I am corn. At least according to Michael Pollen’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, I am. And so are you. This makes the end of summer and early fall bittersweet. Everywhere you look at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market these days, weathered men are deftly hacking away at corn stalks with machetes, peeling back golden silks to reveal long checkerboard ears of bicolor, snowy white and flaxen-hued yellow corn, and stacking them into slightly ironic food pyramids made entirely of corn. Sure, this sweet corn is different than the industrial stuff that feeds our livestock or gets processed into high fructose corn syrup, cornstarch and Fritos. But if I already am corn, do I really need to eat more?
A lot of chefs hate food bloggers. They lambaste us for being amateurish, opinionated or worse, ignorant. I’ve read a lot of food blogs while working my own and many are all of those things, home cooks whose apron strings have become unhinged, angry diners with a forum to rant. But others are inspired and informed, thoughtful and even well researched. The best blogs I’ve found are written by passionate people, who come at life with a fork, a knife and an insatiable appetite for transforming new experiences into stories.
Last month, while I was researching a story on the Best Ice Cream in Los Angeles for Serious Eats I had the pleasure of hanging out at Tara Kolla’s Silver Lake Farms for the afternoon. It was there, with the bees buzzing around four different varieties of mint and picture-perfect roses that I first tried epazote, plucked fresh from a tall mint-like plant. I rolled the spiky green leaves between my fingers to extract some of the Mexican herb’s perfume, which was quite pungent, almost petrol-like, and spicy. I took a bite and was intrigued by its zesty, fennel and coriander-like flavor. I couldn’t get it out of my head. All I kept thinking was, this would be good with citrus. Continue reading »
Last Sunday my dear friend Brooke and I sat on the curb underneath an old avocado tree a few blocks from the Hollywood Farmers’ Market and flipped through the Chez Panisse Café cookbook before heading into the dizzying array of farm fresh fruits and vegetables. It seemed apropos, really, looking at recipes from Alice Waters, the woman who inspired a generation to get back to cooking in season, who praised farmers’ efforts by putting their names on her menus more than 30 years ago. Continue reading »
Tomato season has officially begun and I’m a woman obsessed. All of the delicious, funky-looking heirloom varieties scattered across the tables at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market last Sunday tempted me like Tribbles. They were so fresh. They smelled so good intoxicating. And then I tried one, the juice dripping from my chin and between my fingers. Before I knew it, my bag was overflowing with Cherokee Purples, Golden Jubilees, Brandywines, Marvel Stripes and Black Crimsons from Tutii Frutti Farms, all bumping up against each other in the hot August sun. Continue reading »
Among my friends I’m considered a wine snob. But honest, I’m not! No, I don’t like Two Buck Chuck. But I don’t think wine needs to be expensive to be good, or that has to be red to be good. I don’t even think it has to come in a bottle to be good. Yes, I’m talking about box wine.
The bag-in-a-box concept is brilliant, portable and keeps your wine fresh much longer than in bottle. The problem with much of it has been the wine itself, but fortunately winemakers are embracing the box and filling it up with some delicious, characterful wine. At K&L, where I work as a writer and editor, we are importing three-liter boxes of Blason Pinot Grigio from Italy (it’s currently bobbing around the Atlantic somewhere), but already have three-liter boxes of the quintessential summer wine, the 2007 “Le Petite Frog” Picpoul de Pinet Hughes Bealieu ($29.99) in stock. That’s $30 for the equivalent of four bottles of wine and it will last up to six weeks in your fridge.
Picpoul, which means “lip-stinger,” is a high-acid white grape grown also called Folle Blanche; it’s a primary component in Cognac and Armagnac and is also a common grape in France’s Loire Valley. This Picpoul comes from Southern France’s Coteaux de Languedoc, where it manages to maintain its vibrant acidity despite the region’s blistering heat. Juicy peach and apricot aromas and flavors, stony minerality, tarragon notes and low levels of alcohol make it an ideal match for almost anything on your summer table. I’ve paired it with barbecued chicken, caprese salads, rosemary shrimp and grilled peaches all to great success.
Perfect for camping, picnicking, backyard pool parties, beach excursions and, frankly, any other excuse you can come up with to crack open a box of fresh, fun, delicious wine. You have to try this Picpoul, it’ll convert the snob in you, too.
I invented the root beer float when I was five or six years old. I was at a birthday party at the Ground Round, staring into my glass of soda, contemplating how to make my plain vanilla ice cream taste better. And then it dawned on me. And I dumped the ice cream in the cup, watched the fizz build and then started to suck down the creamy soda through my straw. My friends watched on in awe. Continue reading »
Growing up, my mother’s version of junk food was, well, limited. Unlike my friends, we didn’t have a pantry full of Kool-Aid and Marshmallow Fluff. Popsicles were made in Tupperware using real juice and the ice cream was Breyers (read: no preservatives). Fortunately, at least once a year, sometimes twice, my grandmother would bake rugelach. Even after my grandparents moved to Florida, the rugelach would come, packed into shoeboxes between layers of foil and wax paper. Even after my family moved from New York to Southern California, and after I left for college and subsequently moved a dozen or so times, I eagerly checked the mail around my birthday for the box of rugelach. When my grandparents would come out west to visit, my grandma would pack a second suitcase, filled with rugelach and mandel brot, and occasionally (and disastrously) my grandpa would sneak in some golf balls.
I’ve often joked that the only differences between Jews and Italians are red sauce and Jesus. The cultural similarities are countless, right down to the cookies. Jewish Mandel Brot (not to be confused with the trippy, mathematical fractal images called Mandelbrot) are a twice-baked, cinnamon and sugar dusted, nutty cookie perfect for dunking in a piping hot cup of coffee. It is almost identical to Italian biscotti, which literally means “twice-baked.” Biscotti are nutty and occasionally chocolate-dipped cookies perfect for dunking in a frothy cappuccino. Continue reading »
In college, I had one friend who still refused to eat vegetables. “I hate them,” she insisted repeatedly and with the vehemence of a five-year-old presented with a plate of cauliflower. And she meant it. In the span of fours years, the only vegetables I ever saw her eat, on purpose, were carrots cooked with cinnamon, potatoes and artichokes dipped in butter and sprinkled with salt. Believing that her aversion to veggies lay in poor parental preparation—overcooked, under-seasoned and texturally inert—I learned to cook broccoli al dente and make fresh cheese sauce for the cauliflower. But to no avail. My friend would look at the veggies with disdain, sniff them and then, with a flick of her long, brown hair, push them away. So I resigned, like a concerned parent, to slipping vegetables into dishes on the sly. There was spinach in my stuffed shells, chopped fine and mixed into the cheese and there were carrots and onions in my turkey burgers. Continue reading »
