Year of the Cocktail

After reading Jonathan Gold's article today, "The New Cocktailians," I am both humbled and thirsty. Just wanted to share.

Anyone want to check out The Varnish with me this weekend?

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In the spirit of this post, I'd like to add an addendum. There was a great article in the food section of the LA Times this week talking about kumquats, which apparently are at their tastiest this month. As they always do, at the end they included some recipes, including one for a Candied Kumquat Mojito.

Candied kumquat mojito

Note: From Peter Birmingham at Norman's, where the drink is made with Ron Matusalem Platino rum. Birmingham also recommends Bacardi Silver or Cruzan Estate Light rum. You'll have enough simple syrup and candied kumquats for up to 12 drinks.

Candied kumquats

1 cup boiling water

1 cup sugar

12 whole kumquats

1 stalk lemongrass, ends trimmed and two outer layers removed, slightly smashed with the side of a chef's knife

1/2 teaspoon orange blossom water

1. Add the boiling water to the sugar. Stir to mix and dissolve the sugar, cool.

2. Bring a pot of water to boil. Blanch the kumquats for 1 minute, drain.

3. Place the sugar water, lemongrass and orange blossom water in a bowl. Add the kumquats, placing a small plate on top to submerge the kumquats. Cover and refrigerate for at least 12 hours and up until 3 weeks.

Simple syrup

3/4 cup boiling water

3/4 cup sugar

Add the boiling water to the sugar. Stir to mix and dissolve the sugar. Cool.

Cocktail (per serving)

6 mint leaves

3/4 ounce (5 teaspoons) simple syrup, divided

1 candied kumquat

4 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

2 teaspoons fresh lime juice

2 ounces rum

1 tablespoon pineapple juice

1 wedge lime

Splash club soda

1. In a double old-fashioned glass, muddle the mint with one-fourth ounce (two teaspoons) simple syrup. Add the candied kumquat and muddle. Add ice to glass.

2. In a cocktail shaker, mix together the lemon and lime juices, the remaining one-half ounce (about 3 teaspoons) simple syrup, the rum and pineapple juice. Shake well. Pour into the glass, add the wedge of lime and splash of club soda.

Each serving: 200 calories; 0 protein; 19 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram fiber; 0 fat; 0 saturated fat; 0 cholesterol; 3 mg. Sodium.

Cheers!
Em

In Bloom

It's been a chilly couple of days out here, but I'm still warm and cozy from a lovely dinner Tuesday night with Mr. D. There was no occasion for it, other than the desire to spend a little special time together.

I am usually hesitant to try any restaurant that sticks menus in mailboxes. Why would someone do that unless they were desperate? However, as one who loves reading anything food-related, I always glance through before trashing it, and one day I was really glad I did. We’d noticed Bloom, a brightly colored storefront at Pico and Hauser, many times since moving and often commented that we should check it out. When we got THAT menu, their claim of cooking with locally grown organic foods, combined with some really unique and tasty-sounding offerings totally hooked me. Before heading out, I read some reviews online that only made me more excited!

I read on a couple different sites that Bloom didn’t have a liquor license, but DID have BYO, AND no corkage fee. The latter is sort of revolutionary in LA. Why places feel ok with charging $25 to unscrew a cork is completely beyond me. But I digress. Since we’ve been trying to be ‘better’ (ie, more frequent) wine drinkers (hopefully in the hope of becoming aficionados rather than lushes), I thought it would be fun to take along a bottle we had picked up at Cost Plus. (On a side note, David found this website that lists cheap-to-no corkage fees in LA restaurants--seems like a pretty new site, but it could be a neat resource down the road. If you know of places with low cork fees, you can submit!)

One of my favorite things about the restaurant, before even stepping foot inside, was that it is walking distance from our house. You just don't get that very much in this city! I don't think I would make that walk by myself after dark--in spite of beautification efforts, Pico Blvd is still very rough around the edges--but with David, it was a nice (safe) little adventure.

The restaurant is divided into two sections--on the right side is the restaurant, with about 12 tables; the left side appears to be a take-out/juice bar deal, although I don't think it's open at night. The whole place was pleasantly dim, and we were greeted immediately by the man who turned out to be the waiter. He opened our wine as a busboy brought us wine glasses and cucumber-infused water (so refreshing!) and we perused the menu.

One thing I read about this place was that the pizzas were awesome, so we decided to find one of those to split, along with another dish. It didn't take us long to agree on the Rosemary Comte Cheese Potato. The salads here are outside the norm in a very good way--more than your standard Caesar, Cobb or spinach-and we finally settled on the Spicy Free Range Chicken Salad, with baby greens, poblano chile, roasted corn (I think David hogged all of that--corn:David::spinach::Popeye) and sundried tomato-red chili vinaigrette. I also got a cup of the Vegan Soup of the Day, butternut squash. Such a sucker for pureed vegetable soups!

First the soup. It had a nice squash flavor, but needed something more to round out the overall profile. Table salt didn't do the trick--I think my standbys allspice or nutmeg would have been particularly effective.

There are no complaints about flavor with the salad. The dressing added a good kick to the generous portion of greens and (delicious) chicken. The pizza, too--I am not too familiar with Comte cheese, but it is creamy and very mild, and complemented the razor thin slices of potato beautifully. There was no one glaring flavor on this pizza--even the rosemary seemed to be a subtle infusion rather than the leading lady, as is so often the case by the mere fact that it's a strong herb.

Throughout our meal, there's little doubt that part of our enjoyment came from the wine. We are still green in the whole wine game and even more so in our experience with reds, but we lucked out with this Cabernet. I won't try to explain it because my palate isn't sophisticated enough to detect individual fruits and chocolates and herbs like some can--suffice to say it went down easy, warmed our bellies, and widened the smiles on our faces just a little bit.

The food was so lovely that I was tempted to opt out of dessert...even the best of restaurants can be hit or miss with that portion of the meal, you know? My hesitation disappeared, though, when he listed the amazing-sounding ice creams and sorbets they had. We decided on a bowl of the brown sugar vanilla bean. Oh. My. Goodness. Heaven in my mouth.

The bill was wonderfully affordable (my, do I love BYOB!) and we left arm in arm, thrilled that we had found such a great neighborhood restaurant to call our own.

That's all for now, folks! Tune in next time when I wax poetic about our lemon tree....

Cheers,

Em

Two things

Hello loves!

Two quick things have I to share:

Today for lunch I convinced the ladies to come check out a new place that I've heard a good amount about lately, The Curious Palate. When my man Jonny Gold mentioned it in LA Weekly, well, I had no choice but to go. We weren't disappointed! Amber tried the Cubano sandwich and liked it (although she and I were in agreement that we weren't tickled by their pickles-she took hers out of the sandwich).There wasn't too much for Miss Michelle (a vegan) but she loved her Curried Squash Soup. And I LOVED the Veggie Panini! The black-eyed pea mash was a really unique and yummy touch, and the balsamic that came on the side was delicious for dipping. I also got the Beluga Lentils, which was good but a bit overwhelming with olive oil flavor. Actually, let's just take that to mean my palate is evolving, eh?

What a cute space--there is seating inside and (minimal) out, it's got a deli counter and a whole bunch of artisanal goods to purchase. Didn't have too much time to peruse, but we couldn't resist looking at the selection of mini chocolate bars by the register. I didn't need too much pushing to buy the dark chocolate orange cardamom (LOVE me some cardamom) and the white chocolate lemon pepper. Oh my Lord. That's really all I have to say. I'm already craving more of the white--I think they must get their crack from the same place as Pinkberry.

Too far?

And on that note, I leave you for now. I just ordered a bunch of new baking supplies (on a bit of a shopaholic kick this month) and plan to be making a bunch of new lovely things to share. Yes, this apparently is still very much a food blog. Re-name change may be forthcoming.

Happy Friday!
Em

Birthday Cake for My Boy

Mission: David's 27th Birthday Cake

I asked young Mr G what he was looking for in a cake this year. He loved the one I came up with for his 26th (a really hearty whole wheat flour cake with lemon icing and blueberries) so I couldn't disappoint this year. He told me, "Something with caramel sounds good." Nothing more. And so the quest began.

I was looking for something delish but low maintenance, sinc

e I would be making it on a weeknight. After some digging through cookbooks and ye olde Internet, I settled on this recipe. Super basic vanilla cake, just like David likes it. To spice things up a bit-literally-I decided to add 1 tsp of cardamom and 1/2 tsp of cinnamon, as well as the zest of one lemon.

The cake baked up beautifully in 35 minutes and slid out of the pan easy as...pie? Do you ever have that moment of total fear before you take a cake out of the pan, that maybe the shortening or whatever you used to line the pan somehow didn't work and half of your cake is going to stick? Yeah...me either.

While ze (fully intact) cake was cooling and smelling up the house with all sorts of deliciousness, I set to work on the topping. Although the aforementioned cake recipe did include its own recipe for caramel glaze (it is, after all, called caramel cake), I decided to go with a caramel recipe that I already know and love.Forgiv

e me if I've already mentioned this book, but Desserts by the Yard is an absolutely fabulous book of dessert recipes by the pastry chef at Spago. It's also just a really a good read if you like that sort of thing. One of the desserts she has is for homemade Twix bars, inspired by her time studying pastry making in London, and the caramel is to die for!! The trick is Lyle's Golden Syrup, instead plain old corn syrup. You can buy it online, or find it at Cost Plus World Market--it's an import from the UK (and I'm pretty sure there is a little of the White Witch's magic in the stuff).

I decided to halve the caramel recipe, since it was just being used as a glaze and I didn't want to make the cake soggy. I realize now that was silly thinking, since the caramel solidifies pretty quickly. Ah well. Anyway, halving it is very easy, except for the fact that my liquid measuring cups don't have a line for 3/8 of a cup, so I may have added too much Golden Syrup. Not that that could ever be a bad thing. I always feel like a brilliant mad scientist when I add the heavy cream to the hot sugar/syrup mixture--it suddenly starts boiling and changing color, and then magically (ok, chemically) turns into caramel when I add the condensed milk. Bwa ha ha!

OK, so. As soon as the caramel was complete (it only takes about 15 minutes if you do it right, as I do sometimes), I poured it on over that cake. I placed a cookie sheet under the cooling rack to catch any rogue caramel, of which there was much. The caramel was not as thick as I would have liked, and I think that showed in the final product. Of course it was supposed to be a glaze, so I guess in that regard it worked out.

In the end, it was a pretty humble looking cake--you might have mistaken it for a corn bread. Looks aside, the taste is great!! The cake is just moist enough with a nice crumb, and I do feel the extra spice touches I added made the difference in flavor. However, because of that the caramel tended to fade into the background, which is unfortunate. Next time I either need to back off on the spices, or work with a more assertive flavor profile for the icing. All in all, though, I'll call it a success. I have one happy and full 27 year old guy, and a lot of cake that needs eating! 

Cheers!

Monday Night Dinner in MDR

Dinner last night inspired me to write a haiku to commemorate the occasion. We took D’s aunt and uncle (wrapping up an abbreviated version of their annual trek out West) to C&O Trattoria in Marina del Rey. None of them (my boy included) had been there before, and it had been years since I’d graced the place with my presence. I was a little dismayed when we were led in to the dining room and I saw that the seats were nothing more than your standard green plastic chairs…I was worried that I recalled the restaurant being much better than it actually was.

However, Raymond and Janie quickly put my mind at ease. They loved the atmosphere, said it was just their kind of place. The hot, buttery garlic rolls didn’t hurt, either. They both got the special pasta, linguini with clam sauce. It had clams in the shell, too, which apparently is a very very good thing. D and I know nothing of such things. He got the Fettucine Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto, I the Pappardelle avec Wild Mushrooms & Chicken Apple Sausage. Everyone seemed pleased as punch…or maybe it was just the chianti? I sure am glad I drink red wine now. Raymond advised us early in the night to always get the house wine, said you can’t go wrong. In wine as in gambling, the house always wins. And I win doubly--wine never gives this little girl a hangover!

Still waiting for that haiku, are you? All right, you’ve been good. Here ya go:

Rolls of Garlic Sate

(Outside, the Ocean Winds Whip)

Red Wine Freely Flows

Another Random Emily Musing

I think I wrote this one sometime this summer:

"There’s something so sad, somehow, about seeing a middle-aged man, sitting in front of a receptionist’s computer…temping. Ready for action, dressed in his nicest shirt and tie, sitting quietly with his hands folded, watching the bustle of big business around him while he reads the morning paper. How did he get there? What string of bad luck led him to the point of seeking out temp work filling in for the receptionist at a medium-sized private equity in Santa Monica? How does he feel about it? Ashamed that he is forced to temp…or happy to have finally gotten the call for duty? I imagine him waking up at 6 every morning, showering and ironing his shirt and pants…and then waiting by the phone. Maybe he showers the night before, just to make sure he doesn’t miss a call? I want to smile at him, show him some friendliness just in case he is hating the fact that he is here right now, but he doesn’t look up from his paper."

Found: An Old Emily Musing

I just found this little piece--I named the file  simply "10-23" (October 23, 2007):

Today I counted down the minutes, as I do every day, until I could break free and suck some life back into my nearly lifeless, corporate body. When 6PM came, I cut my shackles and headed home. 

What greeted me when I went out the door was not the usual unspoken unclean smog of Los Angeles, but something dirtier, heavier. My eyes felt itchy and dry. The fires, which had up until now been beyond my periphery, seemed ever closer.

I quickly got into Lainey and forgot about the air as I rocked to the Beach Boys on my Workout Magic playlist and got cooled off by my A/C. As I battled through Hollywood traffic, I wondered if it was bad to curse the GOD-AWFUL driver who happened to have the enormous “God Bless” Sign in the back of his car. Should that REALLY give him license to swerve manically in and out of lanes without signaling? I’ll have to meditate on that one.

As I drove up Cahuenga towards the freeway, I thought of little beyond getting into the left lane to get onto the 101. I missed it. Why ANYONE would INTENTIONALLY take Cahuenga past the freeway entrance is beyond me. It gets ridiculously backed up and takes 10 times the amount of time. I was busily swearing at the snail’s pace of the traffic (as the 101 traffic running parallel streamed steadily along) and not paying attention to anything outside, when suddenly I reached the peak of the hill.

The skies had been just dark up til now. It’s late October at 6:30, so I wasn’t questioning that point. If I had stopped to think about it, I would have remembered that yesterday wasn’t quite so dark…

But when I got that peak, I saw something odd. The horizon looked different. It looked like that silhouette time, that David knows I love so much. But this wasn’t the regular white-blue silhouette against the sky. These silhouettes stood against an orange-red sky, beneath the smoke, above the horizon.

I became breathless. I had to turn off Diana Ross on my iPod because I could not think of anything but this sight I was seeing and all that it represented. Suddenly I was reminded of all the lives that had been displaced in the last 48 hours; all the homes that had been built from hard earned money that were suddenly and cruelly burned to the ground. I realized that all of my money troubles, which I had brought onto myself, were nothing compared to the devastation that so many of my fellow Southern Californians were suddenly faced with.

I was at the stoplight at Barham, much sooner than I expected. There was a man there holding his cardboard sign, like so many other intersections throughout the city. I didn’t even look at the sign, but simply felt relief at the fact that I had cash in my wallet to give him. I needed to do something, anything, to help someone other than myself right then. I fumbled in my wallet and pulled out $2. I rolled down my window and the man said, “God bless.” Just like that fricking bad driver’s car.

I turned the corner and started down Ventura. The skies weren’t red anymore…they were just back to that same smoky black night sky. I really hope that guy buys himself a burger or a taco or something. How many drugs can $2 buy you on the street, anyway?