noirs de Domaine’s Grand Couva from Trinidad. I told someone special that dark chocolate was my pie and that same someone gifted me with an exquisite Millesime box for the holidays. There’s something about the way this chocolate melts on the tongue, coating the palate, that is both sensual and heavenly and I realize that 2011 has been equally delicious for me. 

This may be the most delicious year of my life so far full of turning points and transitions. I sent a grown daughter to college, moved to the beach, dove into my novel and perpetuated my art career that has been pushed into overdrive. Passion has been the cornerstone of the year, which has also carried over into all things culinary as I continued to venture out on food adventures as well as learn new things in the kitchen. So to repeat a sappy sentiment, life really has become like a box of chocolates in all the best ways. Below is my ode to the best foodie memories of my 2011!

Horchata flavored Italian ice on the Venice Beach boardwalk for three bucks

My first Yakitori meal in L.A.’s Little Tokyo

Cold squid ink pasta at Mozza Osteria in West Hollywood

Perfecting my onion marmalade recipe

Lobster barbecue on the roof in San Francisco with Tara and Jamie

The best two a.m. grilled cheese sandwich in the middle of Burning Man after days of living on beef jerky, followed closely by the grilled cheese truck outside Bergamot Station in Los Angeles

Tandoori turkey Thanksgiving with the Hadley’s

Whole Foods’ pho bar and smoked chicken and red onion pizza

Organic cream on the top maple yogurt

Pt. Reyes bleu cheese from Cowgirl Creamery

The opening of Savory Spice Shop and discovering Penzey’s Spice Shop

Chef Ernesto from Rio Azul’s sweet corn tamales

Chia seeds

Cacao nibs

Tasty Bite microwavable Indian food packets

Flat bread duck confit pizza at 3rdCorner Wine Shop and Bistro

Sean Minor $15 pinot noir

The burger at Father’s Office Culver City

Gyro sandwich at Kabobz in Palm Desert

Wine and schwarma art geek salad lunches with fellow artist Richard Twedt at Garbanzo’s

Perfecting soy chorizo egg scrambles

One Life Natural Foods’ superfood chocolate and strawberry sundaes

Shrimp and mango quesadillas at Windward Farms market

Primitivo’s bacon and chorizo wrapped dates

The chorizo breakfast burrito at Alkobar

Bring your own wine cheap and easy Chinese eggplant at Mao’s

The Venice Farmer’s Market   

Korean pickled daikon

The Bread Man’s squaw rye loaf

The blueberry covered goat cheese log at Trader Joe’s

The perfect Negroni, straight up with an orange rind twist

Thai Kitchen instant green onion and ginger noodles

Vietnamese chili sauce

Ritter Sport’s dark chocolate and marzipan bar

Raw collard greens as wrap sandwich leaves

Swiss Chard

Lemon thyme and kale from Leslie Shockley’s garden

My first taste of haggis

Valeska Kaufmann’s mushroom stew

Brian Uyeda’s homegrown tomatoes

The rediscovery of taco-flavored Doritos

Coconut water

Poached salmon and beet salad at Cuistot during lunches with my mentor Gesso   

Creating my own sausage and sage stuffing for Christmas dinner

Sausages with grainy mustard in Austria

Tommy Bahamas’ scallop and arugula salad

Sammy Woodfired pizzas grilled chicken balsamic salad

Pork burrito at CasaLinda

The Twisted Snake habanera cocktail at Birba

Here’s to happy eating in 2012 to all my foodie friends!

Sweet Meat at Father's Office

I have been wanting to try Father's Office ever since my friend Rick told me it's his favorite place to grab a beer and burger. I am a burger whore but only if it's a good one and I am usually hard pressed to find a joint that gets it right. See, I am one of those people who likes stinky cheese, weird leaves and sweetness on my warm, on-the-raw-side meat and that's not something that's traditional in the world of patties on a bun. After reading countless reviews of the place, I had a distinct intuition that this burger joint might be right for me, especially after my favorite meal companion of late told me that this one was served with caramelized onion on a bun usually reserved for lovers of au jus entrees.

So, last night we finally ventured to the place after a trek through the heaven that is Surfas in Culver City. After walking down rows of quail eggs, caviar, thai sauces and exotic butters, I was ready for something meaty and fulfilling. We scored a tiny tall boy table front and center of the bar and met full mouth bliss. At Father's Office, you get a menu, order at the bar, pick up your cocktails, and anxiously await your food. Even the obnoxious man in the booth next to us who got louder as the drinks diminished couldn't stave our pleasure.

First up, an amazing poached egg and smoked eel salad. Warm, flowing yolk-egged, and smoky with tiny strips of tangy red onion and vinegar. Best dish of the evening. Eaten in small savored bites.

My burger was amazing. Made rare and juicy, smothered in caramelized, sweet onion marmalade, the deep taste of maytag bleu cheese and fresh arugula leaves on a bun that soaked up all the meat's juice accept for the crusty exterior which provided a nice textural crunch. And the skinny fries dipped in garlic aoili were the perfect companion. I am going back for this, for this is my favorite burger found in L.A. so far.

They don't allow ketchup here but nothing needed it, even though people are known to bring in their own bottles. 

A warm duck salad was also amusing in its expertise texture and it mixed well with the crunchy filberts. I thought it lacked sweetness but found out later it had figs in it so it was more about it not being blended correctly to get the perfect blend of tastes in each bite.

The dessert was a Kobucha Squash buttercream cupcake with the most translucent and purely butter whipped frosting, which sort of made up for what I am going to say next. Yummy but the ratio of cake to frosting was imbalanced and the few pumpkin seeds could have been ground or dispersed better.

I liked the dim lit atmosphere, the nice staff and the people all around us enjoying themselves. And more than 24 hours later, I am still craving that burger.

Hog Heaven at CasaLinda

Being the fanatic foodie that I am, and being new to the area, it’s pretty guaranteed that I won’t often go to a place twice as am I discovering the vast culinary landscape of the various cities that make up Los Angeles. So I was surprised when I chose to take a fellow foodie freak to CasaLinda for my second time this week all for the love of pork. 

Located smack dab in the middle of Abbott Kinney, in the spot where Tortilla Grill used to reside, and owned by the same people who own Hal’s Grill, it is now relegated to become my quintessential neighborhood taco joint. I had already discovered the restaurant a mere few nights before when a friend and I were on the hunt for a place we could order out from that was walk-able from my house. Even though we didn’t eat there, I liked the non-pretentious and simple dining room where you could see the cooks making the food and the salsa bar with all different kinds of toppings including a nice avocado and jalapeno blend. 

But it was the Al Pastor pork burrito that I fell head over heels for.  Its merits lay in the super tortilla-soak-through greasy, tiny chunks of sweet caramelized pork that stuff the gargantuan burrito. Adorned with not much else but some rice and tiny, diced pieces of zucchini, it was a tangy, zesty, spicy delight bite after bite. I could easily just sit around with a bowl filled with that pork and no tortilla and be just fine. 

They have tongue and octopus and other exotic items beyond the regular, and affordably priced, normal shrimp and chicken taco fare but I am not sure if I will ever be able to get past the pork items to try anything else. Oddly enough, the pork quesadilla was a dollar more expensive then the burrito; a mystery because it’s not as much food, doesn’t have the vegetables the burrito does, and comes with only cheese added.

Now I know where to go when I have had too much fun, stayed up too late, and need something I can rely on to soak up all the revelry and put me to bed with sweetness in the belly. It reminds me of my favorite end of the evening joints in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Triple Tomato Bliss

Gifts of freshly grown and plucked winter tomatoes have found their way to my produce bin over the course of the last month. The fastidious gardener who cultivated them warned me that they might not be so tasty this time of year. But I found that to be far from the truth as I crafted three great meals with the character-laden beauties, proving that his green thumb is actually a rather talented one.

There were different varieties including mild, perfectly round and pink momotaros; super red and fleshy purple cherokees, yellow hillbilly potato leaf and then a handful of baby San Marzanos.

My first endeavor was just to dive into the larger and plump globes calling for nothing more than to be eaten at a lukewarm and juicy room temperature with a garnish of sea salt and black pepper.

Laid on a leaf of romaine with a side of red pepper hummus and a slice of organic sharp white cheddar made a perfect lunch. Notice the red veins in the yellow slices; apparently these flames are what caused the great personality on the palate.

The second batch of the cherokees and the momotaros were diced at their most bursting ripeness for inclusion into one of my standard breakfasts: the soy chorizo omelet.

I have a bizarre secret for the perfect fluffy eggs. It’s all about putting eggs in a bowl and adding a teaspoon of almond milk. I know it sounds weird but there is something about the almond milk’s slight sweetness that puts a mellow and warm spin into the finished eggs without the taste of almond sticking in the mix. The second secret is to whisk the eggs for two whole minutes to guarantee the perfect fluff. With these two things in mind, you can really throw anything else into the eggs after that, and in this case, I added some dried, French thyme.

Whisked and poured into a pan that was already simmering up some soy chorizo and then adding a sprinkle of Mexican queso fresca on top until slightly melted, the whole thing was then flipped into an omelet worthy of being topped with the fresh diced tomatoes. The spice of the chorizo, the subtle flow of the thyme and the flesh of the tomato produced savory flavors in every bite.

The rest of the bunch, were the grizzly looking and scarred San Marzanos and odds and ends of others that had been used here and there . What a perfect little gang for my favorite smoked chicken sausage spaghetti sauce. I gathered up all the ingredients I needed. The secret of this sauce is to super-slow cook two large and fresh, spicy Italian chicken sausage links in a heavy pan on low for about an hour until they are heated all the way through, watching them carefully and flipping them over regularly to cause a nice burnt (but not overly) line here and there on the link. This causes the sausage to become multi-flavored and textured adding to the complexity of the final sauce. Once done the links are kept room temperature and reserved for the sauce. My grandfather taught me this sausage secret when I was little and used to stand on a bench as he slowly cooked them, singing big band songs to me while we waited. His sauce was the best so I have adapted it to my own version as an adult, absent the Crisco and other 1950s foods that have come to mean clogged arteries to my generation.

Here is the sauce recipe:

Ingredients

2 Tbsp olive oil

1/2 medium onion, finely chopped

1 small carrot or 1/2 large carrot, finely chopped

1 small stalk of celery, including the green tops, finely chopped

2 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley

1 clove garlic, minced

1/2 teaspoon dried basil or 2 Tbsp chopped fresh basil

1-3/4 pound of fresh tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped

1 teaspoon tomato paste

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Heat olive oil in a large wide skillet on medium heat. Add the chopped onion, carrot, celery and parsley. Stir to coat. Reduce the heat to low, cover the skillet and cook for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring occasionally until the vegetables are softened and cooked through.

Remove cover and add the minced garlic. Increase the heat to medium high. Cook the garlic for 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes, including the juice and shredding them with your fingers. Add the tomato paste and the basil. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a low simmer, reduce the heat to low and cook, uncovered until thickened, about 15 minutes. If you want you can push the sauce through a food mill, or blend it with an immersion blender, to give it a smooth consistency but I like it chunky and textural.

At the end, cut the sausage links into one inch or two-inch chunks and throw into the pan of tomato sauce and toss. Then, serve over a bed of hot whole-wheat pasta.

Ethiopian Food and Authentic Jazz and Blues

We heard that the place to go for impromptu and live jazz ANY night of the week was Culver City’s Industry Café. Supposedly you could order authentic Ethiopian food, honey mead wine and get your groove on simultaneously so we met there on a Wednesday night to check out the scene.

A simple menu offered Southern-style soul food like fried chicken and catfish and candied yams alongside more authentic East African items. Although we started out sitting at the slim bar in the cramped house, the moment a table front and center of the stage opened up, we were offered it with great hospitality.

While the band in front of us tooted some blues, including a wild bongo player less than a foot from our feet, we opted for the East African specialties: a vegetable platter and a meat dish.

The band started out with a senior drummer with a soulful face full of sagging jowls and hands that wielded drumsticks like an old and lovable hound dog. The sax player slouched in a chair and fell asleep a little between his moments of waking up and throwing out a bellowing salute with a smile. A woman on the keyboard, dressed in full Christmas light regalia expertly played back up notes for a young guitarist in front on a stool in a striped cap and Chucks tennis shoes. Everyone was totally moving on stage, in the seats, on the sides of the room and every few minutes another person with an instrument would enter the door to sit around and contribute a few chords or a blast of sound when they felt duly inspired throughout the course of the evening. Just my kind of scene: real music, real people, real passion and no formal program with some awesome food thrown in. My hips and feet were bouncing the entire time beneath the table. 

The cool thing is that when you order they ask you if you want all the food together on one plate, which I think is essential to the experience. All of the food arrives on top of traditional Injera, a large pancake like piece of yeast-risen flatbread that is super spongy and is meant to be used like a tool for scooping up bits of the food to eat. No forks or spoons necessary here. The bread helps you eat and then becomes a flavorful end bite in which all the flavors of the meal harmoniously blend. 

 The vegetarian platter consisted of Atkilt Alicha, which is a sweet pile of vegetable white including carrots, potatoes, cabbage and green beans cooked with turmeric and special seasonings. A red lentil scoop of Misir Wot wonderfully resembled refried beans a bit in taste and the collard greens were my favorite of the meal, with their buttery sweetness and al dente onion strings.

Meat portion was an enormous pile of Kitfo, which is basically raw spicy beef, served room temperature rounded out in flavor by subtle chili and lemon spices from a mellow marinade. Really good mixed with everything else or alone, savored in single bites.

Before we knew it, we were in the middle of a huge birthday party of some of the regular musicians that frequent the joint and all levels of madness ensued. A chanteuse singing with gyrating hips, a ventriloquist, and even the tap dancing man who was the choreographer of Gregory Hines in the movie Taps all took turns at the mike. Cake was passed around and everyone in the place was invited to share in the festivities. While leaving, I realized the party was one of those that could easily last into the wee hours of night and that was just the kind of strange and random mix, I like to be privy to every once in while – those magical real slices of individual life that can’t be duplicated or forced.

This will definitely be a place I return to every once in a while for comfort food nights with live blues. 

Melancholia at Bar Pintxo

Both of us wanted us to try Bar Pintxo because we already love Joseph Miller's real restaurant Joe's in Venice Beach and his step-son Spanish Tapas bar in Santa Monica had to be just as good. Maybe it was because we went there on a gloomy Sunday afternoon after seeing the Lars Von Trier's suicide-inspiration flick Melancholia that made the food not quite live up to our expectations. Maybe it was because my date had just eaten at Patina the night before and had an overloaded with pleasure palate that would leave anything else in the next 24 hours in the dust or the fact that I had visited my favorite bistro in the desert for a surprise chicken liver and apple mousse the night before because the food was strangely bred on plates where a great potential piece of fare was served with something less spectacular. We totally forgave our obviously new waiter for coming over every five minutes to see if we wanted something next when we really just wanted to be left alone to talk and sip our wine and savor our bites, and I actually did enjoy the small dining room getting more crowded as the hours drew on with chefs bustling about and a seeming sense of passion about the place. And the company was great so it was hard to hate the food, although it isn't somewhere I will be rushing back to in the future unless I want to just drink wine and enjoy the good happy hour prices.

Three menus made choices a little overwhelming; a regular one, a special happy hour one and then later on into the afternoon, the nightly specials one. We did eat something from each though which proves we are adventurous foodies hoping for that cream at the top. 

First off, we chose a cheese plate to savor with our Avinyo non-vintage Brut Cava sparkly. It came with thinly sliced Manchego, Valdeon blue and Capri Chevre al Pimienton. It's hard to muck up a blue and the apricot paste was good but the goat and manchego were mildly disappointing. The goat tasted more like cream cheese and the pimento rind wasn't that flavorful. Felt a little cheated.

Piquillo stuffed crab was next. This looked and tasted more like a tomato stuffed with watery crab salad. The green sauce was good but the same mouth texture and temperature of the other stuff so that it just melded into a tasteless wash on the tongue. Unfortunately, it had the same affect on the accompanying Luberri Tempranillo glass of red.

 

This dish was truly the saving grace of the evening for me, if I were to go digging for one, which the man across the table tells me he's noticed I am prone to do.  Pumpkin pate with pickled cauliflower and carrots. More French then Spanish according to my mate so maybe the geography jump had something to do with the better taste. The small pot of bright orange pate covered with a balsamic gel, which was hand mashed and not consistently textured (to our liking) was novel and interesting, especially when spread on the nicely charred bread for a little burnt mixed with sweet taste. And our option of Joan Garnatxa to drink with it was great.

 This was weird and I was sad about that because I love lamb. But the meatballs tasted more like beef and there were boiled grapes in the middle with no taste, just making it a strange surprise to find in the middle of lamb that sucked the meat's life away into a hard little globe of nothingness. The fried kale was good but again, took the life out of the poor lamb. Mencos Roja wine saved the tongue a bit. Wash down and to the next.

Further disappointment was in the "special" of the evening, a rolled turkey disk with truffles and brussel sprouts. Truffles and brussel sprouts being the reason our ears perked up over the dish but you could not taste the truffle at all so you were really eating a slab of hard turkey bologna, bland as something you would buy for a cocktail party buffet at Costco. Clamoring for the brussel sprouts ended this meal.

 

Italiexico Mash-Up Quesadilla

It all started when a really cute gardener gave me a thin-skinned and heavy, half pale yellow and half pale green, teeming-with-juice-waiting-to-be-released solitary lime. At first I was was going to take the easy way out and mix its juice into a Sunday morning guacamole for one. But then as it sat alone in the sun on my wooden kitchen counter, I realized I wanted to do something unique with it so I sliced off just the tip to adorn a small glass of iced Patron Anejo tequila, so I could ascertain the flavor of this particular little fruit. It was super tart and tangy so I knew it had to be used in a way to accentuate it's flavor.

 So while walking back from a volunteer meeting at the Venice Family Clinic today, I stumbled upon an unusual source of inspiration in at the Venice Ranch Market. A carniceria and market combined in one lured me in with the promise of some Mexican specialties and my first stop at the deli counter surprised me with the offerings of mild and hot Italian sausages. It is Venice Beach after all, the land of make up your own cultural identity with a little creative twist thrown in. I have been in love with hot Italian sausages, plump with sage and fennel, since I was a little girl and used to stand on a step ladder in my grandfather's kitchen for hours at a time while he would make his famous sausage chunk spaghetti sauce. My friend Kelly recently reacquainted me with this sausage at a girl's pasta night in her home and I had been looking for it on meat shelves ever since. So I bought a link and some authentic, fresh guacamole, some wheat tortillas, a skim milk queso round and cilantro and headed home.

So, musical mash ups seem to be super popular these days. Why not create a food mash up? Not a sophisticated fusion or hybrid "dish" but a down and dirty cross cultural, slang swapping, feed a family of five kind of standard fare. So, of course I immediately mentally conjured one of my all mighty favorites the quesadilla.

But with a loving and passionate twist perfect for the cultural bravo of both the Italian and Mexican communities. First, I squeezed the juice of half the line into the guacamole that I had purchased that was made of red bell pepper, avocado, and onion and the remaining half into a fresh pot set on steam temperature low on the stove. I put the raw sausage into the pan and covered it to simmer slowly for ten minutes in the citrus juice. Enough to make it almost burst but also to absorb the sprightly lime steam through its membrane.

 Then I cut up the sausage so I could see the momentum of its raw meat middle and sauteed the disks in the pan to make the edges carmelized with lime essence and finish the cooking.

 This was followed by a buttering of the pan and half a tortilla laid within its crusty, burnt bowels to be layered with two ounces of crudely crumbled queso. Atop of that went the slivers of sausage before being covered with the other tortilla half and fried to a darkened crisp.

The whole quesadilla was then put on a plate and smothered with the guacamole before halved. This was a heavenly mix. The crispness of the tortilla gave way to a nice layer of cheese, tasteless like tofu that acts more like a texture bed for the explosion of fennel sausage that comes next topped with the refreshing zest of guacamole aftermath. I must say, this particular in-breeding produced quite a success!