Spring is Green

Wine: Celius Toscana 1999 Indicazione Geografica Tipica from Silver Lake Wine

When Spring arrives we always make two of our favorite dishes. We started by making Fava Bean Puree. At the Hollywood Farmer’s Market, fresh young fava bean appeared and we purchased several pounds. Fava’s require lots of peeling, first the bean from the large shell, then par-boiling the beans, and finally peeling the bean itself. There is a slippery skin that easily slips off after the boiling. Then you can start to make the puree. We simmer the beans in Olive Oil, garlic and Thyme then remove the thyme and puree. We served the puree with pita bread that had been toasted in the oven. It brought back all of the tastes of spring. We will be making this some more this spring and summer! Fava’s have a fairly long season. This recipe was modified by Cathy from the Chez Panisse Vegetables cookbook.

For the second course we made a new dish for us. It was from an old cookbook that we had, The Fine Art of Italian Cooking by Giuliano Bugialli. The recipe is called Asparagus Florentine Style. The asparagus is sautéed in butter, parmesan cheese is added then for the complete cholesterol hit, a fried egg is served on top! Pass the Lipitor with it! It is wonderful! Double click the scanned image from the book and you should be able to read and make it.

For the pasta course we make Asparagus Pasta. This is one of my very favorite dishes. The dish is simplicity itself, with great flavors. Browned butter, Asparagus, Parmesan Cheese and great Pasta are the keys. Cathy adapted it from a recipe in Chez Panisse Pasta Pizza & Calzone by Alice Walters. We got all of the cheese, of course from the Cheese Store of Silverlake. We also got the curly pasta from the Cheese Store.

Moroccan Dinner

Sake with Gold Flakes Sho Chiku Bai Kinpaku was gift from Kazue our Japanese neighbor. It is a traditional Sake served at Japanese New Years. The gold flakes are totally healthy and give a shimmer to the sake. The bottle was so enormous we decided to save it for a party with many guests. This was the time! Like all good sakes it is served cold.

Robert Foley Claret 2000 this was a BIG bottle of wine from Chris at the Cheese Store of Silverlake. It was given to me as a present on my 60th birthday. I was looking for an appropriate gathering to open it. It went perfectly with the dinner.

Chatau Longueville Pauillac-Medoc – 1982 Bordeaux was brought by Les and Linda. 1982 is the gold standard for Bordeaux, we were lucky to get this bottle, after a little trouble with the cork we served it to a happy table!

Cathy and I had wanted to repay our neighbors for some past dinners and finally we got a date and a menu that worked for all.

Neighbors: Bea, David and Shelley, Mike and Terry, Les and Linda

There is a Lebanese Restaurant that we occasionally go to named: Marouch. It has absolutely the best Baba Ganoush we know of. The flavor is amazingly Smokey. We couldn’t resist it as an appetizer that would go with the Moroccan dinner we were planning. In addition I went to Joan’s on 3rd Street for their peta toasts that are crunchy and buttery.

We used the Casa Moro Cookbook. We had eaten at their restaurant in London and its combination of Spanish and Moroccan food was typical of the food we like to eat.

We made an additional appetizer: Carrot Puré with feta from the Moro Cookbook. It is fairly easy and has a taste that is just great.

For a first course we made: Lentils with Beets and Preserved Lemons from Deborah Madison’s cookbook Vegitarian Cooking for Everyone. It is a favorite of ours. Preserved lemons are easy to make, and months before we had bought the lemons and preserved them. All it takes to preserve them is: Lemons, lemon juice, salt and olive oil. Store them away, shaking them for the first week, then refrigerating them. No reason to ever buy them.

We made the Lamb Tagina from the Morro cookbook. We purchased the lamb shanks at Gus Meats and they were enormous! Last time we were in San Francisco we purchased two clay cooking pots and we wanted to use them for this meal. The have to be soaked overnight before their first use. We soaked them and then prepared the tagina. The meat and sauce are sealed in the pots and then they cooked for 6 hours at a low temperature. We wondered if the pots would make it, but they did and the meat fell off the bone. It was flavorful and tender.

We served it with couscous.

We once went to the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite for a dinner prepared by Stephen Pyles. One of his great recipes is his Apple Cake. We decided to make it, and cooked it on Thursday before the dinner on the Saturday. The cake only gets better with age! We served it with Sheer Bliss Ice Cream and Carmel Sauce from Recchiuti Confections in San Francisco – YUM!

Later we served some Drambuie Liquor.

It was a great night with talk of Opera, Politics, Senior Activities and maybe the start of Bea’s re-election campaign to the neighborhood council.

Masked Meat Loaf

Wine: Chateau Margaux Premier Grand Cru Classe 1989 – John had given us this wine years ago, and seemed appropriate to serve it back to him.

John Carpenter finally arrived from San Francisco. He was supposed to come last week but got sick. We had a Provencal dinner for a cold night. We cooked two recipes from Paula Wolfert Cookbook: Mediterranean Grains and Greens.

The previous weekend Lynn Friedman and Beth Rimby from San Francisco stayed with us. They work for KGO-TV in San Francisco. Beth is a producer and Lynn an edior for the I-Team that does investigative reports. They had produced a series that won an award about the Egg Industry and the conditions that non-free range chickens live under. They came to Los Angeles to receive their award at the Beverly Hilton. They brought to us from San Francisco some truffle products (truffle oil,truffles sliced in oil and truffle salt. They also brought Dessert Sauces (Carmel and Chocolate). We decided to work both the truffles and the chocolate into this dinner.

Farro and Chick Pea Soup a very thick soup. It was a little bland but with the additional of sliced truffles the soup became a declicious first course.

Potato with truffle Salt, Olive Oil, Cathy created this dish and it was great, lots of small fingerlings roasted and crisp with the truffle flavor from the salt.

Provencal Meat Loaf this is really more vegetable then meat, with Chard, Spinich, Artichoke bottoms (that are a pain to cook) and prosciutto, sausage, ground pork, etc. The entire mixture is made the day before so the flavors meld and then wrapped in cabbage and cooked as a single giant stuffed cabbage. It is very rich.

The second day we made a tomato sauce from scratch and served it over the room temperature meat loaf.

The meat loaf has a very complex flavor due to all the ingredients and went well with the tomato sauce.

There is a gourmet ice cream we have been buying: Sheer Bliss, we had the vanilla flavor with the Extra Bitter Chocolate Sauce from Recchiuti Confections. The chocolate sauce is like fudge, it is fantastically good and only available in San Francisco at the Ferry Building or via the internet. We served Chocolate Covered Dipped Tozzetti from Buona Forchetta with the ice cream.

Great Dinner!

Wine: Ortman Family Vineyards 2003 San Luis Obisbo County Syrah


With the first spring peas every year we make Risi e Bisi. The recipe we use is from Bugialli’s Italy by Giuliano Bugialli. We bought a large amount of fresh peas at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market. On the afternoon that we made the Risi e Bisi it took over 1 hour to shell the peas. All of the pea pods are retained and boiled to make the infuse the water used to make the rice and peas. In addition the recipe calls for Parmesan Cheese and Prosciutto – we purchased them from The Cheese Store of Silverlake. The dish was wonderful and perfect for the cold night.

For the first course we decided to make a tart from Sunday Suppers at Lucques. We made the pizza like tart: young onion tart with Cantal cheese, apple wood-smoked bacon, and herb salad. Though the tart called for puff pastry, Cathy decided to use some Vicolo Corn Meal Crusts that we had to make it less rich. The tarts turned out wonderfully.

Great winter – spring meal!

Onion Soup and Fava Pasta

Wine: Domaine Des Relagnes 2003 Cote-du-Rhone Vieilles Vignes

Onion Soup and Fava Bean Pasta


It had been very cold in Los Angeles so we decided to make two of our favorite winter / spring dishes.

We started with Onion Soup Gratin. We use Julia Childs recipe from her first cookbook: Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It is very rich with lots of Gruyere Cheese and a splash of Cognac.

It warmed us up!

Once in San Francisco we ate at The Slow Club. They served fava bean pasta. We loved it and asked for their recipe. They gave it to us and we have continued to make it every spring when the fresh fava’s first appear. There is a lot of peeling and double peeling of the fava’s but it is well worth the effort.

Great leftovers!