Sunday Spices - Vegas Edition

So, this being Vegas, I can't be ordinary and present anything run-of-the-(spice)-mill. So today our Spice (...) of discussion is going to be as extravagant and opulent (and expensive) as this glittering playground in the sand - the truffle.

I've not had much experience of truffles in my life - indeed I think the first time I ever tasted them was at a fancy dinner party thrown by my mate Alec Von Bargen in Tokyo. He had run all over the city trying to find them, and doubtless had to mortgage his internal organs to pay for them.

It's an unusual flavour - I've no idea how I'd approach cooking them. Anything that expensive, I'm cagey about preparing. I am all about trial-and-error - so long as the trials aren't too pricey! And, as blogged previously, I hate waste. So messed up truffles would be a disaster.

Tonight at the MGM, I met my dear and lovely friend Ruth, (Dr. Ruth, indeed), and we had dinner at Wolfgang Puck's restaurant there. We shared a bottle of wine called 'Irony' (how perfect is that?) and then came back two hours later for more food. Splendid all round - but the triumph of the evening was convincing our second waiter to prepare the truffled potato chips with a lighter cheese than the one on the menu. Waiter #1 was no help, but #2 was marvellous. Guess who got a good tip?!

Here are some photos of Ruth and her truffled - delicious - potatoes, Traci and her extravagant dessert, and Ruth and me posing. Viva Las Vegas!

Seasonal Saturday - LAS VEGAS

Well, thanks to MLK Day, this is a long weekend. So - along with a substantial number of UCLA people - I'm heading to Las Vegas!

Observance of the seasons and delicate, nuanced haiku-esque awareness of the passage of time are all well and good, but this trip has been in the making since last summer. Indeed, it was supposed to be my birthday present!

[Happy Birthday to me. ]

Ironically, despite the glitz, awesomely manipulative architecture, 24-hour gambling and general extravagance, I'm thinking I'll spend much of the weekend with my nose in a new book. It's called 'Hidden Buddhas', and get this - it's by Liza Dalby, whose 'East Wind Melts The Ice' is the inspiration for Seasonal Saturdays on this blog!

Full circle. Om. Now for the slot machines....

Foodie Friday - UNAGI!

Monica took me to a sushi restaurant in the Valley some time ago, called Katsyua - it is her favourite place. We all tend to be a little wary of such things, thinking "Oh yeah, sure, your favourite will be just fine for you, but it can't compare to MY favourite..." and so on. Monica WINS. Hands down.

It's a nice small place, you'd never notice it if you weren't looking for it, and the interior is bright. The staff are actually Japanese (don't ask me why, but it's a big deal for me at a Japanese restaurant!) and the green tea comes fast.

I put myself completely in Monica's hands, and she insisted I try some eel and the house specialty, something called rock shrimp. This shrimp comes in a big pile on a plate, slathered in a tomatoey-mayonnaisey-secret sauce. Incredibly good.

BUT the revelation of the night - and what I have happily taken with me for life! - was her insistence on the unagi. I have seen a variety of eels - both electric and not - in my life, and I think they have the lot of being among the most hideous-looking creatures in creation. Needless to say, I had little desire to eat them. I was wrong - clearly their ugliness is compensated in their deliciousness.

I've had unagi nearly every time I've eaten sushi since. (It's cooked - this helps.)

At a rather dingy Japanese restaurant this week I was served a horrifically badly-proportioned order of it, and the eel flesh was cut in such a way that I could see the texture of its insides and even the curvature of the dead animal's body. I honestly thought I would gag on it. But I managed - and it didn't taste bad at all. (Note to US American sushi-preparers - less is more. No, really. Small portions = delicate, appealing, appropriate and better. Thank you.)

30 Before 30 #5 - VEGETABLES

I have a dear friend who absolutely LOVES to make fun of the way I eat. Has done for years. I won't mention her name here because she has no means of defence against this diatribe, but I'm sure anyone who knows me (and her) will know precisely who I mean. And if not, it doesn't matter - the only reason she got to me was because - despite her less-than-decent way of drawing attention to the issue, she was absolutely right. Her major issue is/was with the fact that I seldom show any sign whatsoever of interest in eating vegetables.

And - loud and clear - may I state here that this is only partially true. What I hate are the vegetables with which I am presented in restaurants. Pickles. Coleslaw. Sad-looking lettuce posturing as a 'salad', with a few anaemic tomatoes or something. Disgusting. If I want any of these things, I promise, I will order them. When I don't, I feel it only right to request that they not be brought - it's wasteful, and I'd be much happier knowing that they might end up on the plate of some other, less crazy diner.

I also hate salads. Hate them. I am not a rabbit, and I somehow cannot see the point of eating leaves. It has even reached the point where I've considered seeing a hypnotist, in the hope that s/he might be able to reprogramme me to think that leaves and peppers (to which I am borderline allergic - not enough to be sick, just enough to be uncomfortable and therefore cranky for up to a full day after eating them) taste like chocolate. Wouldn't that make an enormous amount of sense? Intellectually, if not physiologically - I'm sure that what chocolate does to the body is not entirely in the mind. And therefore I'd still be craving something else after snacking on leaves.

Long story short (well - shorter) - I actually love vegetables. But only when I prepare them myself. This makes me weird? I don't care. For this 30 Before 30 insanity, I decided that it would be only good and proper to come to terms with 5 new vegetables - a) in order to have something to say to Ms. X, and b) because I'm interested.

I did a vague search on the interweb to find something like a 'Top 10 Healthiest Vegetables' list. (Y'all know how much I love taxonomies and lists...)

What I found was more of a Top 10 healthiest KINDS of vegetables. So, I've taken one from each list and developed a nice recipe for each. These top ten include relatively familiar vegetables - I cannot in good conscience say that learning to cook carrots was 'something new' for me - but what I did WITH them certainly was.

[I am blogging about cooking vegetables. Where are the Four Horsemen???]

1- Cruciferous Vegetables

I cooked broccoli. I steam it and serve it with fresh lemon juice and capers. The Mexican also taught me a recipe to make with broccoli stalks (the bit that you normally try to remove at the shop, or else feel that you're being cheated when it's sold by weight...)

I even ordered cauliflower in a restaurant recently!

2- Carrots

No real innovation here - they are my favourite vegetable. I don't like them raw (unless accompanied by mandarins and balsamic vinegar) but any other way is great. I got an immersion blender for Christmas and have used it to make a variety of soups since, but the best so far has been my version of a carrot and coriander soup. Delicious. And dirt cheap!!

3- Dark Green Leafy Vegetables

The majority of items on this list don't inspire me much, they being leaves, but I love spinach. Again, cooked with some lemon. Baking it in filo a la grecque isn't really in line with the whole self-improving notion of this post, but the fact remains that spanakopita is the best (only?!) way to enjoy spinach. As for collard greens - I shall wait until I visit Savannah and have a Deen cook it for me. I'm sure it's best with butter.

4- Tomatoes

Again, not exactly foreign to me - although tomato soup is the next thing on my agenda. I also love making stuffed tomatoes - also a Greek recipe! I bought some heirloom tomatoes recently for the rataouille I made at Christmas. They were almost too beautiful to chop!

5- Beans and Peas

What to say? Beans are such a broad range of things. I like some, not others. Peas - best with miso.

6- Asparagus

Antoher likely soup candidate in the near future. Also great izakaya-style, wrapped in bacon and served with beers, tofu, fish, all that good stuff.

7- "Allium Foods"

I think this means onions, shallots, scallions, garlic etc. These have all become staples of my cooking - none moreso than garlic - since I went 'foodie', so they can all go on the list. I'm not a very big fan of shallots, which taste somehow stronger to me than regular onions, but they were a hit with my maple candied sweet potatoes at Christmas....

8 - Bell Peppers

Non-negotiable. I won't eat them raw. But they improve so much with cooking that I'm being adventurous. I had a chile rilleno at a Oaxacan restaurant recently, and thanks to the advice of Marcella Valladollid, I'm trying some new Mexican recipes, which clearly demand peppers galore. But gently. Pass the Tums.

9- Sweet Potatoes

Side dish triumph! The whole US thing of serving these with marshmallows I find rather gross, but they are really good baked and fried and served as a savoury piece. And easy to prepare!!

10 - Squash

I am using the ratatouille here again. It had aubergine, courgette, yellow squash in it, so covers all the items under this rubric. And turned out rather well, by all accounts.

Wow. I have overachieved with my vegetable enthusiasm. I set out to aim for 5 new ones. I have managed over 10. Chocolate comes from beans. Making it a vegetable too. Win win.

Wild Card Wednesday - PUBLIC SPEAKING

I have never read much by Fran Lebowitz, other than pithy and amusing quotations in collections of wit and one-liners. Sitting in a hotel in Las Vegas over Thanksgiving, I saw commercials on HBO for a new special - directed by Martin Scorsese, no less - that promised all the usual 'rare insights' and so on into the life of this amusing and acerbic humorist. So needless to say I've been trying to get a look at it since.

Thankfully, it doesn't disappoint - she's right, she's judgemental, she's unapologetic, and she's pretty damn cool. Of course writing this I am fully aware that she doesn't give a damn what I say, but I very much enjoyed what SHE said. Check it out.

Tuesday Tunes - Roisin Murphy

Probably the most impossibly cool Irishwoman in contemporary pop music - I just love that Roisin Murphy is so brilliant, comes from Wicklow, and continues to bring out such classy choons.

Apparently there's a new album coming at some point in 2011 - bring it on, I say - but this recent web leak is just great. I have no idea who Mason is, but who cares? I love the sound, love the theme. Fight the good fight!

Movie Monday: A Touch of Spice

I must confess that much of my interest in spices - and particularly their emotional and physiological effects - came about from a Greek film called 'A Touch of Spice'. It's not particularly new, but it might be new for some of you readers. And it's my Movie Monday choice for the week!

It's a story of a Greek family who were forced to leave their home in Constantinople when the Greeks were all deported from the city. The Greek-language title of the film is 'Politiki Kouzina' (πολίτικη κουζίνα), which is quite a nuanced play on words - it could simply mean 'political kitchen' or 'cookery', but in Greek the word 'politikos' or politiki' always implies THE city, Constantinople. Indeed, it still bugs many modern Greeks that the name of the city is now Istanbul.

Throughout the film, it is food, cooking, spices and shared broken bread that brings and keeps families and relationships together. It's very beautifully observed, with great acting, and a beautiful score by Evanthia Reboutsika.

Here's a trailer:

Hiroshige

This was a special treat - today Ellen and I trekked out to Pasadena to the Norton Simon Gallery to see the exhibition 'Hiroshige-Visions of Japan'. I'm a big fan of Japanese woodblock prints, and this was a particularly big exhibition - they had the full series of all 55 Stations of the Tokaido (both the landscapes and the second set featuring people!), the 36 Views of Mount Fuji, as well as a beautiful selection of the 100 Views of Edo, and - perhaps most intriguing - a variety of Hiroshige's rarest items. These included images for fans - r

are, since the majority of the prints were cut up and glued onto fans, as intended. There were also other cut-out pages with a variety of images, and then the final room had a selection of his delicate prints of birds and flowers.

I'm a sucker for a complete set, so it was amazing to see the full collections all in one place!

The Norton Simon has a very impressive collection of Eastern and Western Art - including an amazing room that has Picasso, Brancusi, Hepworth, Kandinsky, Klee and several others all in one very beautiful room!

Sunday Spices - Nutmeg

I've always wondered about poor nutmeg - not as exciting as cloves, not as popular as cinnamon. A little research online told me that it was believed during the Middle Ages that nutmeg could ward off plague - and given that just about everyone I know has a cold of some sort at the moment, I figured I should cook something with it this weekend.

Admittedly I got distracted today - I slept very late (hurrah!) and then went out to the Norton Simon Gallery in Pasadena to see the Hiroshige exhibit. (More on him in another post). So, I got home rather later than I thought, and was a bit too tired to be going TOO fancy in my quest for a nutmeg recipe. Instead, keeping in line perhaps with this delicate spice's humble position on the spice-rack totem pole, I made two gentle but very comforting dishes - a Quiche Lorraine and some honey & nutmeg cornbread muffins.

Nutmeg is the key ingredient in a good quiche - no more than a good pinch of it is enough to elevate your custard to a really warm, rich flavour. And a whole teaspoon added to my cornbread batter meant that they came out of the oven warm, golden and quite delicious.

Seasonal Saturday - What a Day!

This has been a pretty crazy week. The first week of any quarter invariably has been rather manic, but Winter Quarter Week 01 is also when a substantial number of UCLA productions hold their auditions. All at the same time. I saw a huge number of people, with great spirit and enormous talent, and it was rather brutal having to make the cull down to only seven people for Pains of Youth. (Those seven are a remarkable lot, and I'm very excited to get to work with them.) Erendira, Rent and all of the undergraduate one-acts are also fully cast at this point, and will doubtless be great shows, all.

This week - as well as my own New Year New Blog New Everything stuff, I also had a full load of reading for one class, another that began very first thing Monday morning, and then auditions every evening. On top, we have also started rehearsals for the opera I'm working on in the Music Dept, so there was time to be spent down there too. AND the Entertainment Design class I'm TA-ing kicked in again on Thursday....!

So you'd imagine that after all that I'd take Saturday off and chillax a bit, eh? Not so! I was in Westwood first thing (guess where I got my coffee...) and then up to UCLA at the crack of noon for the first of a series of classes with the enormously charming Alfred Molina, who is teaching Shakespeare. He is splendid. Thereafter it was back to Schoenberg Hall for a full sing-through of Dialogues des Carmelites. Despite how many times I've heard the music on cd, I wasn't really prepared for the incredible punch that it packs. I look forward to it being a very deep, very rich experience. After THAT it was back to the Theatre Dept, for the Thesis performance of the MFA actors in my year. It seems like only yesterday we were all performing our autodramas for each other, and already they have presented their final iterations of that process. Time flies!

After the performance I went to my new favourite Indian restaurant, Nizam, at Westwood & Pico, and tried Mulligatawny soup for the first time. It's delicious! Spicy Sunday began early ;)

Foodie Friday - Profeta Coffee

Ok so, this isn't strictly 'food', but it's the culinary establishment that I've been to more often, I think, than ANYWHERE ELSE in LA. (And that includes Jerry's Deli. Where I hadn't been for many months before the horrific Hepatitis scare before Christmas - and to which I certainly won't be rushing anytime ever again...)

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce you to the wonder of Profeta in Westwood. I won't tell you where it is, because I don't want this amazing secret to become toooo well-known. But try it. Their coffee is a little bit of bliss in a cup. Every single time. (It helps that your beverage is prepared by two baristas, that their coffee is fresh ground, that they use whole milk, and that their small but fabulous selection of pastries and treats is uniformly delicious.)

So go! Try them out. And when you've had ten drinks, your eleventh is free.

(Oh, and the staff are impossibly cool, as is the music they play.)

30 Before 30 #3 - Soda

I went to see a play at the end of the summer holidays last year and spent the entire first half craving a Diet Coke. I felt like Elaine Stritch having an attack. (But without the vodka stingers and the lifetime of Sondheim and hooch.) Having ascertained that I wasn't diabetic, and having sated myself with a 7 Up during the intermission of the play, I spent the second half still craving more soda. After the show I had dinner with some great people, and probably drank enough Diet Coke to fill a hip-bath. And this was at DENNYS. Shame squared.

The following day, feeling unwell after so much carbonated sugar, I pronounced (to myself) that I was going to go cold turkey. Mainly just to see if I could. Boy has it been rough. It's only when you stop acquiescing to the constantly-available nectars that you realise just how omni-present they are. Coca Cola advertising becomes immediately more visible and distasteful when you stop drinking it. (Despite REALLY wanting to.)

I had heard many years ago that Sprite is officially 30% sugar - I suppose it's no wonder that it was my favourite drink, for which I was notorious in Greece. My friends there were ashamed that I would order it, nearly every night. It's still delicious, I'm sure - it'd want to be - but I'm done with it. When I turned 29 last summer I toyed with the idea of stopping drinking sugary sodas at some point in the future - but now that it is fully a quarter of a year since I touched a drop of it, at all, I am happy to put it out there as another of the 30 Before 30 achieved. I do not drink soda any more.

Wild Card Wednesday - MUJI!

I already have a weird reputation for being too much a fan of Japanese stationery. Can you blame me though? Nobody, nobody does it better. (It's a lovely coincidence, in my view, that the words for 'paper' and 'god' are homonyms in Japanese...)

Of course, the best of the best stationery comes from Muji. Tokyu Hands may be the 'Creative Lifestyle' store - and their stuff, on just about every floor, is splendid also, but for my (substantial amounts of) money, Muji can't be beat. Their pens. Their notebooks. Their bags. Their kitchen utensils. Even their packaged food! The cardboard speakers, the spinning-cd wall-mounted cd-player. The list goes on and on - their bed linens, in fun stripes and humble jersey, are probably my favourites in the world. Keep your posh Egyptian ultra-high thread count cotton, I'll take a Muji nap any day.

Tuesday Tunes - Robyn

Definitely my favourite album of 2010 was Robyn's "Body Talk". I know it's kinda cheating to call it one album, since it was a series of three fantastic EPs staggered over several months, but who cares.

Alas, I missed her last gig in LA in November, but hopefully she'll be back at some point. Soon.

I can't pick a favourite, so the top ten 'most played' in my iTunes are:

Love Kills

Dancing On My Own

Indestructible

Include Me Out

We Dance to the Beat

In My Eyes

Hang With Me

Fembot

U Should Know Better

Get Myself Together

...and here's a video. :)

Movie Monday - PARADE

As a pretty random afterthought in early December, I wound up watching this recent Japanese movie - based on a novel by Yoshida Shuichi. Given all the work I'm doing on 'Pains of Youth' I suppose it made sense - it being, like the Viennese play, a tale of a bunch of co-ed young people living in the same place and navigated through their disaffected experience of the world.

It is one of the best Japanese movies I've seen for a long time - dark, surprising, very funny in places, and with some superb acting. Yukisada Isao (who also made Year One in the North and the movie adaptation of Mishima's Spring Snow) does a really clean job of adapting this complicated story, without showing the tricks up his directorial sleeves. Kudos!

There's a trailer here!

Sunday Spices - Celery Seed

I must confess, I absolutely loathed celery when I was small. Probably because my Dad always cooked it in the same pot as my beloved carrots, and the flavour often leaked from one to the other. Stories of the Conor next door eating the stuff raw made no impact, and then later hearing that some people eat celery with PEANUT BUTTER (another taste I developed rather later in my life) truly horrified me.

I'm not sure that I'd go all out and say that I now love celery or anything, but it's definitely part of many flavours, so I've been paying more attention to it of late. At Christmas, I made two big batches of stuffing from the recipe we used when I was growing up (a quarter pound of butter, a pound of mushrooms, two celery stalks, an apple, and a whole bunch of breadcrumbs, all diced, chopped, combined and baked. Sausage meat can be included too, but the sausages here are so demanding in their flavour that I wasn't happy including any...)

With a whole bunch of celery left over from these, I decided to make some soup. But the star surprise was that in Whole Foods I found a packet of celery seeds, which made the soup far spicier and celery-er, and turned out being my new favourite spice! Did you know that it's mostly grown in India? Or that the Ancient Greeks, particularly those occult-obsessed residents of Samothrace, considered it a chthonic plant, heavily associated with death and the underworld? Not so humble now, eh?

I have a whole jar of celery seeds now, which are apparently also great for canning, preserving and pickling. Dunno if I'll be getting THAT far, but I'll definitely add a little for some richness to the next pasta sauce I try.

A New Look!

Well Hello!

I'm sorry I didn't make it into 2011 with a blogpost, but I managed to pick up a cold between 8pm and midnight on New Year's Eve (or possibly a strong allergic reaction to cats, but I doubt that) and so I've spent much of the year so far in bed, medicated.

Regardless, I am HERE, and happy to announce that, as one of my New Year Resolutions, I have decided to blog every single day for 2011. Even if it means that I wind up posting digests if/when I'm away from computer access. Just a little something every day.

In the hope of focusing my posts this year, I'm proud to be telling y'all that every day will have a different 'theme' this year, and they're gonna be something like this...

Spice Sundays

In my new career as a foodie, I'll be trying out a new spice every week - or re-examining one - and trying to cook something with it. Mild to wild...!

Movie Mondays

I watch a lot of movies. Some of them are so weird you may never have heard of them, but I'll be happily introducing what wonders I come across as we go through the fifty-two weeks of this new year.

Tune Tuesdays

Likewise I go through a bunch of music. Maybe it'll be an album, a song, a piece of classical music or maybe even an artist that I wanna talk about.

Wild Card Wednesdays

Just you wait and see!

30-Mad-Thursdays

I'm going to turn 30 on July 11, a little less than 200 days from now. As has become quite a popular blogger meme, I have put together my list of '30 before 30' - admittedly later in the game than some enterprising souls! Stay tuned as every week I let you know how I'm progressing. (Although I am cagey about posting the whole list. It's handwritten and posted on my wall above my desk - I'm gonna do it, but I probably won't post it until the big day!)

Foodie Fridays

As well as my own experiments and adventures in the kitchen, I'll be sharing food adventures and tastings in Los Angeles. Despite my status as a cash-starved graduate student, I manage to get around a bit here in LA, and there are lots of fun places I've discovered that I'm gonna tell y'all about. (And failing that I'll just comment on whatever madness is going on on the Food Network....!)

Seasonal Saturdays

This blog's title comes from the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, who wrote so many pithy entries documenting life in the Japanese court. Another favourite of mine is Liza Dalby's truly beautiful 'East Wind Melts the Ice' (buy it here) - a book that guides through the seasons of the Japanese (and, indeed, Northern Californian) year. As an homage, I am hoping, every week, to note something special - or note-worthy - of the time of the year, so that the daily beauty, the ordinary plenty, of 2011 does not go unnoticed.

Are you excited?

Stay tuned, add me to your RSS feed, leave comments, get in touch, let me know if even one single soul out there is reading any more!

(I'm gonna be posting regardless. But I hope you'll be coming along for the ride!)

Happy New Year!

Well, here we are, another year is coming to an end. :)

It's funny to think that this time last year, if I remember rightly, I was getting off a plane before heading back to Westwood and spending NYE with Pilar and watching Moulin Rouge, eating pizza and pound cake as the calendar changed. Is it really 365 days later?!

This was a year of Shakespeare, Robyn, Gaga and Ono, Terzopoulos and Mnouchkine, Cirque du Soleil and a cute little mouse. This was the year of Much Ado and Samuel Barber, Hamlet for months, a whole bunch of good cooking, a move to Santa Monica, a visit to the Greek islands, Vienna, Berlin, Paris, Dublin and even Las Vegas!

It was the year in which I've started my fun 30-before-30 project - more details coming soon - and of conquering a variety of fears. Everything from going on a rollercoaster (or eight!), eating a chili pepper, writing more, working more and listening more.

2010 had some peaks and some deep valleys, some new wins and some sad losses, but on the whole, it has been one in which I came face-to-face with a lot of challenges, as we always do. And I'm still standing!

So here's to 2011, may it be one that inspires, thrills, surprises, challenges and changes all of our lives. And hopefully with lots of new music, movies and fabulous food.

I sound like I'm writing this drunk. And I'm totally not. Honest.

Holly, Ivy and Ratatouille!

Stranded as I am in Los Angeles (listening to Mudd and Bing Crosby... Sigh...) I have decided to throw a lunch party tomorrow - Christmas Day - for a bunch of other Christmas orphans from my programme.

Given that we have vegans and veggies and all sorts of dietary requirements and considerations, I have decided NOT to do a turkey - or a ham - but instead I'm preparing a whole bunch of small things that people can nibble.

Piece-de-resistance will likely be the delicious-looking leg of lamb that I'll roast tomorrow. Along with it;

- caramelised maple sweet potatoes

- a ratatouille that looks just like the one from the movie (thank you Thomas Keller!)

- Conor's "roasted roots" - potatoes, garlic and fennel

- white miso peas and carrots

- Ellen's grilled asparagus

- cranberry bread and butter

AND FOR DESSERT;

- my pumpkin spiced bread & butter pudding

- chocolate raspberry brownies

- coconut macaroons with pomegranate cream

- pumpkin pie

- french macaroons with cranberry sweet cream filling

Cooking

I really love cooking - but I seem only ever able to get any done during school holidays.

I'm going for some hardcore nostalgia this weekend; yesterday it was spaghetti bolognese (see above, accompanied by the pumpkin spiced pudding that seems to be becoming my signature autumn dessert!), and today I'm gonna make a quiche - like my mom used to. Maybe with some tomato soup on the side!

As companions to the recipes that make me feel a little less homesick, I'm having fun with some true Americana recipes - yesterday was a bread&butter pudding, and today it's going to be a pumpkin pie. Haha!

(Tomorrow will likely be a chili, and a tres leches cake. Delicioso!)