The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Still pretty crazed at work right now, but we're closing in on the goal. Even though I'm 11 days into my second 13-day week this month, I feel good today. Maybe I'm just getting acclimated to working until 1AM. Maybe being on the summer side of the vernal equinox has given me some added strength. Maybe I'm just as beat and delusional, but I can't tell any more. At least it's not Public Enemies.

Today is our second preview, and we're in much better shape than we were for the first, both in terms of the content and the execution. That makes for a positive attitude and outlook as well as a chance to breathe today. Last time, we used our emergency time to take care of emergencies. This time, everything has gone smoothly thus far.

Even though I was at work until after 1AM, I still was up by 9, so I took advantage of the time to do a little shopping.

Cheap wine and expensive liquor kinda sums up my drinking habits, and it certainly describes this particular trip to Beverage Warehouse. 

I had some Miller's gin at Ford's the last day off I had, and one of my crewmates got a bottle of Plymouth for the cutting room the other day, so I've been thinking about small-batch gin lately. This Leopold's certainly passes Count Reeshard's label test, so I decided to try it. I have the opportunity to indulge in Taco Thursday this week, so I grabbed some 1800, and the Blavod is in memory of Dr. Amelia Haygood, who was a big fan and one of m drinking mentors.

I also got a chance to stop at Ronnie's Diner and have some good old American breakfast. Ronnie's is in the same strip mall as Fioretto, and just up the street from Beverage Warehouse and the LA Wine Co. I like that neighborhood.

Notice how the contents combine with the egg in the omelet rather than just being wrapped inside like a crepe. You probably can't tell from this pic, but those red potatoes have a really nice griddle sear on them. The coffee is strong and dark, and salsa is the preferred condiment. This is SoCal after all. Never disappointing, and $11 with tax (now 9.25%!) and tip.

After our setup, the crew went across the street for a little sushi at Sugarfish, the Marina Del Rey outpost of the famed Nozawa. Nozawa is known as the "sushi nazi." He only serves omakase, and is known to fiercely ridicule American trends in sushi, like California rolls and dipping everything in soy and wasabi. Of course, our tastes as consumers have developed, and we're all beginning to realize how right he is.

Sugarfish takes his "Trust Me" concept to the casual diner. The "light" lunch is $13.50, the full combo is $23.50, and a full complement of à la carte options is available. Drinking was not an option today, but I will return to sample some of their small, but varied sake list. Highlights of the meal included tuna sashimi; buttery albacore; thin, nearly transparent snapper; and delightfully fresh and mild uni. The house ponzu was especially tangy and refreshing. It made you feel like the yuzu was grown out back. The knife work was excellent, especially for the price, yielding perfectly thin, delicate slices of fish, respectful of the grain and texture and providing a more than satisfactory level of taste ad texture. 

All in all, it's a pretty good day to go to a favorite spot and discover another that's really good. Of course, at this point, any meal not served in a clamshell or cardboard box is a thing of true joy and beauty.

 

I am still here, kinda.

In the few minutes I have before heading out to work this morning, day 10 of a 13-day week that has included 4 16-hour days thus far, I am somehow compelled to blog. I can no longer be satisfied by mere facebook status updates or snarky comments. I must speak and have you listen. Both of you.

Partially, I am a little inspired by bikesnob, my hero of the blogoshpere. His recent work has bee among his best, and today's skewering of single-speed culture was particularly wonderful. As a fellow child of the 80s, the snob has a similar appreciation for counter-culture scenes as I do, having the same reaction in 1991-92 when al of a sudden Metallica and Nirvana became platinum sellers. You can't suffer that kind of disillusionment without it changing you forever. Hell, I listened to nothing but Phish and Miles Davis for at least a year after that. It was a long time before I got back to my punk rock roots, as my friend Rotary Rachel cautioned me to do.

On the plus side, I listened to a lot of Miles Davis.

It's also the start of racing season, but I haven't been on a bicycle since my last day off work. I've been daydreaming of the new steel I intend to reward myself with (that decision is not yet fully arrived at) and looking at pictures on pez, but I have no commuting stories or epic jaunts to share as in posts past.

Even my eating has been curtailed. I have eaten often and sometimes well, but styrofoam boxes and plastic clamshells are not the stuff that blogs are made of.

I did have another (oops, never mentioned the abalone and truffles from the last trip there!) near-religious experience at K-Zo on Saturday. It was a short day: 10-8, so I told BoW that I wanted to have a really good dinner out and asked her to look for a res in Culver City for the evening. Ideally, I would have gone to Fraîche, but that's just because we can never get in.

She got us a reservation at the bar and told them ahead of time that we wanted omakase, and we were seated in the center of the bar in front of the chef who was clearly the stud on duty that night. We ordered some Kikusui draft sake (it's the best drink to come from a can ever!) and did some positive modeling for the younger couple at the bar next to us.

What followed was a truly wonderful dining experience. We had the complete attention of the chef who made only two dishes the entire night not intended for us. Most of his time was spent on an amazing parade of fish and fish accessories: cooked, marinated tuna with a ponzu-like gelée, beautiful snapper, halibut, Santa Barbara prawn two ways, seared halibut fin (!), real bluefin, Spanish mackerel, premium Japanese mackerel with (!), premium golden-eye snapper with seared skin (!), some kind of crazy sweet clam thing (!), fresh raw octopus tentacle, sea trout (it looks like salmon, but it's sooooooo much better), fried octopus suckers, uni, seared black cod with eel sauce, and premium Japanese baby sweet shrimp.

I think that's everything.

One of the best parts of the night was when he brought out the whole prawns and showed them to us. BoW was so sad when he took the heads off. "I want to eat the eyes." Can you blame her? Something distracted her (probably the delicious butterflied tail that was the most delicious shrimp I have every had - why do we cook tis stuff again?) from noticing him carry the heads on a plate back to the kitchen. Imagine her joy when the head returned, split in half and tempura fried. Delicious brains.

I felt a bit self-conscious about photos in this context, but I plan to return and make friends with that chef. My Japanese friend is actually moving to the neighborhood, an K-Zo is where she takes her mother when she visits, so that will boost my cred a bit. After we establish a bit of a rapport, I may give you a visual taste.

By the way, he introduced himself and gave us a fist bump at the end of the meal. His name? K-Zo.

Pork Week! 2

If you haven't read the first post in this series, I suggest doing it in order. I'm a formalist, after all.

Pork has become a pervasive theme in our society. The internet memes alone are enough to make one turn to Tarvu for solace. How many of you are fans of bacon on Facebook? Even the New York Times has featured the bacon explosion. That makes it the pork of record.

But, I shouldn't get ahead of myself. Amidst all of this excitement, I need to return to my roots. In the 80s, low fat diets and healthy eating invaded the middle of our country from the coasts, this one in particular. Cholesterol and triglycerides made traditional American breakfasts and Sunday dinners taboo, and to fight off the onslaught from the chicken folks, the National Pork Board advised us that pork was really the other white meat. And why would they give us bad advice about pork? After all, they had bred their pigs lean and were giving people like my mom great tenderloin recipes through trustworthy channels like Cooking Light.

In all seriousness, I enjoy the nutritive aspect of food nearly as much as the hedonistic. In my own home cooking, I really do try to strive for the latter while achieving the former. In that respect, the tenderloin has been a staple for me ever since college, when I first started to cook for myself. Like its beefy cousin, the filet mignon, the pork tenderloin is a lean, mildly flavored cut that takes many preparations well, in particular, both stuffing and wrapping, as you shall see momentarily.

Oddly enough, it is sometimes difficult to find at our local WFM or TJ's. Weird, right? In fact, I was just thwarted a couple of weeks ago. The butcher couldn't believe that I didn't just get one of the beautiful loin roasts, but in the end, a ribeye is not a filet. This was no problem on Saturday, and I did hear later from ML that on Valentine's Day, it was the filet that was selling out in our local grocery stores.

As you know, I am serious about mise en place, and this was going to be a serious construction project, so I spent a good portion of the afternoon being fussy with small piles of veggies. I planned to stuff my roast with bacon, leeks, mushroom, and cornmeal, so I started there. I also intended to make a pan sauce of mushroom and Marsala, so I had those the consider as well. 

The bacon was the bulk black forest bacon that they sell at WFM. I got it so I could just get 6 strips, but the smoky-sweet flavor was just perfect for the application.

The other essential ingredients were the fresh herbs. The sage I got at the store, but the rosemary grows outside my back door, and it is prime for pickin' right now.

I chopped some of the bacon and rendered it, setting the crisps aside while sautéing the stuffing in the drippings. After preheating the oven and laying the pork open, I was ready to stuff.

Unlike a certain Top Chef contestant, I am familiar with the method for tying a roast. 

Once all gussied up, my roast was ready for the big time. Big time bacon that is. The process brought to mind on this Valentine's Day a poem of Browning called Porphyria's Lover.

That moment she was mine, mine, fair,

Perfectly pure and good: I found

A thing to do, and all her hair

In one long yellow string I wound

Three times her little throat around,

And strangled her. No pain felt she;

I am quite sure she felt no pain.

Read it. It goes on. I sent this to BoW when we were first courting. Kinda like taking a date to see El Topo at a midnight movie (sorry Count R)  just to make sure she's worth your time. In my case she was, and we are prone to wrapping pork in bacon to this day because of it. Also, Miike.

It did require toothpicks to hold the bacon in place, but they're easy enough to remove for service.

That's a lightly oiled, oven-safe vessel. I roasted for a while, but I don't remember how long - I'm an instant-read thermometer kind of guy. I kept turning it to get a nice sear on the bacon where it rested on the pan. When I took it out to rest, I transfered most of the fat to another pan where I began frying up some slices of store-bought polenta with garlic and herbs. To the drippings, I added some flour then deglazed with a reduction of broth and mushroom liquid with Marsala. The polenta soaked up most of the grease, but there was just enough of that and browned garlic left in the pan to nicely wilt some spinach.

I'm kinda spent just reliving it. Time to strangle my lover and take a nap.

Pork Week!

Something happened last Wednesday that changed me forever. Well, maybe just for the next 6 days. I had a pigpiphany, if you will, and you're here, so I know you will.

Many people commented on my last post, most of them expressing joy over pig candy and a salad that is more than half bacon and eggs. It is my duty, however, to give you all a warning: pig candy is a gateway drug. Use it with caution, or you might just find yourself on a week-long pork binge, selling out your friends and loved ones for a tiny bit of cracklin. And be very careful about doing this around your children. Although, if bacon grease is a drug, they may be onto something here. Mmm, brains.

I'm going back to turkey tonight for Taco Tuesday, and only one of BoW's famous margaritas will make the shaking stop. Maybe I'll get a ham sandwich for lunch, just to tide me over. With my luck, they'll probably pick M Cafe today.

Thursday night was a quiet night at home. We had a couple of sausages in the freezer and thought we'd grill them up and serve with steamed broccoli. Simple, tasty, healthy, right? Normally, we would get chicken sausages for this kind of meal, but since it was leftovers, we had a couple of those and a couple of pork Italian sausages. And so it began. I didn't even think of it at the time. In fact, it was only Sunday when I noticed how quietly and innocuously the pig had inserted itself into our lives.

Friday, we decided to do our anti VD night out. I knew Count Reeshard was planning on going to Fioretto on Saturday, so I would get the report if they did something special, but this way BoW and I could enjoy a relatively quiet dinner and save the fireworks for Saturday at home. I finally photographed the elusive Rossa.

BoW had the Mozarella, which was fresh and delicious.

We had a nice bottle of the Morellino di Scansano and were more than satisfied with our main courses, to say the least. Here is the Scottadito, with a thick and acerbic olive sauce that harmonized perfectly with the meatiness of the lamb and the slightly thin yet creamy gravy of the goat cheese risotto. This was a perfect example the Tuscan ideal of simple, balanced combination. None of the elements was as good as it was when eaten with both of the others.

The Pici is a standard menu option, and Chef's fresh pasta never disappoints. Sausage ragout fills my pork requirement for the day. Every time you have spaghetti and meat sauce in a restaurant in this country, this is what you wish you were having.

At this point, I'm going to skip ahead to Sunday. I know that if I show you what I did on Saturday right now, you won't go on. You'll at the very least have to stop for a moment to yourself, and when you come back, the last segment will seem like a tagged-on ending to a modern high-concept comedy.

Sunday, I had to work, so BoW was left to do some typical Sunday chores and whip up some of her awesome pizza. I've spoken pie here before, and I will say that hers is as good as any I've mentioned. First was the red pie, seen here in enticing before and after photos, with tomato sauce, fresh cheese, basil, mushroom, and salami.

Second was the white pie with cheese, artichoke, and prosciutto. 

Finally, Monday (day 6) arrived, and thanks be to Ceasar Chavez, I had the day off. Sadly, BoW had to go in, so while I had time to make a nice meal, the day was not quite as decadent as our normal Sunday. This leisure allowed time for my fertile imagination to come up with a way to get some pork into what is normally a vegetarian pasta dish. Rendering prosciutto pieces in the toaster oven to use as garnish? Dare I?

Apparently, yes.

Fresh fettucini from WFM, lots of garlic, artichoke, hearts of palm, fresh parsley. This is what Mussolini sympathizers were eating in Argentina in the 50s while they waited for their steaks to grill.

Okay, I need a break. I apologize to those of you in the RSS crowd for the tease, but rest assured, I will be back later in the afternoon with further salty, smoky, fatty goodness.

Sweet Lou

First, an apology. I promised a report on grilled tofu featuring my standard Cardini's-based marinade. Well, the grill never really got hot enough due to gas pressure issues related to temperature and disuse. The result was limp tofu that never really got any kind of char. It wasn't bad to eat, but certainly nothing to photograph or write into the abyss of the internet about.

Instead, I bring you a report on one of my favorite restaurants in LA, Lou. An unpretentious little spot in a strip mall at the wrong end of Vine street, Lou is exactly the kind of place that makes me love this town. Where else would you find a tube hi-fi, chalkboard menu, biodynamic wines, and the love for pork that only a secular Jew can have all in the same building as a laudromat? Plus, Natalie Portman was there.

I was the last to arrive, and when I did, I found BoW, ML, and Count Reeshard at one of the better tables already enjoying some vin, some olives, and some pig candy. Yes, I said pig candy. I didn't get pictures at this point, but as you can see from the links, several other people who generally do a better job of that have already gushed about the stuff. It's even better than Sloppy Joe on a Krispy Kreme.

I then ordered a nice light, yeasty biodynamic wine and insisted we get some smoked fish. It was only halfway through this plate that I remembered my faithful readers, I will admit, but I'll tell you what we got from nearest to farthest. House cured albacore on toast. Chicken of the sea my ass. House smoked trout, a consistent staple of the Lou menu, dilled. Bacalao mousse on toast (not pictured because it was soooooo good and we tore right into it). House smoked salmon (clearly not some pale Atlantic crap, either) with fennel and onion slaw. Horseradish crème fraîche, capers, pickled red onions.

Snacking out of the way, we moved on to proper courses. I had a simple green salad of Boston and red lettuce in the kind of light vinaigrette that I make at home. BoW was a little more adventurous in her salad choice, opting for the frisée with bacon and poached egg. Decadent? Yes indeed. If you haven't had a salad like this before, do so now. It's easy to do yourself and very impressive in presentation, as you can see here.

If that's too schmancy for you, The Count ordered the mac. A lot of places in town insist on truffling it or adding extras. At Lou, it's done simply. The upgrades are in the ingredients: perfectly al dente elbows, rich béchamel, truly funky aged Red Hook cheddar. It's just the right consistency. ML commented that she wanted to take it out in the back alley and make it pregnant.

By this time, I had moved on to a dry, spicy Côte du Rhône, and I was as happy as the former candy was when it was a corporeal corporopiliac. (Yes, I'm very proud of that.) We still had main courses coming! Reeshard and I both opted for the chorizo, a dish that has been on the menu as long as I've been dining with Lou. The black lentils are perfectly prepared, soft without being mushy. They provide the perfect foundation for the subtly spiced pork links and the richness of the yolk. 

Our lady friends opted for the duck, which was my other choice anyway. BoW was kind enough to share. The accompaniment on this plate would have been remarkable under different circumstances. Everything was just-so in seasoning and preparation. Of course, the duck juice spilling out over the plate wasn't hurting anything. The bird itself was as good as any duck breast I've ever had. Period. The meat was moist and flavorful, the skin crisp, and the fat and succulent and delightfully melty as if it were pork belly. At this point, we were all ready to take that dish outside and give it octuplets.

ML made the call on dessert, and sadly, she was disappointed. This wasn't for lack of execution. As far as pot de crème is concerned, you could find no fault with this one, unless, like her, you didn't like orange and chocolate. For the rest of us, the creamy texture, light infusion of citrus, and finishing crunch of pistachio provided the perfect end to the meal.

Lou has never disappointed, and I find it a great place to meet a couple of friends. My thanks to our companions for the evening for their great company during a wonderful meal and especially to Reeshard for backup on the photos.