Posted on

Success!


It’s official. It takes five days for the Finnish teaspoon cookie to become a cookie.

Leave it to the Finns to make a cookie you have to wait almost a week for to enjoy. But when those five days pass, something truly incredible happens. The flavors become cohesive, resonant, gorgeous and linger on the tongue for whole minutes. My friend Leah clocked it and she says that the flavor lasts for more than a minute. Personally, I love that she timed it. My friend Susan is already requesting a new batch be made.

What’s so different now? Before, the cookie just tasted “unready”. There was an imbalance with the sugar, the flour and the browned butter. But now…Now there’s a nuttiness, a smoothness, a rich-soft saltiness, a buttery sweetness and a certain je ne sais quois that the passing of days imparts. It truly is incredible what a difference five days make.

So, my food loving friends, the Finnish teaspoon cookie really does need that time to mature.

God love the Finns for teaching me a good, old fashioned lesson in patience.

Posted on

Cold Cure


Though we here in LA don’t really get what most people call “weather”, we certainly get a mild version of such things. In place of snow, we get wind. Rather than the mind melting humidity of the east coast, LA experiences dry heat that feels like a sauna.

Rain, when it does fall, comes quickly, and without much warning. The streets flood and people with generally bad driving skills suddenly become like sixteen year olds on their first day of driving school. I know the streets get slick from the rain and all the traffic, but really…How ever is it possible that it can take more than an hour to drive five miles in a rain storm? Being from the east coast originally, I really have no sympathy for us year-round flip flop wearing sun bathers. But, I have to admit, now that I’ve lived out here for almost a decade now, I definitely feel the effects of our “weather.”

It is, in LA terms, cold outside. I haven’t checked the weather channel, but I’d say it’s in the 50’s. Which, for someone that’s used to 70 degree weather every day, is suddenly very cold. I’m embarrassed to say I’m currently wearing a scarf, three layers of clothes, and thick wool socks so my toes don’t freeze.

Okay, I admit it. I’m a wimp. And thanks to my thinned blood, I have this really nasty cold I caught from one of my co-workers. We at the restaurant have been trading colds and viruses like they were a valuable commodity. I’ve probably had something like 5 colds in the past year. I can’t tell you how many customers sneeze and spit on me with their over active super-excited-for-their-food salivary glands. Blech.

Anyway, instead of writing about the state of my cookies, I would like to post my current favorite cold cure:

GINGER TEA
Use the back of a spoon to peel off the skin of a big piece of ginger. Chop it up and put into a big mug.
Thinly slice half of a lemon and squeeze the juice into the mug before dropping it all in.
One yogi tea bag for respiratory issues.
Add a little honey and drink!

The key is to drink at least 2-3 cups of this and to also drink it fast, otherwise the lemon skin will turn bitter and make your tea taste terrible.

Here’s to getting well enough to eat teaspoon cookies!

Posted on

Tea Cookies: an Old Family Recipe

I might have a pretty big sweet tooth, but that doesn’t mean I’m running to the kitchen to bake up dessert. I’d rather drizzle honey over a wedge of cheese, or doctor up a pint of ice cream I bought from the store.  I might be fearless when it comes to cooking up a side dish, but I run scared every time I even think about baking. I’m too afraid I’ll ruin everything to even try.

Blame it on the number of pastry chef friends I have (I’ll let them make the hard stuff), or the proximity of my home to a handful of amazing bakeries and dessert shops (Susina Bakery and Milk), but  I have had little to no interest in cooking desserts at home.

All that changed a few weeks ago, when I unexpectedly received a cookbook in the mail.

This was no glossy, food-porn cookbook. Rather, it was a culinary guidebook to my past: a plastic-covered, three ring binder with hundreds of recipes collected from the members of Gloucester, Massachusetts’ St. Paul Lutheran church. The cookbook (originally printed over 20 years ago), was a piece of culinary history from the home town of my paternal grandmother’s past.

Past the hand drawn cover of the church’s pulpit, I found the recipes of my grandmother, my Finnish cousins, and Greek and Finnish neighbors of the tiny fishing village I grew up in. This surprise cookbook was from my ever-caring step-mother: a woman that knows the power of food.

Inside, I found a recipe my Grandmother contributed (Greek Bread) and traditional family dishes like Nisu (a Finnish sweet bread), American “Chop Suey” and Haddock baked with mayonnaise. These were recipes I grew up eating whenever we visited.

One recipe that caught my eye was for a recipe my grandmother never got around to making for us.

Finnish Teaspoon cookies recipe was so straightforward, I decided to get over my fear and start baking. I’m so glad I did. The recipe suggest waiting a few days (THREE!) before eating, because flavor improves with time.

What kind of crazy people make a cookie recipe that you can’t eat until half a week goes by?

The Finns. My people.

After tasting the cookies from the moment they came out of the oven and a series of long, long days, would agree that the cookie requires some aging time. But boy, is hard to wait.

Allie Enos’ Finnish Teaspoon Cookie

from the St. Paul Lutheran Church Cookbook

1 cup butter

3/4 cup sugar

3 teaspoons vanilla

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

Strawberry Jam

Brown butter to a pale tan color in a small, heavy saucepan. Let cool. Pour cooled butter into a mixing bowl; Stir in sugar and vanilla. Combine flour and soda; gradually add to butter mixture. Stir until mixture is uniformly crumbly.

To shape cookie, press dough firmly into a teaspoon; level the top with the center of your hand. Tap side of spoon on cookie sheet to gently remove cookies or slide off spoon with the gentle push of a finger. Spread jam on flat side of half of all the formed cookies. Press second cookie to jellied cookies, to create a single, almond shaped “cookie sandwich.” Bake at 325 degrees for 6-8 minutes. Let cool. Put in airtight container and let sit for a few days before eating. Flavor improves with time. Makes several dozen cookies.

Posted on

On Not Winning the Nobel Prize

If you’re looking for literary and creative inspiration, you should check out Dorris Lessing’s acceptance speech for her recently won Nobel prize for literature.

In her essay, she speaks of the marked loss in the appreciation for reading and the ever-fragmenting culture of those who read and those who find their entertainment on their (TV, movie, computer) screen. Being an impassioned reader, it’s hard to imagine a world where children aren’t inspired to read, or worse, can not find the books they want.

Lessing wrote:

I have a friend from Zimbabwe. A writer. Black – and that is to the point. He taught himself to read from the labels on jam jars, the labels on preserved fruit cans. He was brought up in an area I have driven through, an area for rural blacks. The earth is grit and gravel, there are low sparse bushes. The huts are poor, nothing like the good cared-for huts of the better off… He found a discarded children’s encyclopedia on a rubbish heap and learned from it.

I say a little thank you every time I walk to my local library just blocks from my house and borrow a tall stack of books. I really do know how lucky I am having access to a library system so flush with books. I’d never be able to pay my rent if I bought every book that I read. I’m abundantly glad I’m not in the position of having to choose between a roof over my head or a book in my hand.

Lessing is most certainly right when she says none of us would write if the only words to be found were printed on the containers of food stacked intermittently on the shelves at the market.

Just as food is important to fulfillment, so are precious words.

Posted on

The Hulk vs. Leslie Brenner


Okay, so it’s been a while since Leslie Brenner “humbly” proposed her diner’s bill of rights in the LA Times’ Food Section. Yes, it’s true, I should be over it by now. I know it has been almost three months since she wrote about restaurant service and what diners ultimately “deserve” when they go out to eat. But the woman was just SO WRONG about what diners should expect from a restaurant and what is considered good service, that even after all this time I am still just-this-close to popping a blood vessel over what she had to say.

Look, I’ve tried to put it out of my mind. Believe me. I’ve probably written something like ten I-can’t-sleep-so-I’ll-craft-an-editorial-response-in-my-mind letter to Brenner herself and sent none of them.

The problem I have with Leslie Brenner the food critic is that she’s lost the joy of being a diner. In my personal opinion, Brenner is fed up with eating out for a living and wants as little to do with the restaurant scene as possible. Her articles show a growing pattern of disdain for what most LA diners would call “helpful service” and her columns show impatience for anything (i.e. service) that gets in her way of immediately sitting down and consuming her food. I bet if you asked Leslie Brenner if she would be interested in going to a beautiful restaurant where she could order her food on a sleek computer screen and receive a perfectly executed meal via a silent robot, she’d give you a big smile and ask if they could set up a standing reservation for her.

Though some of Leslie Brenner’s articles about food are insightful and well written, many of her critical columns about restaurants are devoid of objectivity and are bogged down by her obvious disconnect with the real needs of her readers. Most people that read the Food Section are hungry to learn about food and want information that will lead them to restaurants that they’ll enjoy. She and other old-guard restaurant critics say they should be treated like everyone else, and yet hyper critical of servers for giving descriptions of ingredients commonly asked about. Brenner once wrote critically of a server in a review because he included in a menu description what Burata was. She snidely stated that he was wasting the table’s time because “everyone in LA knows what burrata is”. I’ll have you know, Leslie, that unfortunately not everyone eats out as much as you (or I) do and most people have no idea what half the items are on any given menu. And to prove my point, I counted one night and I found that 9 out of ten tables I serve asks me what buratta is.

Up until now there was a certain level of professionalism that has kept me from writing any letter in response. That and time…this thing is going to go long…When it comes to responding to some of the unbelievably off-base attacks written by food critics, we in the restaurant business tend to keep to a vow of silence out of self-preservation. Sure, we restaurant folk could spend hours talking about all the baloney that’s slung our way, but we adhere to the unspoken understanding that we must maintain a vow of public silence in order to keep off the radar of angry food critics.

I was doing all right holding in my anger, until the other day I discovered the beautifully designed and gorgeously photographed food blog, Matt Bites. In looking through his beautiful photographs, I discovered a very thoughtful response to Leslie Brenner’s article. In it, Matt was critical of Brenner’s call for a sort of “culinary uprising” and wrote about his belief that in order to get good service one must be in the right mind set and be WILLING to get good service. Suddenly I was angry all over again.

Which brings me to the Incredible Hulk.

Despite moments of real frustration over injustice, inequality and bad reporting, I tend to be a really happy person. But if I hold onto my anger and don’t let it out, I tend to turn nasty. Swallowing anger is not only terrible for my personal life, it’s also really bad for business.

So just as the Incredible Hulk learned every week on his hit TV show in the 80’s, I’ve realized that a person (or half man/half monster) just can’t run away from anger. That person (or monster) must face their anger and conquer it.

First things first. I’ve got to put all that anger and frustration with the cock-eyed “bill of rights” down on paper before I really turn green. Who knows if any one else will appreciating my ranting, but god knows I’ll be a much better (and honest) person for doing so. In hopes of honoring Brenner’s initial premise of a diner’s bill of rights, I humbly suggest we add a few points, take a few away and lastly, do a LOT of editing.

1. Hospitality.Early in her bill of rights, Brenner waved the Danny Meyer flag of what is good service. She quoted his book “Setting the Table” with “hospitality exists when you believe that the other person is on your side.” I believe that getting great service at a restaurant requires the server and the diner to agree that they are entering into a business transaction* in which both people are required to give one one another respect and attention. A nasty server is no more accommodating than a guest with a bad attitude. Just as a server must show individual consideration to each guest and their needs, a diner must walk in the door with an open mind (and receptive stomach).

2. Restaurants are a business: I felt it was important to add this one because more and more I find that on average, most guests forget this. They ignore posted business hours (“what do you mean you can’t open 30 minutes early? My kid’s hungry!”, the lounge at tables for hours (“we’re catching up!”), bring in their own food (“look at the pretty cookies Grandma made!”) and get upset when we charge a “cake cutting fee”. Even though restaurants serve food and must offer good service, guests must realize that restaurants are a business. Tables have budgeted times, each restaurant has a set culinary style (i.e. don’t ask the sushi chef to cook you up some nice tuna), food is portioned and employees are paid minimum wage (however, in NY and Massachusetts, servers are paid less than half the minimum wage). Restaurants are not picnic stands and are not non-profit organizations. Just as a bank, hotel or retail store have certain rules (hours of operation, intolerance of thievery, procedures and protocols), so does a restaurant. Respect them.

3. Equal opportunity. “Restaurants shall not show preference in granting reservations to celebrities or their handlers.” Leslie’s words and I couldn’t agree more. However, her preposterously broad statement that “each di
ner has an equal right to any given table,” is ludicrous. If every two people that walked into a restaurant and demanded the equal right to sit at a table for six, than nearly every family dinner out or birthday celebration would be ruined.

3. Time of your choice. “You shall be given a reservation at or near the time you prefer when the restaurant has tables available. The corollary is that if you cannot show up, you shall cancel the reservation in a timely fashion.” Again, Leslie’s words. It should be mentioned that since empty tables drive customers mad, all diners showing up more than 15 minutes late (without a phone call) should not only be considered a no-show but they, the late customer, will take responsibility for their tardiness and not point blame elsewhere. Like missing a flight or a movie or any other business that runs on a time schedule, the customer pays the price for showing up late. Not the business.

4. Timely seating. When you arrive on time, you shall be seated on time. I agree with this idea as much as I agree with the philosophy of “paying it forward”. But if a diner expects to be seated on time, the diner will respect those who come after them and not sit at the table for an hour after the food is done so that they can “catch up.”

Restaurants budget between an hour to 2 hours (depending on the style of service) per table and book their rooms accordingly. Making other diners wait because you want a place to hang out is unfair. For clarity, see “Restaurants are a business” above.

5. Courteous greeting. “You have the right to be greeted courteously at the door.” Absolutely. Good service is all about good manners. So when a server says hello and greets the diners, the diners will have the common decency to respond with a look or a hello back.

6. Waiter’s anonymity. You have the right not to be told your server’s name.

I’m sorry, Leslie. I can’t even start to understand this rule. This one would make sense if we were talking about a firing squad.
Servers don’t want to be your friend. They appreciate being seen as human. Surely even Jeeves, the manservant, was allowed a name.

In the words of Bruce Banner just before turning into the incredible Hulk, “Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like to see me when I get angry.

7. Wait at the table. Brenner believes that guests that “arrive at the time of your reservation and (the) table is ready, you shall be promptly seated, and not asked to wait for your party to be complete.” Not a bad idea if diners that are unwilling to wait for their party to be complete are respectful of the other diners with reservations following their dinner. If the diner’s reservation is for 7 o’clock and the table is needed back by 9, the diner will respect the restaurant’s need to sit the following guests in a timely manner.

8. Know your restaurant. Thought this was a good one to add. If you (or any of your fellow diners) don’t like meat, dairy, wheat or loud music at restaurants—don’t go to a restaurant that offers those things. If you think $30 is too much to pay for an entrée, don’t go to a restaurant that serves $30 entrees. If someone is willing to go to said restaurant despite their aversion to one or all of the above issues, they must either be willing to compromise or able to suspend judgment of said restaurant. Because let’s be honest, a person with wheat allergies in a noodle house, no matter how hard the restaurant tries to make the diner-with-restrictions happy, will not be experiencing an optimal dining experience. If a diner doesn’t like rock and roll and steak, they shouldn’t go to a rock and roll steak joint. Like any business, restaurants choose to do things a certain way for a reason. If you don’t like it, do go there. Save your money for another restaurant. No one is forcing you to eat out.

9. Tell it like it is. Brenner states that diners “have the right to a simple, accurate description of any dish you ask about.” The corollary to this clause should be noted that no food critic will criticize a server for describing an ingredient because they personally believe that everyone knows what “burratta” is.

10. Right of refusal: wine. Brenner is right when she says that “you have the right to refuse a wine that is not in good condition, and you shall not be required to pay for it.” If, however, you order a wine that isn’t corked, don’t feel it’s your inalienable right to change your mind twenty minutes (and ½ a bottle) later when all the glasses have been poured and your friends tell you they don’t like (your choice in) the wine.

So I ask you Leslie Brenner, with the list of demands minimized and reality balanced with expectations, do you think you could abide by these rules? True, the job of a restaurant critic is a difficult balance. One must be a talented writer, an educated diner and have an unflinching critical eye. But after years of eating out every day and writing about restaurants, there’s got to be more for you than getting through the meal so you can soon grind your axe at the newspaper. If you want to have a great experience at a restaurant (or in anything in life for that matter), you have to walk into it with a positive attitude and an open mind. Great restaurant experiences don’t just happen TO you.

Posted on

Soffritto: (Trying to) Learn from a Master–Part II

BACK HOME
I unload my farmer’s market finds and start prepping. I quickly glance at my copy of Soffrito. The recipe for Ragu is about seven pages—including a lovely picture of a finished Ragu and a three page essay on meat sauces. I force myself to skim the dense paragraphs describing the history of meat sauces and stop at the list of ingredients for the Ragu.

1 1/4 lbs of beefsteak (sirloin, rib eye or round steak)
1 pork sausage
2 chicken livers
1 chicken neck
1 large or 2 small red onion, minced
1 carrot, peeled and minced
1 large stalk celery, minced
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
½ cup dry red wine
salt
2 fresh or canned tomatoes, peeled
4 cups water
1 piece of lemon zest, cut into thin strips
2-3 tablespoons of butter for dressing the pasta
1 cup Parmesan cheese for serving

Though the list of ingredients calls for beefsteak, it isn’t until I start reading the actual recipe that I realize I was supposed to ask the butcher to mince the meat for me. Upon further reading, Vitali suggests strongly that the butcher must only put the meat through the mincer once in order to “prevent excessive flaccidity.” I try to imagine myself returning to the meat counter with my sirloin and asking the old man for a shot at the mincer. I made a fool of myself in front of him once today. There is no way I’m going back there.

Luckily, a few sentences later, Vitali says a good home mincing is also an ideal for a ragu, but warns the reader that it is not only time consuming, but requires “a certain skill.” Hoping I have the innate skills needed, I commence mincing.



Based on the size of my dice, I decide I have quite possibly succeeded in making a somewhat proper mince. I begin my soffritto and heed Vitali’s advice to do nothing but observe the cooking process of these key three ingredients.

I marvel at the smells of this holy trinity
and admire the way the heat and oil changes the texture of the vegetables over time.

What was once clearly separate becomes one in velvety texture. It is at this point, when the soffritto gets to the “moment before it burns” I toss in the meat and let it brown.

As I do I read Vitali’s advice with the hunger of a starved pupil.

“Don’t be seduced into forgetting what you are doing and letting browning turn to burning. In this recipe you work at full attention, monitoring all operations…as the browning of both the soffritto and the meat should stretch your attention to the maximum. You will need all your senses, including the olfactory one, to prevent disaster.”

I tell myself Vitali is my greatest teacher yet, and continue on. If anyone can teach an Anglo Saxon how to cook like an old school Italian, it’s Vitali. She describes the browning process as one of making the meat “suffer”. Without browning, she explains, the meat will taste like it was boiled.

Sure. Brown the meat. Got that. Check.

I brown the meat for 15 minutes, waiting for the tell tale “crust” to appear on the meat and on the bottom of the pan. When this begins to happen, I add ½ a cup of wine and let it cook off.

With the wine cooked off, I begin to add my two cans of peeled tomatoes.

After adding the first can I realize I have been using the wrong pan for the job.

I re-read the recipe and discover that Vitali calls for a 10 inch diameter POT, not a 10 inch in diameter PAN. Suddenly, I am forced to move all cooking operations into the right sized container.

***It is this moment here, when things began to go astray, that I should have realized there was something wrong. I should have turned off the heat, stepped away from the stove and re-read Vitali’s 7 page recipe. Had I done that, dear reader, I might have discovered that the recipe called for TWO TOMATOES. Not TWO CANS of peeled tomatoes. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I definitely have problems with paying full attention to the little (and some times big) details. Just ask my husband. He’d be the first one to say with a smile that I am one quick moving person of the Aries persuasion. ***

With my meat and two cans (blush) of peeled tomatoes transferred to a pot, I am ready to add the 4 cups of water to the sauce. I lower the flame to minimum, add salt, pepper and lemon zest and leave it for 2 hours.

At the end of the cooking time (no wonder it took my sauce about an hour more to cook down), I remove the chicken neck and pull the meat off the bone. I toss the bones and return the chicken neck meat to the sauce. Delish! While I cook the pasta, I heat up my oven to 100 degrees so I can warm my pasta dishes.

When the pasta is al dente, drain and save some pasta water for thickening the sauce. Pour a ladleful of sauce into the bottom of the pasta bowl with a dab of butter.

Add a serving of drained pasta in the pasta bowl and add more sauce. Turn the pasta with a fork and spoon so as to blend it and serve immediately with grated Parmesan cheese.

Though the meal was a success (the house smelled like Casalinga a favorite Italian trattoria), I know I sti
ll have much to learn. The ragu would have been a true meat sauce had I followed the directions to a T. What I ended up with was a saucy meat sauce.

I have to admit, this dish as prepared, was amazing. Next time, I shall try it with the requested TWO TOMATOES and see what the difference is!

Posted on

Soffritto–(trying to) learn from a master Part 1

There’s something to be said about learning from a master. Curiosity and reading can assist a student in the basic understanding of their subject. Practice and countless attempts may move a student’s understanding forward, but it is the presence of a master and a student’s drive to understand, that can initiate the most profound kind of learning. The eager student that studies with a master will inevitably learn the important nuances that makes proficiency possible.

To behold a master, no matter what it is they do, is to witness artistry. A master distills millions of hours of learning in a dab of paint, the slice of the knife, the turn of a phrase, the swish of the bat, a musical tone or the stillness of their mind in chaos. Despite the power of academia, the whisper of a master may be more important than a shelf-full of books.

And so it is with cooking. Reading can only get you so far. It’s what’s actually done in the kitchen that will get the novice to a place of mastery. It’s in doing that one does. Cookbooks can only get you so far.

Preparing food from “Soffritto: Tradition and Innovation in Tuscan Cooking”, however, is to learn Italian cooking from a master.

If the student is willing, Benedetta Vitali’s cookbook will teach the traditional Tuscan way of cooking in a handful of well-written chapters. Information usually transmitted via hours in the kitchen by an ancient family member, is shared in meandering stories and pointed observations on the aesthetics of cooking. Vitali’s stories are captivating and her voice is like a patient mother doling out the family rules. “One must never leave a Soffritto on the stove unattended,” is the sort of advice that if taken to heart will haunt you every time you start the traditional onion/carrot/celery mixture sautéing on the stove.

No other cookbook I’ve read gives so much personality and passion for the correct way of doing things. When reading Soffritto, you get the feeling there’s a whole army of Vitali’s family ready to start a war over why she would ever give away all the family’s secret recipes.

After eating the multi-course dinner at her restaurant Cibreo in Florence (one of my most memorable meals of 2007), I knew I had witnessed the culmination of years of experience and real mastery of a subject. The food was not only impeccable and representative of Tuscan food, but each and every one of the dishes elevated the common fare to a whole new level. Each course was a revelation. Even, ribolita—a rustic left over stew mixed with bread—was recreated and deconstructed—making it an ultimately sublime experience.

So when I woke up on Sunday morning with the urge for a meat ragu, I knew I had some learning to do from Benedetta.

What follows is my experience cooking Ragu from Soffritto.

MAKING RAGU–SUNDAY MORNING
Always a slow day, I pull myself from bed at 10. After an hour of catching up on the presidential primaries, I head out the door. It’s cold and rainy (an oddity in LA), so traffic is slow going. I make it to the Hollywood Farmer’s market just minutes before the vendors pack up their stalls for the day.

With my stomach growling, I quickly buy a cinnamon bun from the Bread Man and eat it out of its plastic bag while I speed shop for my vegetable essentials. I buy a bag of sweet carrots, three perfectly white onions and a hearty bunch of celery for soffritto, the traditional base elements for most Italian dishes. I buy a flowering bok choy, leafy red lettuce, Meyer lemons, and cherry red tomatoes. I taste test blackberries and drip sugary raisins on a bag of dried favas as I reach into my jean pocket for my stash of wrinkled dollar bills. I leave the market before someone shoes me away for ruining their product.

After failing to my friend’s recommended butcher, I fight the weekend traffic and go to the permanent farmer’s market at 3rd and Fairfax. Finding a parking spot is nearly impossible, but I find a space in the 30 minute parking area and run for it.

On my way across the parking lot I call my husband and ask him to read to me the ingredients for the meat ragu from the Soffritto cookbook. As he reads me the ingredients I scribble them onto a scrap of paper I scrounge from my cluttered purse.

“You’re going to need 1 ¼ beef sirloin. 2 chicken livers and one pork sausage” My husband pauses. “Uh, the recipe calls for 1 chicken neck and 2 oz suet. Are you sure about this?”

I shrug. “Why not?”

The forward moving force of limited time (my thirty minute parking spot) and powerful muses (Vitali’s gorgeous Soffritto cookbook has me convinced this is a meal worth eating) has me excited and dodging dawdling mall customers and hurtling at a break-neck pace for the meat counter of my local butchers. Hah! I laugh. Chicken necks and the unknown ingredient “suet” can not deter me.

At the Puritan Poultry, I buy the chicken livers, no problem. They’re fresh and a gorgeous purple brown. The butcher rings up the chicken neck. It weighs next to nothing and it looks like freshly skinned pinky finger. The whole thing costs me less than 50 cents. Who knew a person could get fresh chicken necks at the butcher?

I head over to the Pork and Beef butcher by the Korean food stand. These guys are always busy and their playful meat displays (pig faces made out of pork sausage) always put a smile on my face. Behind the glass case are two young men in white butcher’s coats. A wiry old guy that looks like he’s spent more time chain smoking than actually eating food stands behind them, checking their work at the counter. I carefully check my list of ingredients and prepare to direct my questions to the senior gentleman.

A young man with a thin moustache approaches and offers to help. I rattle off the easy stuff. Instead of purchasing in spicy Italian sausage, the young butcher recommends a small portion of pork sausage meet. When I order 1 and ¼ lbs. of beef sirloin, he finds me the best chuck sirloin. With my basic meat needs met, I wait for the right moment to ask for the suet.

“So, I’m also going to need some suet,” is say as the senior butcher crosses behind the young man with the skinny moustache. “About 2 ounces.”

“What the hell kind of recipe calls for 2 ounces of suet?” The old man laughs at me with spite. “I hate cookbooks like that. Those people don’t even know how we have to sell this stuff. I should sell you a whole pound and let you deal with the rest of it.”

I smile and nod. “I know. Crazy cookbook authors.” I chuckle.

I do my best to try to make the guy understand I’m on his side–not the cookbook’s.

The man disappears into the meat locker and comes out with a plastic bag filled with what looks like a white powder. He shovels a few scoops of the stuff into a white bag and seals it.

“Here’s about a ¼ pound.” The man frowns as he slams the bag down onto the counter.

“What you don’t use, you can freeze.”

I thank the man as I screw up my courage for the question I’ve been saving. Time this wrong, and the innocent act of questioning could turn this transaction seriously sour.

“You wouldn’t mind educating me on what exactly suet is? “ I swallow hard. “Would you?”

The senior butcher pulls the paper hat he’s wearing over what’s left of the hair on his head. “Fat. Suet is the fat that lines the kidney.” With that, the man disappears back into the meat locker. As soon as the door locks behind him I know the old man is swearing underneath his breath at me. I comfort myself with the thought that someone has to ask these questions. Someone has to act stupid so others won’t.

(to be continued…)

Posted on

Employee’s New Years

If you work in the food service industry, chances are you work most holidays. Popular holidays like the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Yom Kippur and in LA, the night of the Academy awards, are practically impossible to not work. So if you’re a traditionalist and insist on getting time off for all the major holidays you can most certainly can kiss your restaurant job good bye. Or you can suck it up, work the holidays, and schedule your life around the restaurant’s required hours of business. And so it goes. That’s just the nature of the food service business.

Most non-industry people see this way of thinking depressing/tradition ruining/frustrating, but I just see it as an opportunity to avoid preconceived notions, required moments of pomp, traffic and crowded shopping. Instead, every year I celebrate holiday MY WAY and on ANY DAY I LIKE.

So while Joe Public is getting messy drunk and spending way too much money on New Years because he feels he has to, Joelyne Server like me makes lots of money I can spend on a less pricey night with a million times less social stresses. Friday or Saturday night on the town with all the rest of the 9 to 5ers? No thanks! I’ll work on the weekends and forgo the line at the door for an amazing meal on the town on a quiet Monday night!

Which brings me to my point. Finally.

Since both my husband and I had to work New Years Eve at our restaurant jobs, we decided to celebrate the beginning of 2008 on first night of the New Year. Though I’m against celebrating big holidays with the masses, I am all about creating a great big traditional meal with friends. So while the rest of LA suffered through their lingering hangovers, husband and I were just gearing up for a night of incredible food and wine with our two wonderful foodie friends, Leah of spicysaltysweet and her boyfriend, Neal.


With the streets clear of drunken idiots and DUI searching cop cars, we were ready to enjoy ourselves.

NEW YEARS NIGHT MENU
Cotechino con lenticchie

With hearts set on making a traditional New Year’s meal, we decided to make Cotechino and Lentils. According to Mario Batali, Cotechino con Lenticchie is the most traditional dish of all Italian New Year’s dishes. The humble dish of pork, it is said, originated in Emiligia-Romana (while others say Modena) with the peasants who made the sausage from left over ends of a newly butchered pigs.

Quick to dive into research, I learned that Pellegrino Artusi, author of Italy’s first popular cooking book in 1891, believed that Cotechino was “not a refined dish” and was fit to be served only to very good friends who wouldn’t mind its rusticity. Undetered, by this information and descriptions of the sausage’s strange “tacky” texture (which comes from the gelatinous matter that is released from the pig skin component of the sausage), Leah and I went in search of Cotechino.

Though Cotechino is sold in two ways: pre-cooked and uncooked, I could only find the pre-cooked variety at local LA gourmet markets. The nice people at Froma on Melrolse sold me Umbrian black lentils and a reasonably priced pre-cooked l lb Cotechino sausage (Under $14). I skipped the $25 cotechino at Joan’s on Third I put my $$ towards a luxury bottle of $40 fresh pressed olive oil (harvested and pressed in October of 2007) from Gianfranco Becchina and a slice of Gorgonzola Torta (A layer “cake” of Gorgonzola and marscapone topped pine nuts).

On New Year’s day I arrived at Leah’s apartment with my ingredients in hand to cook our special meal together. While Leah rolled out her dough on the dining room table,

I started cooking the lentils.

Instead of following a recipe, however, I decided to go on instinct. Here’s what I came up with:

LENTILS

EVOO Olive oil (enough to coat the pan)
1 Onion (finely chopped)
1 Carrot (finely chopped)
A handful of sage
2 cloves of garlic
1 bag of Umbrian lentils (1/2 pound)
Chicken stock (2-3 cups)
1 tbl of tomato paste from a tube
¼ cup red wine vinegar
¼ cup fresh press EVOO
Salt

Chop the onion and carrot finely. Heat a large sautee pan on medium high. When hot, add enough olive oil to coat the pan. Add the finely chopped onion then carrot. Throw in the un-sliced garlic. Sautee down the onion and carrot until they become soft and transformed into cohesive, soft duo of texture. Add the lentils. Sautee for 3 minutes and then begin adding ¼ cups of chicken stock until the pan is filled with liquid. Allow to cook down and continue adding chicken stock and water from the cotechino pot (see below). Cook for 30-60 minutes, depending on the texture. The lentils are done when they are no longer al dente. Finish with vinegar and olive oil. Season to taste.

COTECHINO (pre-cooked prep)

Prick the Cotechino sausage with a toothpick and then drop into a pot of cold water. Bring the water to a boil—approx. 20-30 minutes. The sausage is done when it appears plump and a new shade of pink.

**Save the Cotechino water for adding to the lentils.
Slice the Cotechino and serve on the Umbrian Lentils. Serve with Mostarda di frutta or Salsa Verde (a sort of pesto of olive oil, parsley, garlic, S&P).

Our NEW YEARS MEAL:

Leah’s homemade ravioli (stuffed with Butternut squash, asiago cheese, and walnuts) and for later the Torta di Gorganzola

Cotechino and Lentils, Swiss Chard, Mostarda di fruita

Happy New Year!