Don't Make This in Los Angeles!

Wine: Empreinte du Temps Carignan Vid de Pays Des Cotes Catalanes 2003


Cathy and I decided to make Short Ribs from the Sunday Night at Lucques Cookbook. We have had them many times at Lucques.

We also made an amazing spring soup from Paula Wolfert’s Mediterranean Grains and Greens Cookbook. The soup’s name is: Farro, Leafy Greens, and Potatoes as Prepared in the Marches. It is a wonderful thick soup. It is served with Olive Oil and Parmesan cheese floated on top.

On Monday I went to Guss Meats to pick up the short-ribs. They need to be seasoned overnight.

We had shopped for all of the vegetables at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market on Sunday.

On Tuesday I started peeling peas at Noon and basically the rest of the day was taken making the Short Ribs, the Soup, the mashed potatoes, the swiss chard, the horse radish cream, etc. We didn’t eat until almost 9pm!

The food was fabulous and we are looking forward to the leftovers. Now as to the question of “Why you shouldn’t make this dinner in Los Angeles”. I think this is one of the messiest meals we have ever made. Many, many pots, utensils etc. It really is an effort. It is VERY worth it, except if you can get this by just being in Los Angeles it is probably better to just go to Lucques and eat it there! However if you can’t easily get to Lucques this is just like eating there. Fabulous!

Jar B Q

Wine:
DeRose 2002 Cedolini Family Vineyard Cienega Valley Zinfandel
Shotfire Ridge 2003 Barossa Cuvee

First Barbecue of the Year!

One of our favorite restaurants in Los Angeles is JAR. With love their Char Sui Pork. We have asked the chef: Suzanne Tracht for the recipe for the marinade. She never got around to writing it down for us, but wonderfully she would always just give us a large container of marinade to take home and we would use it.

Our neighbor Bea informed us that Bon Appetite March 2006 had an article with Suzanne’s recipes. Wow! There it was. The mystery Char Sui Pork recipe was no longer a secret. We immediately knew we would be making it!

We bought a copy of the magazine, ordered some pork chops from Niman-Ranch and awaited Fedex to bring us our meat.

We made the recipe for the marinade (we cheated and left the Red Dye #3 out). We grilled them outside and they were great. We used our new Rice Cooker to make Japanese Rice, to it we added a Mushroom Mixture we purchased at a Japanese market. We have no idea of the name (it is all in Japanese) but it is very tasty. Kazue our neighbor introduced us to it. When we go to the market we take the empty box to identify a replacement! The rice can easily the next day be turned into fried rice.

There was a recipe in the New York Times for a Squash Soup. We made that as a first course. We substituted some Japanese kabocha squash from the Hollywood Farmer’s market. The soup was very rich and good. Will make again.

Roast Squash Soup With Brown Butter
Adapted from David Kinch
Time: 1 1/2 hours

A medium-size butternut squash, 2 to 3 pounds, halved, seeds removed
2 tablespoons light brown sugar
2 tablespoons plus 1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
Salt and freshly ground white pepper
3 cups vegetable broth, approximately
1 teaspoon white wine vinegar
2 teaspoons lemon juice
Pinch cayenne.

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil. Place squash halves on baking sheet, cut side up, and into cavity of each put a tablespoon of brown sugar and a tablespoon of butter. Season lightly with salt and pepper and bake until tender, about 1 hour.
2. While squash is roasting, place remaining butter in a heavy 1-quart saucepan over low heat. Have ready a big bowl of ice water to accommodate pan. When butter is almost melted, increase heat to medium-high and allow butter to come to a boil and start to foam. As foam subsides, when butter turns a hazelnut color and acquires a nutty aroma, immediately place bottom of pot in ice and water to stop cooking.
3. When butter is no longer hot but still liquid, pour it through a very fine mesh coffee filter or strainer into a container to remove solids. Clean saucepan and return butter to saucepan.
4. Scrape out flesh of squash and place in a blender with any juices from baking sheet. Purée. With machine running, slowly add half the broth. Gently warm brown butter. With blender running, drizzle in warm butter.
5. Transfer soup to a 3-quart saucepan and heat slowly until not quite simmering. Whisk in enough of remaining broth until soup is no thicker than heavy cream. Season with vinegar, lemon juice, salt, pepper and cayenne and continue to heat. Do not allow soup to come to a full boil because it may separate. Serve at once.

Dessert: German Chocolate Cake from Perfectly Sweet.

Spring Lamb and Fresh Strawberrys

Wines:

Mc Price Myers
2003 Santa Ynez Valley Sirah Larner Vinevard
JC Cellars Syrah 2003 Fess Parker's Vineyard
Lingerfelder Satyr Brut NV

Spring Leg of Lamb

We decided to make Mark Peel’s Leg of Lamb with Rosemary, from Mark Peel & Nancy Silverton at Home. Mark serves this at his restaurant, our favorite: Campanile. It is a great recipe. Basically you bake the lamb surrounded by rosemary twigs. At the end of the cooking you take the roasting pot outside, open it up, set the rosemary on fire, let it build quickly to a roaring fire then place the top back on to extinguish the fire and smoke the lamb. It is a great recipe and very easy.

We made a potato gratin to go with it from Biba. The recipe was originally in Gourmet April 1994. It is very rich!

CHANTILLY-MASHED POTATOES BIBA

6 russet (baking) potatoes (about 3 pounds)
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter,softened
3/4 cup milk, warmed ^
3/4 cup chilled heavy cream
1 cup grated Gruyere cheese (about 3 ounces)
3 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Salt

Preheat oven to 400° F.

Wash potatoes and prick several times.
Bake potatoes on oven rack /45 minutes to 1 hour, or until they can be easily pierced with a fork.
Halve potatoes lengthwise and cool until they can just be handled. Scrape out potato flesh and put through a ricer, in batches, set over a bowl.
Add butter and milk and salt, stir until smooth. Spread potatoes in a shallow 3-quart gratin dish.
Increase oven temperature to 500° F.
In a bowl with an electric mixer whip cream to soft peaks and fold in Gruyere. Spread cream mixture evenly over potatoes and sprinkle with Parmesan.
Bake potatoes until heated through and topping is golden brown, about 10 minutes.

Serves 6.

Reheat Covered 350° for 10 minutes.



For dessert we had Strawberry's with Balsamic and Vanilla Ice Cream.

Bea joined us for dinner and provided the wines.

Caviar-a-Thon

When I retired from Bank of America, my team sent my a gift certificate for a complete Lobster Dinner to be flown in from Main Lobster Direct.

We decided to use it for our anniversary. We arranged for it to be delivered on the day we wanted it. Our plan was to take the Lobster only to Campanile and let Mark Peel cook it anyway that he wanted. A BYOL (Bring Your Own Lobster). When it arrived, I took the lobsters to Campanile around 10am and left them. That night he cooked them and they were fabulous. He grilled the split lobsters on the grill, stuffing them with Bread Crumbs and Bacon. He cooked the claws separately, poaching them in butter. We had a bottle of Pierre Peters Champagne and Chateau Y’quem with desert.

The next night we decided to have ALL of the other things that came with Lobster that we hadn’t taken to Campanile and the left over Lobster we brought back. We invited Bea over to join us. We had purchased additional caviar and decided to make a night of it.

Bea arrived with a bottle of Piper-Heidsieck Champagne Extra Dry.
We also opened a bottle of Pierre Peters Champagne.
With desert we opened Muscat De Baumes-de-Venise Paul Jaboulet 1997 that Tony had given us.

We started with the left over lobster. It retained it smoky taste and was just as good as at the restaurant we served it at room temperature.

We had defrosted some potato pancakes and served them with smoked salmon, cream fresh and caviar.

We then had the Lobster Stew that came with the Lobster. It was very rich with lots of chunks of lobster.

We had planned to serve the caviar in a recipe we use for caviar pasta. By the time we were ready for that course we decided we were getting so full that we would eat the caviar straight. So we put out the caviar, onion, chopped egg and lemon and dug in! We couldn’t finish it! Ah to have caviar as a left over!

For dessert we had two separate desserts from Perfectly Sweet: a Dulce de Leche mouse and terra misu.
We then had two different chocolate truffles that came with the lobster.
We would definitely recommend the lobster dinner from Maine Lobster Direct.

Moroccan Dinner

Wine: mil piedras Malbec 2003

We wanted to use the rest of the Roast Pork and Cathy had a lentil recipe we used to make with left over ham. We substituted the Pork from Willy Ray’s and added lots of spinach and lemon juice it was very tasty.

We had purchased a new Moroccan Cookbook: Moroccan Modern by Hassan M’Souli. We cooked Oven Bag Chicken with Couscous Stuffing. The chicken was seasoned with preserved lemons, olives, etc. It was our kind of food! Very moist and the couscous stuffing with almonds and raisons went well with it. Lots of left overs.

Mac and Cheese Party

Cathy wanted to have a lunch for her fellow workers at the American Film Institute Catalog. The AFI top 10 had been completed, and it was time to have a celebration.

We decided to cook Mac and Cheese. As an appetizer, we purchased from the Cheese Store of Silverlake. a Spinach Spread they sell. You heat up in the oven and serve warm with chips. It is a crowd favorite. .All of the cheese and prosciutto were also from the Cheese Store.

We also had a Roast Pork from Willy Ray’s shipped in.

Finally we decided to make a retro Salad with Green Goddess Salad Dressing. We had never made one before and used the recipe in Sunday Night at Lucques by Suzanne Goin. The salad was great and the dressing stayed fresh in our refrigerator for several days, giving us additional salads.

Pat provided the pastries for dessert. It was a delicious lunch, Page insists we freeze some Mac and Cheese for the next time she cat sits. Our cats: Polenta and Parsifal won the gang’s heart.

Rice Cooking!

On our walks, we have grown friendly with a neighbor Kazue who was born in Tokyo. We always stop and talk to her if she is in front of her house. We asked her if she would be interested in taking us on a shopping tour of Japanese markets. We had been to Little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles, and we knew about Sawtelle on the West side of LA, but were unaware of any other Japanese areas.

Boy were we wrong! Gardena and Torrance we found out from Kazue were where there are large Japanese communities and many large grocery stores.
We spent the day there and had lunch at Sanuki no Sata in Gardena and went to several stores. We bought a Sanyo Rice Cooker.

Kazue was invaluable in showing us many vegetables and ingredients we would never have tried. She insisted on coming to our house later in the week to show us how to cook rice.

We had purchased rice from Japan, you had to repeatedly wash it before use. Once it was cooked in the rice keeper it would stay warm for over 12 hours. The rice was like no rice we had ever made, it was the short grain rice that is sticky that is similar to the rice in Sushi. You keep the uncooked rice in the freezer.

She also made a curry to pour over the rice. She refused to use our Japanese knives saying they were too dull. She went home and brought her own knife over and proceeded to dazzle us with her use of the knife. She made a shrimp curry from scratch. She took all of the shrimp shells and vegetable peelings home for her garden. The curry and the rice were great.

Feeling chastened Cliff finally watched the video that came with his Spyderco Triangle Knife Sharpener. It is a very weird contraption. Now the knifes are sharp and we won’t let them get dull again!.