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August 19, 2009
ice cream scooter crawl
The two best things about summer are:
1) That it is acceptable to eat ice cream at least once a day, every day.
2) That riding my scooter becomes the perfect pastime.
Don't get me wrong, I almost always like riding my scooter. But chilly midwinter scootering can't compare to a sunny August afternoon ride, sunglasses on, arms recklessly bare, my little Buddy 125 humming happily beneath me. There's nothing better than that. Except maybe ice cream.
Which is why fellow scooter rider Javier (a.k.a. Teenage Glutster) and I decided to combine the two and have an ice cream scooter crawl, starting with scoops at Scoops, ending with beer floats at The Golden State and trying to avoid any sugar-fueled collisions in between.
We met at Scoops in the early afternoon, so early that the ice cream was mostly untouched, still mounded in creamy swirls and somehow looking even more irresistible. Javier, his lady friend and I split two double scoops: one cup of vegan salty chocolate and coffee-cardamom, which Javier wisely sprinkled with chopped peanuts, and one cup of black currant-sour cream and vanilla-whiskey. I view the combining of two flavors of ice cream in one cup something of an art form and I think we really nailed it this time, especially the salty chocolate and coffee-cardamom with the peanuts. The peanuts were crucial. The other cup worked just because the black currant-sour cream was one of the best Scoops flavors I've ever eaten, rich and tangy with a deep berry taste.
As we were finishing, Jessica -- my passenger/lady friend -- arrived and we worked out a game plan while she polished off a scoop of ice cream.
The next stop was Helados Pops, just a couple blocks away. A tiny shop specializing in sorbets flavored with Central and South American fruits, it was the place I was most excited to bring Javier to, mainly because I was so curious about all the flavors. Javier immediately started chatting with the woman behind the counter, who dished out brightly colored samples of nance (a yellow crabapple-like fruit with a slightly funky taste), arrayán (a kind of guava), marañón (cashew apple, a yellow fruit with a sweet taste reminiscent of pineapple) and lúcuma (egg fruit, a dry-fleshed fruit from Peru with a unique caramel flavor). We ended up getting scoops of the last three in a pint container, along with a half-scoop of the nance because we asked nicely. Lúcuma, the only non-sorbet of the bunch, was the flavor that most interested Javier due to its rarity outside of South America. My favorite was the arrayán: green, slightly sour and utterly refreshing. They also make arrayán paletas!
Next we made a brief savory stop at Mush Bakery for fresh lahmajun, to halt the onset of acute sugar shock. At 90 cents each, they were an amazingly affordable curative.
Bhan Kanom is my favorite place in Thai Town for sweets, so I assumed they would also serve a good Thai slush, but although the ingredients were intriguing -- palm toddy? -- the ice was chunky rather than slushy and drowned in a syrup that tasted like children's cough medicine. Never again.
Thankfully, our last stop was a sure thing: award-winning beer floats at The Golden State. The ride from Thai Town to Fairfax was the longest of the day, so by the time we arrived we were more than ready to get out of the sun and relax with our floats. Jason, one of The Golden State's co-owners, welcomed us with his usual laid-back friendliness and set about making us a couple floats when we told him our ice cream mission. First up was Old Rasputin with Scoop's signature Brown Bread gelato, a now-classic combination of rich, dark stout and creamy, brown sugar-tinged ice cream. Our second float was a lucky off-menu score, a summery combo of The Bruery's Hottenroth Berliner Weisse and strawberry-basil gelato. Jason pointed out that the sour ale makes the float taste almost like it's made with champagne. It was light and refreshing, undoubtedly my favorite of the two, at least on that warm summer day.
After draining our glasses, we sat back and sighed, contented and full of ice cream, looking forward to a leisurely ride home. We're already discussing our next scooter crawl: a San Gabriel Valley winter hotpot marathon. Who's in?
Scoops
712 N Heliotrope Dr
Los Angeles, CA 90029
(323) 906-2649
Helados Pops
1010 N Vermont Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90029
(323) 660-2900
Mush Bakery
5224 W Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 662-2010
Bhan Kanom
5271 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 871-8030
The Golden State
426 N Fairfax Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 782-8331
Posted by anjali at 10:00 AM | Comments (13) | Categories: Restaurant | Silver Lake & Nearby
August 8, 2009
you got to know your chicken
Phyllis.
I want a chicken.
For awhile I've kind of suspected I wanted a chicken, ever since I found out it is actually legal to own chickens (but not roosters) in the city of LA. My obsession with really good eggs has already been documented and I am always on the hunt for new egg vendors at the farmers market. So after meeting a chicken named Phyllis last weekend and trying her seriously amazing eggs, it's official: I want a chicken.
My friend Jon was house-sitting for his friends in Highland Park and part of the deal was caring for Phyllis, their backyard-roaming chicken. With her green-black body, gentle disposition and head of fluffy white feathers that wobble when she walks, she's a real cutie. Fortuitously, Rob and I stopped by to visit after seeing Food Inc., and seeing Phyllis happily scratching around in the compost pile and jumping up to snag grapes off the vine seemed like a tonic for the stomach-turning treatment of animals we had just watched onscreen.
Phyllis lays one small egg about once every two days and Jon was nice enough to give me two eggs he had saved in the fridge. I knew they were destined for something simple but special, and Zuni Cafe's fried eggs in bread crumbs seemed just about perfect. It's one of my favorite ways to cook good eggs because it combines rich, runny yolks with the toasty crunch of bread crumbs and the warm flavor of thyme in a way that seems fancy yet tastes just like that childhood favorite of mine, egg in the basket. (Or egg-in-the-hole or cat in the hat or whatever it is your mom happened to call it.) With a simple beet salad -- just chopped raw beets, salt, pepper and fresh lemon juice -- and a couple slices of toasted olive bread alongside, I had the ideal summer meal: easy, oven-less and utterly satisfying.
Phyllis's eggs, by the way, were incredible. Is chicken-napping punishable by law?
Fried Eggs in Bread Crumbs
Adapted from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook
Makes one serving
3 tablespoons panko (Japanese bread crumbs)
Salt
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
A few sprigs of thyme
2 eggs
In a small bowl, mix the panko with a pinch of salt and 1 tablespoon of olive oil until the bread crumbs are the texture of wet sand. Strip the sprigs of thyme and set the leaves aside.
In a medium-size nonstick or cast iron skillet, fry panko until crumbs are just beginning to brown. Quickly add remaining tablespoon of olive oil and thyme leaves to the pan and push panko into the middle, forming a flat little island at the center. For over easy eggs, separate about half the crumbs and let them hang out at the edges of the pan. Stir them occasionally so they don't feel left out.
Crack eggs over the panko island. Cook until whites are set and bread crumbs are a toasty brown. For over easy eggs, scoop excess panko over the tops of the eggs and flip once. Serve immediately. While eating, think about the awesomeness of chickens.
Posted by anjali at 5:51 PM | Comments (15) | Categories: Recipe
August 5, 2009
public fruit jam with fallen fruit
Communal jams.
It is perhaps not surprising to hear that people who devote half their Sunday to making and sharing fruit jam with a bunch of strangers are really nice. But I didn't know what to expect this past weekend when I attended the Fourth Annual Public Fruit Jam at Machine Project in Echo Park, hosted by Fallen Fruit Collective, a group that organizes occasional public fruit-gathering walks in LA. I had a great time and learned a lot, so in the spirit of sharing, here are some of the tips I picked up.
DO bring fruit to share from your own trees or that you've gathered from public land (in parks, hanging over sidewalks, etc.). I saw bags of homegrown oranges, crabapples, jujubes, lemons, nectarines and tiny plums the size of cherries. Jessica (my jam-making partner in crime) and I ended up incorporating everything but the jujubes into the second jam we made.
Raspberries, peaches, lemon verbena and lemon zest.
DO set aside any special fruit you want to use for your own jam. Jessica had made a stop at the Atwater Farmers Market that morning and the first jam we made used all the raspberries and peaches she bought, along with lemon zest from some shared lemons and the lemon verbena I had clipped from my backyard.
But DON'T be a jerk and if someone asks if they can have a little of what you brought, DO share. A woman sitting next to us had brought a piece of ginger she was mostly using for herself, but she kindly gave us a knob when we asked.
Cooking the jam.
DO fill the bowl you're given with chopped fruit. The proportions are somewhat flexible, but you'll need about five cups of fruit, five cups of sugar and one packet of pectin to make about four small jars of jam. You cook the jam by yourself, with the assistance of the jam-making experts floating around, but it makes it easier for them to guide you if you start with the correct proportions.
DON'T just chop up a little bit of everything and throw it into a bowl to become an unappetizing pile of mush. Remember finger-painting in kindergarten? When you thought mixing every color together would result in the most beautiful color ever, but instead turned a mucky, ugly brown? It's like that. DO have a plan, even a vague one.
Simmering plum-nectarine-citrus-basil jam.
But DON'T be afraid to experiment. The second jam we made included plums, crabapples, nectarines, basil, oranges, grapefruit and ginger. Sounds like a scary mess, but it's actually quite good: slightly bitter from the grapefruit, sweet from the stone fruit, a tiny bit gingery and tinted a lovely coral hue.
Plum-jam-maker standing in front of us. Love the matching apron!
Perhaps most important: DO talk to the people around you! We met a father and son from Culver City who were there because the son, who was around ten years old, loves gardening and cooking. I wish I had been that awesome as a kid. Standing in line for the cooking stations outside, we befriended the people ahead of and behind us, which made the 30-40 minute wait bearable, and we ended up swapping jars of jam with them at the end. (And regarding the line, DO wear sunscreen and DO get there early, so you aren't waiting outside under the relentless afternoon sun.)
Clockwise from top: blueberry-lemon-mint, plum-citrus-basil, raspberry-peach-lemon verbena.
Finally, DO leave a jar of your jam for the communal archives and DON'T be afraid to enjoy the rest yourself! Stored in the refrigerator, the jam will keep for 2-3 weeks, longer if frozen. I've been slathering it on toast and PB & J sandwiches and mixing it into Greek yogurt at breakfast. I've also been peeking covertly at the pretty row of jars in the fridge, remembering one of my favorite passages from the canning chapter in my grandmother's old edition of the Joy of Cooking:
"I should like to begin my chapter with the assurance that it is a thrill to possess shelves well stocked with home-canned food. In fact, you will find their inspection (often surreptitious), and the pleasure of serving the fruits of your labors, comparable only to a clear conscience or a very becoming hat."
So true.
Posted by anjali at 1:47 PM | Comments (6) | Categories: Event | Silver Lake & Nearby
