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May 31, 2009
foodbuzz 24, 24, 24: territory BBQ
Southern barbecue is sort of the antithesis of parking in LA. Think about it: barbecue is slow and generous -- piles of meat infused with the sweet scent of smoke, tended for hours and often served at large gatherings -- while LA parking is quick and ruthless, a hair-pulling experience liable to leave you hating your fellow man. So it was in the spirit of slow and generous living that I proposed a Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24 meal* for my friends on May 30th, with food from Territory BBQ & Records, a brand-new Southern-style barbecue joint just at the end of my street. No car required.
Territory is the brainchild of Tony Presedo, a former indie record label co-executive, and Curtis Brown, ex-frontman of the band Bad Wizards. A North Carolina native, Brown is also behind the Brooklyn taco truck Endless Summer, so he's used to bringing regional foods to the hipster masses. The restaurant itself is sparse; all the seating is at outdoor tables covered with checked tablecloths, alongside a refrigerator that diners can open up to grab sodas in glass bottles. It's charming, but no match for my own apartment, where my friends and I can stay as long as we want and go back for seconds or even thirds -- slow and generous, remember? I got our meal to go.
Back at my apartment, my friends gathered around the kitchen table as I opened to-go containers brimming with pulled pork, beef brisket, fried chicken, fried catfish, collard greens, mac and cheese, baked beans and gigantic biscuits. Two small boxes were filled with apple butter, caramel-brown and flecked with spices, to be slathered on the biscuits. One container held only sauces: pepper vinegar and sweet red barbecue sauce, to appease fans of various barbecue styles. To drink there were sodas from Territory -- Bubble Up, Jolt cola, orange and grape Crush and cherry-flavored Cheerwine -- or the fresh mint limeade I had made that morning. Without ceremony, just a communal "Let's eat!," we started loading up our plates and filling our glasses.
The chicken with its thin, crunchy skin and juicy, flavorful meat was quickly voted a crowd favorite, as were the baked beans, which had a big ham bone planted like a flag in the middle. The cornmeal-dredged catfish was crisp yet succulent, but tasted a little bland until I dabbed on some of Territory's tartar sauce, a light, wonderfully smoky version of a condiment I normally dislike. Of the two barbecued meats, the brisket seemed more deeply flavored than the pork, more redolent of smoke, and was a great match with the fresh-tasting barbecue sauce and plain white bread.
Speaking of bread, let's talk about the biscuits. When I picked up the food, there had been a short wait because the biscuits were still in the oven. Freshly baked biscuits? No complaints from me. I carried them home in a roasting pan, their toasty, buttery smell drifting into my face, tempting me to just bite into one there on the street. I refrained, just long enough to get inside and grab a plate. Then I split one open, spread on a thick layer of apple butter and bit into warm biscuit heaven -- one stop past cinnamon roll paradise, just before croissant nirvana -- a place of moist, buttery layers and browned, deliciously crusty edges. If you love bread, you will love these biscuits.
Some of us went back for seconds. A few of us even went back for thirds. Miraculously, though I had ordered enough food for 15 people, the nine of us managed to finish almost all of it. This was not due to paltry servings on Territory's part, I feel, but to the general spirit of the gathering. We ate a little, we talked a little, we ate a little, we listened to some records, and then we ate some more. Slowness and generosity and eating till you bust -- isn't that what Southern barbecue is all about?
Territory BBQ & Records
534 N. Hoover St.
Los Angeles, CA 90004
(323) 662-4100
* Every month Foodbuzz, the company that sponsors the ads on my blog, chooses 24 bloggers in 24 different places to have a meal within the same 24 hours, paid for by Foodbuzz. The meals are all wildly different in concept, so it's an interesting snapshot of eating around the world. You can see all this month's meals here.
Posted by anjali at 7:06 PM | Comments (400) | Categories: Restaurant | Silver Lake & Nearby
May 27, 2009
yu chun naeng myun
I don't know how I ever survived childhood summers in the sunbaked San Gabriel Valley without the help of mool naeng myun. A cold Korean noodle soup anchored by in an intensely flavorful, slightly tart beef broth and garnished with kimchee, shredded vegetables, a couple slices of meat and a handful of ice, it is both refreshing and fortifying. Like taking a cold shower while eating a pastrami sandwich, but not as soggy.
Though it's not quite chilled noodle weather yet here in LA, I asked Marie of the food blog Starchy Marie, a fellow naeng myun lover, to suggest a good place when we met for lunch. She came up with Yu Chun in Koreatown, a restaurant known for its naeng myun made with chewy black arrowroot noodles (called chik naeng myun in Korean) and gigantic dumplings (mandu).
Marie confessed later that she was worried I would get to the restaurant ahead of her and they wouldn't know what to do with me since I don't speak Korean. But the guy who greeted me in Korean at the door just waved me toward a table near the kitchen and a few minutes later dropped two menus in front of me with a thwap. Marie arrived shortly after and ordered for us in Korean (two bowls of chik naeng myun, one order of super-sized dumplings), but the menu is translated and has pictures, so even the Korean-challenged should be fine.
The mandu were as big as tennis balls, soft, elastic tennis balls filled with a flavorful mince of pork and kimchee. Wrangling one into my mouth bite by bite took all my chopstick skills, but was well worth the challenge.
And then there was the naeng myun. Served in big metal bowls kissed with condensation, the ice-flecked broth held julienned cucumbers, some sliced beef and a bright red dollop of chili paste. We added a squirt of vinegar and stirred, revealing the translucent black noodles and ribbons of pickled zucchini. Marie said she had been worried the arrowroot noodles would be too chewy, but because they were so thin, like soba noodles stretched to twice their length, it was never a problem.
The soul of any noodle soup is its broth and Yu Chun's is good enough to make it through the pearly gates, no problem. Lurking below its vinegar bite and slow chili burn is a beefiness of staggering depth. I would have drained the bowl, but I had to leave room for our post-lunch visit to Scoops. Also, I already had two tennis balls of dumpling in my belly.
Were it possible to fill a swimming pool with Yu Chun's naeng myun, I would spend the summer happily paddling past crunchy vegetables and slippery noodles, gulping down icy broth for sustenance. Until I figure out the mechanics, I'll just settle for lunch once in awhile.
Yu Chun Chic Naeng Myun
3185 W Olympic Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90006
(213) 382-3815
Posted by anjali at 8:16 PM | Comments (431) | Categories: Koreatown | Restaurant
May 20, 2009
barbrix
Chef Don Dickman, slicing.
I first moved to Silver Lake when I was 19. Going out for dinner and a drink back then often meant choking down a watery chicken tostada at El Conquistador while sipping a potent margarita and being dazzled by the explosively colorful decor.
Ten years later, my tastes have changed -- and so has Silver Lake. How else to explain my thoroughly enjoyable evening at Barbrix, the sleek new wine bar on Hyperion? Seated at the back bar, I got to watch the kitchen action while looking over the menu and reasonably priced list of wines by the glass. I picked the Kogl Mea Culpa Saemling, a white wine from Slovenia our server described as "crispy" -- yes, it is difficult for me to resist crispy things -- which turned out to be a great match for the meal.
Veal meatballs were juicy and delicate, sitting in a pool of herb-butter sauce that was so good mopped up with chunks of the La Brea Bakery bread, I had to get a second round of bread. The McGrath Farmer's Plate was like a slice of garden on the plate -- dark, earthy beets, sweet sunshine carrots, curling green pea tendrils -- exactly right for a cool May evening. We asked a passing server about the saba mentioned in the menu description (the only saba either of us knew was the Japanese mackerel) and he deferred to the chef, Don Dickman, who came over and gave us a quick but thorough explanation of the process of making saba, a sort of unfermented, deeply concentrated grape juice. He squeezed a few droplets of balsamic vinegar onto a plate for us to taste and contrast -- an unexpected and welcome lesson from a chef who undoubtedly had better things to do.
The Greek sardine, grilled until the skin was crisp and slightly blackened, was meaty with an oiliness nicely offset by a squeeze of the lemon wedge served alongside. Is there any better way to get your omega-3s? I only wish it had been sardines, plural, so I could have eaten more.
The roasted halibut with sunchokes, chard and mushroom was slightly overcooked, veering from Silky-Supple Town into Dense-Flaky-ville. The flavors were spot-on though, and I loved the contrast between the slightly crunchy sunchoke slices and slippery mushrooms.
We didn't order dessert, though I was sorely tempted by the ginger shortcakes with berry compote that kept passing by. Jessica, the ideal dining partner in so many ways, seems to unfortunately lack betsu-bara (literally "another stomach" in Japanese), the affliction I was diagnosed with during my first week in Japan when I could eat five courses of food and still have room for dessert. I always have room for dessert.
The dining room.
I'll undoubtedly be returning to Barbrix, and not just for the shortcake. The service was friendly, the space intimate without feeling cramped, and everyone in the room, whether patron or employee, seemed genuinely happy to be there -- including me.
Silver Lake, it's official. We've grown up.
Barbrix
2442 Hyperion Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 662-2442
Posted by anjali at 4:40 PM | Comments (290) | Categories: Restaurant | Silver Lake & Nearby
May 14, 2009
DIY umeshu (plum wine)
I love umeshu, that sweet Japanese wine made with green plums, best served refreshingly cold over crushed ice. I've wanted to try my hand at making my own ever since a friend, a fellow English teacher in Japan, let me taste homemade umeshu from a giant jar his school's Home Ec teacher had given him. When she heard he liked the stuff, he said, she had started digging in a cupboard in her classroom until she unearthed a container filled with scary-looking plums floating in a hazy liquor. It had been there for years, she said. Besides the awesomeness of a teacher brewing booze in the classroom, I was stunned by the wine itself: sweet and ultra-smooth, a silk ribbon of ume slipping down my throat.
This is what I thought of at the Hollywood Farmers' Market a couple weekends ago, when I stumbled onto a pile of unripe plums, tiny and green, exactly the specimens I used to see for sale in late spring in Japan. The stand selling them offered samples coated in Tapatio and coarse salt which were tasty, like sour-spicy little pickles, but no match for decades-old umeshu. I bought a pound and told no one about my booze-brewing master plan.
Using a recipe in Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art for guidance, I gathered the necessary components: a bag of chunky sugar, shochu/soju from the Korean grocery store and a container large enough to hold everything for a couple months. The original recipe calls for rock sugar, which I couldn't find, so I substituted an equal weight of coarse raw sugar. I was also supposed to rinse the plums and lay them out in the sun for an hour, turning them carefully to make sure they were perfectly dry. Clearly, Tsuji-san does not have a cat and thus has never heard the THUNK thunk thunk thunk of a green plum being batted off the counter and chased under the refrigerator every time he turns his back.
The culprit.
I instead dried my plums by hand with a clean kitchen towel.
After that it was simply a matter of layering the plums with the sugar in the container (I used a repurposed plastic juice bottle) and covering it all with shochu. I chose this particular Clean & Mild Taste shochu for its resemblance to a large bottle of water. It feels so wrong somehow -- which makes it very right.
Freshly submerged, the plums were green and pretty; a week later they've already dulled to beige. In three months, my umeshu will be ready to drink, just in time for the August heat, but it will only get smoother and more intense with time. Will it be as good as a Japanese Home Ec teacher's forgotten classroom brew? Probably not -- but I'll check in after I taste it to let you know.
Umeshu (Plum Wine)
Makes 1 quart
1 pound green plums
3/4 pound raw washed sugar or rock sugar
1 quart shochu/soju
Remove stems from plums and rinse in a colander. Dry one by one with a clean cloth. In a large jar or other lidded container, add the plums and sugar in alternating layers. Pour in the liquor. Seal tightly and store undisturbed in a cool, dark place for 3 months. You can drink it at this point, but it will be even better after a year. Keeps indefinitely. And you can eat the fruit!
Posted by anjali at 7:40 AM | Comments (376) | Categories: Recipe
May 10, 2009
naturewell
Buying beans and grains in bulk. It sounds about as appealing as a patchouli-drenched hippie sitting on your couch and clipping his toenails, but I can't help it -- I love buying beans and grains in bulk. Lucky for me, Naturewell opened a few months ago in Silver Lake, not far from my apartment, so I have access to all the lentils, barley and quinoa I could possibly want. This may not excite you. But if you find yourself oddly pleased or even mildly intrigued by this news, then please read on.
The store itself is clean and bright, and manages to pack a lot into a fairly small space. Narrow bins hold all manner of bean, grain and pasta, as well as various types of flour and healthy-ish snacks like trail mix and chocolate-covered raisins. One refrigerated case carries specialty dried fruits -- something I haven't seen before in a bulk goods store -- and another offers cold drinks, mainly every flavor of kombucha imaginable. Shelves tucked under the counter hold a large selection of herbs and spices, priced higher than those at Super King, but good for those times when you don't actually need a bag of mustard seeds the size of a chubby chihuahua.
If buying beans and grains in bulk leaves you cold, you still might want to visit Naturewell for their juices and smoothies made to order. I'm usually too hopped up on coffee from Intelligentsia to think about drinking a carrot, so I can't speak for the juices, but they all look terribly fresh and nutritious and seem reasonably priced. Of course if I were you, I might decide to instead get my juice at the pupusa joint across the street, where a giant freshly-made jugo is a mere $3 and you can get a cheese and loroco (a type of flower) pupusa for just a couple dollars more. Yes, I choose melty cheese over a scoop of immunity booster. So sue me.
Despite all that, I'm happy Naturewell is in the neighborhood. My collection of repurposed pasta jars are filled to the brim with enough beans and grains to see me through the zombie apocalypse in style. Assuming there is running water. And gas, for the stove.
....Huh. Time for Plan B.
Naturewell
3824 West Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
(323) 638-5894
Posted by anjali at 7:44 PM | Comments (5) | Categories: Market | Silver Lake & Nearby
