Pancakes & Hope

The last nine months illness has been circling my life like angry frustrated bees circling their hive on a sweltering summer day. What do I do with my hands and myself when I feel this helpless on so many fronts? I make special dog meals, meting out a bewildering and ever changing array of meds.



I buy magazines and don't read them.



I visit hospitals, doctor's and veterinarian's offices. I attend and mark every special day as though it might be Sue's last.



I drive in silence. I take pictures of the beautiful northern California sunset.



I try to live simultaneously with hope and without denial. And I make pancakes for this guy.

Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement (and snacks)

Last Wednesday evening we headed over to LACMA for the opening of the new exhibit, "Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement". It runs for the public April 6th through September 8, 2008. I certainly cannot describe the show better than the writers at LACMA, so here is their blurb.

Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement is the largest exhibition of cutting-edge Chicano art ever presented at LACMA. Chicano art, traditionally described as work created by Americans of Mexican descent, was established as a politically and culturally inspired movement during the counterculture revolutions of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This exhibition explores the more experimental tendencies within the Chicano art movement—ones oriented less toward painting and declarative polemical assertion than toward conceptual art, performance, film, photo-and media-based art, and "stealthy" artistic interventions in urban spaces. The exhibition includes approximately 125 works in all media, including painting and sculpture as well as installation, conceptual, video, performance art, and intermedia works that incorporate film, digital, and sound art. Artists featured are photographer Christina Fernandez, who documents the poetic and “phantom” in the urban landscape; Mario Ybarra Jr., who creates performances, site-specific installations and intermedia works; the “intermedia synaesthesia” of the seminal conceptual art group Asco; and the New York-based artist Nicola Lopez, who creates dramatic installations with drawings that extend from the wall into the gallery.

http://www.lacma.org/art/ExhibPhantom.aspx

I may not know much about how to characterize Chicano-Latino art late into the 20th century and on into the 21st, but I know what I....



Above is an example of the first set of pieces that moved me. Taken in the mid 1970's, these are richly saturated and color drenched photographs of the vogue-ings of individual and small groups of Latinos in parks and urban environs. The eternal return dictates that the clothing in these photos are definitely having a second 15 minutes.




The above is particularly striking, but as an installation it needs to be seen in person and from the ground looking up into an antechamber of the main gallery. The effect is that of looking up into the underside of a twisted and torn bridge. There is another half to the bridge, and the two almost meet in the middle of the ceiling. Is the artist saying something about time spent as an under-the-bridge hanging subculture, or is this a statement about the imminent decay of urban infrastructure?



The above piece interested me due to the accompanying text that follows:



The 45 indigenous people that the Spanish settlers "discovered" were living, I assume, between what is now Olvera Street and the LA River, just a few hundred yards from my front porch. I like thinking that I walkon the same earth as they walked, and wondered last night what their lives were like prior to their discovery.



The above series is called "Breaking".



This witty piece is titled, "El Rey y Corona".



Above is an example of my favorite group, color and composition wise. I love the passionate lines and vivid shapes...



This last piece is from a group of photgraphs that are my favorite conceptually. To create these portraits, the artist pairs people with a life size photograph of someone else. These are intriguing to look at and leave some ambiguity with regard to statement, which is something I love in art. This particular piece is a portrait of the artist with Charles Bukowski.



Immediately afterward, we headed over to Jar, one of our all time favorites. We love to hang out with Margo at the bar. She brought over the obligatorily delicious handmade potato chips and horseradish-chive dip. The perfect nibble for starving yuppies posing as art afficionados.



I made the wise choice of ordering a Jar favorite, pureed English peas with fennel, roasted garlic and olive oil. Apparently this one time special was so frequently requested that Tracht added it to the spring menu. It is astoundingly delicious. Served warm, and not overly pureed so you still have a slightly al dente texture, with the tiniest sprinkling of feta cheese for hint of goat and radish shavings for some bite.

Baseless Tranquility? I Hope Not

I love a lounge. A place for casual drinks, laid back friendly service & music that can generate an ecstasy flashback. (Truly, I can live without the elevatorized house music.) Downtown Los Angeles newcomer Tranquility Base offers all of the above and hopefully they will work out the kinks before summer and in time to make use of their gobstoppingly amazing outdoor space.

We stopped in Saturday night with friends and were impressed with the service and the decor. The menu read well but didn't deliver in all cases. Several sushi rolls, while white washed, were still quite good. The charcuterie plate with duck pate had good quality and nice variety. Sea bass on mashed potatoes was simple and delicious, and the scallops were gobbled down tout suite. They list a decent pinot noir by the glass and the infusion cocktails are lots of fun....LOTS.




However....there is so often a however. The crispy calamari was way overcooked and so were the Parmesan fries. They were out of miso salmon and the tuna tartare appeared to have a mayonnaisey aoili sauce squelching the lightness of the dish.



I love what they are trying to do and since it's close to home and they serve food til midnight, I intend to give them many opportunities to perfect it.

Sushi Days & Shorter Nights

Was it the discovery of a new most favorite lunch spot or the emergence from another winter's short albeit sunny days that has caused me to return to my blog? Who can say. And who really cares?






Fat Fish. South-western corner of 6th & Berendo, in the heart of K-town, my old stomping grounds. I sometimes work in the UTLA building around the corner, and when I do I ritualistically walk through the doors of Fat Fish the second they are unlocked at 11:30 am. I am not a fan of sushi belt restaurants & would never darken the doorstep of an all-you-can-eat sushi joint. I have eaten sushi at the Tsukiji fish market so fresh it wiggled. While the plates at Fat Fish may not meet this standard, the fish there is certainly fresh and surprisingly succulent enough for a mid-week lunch. The price is certainly right. All plates are half off at lunchtime, and by noon every seat at the sushi bar is full. The chefs set food out in a predictable pattern. First come seaweed salads, small bowls of spicy albacore sushi salad, dome lidded salmon sushi with rings of red onion and 5 minutes later or so more exotic offerings start popping out the window. Kaiyaki, ebi, sweet shrimp with roe, and the beautiful whole wheat soba bowl in brown broth with a quail egg cracked on top.






The eda mame is liberally seasoned with sea salt and small hot bowls of tempura (zuccini, yam, onion & shrimp) never make the complete loop past the customers and back through the kitchen.





This is not your typical dark wooded, economical of space sushi restaurant. This has modern day Tokyo writ all over it. Plate glass walls let in the socal sunshine and the mod furnishings remind me ever so slightly of the Milk Bar in A Clockwork Orange. As of yet there is no liquor license but they allow BYOB. When they get one, I expect this to become a destination sushi bar for the hip & hot in the happening K- town neighborhood.

Walking Echo Park

When my mother Mary was in town this month, we filled up the hours between drinking wine, eating food and sleeping with a walking tour of Echo Park. In true Los Angeleno style, the walking tour started at a location you had to drive to, and were strongly advised to drive between the 4-5 different sub-neighborhoods as opposed to walking between them. I laughed. Then I got in my car.

This particular walking tour was a tour looking at houses built on the intricate stairway system in Echo Park that gave early Angelenos access back and forth from houses on the hill to the streetcars running down below. Houses were built on these hills prior to the time when automobiles became the prevalent form of transportation in Los Angeles. The irony of the "walking tour" does not escape me.



The steps were built originally in wood, and slowly since late in the 19th century the wood has been replaced by concrete. Most stairs were built in partnership between the city and private interests including the street car providers. The thing that endlessly fascinates is the constant nagging thought of not just traveling up and down these steps every time one wants to come and go from their house, but also the fact that the materials and machines that built the structures had to be carted up and down the stairs as well. Even house #1 on the tour. It was just built in 2005, and despite all the mod cons we enjoy, all the materials had to be carted by hand up the hillside. There is just no other way to do it. There is literally no access to these homes by car. Some of the hills have small parking areas down at the bottom of the stairs. People who live here must do their shopping in small bits daily as opposed to the suburbanite custom of one massive haul per week. This is the view from the porch that hangs off the back of that brand new house.



We walked four main sets of stairs, the tallest being the Baxter stairs with close to 250 steps. Off most of the stairways were two or more houses open to the walking tour to come in, view the architecture and marvel at someone's housekeeping and decorating skills. I was told off early on during the tour for taking pics, so I don't have many of the interiors. And due to the small size of the real estate lots it was hard in some cases to get a great pic of outdoor spaces. House #2 (taken before the tell off) did afford me some good photo opportunities. I love their decorating style. 1960's yuppy bohemian meets African safari. Beautiful!






Another stairway....i love bougainvillea anywhere, but especially in surprising little places where it pops out its beautiful head and says hello.



One of the things all the houses we saw had in common was their remarkable use of outdoor space. Every single house had used the outdoors to create an extra living room for the inhabitants. This example is especially lovely because the corner of the concrete banquette looks out over an amazing view off the hillside. I can envision people enjoying that view throughout all two seasons one experiences during the trajectory of a year in Los Angeles.



Our last stop of the afternoon was a visit to the bar at Edendale, one of our favorite watering holes. Mixville Bar in Edendale Restaurant is housed in a historic firehouse sandwiched in between Echo Park and Silverlake. It was built in 1924, and it still retains beautiful pressed tin ceilings, hardwood floors and glass and wood truck bay doors at the front and back. Edendale, named after the original name of the neighborhood it stands in, was home to the first movie studio in Los Angeles, built in 1909. The bar at Edendale is named after cinematic cowboy Tom Mix's studio western "town" that stood just a few blocks away in the 1920's. Tom Mix was a big enough star at the time to warrant his own studio lot. That lot was called Mixville, and so is the bar at Edendale.




I love my neighborhood, and I love even more that it is steeped in the history and origins of the modern cultural production of this country. What a great experience to see and learn so much about the hills that surround us in Echo Park.

Pot Luck and a Winning Team

~That that pure sanguine complexion of yours may never be famisht with pot lucke.
Thomas Nashe, 1592

The term pot luck has many different interpretations, including the native American potlatch, the old English portmanteau, and the common United States suburban potluck dinner in which all invited guests bring a covered dish to share with the gathering. Common wisdom guides me to believe that the origin of the term comes from the idea of making food to feed your guests from whatever happens to be laying around. And this is what happened last Tuesday evening when John joined us to watch the our Lakers beat Indiana.

Having just returned from one of many weekends out of town, and looking at a fridge full of little else excepting some cornmeal, slightly puckered cherry tomatoes, turkey bacon and a freezer full of random nonsense including some Trader Joe's sea scallops, I put two and two together and made grub.

I wanted to piggyback on my mom's delicious polenta from two weeks ago and make something a little lighter in calories and fat and marry this with the sea scallops. In the cupboard I found some roasted beets and lentils, both in shrink wrap packaging, and some pine nuts.

First, I cut the bacon into small pieces and threw it in the pan. Here my sous-chef assists me in assessing the freshness of the bacon.



Next, I started the chicken-broth-from-a-box boiling for the polenta, next to the bacon simmering with a little olive oil and red pepper flakes. I added some olive oil to the turkey bacon because it produces so little fat in the pan, and I want to make good use of the leftover bacon essence for the scallops...bacon = meat candy.




After whisking the polenta into the broth, I added most of the bacon and some fresh-ish thyme. Did you know it takes 5 cups of liquid to cook one cup of polenta? I like a nice creamy polenta, but not soupy. So I reduced this polenta within an inch of its life and serve it steaming hot.



When the polenta was nearly done I sliced the slightly insipid tomatoes in half, tossed them with some olive oil and the pine nuts and threw the mess under the broiler for roasting.



After the roasting, I lay the tomatoes and nuts on a bed of lentils tossed lightly with a vinaigrette, and drizzled a little white truffle oil over the top.



Next I thoroughly rinsed the sea scallops which were surprisingly beautiful...I will surely use these again. A handy thing to have in the freezer, no doubt. I tossed them in the bacon-ed pan and seared them well done, just like D likes them. The bacon essence, olive oil and red pepper flakes in the pan cooked to an almost caramelized consistency, leaving the scallops with a lovely brown and slightly crispy finish.



All in all, the meal was really tasty. I would have ideally liked a better mix of textures, both dishes had kind of a mushy, comfort food texture. The only really crunchy participants were the bacon bits and the roasted pine nuts. But it all tasted good and I completely avoided a trip to the grocery store or a phone call out for pizza!

Perfecting the Arts of Chicken & Food Photography

http://stilllifewith.com/

One of my favorite bloggers has a small site dedicated to furthering one's skill at food photography. I have been reading her suggestions and taking them to heart. It is challenging, however, when one gets a new camera, to figure out where everything is located, how everything works and what are the great and unique special features. I thought to stave this off by buying another Canon, but this one really is almost nothing like my last one. And for some reason I refuse to both read the instruction manual or bring it along with me on my travels. I liken this to a man's refusal to ask for directions when hopelessly lost and driving around Beverlywood in circles. We will find our way eventually, and no one is in a hurry. Customizing the white balance for a particular location will make these shots look better? I will figure out where the controls for the white balance are eventually, and who cares if the lighting in some of my shots is orange. I am not in a hurry, and this is all for the sheer joy of it. If this was my full time job, I would call it a job not a blog. So, I am plodding along, with the furthering of my digital photography expertise advancing slowly. Very slowly.


My mother Mary is visiting, and she is an amazing cook. I know everyone says their mother is a great cook, and everyone means it. But my mother really is a great cook. It's her art form. She has even constructed a cookbook of her most infamous and well loved recipes from years gone by. Oxtails, French onion soup, carrot cake (the brown kind, not the orange kind) with cream cheese frosting, sun dried tomato & goat cheese kreatopetes, Chez Panisse's brined Thanksgiving turkey, three different kinds of watercress salad, pork in lime cream sauce, pasta primavera, peach melba, Yorkshire pudding and eggs mornay. Etc. Everything is made from scratch and her attention to the details of a recipe would impress chemists the world over. Luckily for me, part of her mission in life is to cook for others wherever and whenever she is, and this weekend she was at my house.

On the menu this weekend was chicken stuffed with Lucy & Ethel's homemade pesto, creamy polenta and roasted mushrooms stuffed with feta and bacon.

Her capable hands stuff one massive portion of the homemade pesto (made at Sue's using home grown basil, hand grated parmesan, 2 quarts of olive oil and then packaged into pint size zip locks bags and distributed among several lucky offspring) into and under the skin of one 4.5 lb organic free range chicken.



The smell....the smelll...the sssssmmmmmmmeeeeeeelllllllll.......




Creamy polenta (cornmeal) on the stove. On our way home from shopping and drinking on the westside we stopped into a Von's for a few items and they did not have polenta. Wth? It's the WESTSIDE. Isn't every grocery store on the westside a gourmet mecca? I have some seriously misinformed misconceptions about life on the westside. There was no polenta, and it was too close to nap time to visit one of my favorite grocery stores on the eastside, so we settled for cornmeal. Add fontina and asiago to anything and it is worthy of consumption, in my opinion.



I tossed together some leafy greens and watercress (natch) with dried cranberries, pine nuts and bleu cheese crumbles, with some balsamic vinaigrette (NOT vingarette, just saying).




And, we supped.



This is what we drank, a Carver Sutro 2004 Petit Syrah, courtesy of mum...it was delicious!




But wait!!!! What about the mushrooms? After extended naps and wine tasting at Rosso, we felt it was too late for appetizers AND mains, so we (she) made the mushrooms for breakfast Sunday morning.

The Year of Losing Dangerously

Dear 2007,

I have enjoyed you immensely, your ups and downs, wins and losses, the bittersweet and the downright sour and so on and so forth. Nevertheless, I have dubbed thee "The Year of Losing Dangerously".

As an adult, I am not one to lose things. Quite the opposite. Things are drawn to me like metal shavings to a magnet. However, during the last 10 months I have lost important belongings at an alarming rate.

June: at a company retreat I lost track of my massive blanket sized pink pashmina wrap my mother gave me for Christmas years ago that is/was my travel staple. I have not been able to find anything close to that big since. It has been to Europe multiple times, Mexico, Vegas, New York city and all over California in all seasons.

July: brand new sunglasses (a gift from D)-shoe department Macy's South Coast Plaza.

September: favorite brown purse containing wallet, makeup and Canon a640 camera-back of run-away taxi, Los Feliz Blvd in the unanticipated pouring rain.

October: one diamond and platinum hoop-Los Angeles, CA somewhere between Echo Park and Monrovia.

I was writing this in the hopes that, as some people say, bad things happen in threes. (Counting the Chloe bag as one "incident" rather than several items out of sheer optimism.) However with the addition of the remembered forgotten pink pashmina I know this spate of losing things is simply part of the character of the year. I need to further add to the list the following:

November: concussion teddy-bear left wrapped in the blankets and sheets of a hotel room in Sacramento, and my favorite black cardigan left wrapped in the sheets and blankets of same chain hotel room one week later in San Diego. Le sigh.

So, dear 2007, I knock on wood in anticipation of the possibility that this spate of losing important and valuable things is now over. And I prepare to kiss you good-bye as you head out the door at the end of next month.

Sincerely,
Liz