August 13, 2010
white pizza-truffle oil, prosciutto, arugula
squash blossom risotto made in a parmesan wheel
seafood pasta
charcuterie
amuse bouche
bittersweet chocolate sorbet, rice pudding, chocolate macaron
petite fours
My uncle is visiting from Korea and we went to Andrea at the beautiful Pelican Hill resort to celebrate. I’m usually a little suspicious of hotel restaurants. They are more often than not, overpriced and overly stuffy. Andrea had amazing service and the food was good but I couldn’t help but feel like the restaurant was overly formal. They made a big deal about table side preparation of the risotto and prime rib. I’ve never really understood the tableside food shows. It seems unnecessary. The hand made pasta was quite good though. Loved the free petite fours!
August 4, 2010
corn and stir-fried vegetable pasta
watermelon, feta, and balsamic reduction
banana oatmeal chocolate chip cookies
I’m usually visiting my family on Mondays and while my mom and sister are doing very important things at work I am cooking them dinner!
July 3, 2010
This is how I know I’m reaching equilibrium. When I first started my job it was hard for me to muster up the energy to cook at home. Really, it was hard for me to muster up the energy to be a person in the world. This week I all of a sudden had a desire to cook dinner for Marcus and me. I’m coming back to life friends. Yay for fancy meals with wine without occasion.
short ribs with fig and pickled cherry gastrique, oyster mushroom purple potato hash with runny duck egg
multigrain salad with feta, olives, and pickled grapes
cheese plate
making sauce!
 
April 3, 2010
clam boyfriend
oysters, prawns, scallops, abalone, clams, bigger clams, baby octopus
Korean mixed rice with clam juice on a shell! mixed table side
koreans love grilling everything! steamed egg, dduk bok ee, seafood
korean pancake, sweet potato tempura, creamy corn stuff
abalone porridge
hand-cut flour noodles
Sometimes I question the logic of how much food served in a Korean meal. The general pattern is banchan (small plates), a substantial meat course (most reasonable stomachs would stop here), a starch course (usually a noodle or rice dish), and then something sweet. A great many places only serve things by fixed menus and you just order the small, medium, or large course and so you don’t even have the choice of eating lightly.
Marcus and I walked to Koreatown yesterday. It was a rigorous 1.8 miles and I’m not going to lie, I was a little grumpy about it. Hunger does not bring out the best in me. In fact I’m pretty sure I’m fairly monstrous when I’m hungry. But in the end I’m glad Marcus insisted that we walk because:
1) it was nice to walk through MacArthur park into dramatically different territory after crossing Vermont. This is the amazing thing about Los Angeles. In less than a mile you’re all of a sudden in a different country. Walking makes me feel like I really do live in a city.
2) I love walking but have generally considered it something I like to do alone with headphones. Also I like to do this at night. In my neighborhood. Apparently this is unwise. But walking with Marcus felt perfect and sweet and will now be my preferred method of city wandering.
3) We desperately needed some form of exercise after our gluttonous (also, glutinous. ha!)meal
We went to the Flaming Clam Grill on 6th and ordered the smallest portion, which could easily serve 3. The meal started with abalone porridge, cucumbers and carrots, a salad, a korean pancake, sweet potato tempura, and some sort of mysterious creamy corn thing. Then the waiter(s) stacked clams, scallops, steamed egg, and dduk bok ee on the grill. Dduk bok ee has rice noodles with vegetables in a red pepper sauce. Marcus kept calling them rice babies which I found hilarious. They also put cheese on the dduk bok ee. Highly unorthodox and unexpectedly delicious. After all those things had been cooked the waiter poured the grilled clam juice into a bowl of rice with seaweed and sesame seeds and red peppers and grilled that on a shell. And after that, oysters and prawns and abalone were added to the grill. At this point we thought we were done and felt quite round and full. But no, the waiter then brought out a pot of flour noodles. I think we were almost angry at the amount of food that we were intaking. Marcus actually made me stop eating at some point, scared that my stomach might burst.
This morning I woke up, still full.
March 10, 2010
sorry for the fuzzy photos
Here’s the unfortunate truth. I’m writing a thesis. It’s due terrifyingly soon. I’m unsatisfied in my progress. Also, I am catering, and teaching, and taking classes, and trying to maintain all the various relationships in my life.
An additional unfortunate truth: Marcus works a dizzying palate of jobs.
I feel stretched thin and anxious and tense in all my fingertips. It’s hard for both of us, I think, to slow down, to relax, and to take time to just enjoy each other’s company. This is why planned date nights are amazing. It’s awful that relaxation with Marcus has to be such a scheduled thing but it is necessary nevertheless.
Marcus is a dear.
He suggested that we cook dinner at his place tonight and so we shopped at Trader Joe’s together and bought ingredients to make steak and roasted potatoes, brussel sprouts, and red onions. We set off fire alarms, cooked in dual cast iron skillets, and ate our meal over an aerial map. I like that we’re both not steak people but felt enormously satisfied by red meat tonight. I like that I now know that Marcus likes his steak medium while I like mine rare. I like that we struggled with butter knives in the absence of proper cutlery.
Afterwards we had Scoops!
February 22, 2010
nitro coconut ice cream
cippolini onions with clementines and passion fruit
cotton candy foie gras
mushroom rice
chicken with dates and mustard caviar
nitrogen frozen caprinhini
sweet potato chips with yogurt, anise, and tamarind dip
goat cheese stuffed piquillo peppers
scallops with romesco sauce
tuna ceviche with avocado and coconut milk
crab steamed buns
pa’amb tomaquet
jamon
olives
braised wagyu beef cheeks
liquid olives
Escalivada
Fancy for my fancy mama! The Bazaar has some of the most theatrical food ever. Since opening it seems like The Bazaar has become the molecular gastronomy go-to in Los Angeles with their rotating list of semi-celebrity sous chefs (they all seem to have been on Top Chef) and of course, Jose Andres. The decor is dizzyingly impressive, if not a little cold but that might just be a things of personal taste. I like to feel cuddled by restaurant ambiance.
I think Doc wanted to take my mom here to remind her of their recent trip to Spain and in particular, their visit to Arzak in San Sebastian (ahem…upon my recommendation). I thought the idea was very sweet.
The meal, like the decor, was impressive but it’s hard to separate taste from the general showmanship, but maybe that’s the point. A memorable meal.
The Bazaar
465 La Cienega Blvd
Beverly Hills
note~ this place is ridiculously hard to find.
February 15, 2010
Whatever. I don’t care that Valentine’s Day is an invented holiday for Hallmark. Blah blah blah.
I totally think Valentine’s Day is great. What’s wrong with an excuse to have a nice evening with someone? I don’t even buy Hallmark cards. And even if I did, I probably wouldn’t lose sleep over it. Not that there’s anything wrong with feeling morally flummoxed about the whole thing. Good for you.
For our first Valentine’s Day Marcus and I made potato gnocchi. Notice, I used the verb “made”, not “buy”. This was a labor of love. I’m talking boiled potatoes, pureed in a food processor, kneaded with flour, rolled out into long cylinders and then cut individually. Maybe more labor intensive than necessary. Sometimes store bought is just more worth it. We also made a tomato sauce that came highly recommended from Marcella Hazan’s dearly loved “The Essentials of Italian Cooking”.
But really Valentine’s Day is about the dessert. We had port poached pears (ooohhh alliteration!) with lavender honey ice cream and oreo cream cheese ice cream. Poaching sounds so fancy but it’s almost embarrassingly easy–you just let it simmer. And the color is so gorgeous. Everything should be poached in wine! Cereal. Eggs. Shoes. Pajamas. Hair.
Ingredients:
4 Bosc Pears
1 cup Port
3/4 cup sugar
2 strips of orange peel
2 strips of lemon peel
1 cinnamon stick
2 cups of water
ice cream for serving
1. in a medium pot combine the port, water, zest, cinnamon and sugar and cook at medium heat for about 10 minutes
2. in the meantime, trim 1/4 of an inch from the bottom of the pears and peel them
3. add the pears to the pot and bring the whole thing to a boil
4. lower heat to simmer and leave for 1 hour, stirring occasionally to make sure that all gets cooked through
February 4, 2010
Marcus and I had a date night! Doesn’t that sound exciting? I can confirm this for you. It was exciting. We went to Little Dom’s on Hillhurst. Marcus made the comment that it looked like a seaside East coast Italian restaurant. It reminded him of Providence. We sat at the bar because they had reservations booked through 10 pm but I think we both enjoyed the casualness of the seating arrangement so that worked out just fine. Marcus made friendly loose chat with the people on both sides of us. His aptness for social situations never fails to amaze me. While my reaction to overly cozy seating arrangements would be to keep more contained, to be even more conscious of the barriers of personal space, Marcus sees it as polite to create a more communal environment. I think it is safe to say that Marcus is a much warmer person than me.
We shared a bottle of wine.
Appetizer: Fish Crudo with lemon and rosemary
My Entree: Salmon with fennel
Marcus’ Entree: Pappardelle with peas and ricotta
I’m sorry for the terrible photo. It doesn’t do the food justice.
It was an enormously enjoyable evening, partially for the meal and partially for the company.
January 26, 2010
Lately Nancy and I have been talking about this mysterious positive energy that seems to be floating near us. It feels fragile and precious and somewhat difficult to describe, except that tonight sort of summed it up for me. Last minute and kind of out of nowhere I had an itch to cook dinner for my friends–something warm and cozy and carby. Lan, Nancy, and Sam were kind enough to scratch this itch and we all ate udon, broccoli and vegan meatball, and yuzu salad together, crammed into my tiny kitchen with soup bowls in our laps. It felt impromptu and unusually easy. While we were eating I marveled at how amazing it was that I met Nancy during a certain part of my life, Lan in another, and Sam in another and we were all sitting together, eating, talking. It’s strange and wonderful that we’ve converged in this way. I feel grateful for this.
Afterwards we went to Scoops and Nancy bought me ice cream. Also grateful for this.
January 13, 2010
It’s that time again: Saeyoung left for Boston yesterday and it seemed like the most appropriate thing to have her favorite home cooked meal of Vietnamese chicken rice. My contribution to the meal was a pea wonton soup which was a bit of an experiment but I was pretty excited about the results. I mean the color of the pea filling alone was enough for me!
Pea Wontons
ingredients:
2 teaspoons fresh ground ginger
2 1/2 cups of peas (or one family style bag of frozen petite peas)
1 package soft tofu
1 teaspoon garlic
a handful of mint
1 finely chopped shallot
1 package wonton wrappers
1. puree all ingredients together into a food processor
2. fill each wonton wrapper with about 1/2 teaspoon of filling and then seal by wetting the edges just a little and then sealing the ends together
3. wontons can be frozen for later use
For the soup
1 stalk of lemongrass, trimmed and chopped roughly
2 tablespoons fresh ground ginger
5-6 cups of either vegetable or chicken stalk
1 large yellow onion roughly chopped
2 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1/3 cup mirin
1 teaspoon garlic
1. bring all ingredients except for the eggs to a boil
2. turn the pot down to low and leave for about 30 minutes
3. bring pot back up to high and ribbon the egg in the boiling broth
4. add wontons and let boil for about a minute
* I topped the soup with baked crispy kale, which i learned from ani and travis.
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