Destination: Los Angeles
This week marks the return of Moveable Feast, The Food Section's occasional series on local food culture beyond New York City. Earlier installments of this recurring feature have taken this site to Saigon, Montreal, Florence, and Washington, DC. For the fifth edition of Moveable Feast, we turn our attention westward for an on-the-ground look at the gastronomy of Los Angeles.
Taking the editorial helm of The Food Section is Kristin Franklin, a recent culinary school graduate who relocated to Los Angeles this past fall. In addition to her formal education, Ms. Franklin’s training involved a two-year stint in the catering kitchen of Northern California’s Wente Vineyards, where she says she learned basic culinary technique and developed a deeper appreciation for fresh ingredients. When she’s not out exploring the gastronomical bounty of her new Southern California surroundings, Ms. Franklin can be found in the kitchen of West Hollywood’s O-Bar, where she works the sauté station. Between shifts, she writes about food and cooking for Babblog, a group blog.
As she prepares the mis en place for her Moveable Feast, Ms. Franklin says demurely, “I just hope I can do justice to the vast and amazing L.A. food scene!”
N.B. While Ms. Franklin steers the ship, Appetizers, the links to your right, will continue to be updated daily. However, Agenda, the weekly listing of food events, will be on a one week hiatus, returning next week.
Shopping List: Holiday Gifts
The holiday season is upon us, and so are the myriad guides to gifts for food lovers. The nation's magazines and newspapers are filled with gift-buying recommendations for everything from cooking gadgets and kitchen supplies to cookbooks and specialty foods. Just in time for the remaining six days of Hanukkah and a healthy sixteen days before Christmas, The Food Section presents The Food Section Guide to Holiday Gift Guides, a collection of recently published articles on food gifts for the holidays:
Kitchen Supplies, Gadgets, and Other Food Stuff:
»Gifts in Good Taste [epicurious]
»Essential Gift Guide [Food and Wine]
»Santa Baby, I'll Take One in Red [Los Angeles Times]
»If You Can Make It Here [New York]
»Taste of a Nation [New York]
»Nourishing Gift Guide [Apartment Therapy]
»Under the Tree, Not Just Sugar Plums [New York Times]
»Last Minute Food Gifts [New York Daily News]
Cookbooks and Other Food Reads:
»Holiday Books: Food [New York Times Book Review]
»The Return of One-Dish Family Meals [New York Times]
»From the Professionals, Three a Home Cook Can Love [New York Times]
»Fit for the Coffee Table but at Home in the Kitchen [New York Times]
»For Full- and Part-Time Vegetarians [New York Times]
»History to Devour (Recipes, Too) [New York Times]
»Culinary Books That More Than Measure Up [Los Angeles Times]
»Good Reads for the Cooks on Your List [San Francisco Chronicle]
»Best of 2004 [Leite's Culinaria]
»The Best Cookbooks of 2004: Great books that make great gifts [epicurious]
»Gifts to Open and Store Upright [New York Times]
»Give Big [Washington Post]
»One to Give, One to Keep [Los Angeles Times]
»Tomes on the Range [New York Daily News]
»Wrapping Up a Year of Cookbooks [Newsday]
Agenda: 12/8 to 12/14
Events This Week
1. Spicy Club Chinese, dinner and wine pairing presented by Johnny Tastebuds Urban Wine Adventures, Thursday, December 9, 7:00 p.m., at Grand Sichuan International, 229 9th Avenue. $60/person (212.255.7191).
2. Holiday Smörgåsbord, Aquavit chef Marcus Samuelsson prepares traditional Scandinavian dishes, Saturday, December 11, and Sunday, December 12, at Scandinavia House, 58 Park Avenue. $65/dinner, $45/lunch (212.847.9724).
3. Preview Tasting at Lo Scalco, Culinary Insiders presents a tasting event at this soon-to-open restaurant in Tribeca, Monday, December 13, 7:00 to 9:30 p.m., at Lo Scalco, 313 Church Street. $80/person (212.330.9080).
4. Punch: A Brief History of the Monarch of Mixed Drinks, the Culinary Historians of New York and the Culinary Arts Committee of the National Arts Club present a holiday party and lecture by "mixology historian" David Wondrich, Tuesday, December 14, 8:00 p.m., at the National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South (at Irving Place). Members/$25, Guests/$30 (212.334.4175)
Ongoing Events
1. Wok Hay: The Breath of a Wok, an exhibition of wok styles and photographs exploring wok culture, through December 23 at the Asian/Pacific/American Studies gallery at New York University, 269 Mercer Street, Suite 609 (212.998.3700).
2. Have You Eaten Yet? The Chinese Restaurant in America, an exhibit exploring the Chinese restaurant’s origin and growth in America and its cultural significance, at the Museum of Chinese in the Americas (70 Mulberry Street, 2nd Floor). The exhibit continues through June 2005. Suggested admission is $3 (212.619.4785).
3. Cookin': A Sizzling Entertainment, "a fast-paced kitchen percussion show combining comedy, rhythm, and non-verbal performance," at the Minetta Lane Theatre, 18 Minetta Lane (212.420.8000).
"Foraging" with the New York Times
In case you didn't notice, this past Sunday's New York Times travel section underwent a complete renovation. The changes in typography, layout, and editorial content give the section the feel of a magazine, rich with feature stories and essays.
The redesign includes a new column called "Foraging," which will be of particular interest to the food obsessed traveler. The piece provides a snapshot of the Spice Shop, a tiny spice store in London's Notting Hill, and its fiery German owner. I don't know if all of the future installments of "Foraging" will be in search of food, but I enjoyed this first one and look forward to reading more.
Belated Blog Birthdays and Baby Clams
Lately, I've noticed a series of birthday celebrations on food weblogs and websites. Il Forno, Chocolate and Zucchini, The Daily Bread, and the Strong Buzz are just a few sites that have recently acknowledged their first year online.
Somehow, I overlooked the one year anniversary of The Food Section, which I launched back on July 7, 2003, with an inauspicious post about cooking spaghetti with clams. The past 17 months developing this site have been an incredible experience, not only because working on The Food Section has provided a wonderful creative outlet for my cooking and dining obsessions, but also because it has introduced me to a whole new world of culinary compatriots, online as well as offline. I want to thank all of you who read this site regularly (as well as the many who seem to end up here via Google searches for photos of Rachael Ray in skimpy outfits), and if you ever have any comments or feedback on The Food Section, please feel free to contact me.
To acknowledge this site's belated birthday, I thought it would be appropriate to revisit that inaugural post on spaghetti and clams. The recipe I made earlier, from Mario Batali, was a study in simplicity -- pasta, clams, wine, garlic, shallots, and parsley -- but, I recently made a variation that is even more bare bones.
Suzanne Dunaway’s recipe for Spaghetti alle Vongole Veraci ("Spaghetti with Real Clams"), in her Rome at Home (Broadway Books, 2004), a great cookbook which I wrote about earlier, is just clams, spaghetti, garlic, parsley, and peperoncino. No wine or shallots needed. I had thought steaming the clams in wine was essential to helping build a sauce for the pasta, but it turns out that there is enough liquid released by the clams themselves to make a briny and flavorful sauce on their own.
A note on the clams. Ms. Dunaway writes: "The dish is a Roman favorite found everywhere, but it can be drastically wrong if the clams are not the ones with two little dark horns coming out of their bodies. They really should be no larger than a fingernail, which is why I use cockles here at home when tiny clams cannot be found." I used what I could find available, which were New Zealand baby clams.
Once all of the ingredients are prepared (the clams are rinsed, the garlic is sliced, the parsley is chopped, and the water for cooking the pasta is salted and boiling), the dish takes only as long as it does to cook the spaghetti. Just a couple of minutes after tossing the pasta in the hot water to cook, saute the garlic lightly in a large pan with extra virgin olive oil and the peperoncino. With 5 or 6 minutes remaining until the pasta is done, add the clams to the pan and cover. The clams should open by the time the pasta is al dente. I love the click-clack sound the clams make as they spring open and their shells knock into each other. Drain the pasta and add it to the pan with the clams, toss with parsley, and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Stir and toss the pasta with the clams until the sauce reduces and adheres to the spaghetti. It should not be swimming in sauce. If it turns out to be too dry, you can always add a few tablespoons of the pasta cooking water. Serve immediately along with bowls for discarding the shells.
Buon Appetito!
Agenda: 12/1 to 12/7
Coming Up
Ingredients: The Quest for the Best, panel discussion featuring Dan Barber, Mario Batali, Tom Colicchio, and Allison Vines-Rushing, moderated by restaurant critic Frank Bruni, Sunday, January 9, 2:00 p.m. to 3:15 p.m., at the Proshansky Auditorium at CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue. $20-$25/person (order online).
Events This Week
1. Cheese and Wine 101, introduction to cheese basics, including milk types, textures, flavors, how to shop, care for and serve fine cheeses, and pairing cheese with wine, Wednesday, December 1, 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., at the Artisanal Cheese Center, 500 West 37th Street at 10th Avenue, 2nd Floor. $75/person (877.797.1200).
2. Gingerbread Homes for Animals, exhibition of gingerbread houses for animals created by pastry chefs, Wednesday, December 1, to Sunday, December 5, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., at the Dana Discovery Center, inside Central Park at 110th Street and Lenox Avenue. Free admission (917.239.9229).
Ongoing Events
1. Wok Hay: The Breath of a Wok, an exhibition of wok styles and photographs exploring wok culture, through December 23 at the Asian/Pacific/American Studies gallery at New York University, 269 Mercer Street, Suite 609 (212.998.3700).
2. Have You Eaten Yet? The Chinese Restaurant in America, an exhibit exploring the Chinese restaurant’s origin and growth in America and its cultural significance, at the Museum of Chinese in the Americas (70 Mulberry Street, 2nd Floor). The exhibit continues through June 2005. Suggested admission is $3 (212.619.4785).
3. Cookin': A Sizzling Entertainment, "a fast-paced kitchen percussion show combining comedy, rhythm, and non-verbal performance," at the Minetta Lane Theatre, 18 Minetta Lane (212.420.8000).
