Eggs in Aspic, o Ouefs en Gelees

Audiobooks are a recent joy in my life. Right now I am listening to Julie on Julia, the journey of one woman experiencing a third life crisis who cooks her way through the classic American tome of French cooking, Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The most recent chapter, which I listened to Thursday, describes Julie's adventures cooking oeufs en gelee, or poached eggs in aspic.

http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/2002/11/29.html

Julie did not measure this a successful recipe. However I, for some reason, find my psyche obsessed with the idea of making aspic from bones. Next, softly poaching an egg and layering it with various herbs, al dente poached veg & maybe some salmon or lardon inside the confines of a transparent aspic encasement. Upon further research, I am pleased to find out that there are many renditions of ouefs en gelee.

http://chocolateandzucchini.com/archives/2006/02/egg_in_aspic.php

The author of Chocolate & Zucchini, Clotilde Dusoulier, writes about the both the joy of gently breaking apart the aspic to free the beauty of the ingredients inside and the omniprescence of this dish in the non-touristy outer arrondissements of Paris.



Below is the close up she posted. I like how this one is wrapped in what looks like a thin slice of ham or proscuitto:




I have not attempted to make this yet, but I can feel it coming. I made a horrific dinner the other night for John and David, as usual winging it completely. I will blog about the horror of that meal at another time. Now however, I will treat you, dear reader, to the joy of a variety of examples of oeufs en gelee from various places about the interwebs.

Here is a simple version, still in its ramikan.



This one, served on a bed of greens, illustrates the beauty of digging through the aspic and cracking the softly poached egg...I am imagining sopping up the yolk with a warm grilled hunk of kalamata olve bread.



And this version (apologies for the tiny pic) shows one housed with slices of salmon, my mouth is watering anticipating that those are slices of smoked salmon, the combination of the lightly flavored aspic, the egg and the soft fleshy salmon...




In the recesses of someone's dark and twisted mind, labeling this photo of a streaker at Wimbledon as "oeufs en gelee" must have seemed amusing.



I am officially amused.

"They're not CUPCAKES!",

I said adamantly for the third time. Inspired by a recent obsession with cupcake blogs and the little cakes made at http://www.cakemonkey.com/, I decided to make Tracy's birthday dessert my damn self.




I had been dying to try silicon baking pans. They are supposedly easy to clean and foolproof with regard to depanning your baking. I bought these online at http://www.kitchenkrafts.com/product.asp?pn=BP1037.






The recipes that inspired these cakes were found at http://cupcakeblog.com/index.php and altered according to my whim and circumstance. I wanted to make starkly contrasting flavors so I chose ancho-chili chocolate and grapefruit-pomegranite.




The chocolate cakes were iced with ancho-chili chocolate ganache and topped with shavings of Scharffenberger chocolate.






When shopping for ingredients, my local yup-mart was *gasp* out of pomegranite seeds. So to give a little extra kick I trebled the amount of grapefruit zest in the recipe. Amd because buttercream frosting should be banished from existence (nods to Karla) I frosted these with cream cheese frosting. Teh nom!



CJ's lamb. This guy can cook!



Before and after:





My all time favorite lewd gesture.



The more or less unused cocktail table.

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.