Wow that was fast.

Lot 1's cute former chef

I don’t make it over to Silver Lake / Echo Park much anymore – it lost some of its allure once it got too trendy to find parking. But I’ve had it in mind lately to make a field trip to the new Lot 1 restaurant ever since I got a rave recommendation from a friend of a mine. “ze food is amazing! You weel lof eet!” (she’s French). And it did sound intriguing with items like a simple arugula salad with guanciale and grated jidori egg and a red wine pot roast with fava beans and candied rhubarb, not to mention a chocolate and fleur de sel mousse with olive oil. Simple but creative food – just my thing. Then I saw the Amy Scattergood feature in the L.A. Times about chef Josef Centeno (late of Opus) and his studiply named but delicious sounding lunchtime baco, and thought I would wait a bit for the post-publicity crowds to die down. Oh well, I guess I lost my chance, since Scattergood now reports that Centeno is leaving.

The story goes that he was walking down the street one day and ran into Eileen Leslie, who was putting the finishing touches on her new restaurant, which was ready to go except for the small detail that there was no chef. Enter Centeno and the buzz began, but these sorts of serendipitous events often end in tears – especially when there is a restaurant involved. After several months behind Leslie’s stoves, Centeno reports that “he doesn’t want to cook for awhile.” Ouch.

I know the feeling. What is it about working in a restaurant that can turn you off cooking? My own denouement came when I started as pastry cook at a super hip and much buzzed about mid 90’s Hollywood restaurant. After a few stints here and there, I got a call from a young chef about a new place opening up in a parking lot off Hollywood Blvd. Chef wanted an Alice Waters-y vibe, and I produced tarts and pot de cremes and delicate cakes served with fruit confits, staying as fresh and local as I could and earning raves for a lemon tart I adapted from Chef’s own. It was all very sun dappled and lovely until one morning Chef came into the kitchen, looked over my shoulder, and I caught a whiff of something on his breath – something like sour milk, or perhaps vomit, no, no – ughhh semen. From that point forward, things were never the same. I can’t explain it, and I do feel bad about it, but I felt small and mean and primal – my sensibilities all in an uproar – and well, how do you tell someone you don’t want to cook for them anymore because they smell like blow job? Quarrels and shouting ensued; I started walking out dramatically on a daily basis. During that time, the kitchen shifted focus away from earthly Alice and towards bad boy Marco Pierre White (read Bill Buford’s Heat for a fantastic portrait of this brilliantly annoying enfant terrible), and suddenly the pastry station was all about spun sugar, and one day I walked out in a huff and didn’t come back. All of this – from first phone call to final huff – took about 3 months to transpire. I thought I’d never cook again. While the desire to cook came back quickly enough, the desire to step into a restaurant kitchen again never has.

Here is a ridiculously rich and delicious chocolate tart that Chef taught me. Use the best chocolate you can find. For the baking shell, I recommend Lindsey Shere’s short crust, recipe below. If you are feeling fancy, serve along side some coffee creme anglaise, a strawberry, cut lengthwise several times and fanned out, and a sprig of mint tucked alongside. Or eat a thin slice or two with coffee, as you would a cookie.

Chocolate Tart

Preheat oven to 400^o

Combine, melt and blend in a bain marie or double boiler over simmering water (do not let the water touch the bottom of your pan)

9 oz good dark chocolate, like Valrhona of Callebaut

½ cup butter

pinch of salt

In electric mixer beat on high until ribbon stage:

6 egg yolks

¼ cup sugar

Fold egg & sugar mixture into cooled, but still warm chocolate. (Add just a bit of the egg mixture and blend into the chocolate before adding the rest).

Beat to stiff peaks

2 egg whites

1 tb sugar

fold 1/3 of the whites into the chocolate, then incorporate the rest.

Fill the tart pan, and bake at 400 for 8-10 minutes, until top appears cracked and cake-like but insides remain running.

Lindsey Shere’s short crust

2 c Unbleached all-purpose flour	¼ ts grated lemon peel
¼ ts Salt	1 tb Ice water; plus
1 tb Sugar	1/2 ts vanilla extract
½ cup unsalted butter, not too cold

Mix the flour, salt, sugar and lemon peel in a bowl. Cut the butter in pieces 1/3-inch thick and quickly cut them into the flour mixture until it is the texture of cornmeal. You can do this with a pastry blender or with your hands by rubbing quickly and lightly between your fingers. Combine the water and vanilla and add to the dough until just blended. Gather into a ball and wrap in plastic. Let sit for 30 minutes, then press into a 9-inch tart pan, making sure it covers the bottom and sides evenly. Wrap the shell in foil and set it in the freezer for at least 30 minutes. Bake it blind (no need to fill the shell with beans) in a preheated 375o oven for about 25 minutes, until golden brown.

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Goodbye Donna Deane…

She had the job I always wanted, as head of the Los Angeles Time’s test kitchen. But to tell the truth, I don’t think I would have had the stamina and savvy she’s shown over the last 28 years. Every week, for as long as I ‘ve been reading the L.A. Times Food section, she’s made my mouth water with her great recipes. Often, even if I didn’t try the recipe, I’ve remembered a technique or a tip. Now she’s leaving, a casualty, evidently, of Sam Zell’s massacre of a once great newspaper. It suddenly occurs to me that I should probably credit her for my becoming a serious home cook – Her recipes always sounded irresistible, the instructions made them seem doable, and the results were always a success.

Here’s one that I haven’t tried yet – I found the clipping under a pile of magazines I was in the process of throwing out. Six Gourmet magazines got the boot, but I’m hanging on to Donna’s recipe for this lemon upside down cake.

Lemon Upside-Down Cake

• 4 small lemons (about 4 oz. each)
• 1/2 c. plus 2 T. (1&1/4 sticks) butter
• 3/4 c. packed light brown sugar
• 1&1/2 c. flour
• 1&1/2 t. baking powder
• 1/2 t. salt
• 1 vanilla bean, split
• 3/4 c. sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 c. milk

Cut three of the lemons into 1/8-inch thick slices. Remove seeds and set aside. You will have about 30 lemon slices. Grate 1 t. lemon peel from the remaining lemon. Set aside the grated peel; save the lemon for another use.

Heat 4 T. of the butter in a 10-inch cast iron skillet or an ovenproof 10-inch saute pan until melted. Brush the sides of skillet with a little of the melted butter. Add the brown sugar, stir until it is moistened with the butter and spread it into an even layer. Arrange the lemon slices, slightly overlapping, to cover the bottom of the skillet. Set aside.

Heat the oven to 350°. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl and set aside.

Cut the remaining 6 T. butter into a mixing bowl. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean with the point of a knife onto the butter. Using an electric mixer, beat the butter, scraping down the sides of the bowl, until creamy. Add the sugar and grated lemon peel and beat until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

Add half the flour mixture and beat until blended. Add milk and beat until combined, then add the remaining flour mixture and beat until blended.

Spread the batter over the lemons in the skillet to cover evenly. Bake 30 to 35 minutes, or until the cake is golden and the center tests done. Let the cake stand 5 minutes, then invert the skillet onto a platter. To serve, slice into wedges with a sharp knife. Serves eight. May be served with a lightly sweetened whipped cream, if desired.

Each serving: 498 calories; 5 g protein; 62 g carbohydrates; 3 g fiber; 28 g fat; 17 g saturated fat; 122 mg cholesterol; 274 mg sodium.

— From Los Angeles Times test kitchen director Donna Deane

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Oy vey!

I learned a few things about kosher meats yesterday, when I read the NYTimes story about an Iowa kosher meat processing plant and its management’s abuse of undocumented workers. I was then horrified to realize that I’ve bought many of this plant’s tasty kosher chickens at Trader Joe’s!. They are delicious, and cheaper than organic, and I naively thought that because they were kosher, they were, well, pure somehow. I’ve boycotted meat brands because of the treatment of animals before – this is the first time that I’ve stopped buying meat because of the way the humans working there were being treated.

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I’m so confuzed…….

“ U R con-fuzing meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” bff Mary emailed me this AM. I had just spent 45 minutes the day before attempting to steady her wavering resolve to vote for Hillary in Tuesday’s Primary, then I forwarded an email from another friend who is trying to get out the vote for Obama. What gives?

I’ll admit it – my own resolve is wavering – I can’t even rely on my marginally-related-through-heritage connection to the Kennedy clan to help me make up my mind: Caroline and Teddy are stumping for Obama while Bobby’s kids are standing by Hillary.

Last Sunday, Caroline Kennedy’s endorsement of Obama had me on the fence for the first time since the campaigns began.

Then I read George Packer’s excellent article on Clinton, and the different between her perception of leadership and Obama’s, in the New Yorker:

“The alternatives facing Democratic voters have been characterized variously as a choice between experience and change, between an insider and an outsider, and between two firsts—a woman and a black man. But perhaps the most important difference between these two politicians—whose policy views, after all, are almost indistinguishable—lies in their rival conceptions of the Presidency. Obama offers himself as a catalyst by which disenchanted Americans can overcome two decades of vicious partisanship, energize our democracy, and restore faith in government. Clinton presents politics as the art of the possible, with change coming incrementally through good governance, a skill that she has honed in her career as advocate, First Lady, and senator.”

“Obama spoke for only twenty-five minutes and took no questions; he had figured out how to leave an audience at the peak of its emotion, craving more. As he was ending, I walked outside and found five hundred people standing on the sidewalk and the front steps of the opera house, listening to his last words in silence, as if news of victory in the Pacific were coming over the loudspeakers. Within minutes, I couldn’t recall a single thing that he had said, and the speech dissolved into pure feeling, which stayed with me for days.”

My point to bff Mary was that I’m just not sure this country can turn itself around on pure feeling and the politics of kumbaya. We need someone who can think critically, who can roll up her / his sleeves and effectively manage us out of this crisis. We can’t afford someone whose strongest suit is their ability to inspire.

Then Frank Rich, who has faithfully articulated my sentiments about the Bush administration many a time, came out with his essay in today’s New York Times:

“What we also know is that, unlike Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama is not hesitant to take on John McCain. He has twice triggered the McCain temper, in spats over ethics reform in 2006 and Mr. McCain’s Baghdad market photo-op last year. In Thursday’s debate, Mr. Obama led an attack on Mr. McCain twice before Mrs. Clinton followed with a wan echo. When Bill Clinton promised that his wife and Mr. McCain’s friendship would ensure a “civilized” campaign, he may have been revealing more than he intended about the perils for Democrats in that matchup.”

Hmmmmm. And then this email plea from my old friend Jon…

“I got started in politics working for Eugene McCarthy back in 68 and worked
my heart out for many candidates until I turned 17. At which point I became
disillusioned with the American political system. I had a glimmer of hope
renewed with Clinton – only to see his willing engagement in attack/reattack
politics squander his administration and its potential.

I feel that we need someone who can rise above the internecine warfare in
Washington that produces such profound apathy in our country. Apathy in
otherwise idealistic people such as myself.

I believe that Barack Obama is the one person running for president who can
change the debilitating politics of the last 20+ years and can rally the
country around some of our most pressing national problems: the war in Iraq,
institutionalized poverty, health care, energy and the environment.

While I appreciate Hilary’s incredible grasp of the issues, her proposed
policies and her ability to debate, I do not feel that she is capable of
creating any kind of consensus with which to enact her programs. I believe
that Hillary and Bill believe in “politics” to the detriment of policy.
Bill’s behavior in South Carolina, convinced me that they learned nothing
from their disastrous years in the White House with its constant calculation
and stonewalling.

Internationally, electing an African American, with an African father, a
last name Obama, who lived in Indonesia for 4 years as a child will go a
long way toward healing the perception in the world that America is a self
centered, xenophobic, intolerant nation.

Finally because I feel that the “experience” issue is still troubling to
some of you – I would just say Nixon – one of the most “experienced”
politicians of our time.”

You may reach him at www.jonreiss.com

My heart or my head? In my heart, I have wanted to vote for a woman for president since I was a young girl. And my head tells me to vote for the bright, competent and battle tested CEO-type: Hillary. But my heart longs to be inspired, and I never saw a corporate boardroom I didn’t like (and I’ve seen more than a few).

Why do I suspect that I won’t know who I’ll vote for until I actually punch the card?

In the meantime, I will turn my attention to something else I read in today’s NYTimes: PUDDING!

But which will it be: the rice pudding with cinnamon and brandy? Or the Guadduja, with its hazelnuts and bittersweet chocolate?

Must everything in life be a decision?

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A few of my favorite things from 2007…

Now that I’ve put Scrabulous in its place, I can get to the posts I wanted to write at the end of last year.

My top reads of 2007:

The books that moved me the most this year are ones that took me to a contemporary place revealing a world previously unknown to me.

• In Martin Amis’s House of Meetings, a book that is a pleasure to read for the language alone, the protagonist survives Stalin’s work camps only to return to them in 2004 as an 84 year old dying man recounting his past in a letter to an American stepdaughter.

• Against a backdrop of Post-WWI historical tumult, The Bad Girl, by Mario Vargas Llosa, is patterned after Madame Bovary, but begins its journey in Peru in 1950 and meanders through Europe and Asia to end in contemporary France.
• Septembers of Shiraz, probably my favorite novel of the lot, is the story of a middle class Iranian Jew imprisoned by the Revolutionary Guard in 1980s Tehran and his family. A prodigious first novel by Dalia Sofer, it suffers from a lousy title for the U.S. market, but one that comes clear in an ending scene that has a bittersweet universal quality.
• Then there is Elizabeth Hand, who’s work I only just discovered through her collection of short stories called Saffron and Brimstone. Several of these stories, set in real time or near future, had a prescient quality when I read them-they seemed to happen to me when I was grappling with aspects of their themes, so the paranormal characteristics of her style seemed to leak into my life. Filed under sci-fi/fantasy, Hand’s writing really belongs to the genre of speculative fiction inhabited by authors like Angela Carter, JG Ballard, Ursula LeGuinn, Margaret Atwood-all favorites of mine, which is why I am surprised that I’ve never heard of Hand before.
• I read lots of essays and short stories this past year, but one piece stands out as absolutely the most compelling I read all year: Werner, by Jo Ann Beard, from Tin House’s fantastic Graphics Issue. Werner has been anthologized in this year’s Best American Essays –just read it.

Favorite cookbooks: This is kind of a cheat, but my two favorites from 2007 are books I bought from Amazon UK in 2006, but were released in the U.S. in 2007.

• I still can’t get enough of Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries, which I read often and cook from only in the sense that his sensibility has slipped into my own attitude towards food.
• I also love to read Simon Hopkinson’s Roast Chicken and Other Stories, which came out in paperback in the UK in 2006 and supposedly was released in the U.S. last year, but I haven’t seen it anywhere. He’s a fun writer and each chapter contains an essay and several recipes for his favorite ingredients, such as anchovy, brains, chicken, chocolate, and on through the alphabet. Try the leek tart and the steak au poivre. I’m still trying to find a humane source for fresh rabbit so I can try his recipe for rabbit terrine.
• I also enjoy cooking from How to Pick a Peach by Russ Parsons, and A Twist of the Wrist by Nancy Silverton, though I don’t always reach for the latter because I seldom have the pantry ingredients called for on hand.
• Favorite cookbook I can’t wait to get to: this would be Jamie Oliver’s Cook with Jamie.
  

  Yeah, you heard me right, Jamie Oliver. The new book is very pretty and full of Oliver’s inexhaustible spirit and inventiveness. I’ve always enjoyed his slightly manic, “let’s just pop round to the shops and go home and whip something up” attitude and I also admire that he has turned his fame into activism. Plus his food is always tasty, and this book really makes me want to cook, unlike Alice Waters’ latest, Art of Simple Food, which wins my vote for Most anticipated book I almost bought and then decided to wait until it comes out in paperback. Don’t get me wrong – Waters is responsible for a important shift in the way that Americans (at least on the coasts) look at food. But this book has a fussy, overprivileged aesthetic that is off-putting. And I have to admit that as much as I refer to and cook from her books-especially the collaborations with Paul Bertolli and Lindsey Shere, there is something about these books that is a little intimidating.

Long story short, if I were to invite someone into my kitchen to teach me something about cooking, it would be Jamie, not Alice. I feel like I’d be getting an education, not a lecture.

Jamie’s School Dinners Ad for Channel 4

 

 

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Soup weather in Los Angeles!

After weeks of hot winds, fires, and relentless sunshine (in L.A. there can be such a thing) it is cold enough today to turn the heater on. This is in addition to the extra layers of clothing and the warm slippers.

Finally the weather cooperates with my favorite convergence at the Farmers’ Market: fresh cranberry beans and cavolo nero. I have my friends at McGrath Farms to thank for introducing me to the former, and the irrepressible and sadly deceased Dee Dee Throgmartin to thank for the later.

Learning to like kale and drop it into soups and vegetable braises was a culinary rite of passage when I first came to Cali and realized that veggies didn’t really come from cans. Ten years ago, when Dee Dee started bringing her bunches of cavolo nero grown from seeds she got from Italy to market, I immediately fell in love with them. With their pebbly texture and richly colored dark green leaves, they look fantastic. They taste even better, whether lightly sautéed in olive oil and garlic, or cooked for hours into a mysterious luscious mass, ala Suzanne Goin.

Now cavolo nero abounds at many a Cali farmer’s table, as have the wealth of recipes supporting their use. I use it for a kale, pancetta and crispy garlic dish I make to serve alongside caramelized cippolini onions for Thanksgiving. I throw it into everything from vegetable soup to frittatas. Sometimes I braise it with garlic and red pepper flakes, and serve it with poached eggs and grilled bread rubbed with fresh garlic.

But my favorite dish is Ribollita, and today is just the day for it. Ribollita can be made a variety of ways, with a variety of bitter greens and with canned cranberry (borlotti) or cannelini beans, but it is all the richer for the fresh ones that are making their brief appearance alongside the kale this year. (Last year the beans didn’t make it into the late fall and I had to rely instead on dried borlottis from Bob’s Red Mill Farms-still good of course, but not the same).

To me the magic of this dish is its simplicity and the sensuality of its preparation. First I roughly chop the vegetables for the mirepoix, and while that is cooking, I shell the fresh beans. The shells of borlotti beans have a distinct cranberry and cream mottled coloring that looks like marbleized Italian paper. So do the beans themselves, though that changes with cooking. Coaxing the plump beans, huddling together in a row, out of their hiding place can be an exercise in patience, but I enjoy the process while breathing in the aroma of the mirepoix on the stove and the mineral-y smell of the kale waiting patiently for its turn under the knife.

Like many simple dishes, the success of this soup relies on assembling the freshest ingredients you can find. There are two exceptions of this rule. Use canned tomatoes, but make them the best – San Marzano or Muir Glen fire-roasted are my picks. Then make sure you have a slightly stale ciabatta on hand. If you are like me and love buying those fragrant loaves but can only allow yourself a few pieces of toast before succumbing to carbo-phobia, this is a good way not to waste the rest of the loaf.

Finally, plan to spend an afternoon attending to this soup in a leisurely way. While the sweet, nutty perfume wafts through the house, read a book or call a friend, Maybe cozy up with a good movie. Then a few hours later, scoop some into a big bowl and eat to your heart’s content –it is rich with minerals and antioxidants. Nothing else required, unless you feel like a glass of good red wine.

Leftovers have sustained me all week long as a lunch I actually look forward to. It only gets better the longer it lasts, about a week to 10 days.

Assemble:

• About 1⁄4 cup olive oil
• a big handful of chopped flat-leaf parsley leaves
• one small celery root, peeled and chopped, or 3 ribs celery, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 1 red onion, chopped
• coarse sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 -2 cans whole peeled tomatoes
• 2 -3 bunches cavolo nero, trimmed and roughly chopped
• 1 lb fresh cranberry beans, or 2 15-oz. cans borlotti or cannelini beans, drained
• 1 stale loaf ciabatta bread minus the pieces you’ve already eaten for breakfast

1. Pour a thick layer of olive oil into a soup pot and heat over medium-high heat.
2. Add parsley, celery root, garlic, carrots, onion, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook, stirring every so often, until onion is transparent and slightly browned, 15–20 minutes.
3. Crush tomatoes and add to the pot. Reduce heat to medium-low; cook until thickened, about 20-30 minutes.
4. Add cavolo nero, and fresh water to cover.
5. Cover the soup pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered, until cavolo nero is tender, about 30 minutes.
6. Slice the loaf lengthwise, and tear bread away from the crust into pieces that are about 1″. then add to pot with a few tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil, and more salt and pepper to taste.
7. Simmer stirring occasionally until thick, about 30 minutes more .
8. Serve drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil, if you like.

• If you are cooking with canned beans, you can puree an extra can of drained beans with 1/2cup of water in a food processor and add to the soup after step 5
• Add red pepper flakes to taste to the mirepoix in step 2.
• Add a parmesan rind to the pot at step 5
• Leave out step 6. Serve with slices of ciabatta toast rubbed with the open end of a garlic clove that has been sliced in half
• Chop some pancetta into cubes, “blanch” in boiling water for a minute or two, and add to the mirepoix in step 2

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Becks and Posh! Posh and Becks!

 

 

 

Girlfriend looks as though she could use some dinner. I wonder if she would need to book a month in advance to get into Pizzeria Mozza the way I did. Pizzeria Mozza, in case you’ve been too busy analyzing the war in Iraq or something is the lovechild of L.A. foodie darling Nancy Silverton and Mario Batali, of the orange clogs and the unfortunate affiliation with Iron Chef America. This, and the newly opened Osteria Mozza next door, is Batali’s first foray into the Los Angeles dining scene after creating his empire of highly regarded restaurants in New York. Don’t be fooled however. Pizzeria Mozza is definitely a Nancy Silverton joint.

The “authenticity” of Nancy’s pies, along with the difficulty getting in to taste them, have sparked a heated debate among foodies. My moment finally arrived last Friday night at 6:15PM. This happened to coincide with the much anticipated opening of Mozza Osteria. As I walked by the window, I saw the Osteria staff in their brand new whites getting their marching orders. First night – the horror! Oh to be a spider in the corner.
Pizzeria Mozza on the other hand has been open since last winter and it hums to a soundtrack of Beck’s Guero CD, laughter and foodie chat. Even at 6:15PM the tables were full and people were milling around the entrance waiting to get a place at one of two bars that seat on a first come first served basis. Everyone appeared to be in a good mood except for the hostess, a boho hottie who looked as though everything was getting on her last nerve – a full 3 hours before sundown. I said a little prayer for her as she guided us to our table, a deuce at the end of a long row next to the window facing Highland, and with a good view of the front door action and the rest of the room.

First up were some delectable squash blossoms fried to perfection with a creamy ricotta filling, except my second one had no filling and a bit too much batter. Then came a lovely piece of fish served in a chunky fresh tomato sauce with cici (garbanzo) beans, a tad too salty for me but perfectly cooked. Then the pizza – a classic combination of guanciale (a pork cheek bacon – memorize this and order it the next time you see it on a menu) and a bagna cauda (a hot bath of olive oil, garlic and anchovy) of bitter greens, with an egg dropped onto the pizza as it went into the oven. I love bitter greens with bacon and egg anyway – see below for a quick, easy supper – but I’m telling you this pizza took it to a level I would never be able to recreate at home. For starters, I usually have the dish with lardoons – thick cubes of pancetta or thick sliced bacon. Typically a bite of lardoon will dominate the palate for a bit before allowing the other flavors to join the party, but the guanciale, which was barely visible, seemed to coat the wilted greens with a crispy deliciousness that melted into a sublime marriage of bitter smoky porkiness that got even better when the silky sweet egg yolk arrived to sooth the bitterness of the greens. I’m coming back.

I was completed enchanted by our first choice of dessert – a “sofiata” which is really a profiterole substituting a subtle pistachio ice cream for the traditional pastry cream, and a drape of sweet cherry syrup studded with macerated dried sweet cherries and a slick of honey. We also ordered the caramel coppetta, (sundae) accompanied by a sticky marshmallow and peanut kind of deconstructed candy bar. It was good, but it didn’t really come together for me. I wish we’d ordered the butterscotch budino that everyone keeps raving about instead.

Service was excellent. We were promptly seated and our server was welcoming, knew her stuff, helped me pick out a perfect wine choice, and actually seemed to like the fact that we took our time with our food (the table next to us turned over twice before we left). The bill came in at $50 per person, including wine, minus tip.

Mozza serves the best kind of causal food served in a casual environment, and you leave wanting to explore the menu further. But when it takes a month to get a table, how can anybody with a real life hang? Also some of the dishes seem to work better than others. This is fine at a place where you know they’re experimenting with flavors and techniques. But when its a month between reservations, you need it to be right.

Granted, seating at the two bars is first come first served, with one bar serving as a kind of wine bar, and the other a close encounter with the wood burning oven. I can see myself going one night and eating bruschetta and chatting with the bartender about his wine pairings. Another night I might want to watch the action at the wood burning oven.

But what do I do when a few of my girls have a Friday evening open and we want to share some pies and a bottle or two of wine? Or a friend from New York who treated me to lunch at Lupa finds himself in L.A. for the evening and I want to return the favor? Pizzeria Mozza should be able to accommodate that – spontaneity is built into the spirit of the place. Maybe that will happen soon, now that the Osteria has opened. Until then, the place will seem too precious to me. Quello non è buono!

Eggs with bitter greens and pork lardoons enough for two

Prep the lardoons:

• Ask your butcher for a 1/2 inch thick round of pancetta, all in one piece
• Cut the pancetta into strips about the width of your little finger. Then cut the strips into chunks about the length of the tip of your index finger to the first knuckle.
• Using a strainer, drop the lardoons into boiling water for a minute, set aside to drain.

Prep the greens:

• Cut a bunch of dandelion (or other bitter grean) and a head raddichio into a rough chop.
• Using the strainer, submerge the greens into the boiling water for a minute until the dandelion turns bright green. Remove, drain, set aside.

Then:

• Heat a frying pan on medium heat.
• Add enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan generously.
• When it starts to shimmer, add 3-4 cloves of garlic chopped into small chunks – don’t mince. They should sizzle in the pan. Cook them until they are toasty brown, then remove from the pan. Turn heat under pan to low.
• Add the lardoons to the pan and let them cook until they are thoroughly browned and crispy. Remove from the pan and set aside. Try not to eat them all.
• Make sure that your greens are relatively dry. If you like you can drain some of the fat in the pan off, but make sure you have enough to coat the greens.
• Over low heat, add crushed dried red pepper to the fat in the pan. Add the greens and toss to coat with the fat and pepper. Cook a while longer until the greens soften and lose their crunch, but don’t let them get soggy. Toss with the lardoons. Turn off the heat, cover to keep warm on the stove.

Poach 2 -4 eggs

Pile the greens into a shallow soup bowl. Place one or two eggs on top. Add a dusting of freshly ground black pepper. Shave some nice Parmesan over that.

Serve with some crusty bread and a nice glass of white wine.

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Gotta love San Francisco…

Where else can you get slow, organic, artisanal ice cream with Rechutti fleur de sel chunks for just $8 a pint?

I was there to see the Vivienne Westwood exhibit at the DeYoung Museum before it came down,and to celebrate my friend Bruce’s birthday. I stayed at the Mosser downtown, did a bit of shopping, got completely exfoliated at the Kabuki Spa (nice spa, good prices, but the front office staff leave a lot to be desired) and squeezed in dinner at Delfina, one of my favorite restaurants anywhere. (hint: if you see seascape strawberries with red wine granita and basil zabaglioni on the menu, don’t hesitate).

Herewith, some reflections:

The Mosser: a serious deal in the heart of downtown SF. BART will take you there from SFO for $5.15 (though I took a cab back out to SFO out of pure exhaustion, which cost $40, including tip). Walking distance to Union Square shopping and in the other direction to Yerba Buena and SFMOMA. Lots of options for public transportation just about anywhere you want to go. I could definitely reduce my carbon foot print by moving back up there. Annabelle’s is next door and offers limited room service. I had great drinks and a perfectly good hamburger in the bar. The room is tiny, but it was super quiet and the custom made bed was incredibly comfortable. I shared a coed bathroom with tub with others on my hall, and a water closet for women only that was vacant every time I wanted to use it. There is a vanity sink, a hair dryer and an iron and ironing board in the room, along with robes. The amenities were decent. It’s like an upscale hostel, and very clean. It was inhabited mostly by musicians (there is an adjoining recording studio) and young European tourists. It worked for me, especially since I got my squeaky clean on at the Kabuki. The pipes groaned in the bathroom, but I’m the kind of girl who thinks that’s charming.

The Vivienne Westwood exhibit: I’d heard mixed reviews about this one, but I have to say I loved it. I wish I’d had time to go back. I’m a huge Vivienne Westwood fan, but even so, I was shocked by how much her aesthetic has influenced contemporary fashion. The BCBG shoes I own are a knock-off of her Gillies. Half the skirts I own reference her Nostalgia of Mud collection. Bubble hems, petticoats, tube skirts, the suit Carrie wore to her Vogue interview in Sex in the City, sky high platforms – tell me, who did it before she did?

I love the cheeky femininity of her models and the pure grace of movement her clothes have when they float down the runway (as seen on wall monitors scattered throughout the galleries.) I love that she shot her models sauntering around the galleries of the Wallace Collection, looking at the portraits they were incarnating.

I took the audio tour, which at first was awkward – something of a misguided attempt to recreate the anarchy of punk pulled together by grandiloquent museum curators more accustomed to Victoriana than modernity. But once the narration got past Viv’s early Sex Shop days and glided into the post-punk collections, they started to get it right, bringing in the experts from the V&A and other fashion historians to create a thoughtful context and to give the woman her due. Its not often that intellect and fashion walk so easily hand in hand these days.

Many of the people visiting the show seemed to be seeking a nostalgia buzz, and they must have stopped paying attention to Westwood after she broke off with Malcolm McLaren circa Bow Wow Wow and the Pirates era. “I had no idea she got into couture,” one woman said, whose multi-colored hair matched her rather unfortunate skirt. But it’s not particularly surprising, considering that at least in the U.S., fashion magazines have de-emphasized her collections in favor of those who design for adolescent archetypes just this side of kiddie porn. Women wearing Westwood’s clothing take up space, and that’s just not done. Anyway, I agree with one of the commentators on the audio tour who called her one of the great modern designers. I think she’s one of the great creative geniuses of the 20^th Century, right up there with Balanchine, Stravinsky and Prince. If I thought I could have gotten away with it, I would have grabbed the black stilettos with the silver spikes at the heels, along with the butter yellow rubber Bettina suit to go with, and oh, yes – the Jungle Dress, and the Nostalgia of Mud skirt with the Peruvian dancers at the hem. Also the bird’s nest hat with the stuffed pheasant, though it would probably just sit in my closet – no one wears hats in L.A.

The Farmer’s Market was just a glint in the eye of Alice Waters when I left San Francisco, or I probably would not have left. Now, if it’s Saturday morning and I’m in SF, I’m at Ferry Plaza with my friends who go to work with an admirable efficiency, collecting their week’s groceries from their favorite farmers in record time. This week, I had a mission,which was to forage for ingredients for that night’s birthday dinner for bff Mary’s husband Bruce. I collected pullet eggs, apricots and raspberries for a faithful version of the Pavlova dessert I wrote about a few weeks back. Again, sooo easy, and a real crowd pleaser.

The drink of the evening was the Sazerac, the famously sublime New Orleans potion of rye whiskey, herb saint / pernod and Peychaud bitters; I’d like one right now, please. Bff Mary is one of the best home cooks I know, and she started things off with these great little nibbles of chicken marinated in pomegranate molasses and cumin. Then a lentil salad with spinach, bacon, sour cherries and blue cheese. Then her wonderful “lamb pops,” served this time with couscous. The recipe for the couscous came from the Epicurious website, and called for chopping all the vegetables into uniform ½ inch bits, and then cook them with the couscous. I had the idea that it would be a more rustic accompaniment for the lamb to chop the veggies into randomly sized chunks and then roast them to bring out their sweetest and add a hint of smoke. Instead of just saying this, I made some snide comment to the effect that the Epicurious recipe was a little “too Nob Hill for me.” Not that I really even know what that means, but I agree it sounds pissy. I’m not a food snob. The cocktails made me say it.

Bff Mary’s lamb pops

3 racks of baby lamb, chined and frenched

Salt and pepper to taste

Several sprigs of rosemary

Olive oil

In a roasting pan, salt and pepper the racks of lamb and drizzle with olive oil

Tuck sprigs of rosemary here and there

Let sit for 6 hours at least, or overnight

Heat oven to 450, roast for 20 minutes. Let sit for about 15 minutes more.

To serve, cut the rack into individual “pops.” Mound the couscous in the center of a serving platter, and arrange the lamb pops around it.

 

You can use any couscous recipe you like, even the one from Epicurious. I like Paula Wolfert’s “Couscous with Seven Vegetables in the Fez Manner” from Couscous & Other Good Food From Morocco.

 

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