Wormwood, yum

That's two glasses of Fraîche bartender extraordinaire Albert Trummer's version of absinthe, a tincture he makes with his special combination of ingredients (which he says does include wormwood); you can see the concoction steeping in an original absinthe tower from New Orleans that sits atop the bar. It's not on the cocktail menu, but Trummer was kind enough and enthusiastic enough to demonstrate his absinthe ritual. He uses the traditional slotted absinthe spoon topped with a cube of sugar, then pours over the absinthe (it actually drips in from a spigot in the tower) along with some of his other elixirs. And then he goes through several steps of flambéing and hands you a glass of it hot. "The first sip should be a big one," he says. As soon as you bring it up to your nose, you feel its effects. Take that big sip and it hits all your senses at once. And it's delicious, both floral and herbal and milder-tasting than you might expect -- with no deleterious effects that I could tell. 

-- Betty Hallock

Fraîche, 9411 Culver Blvd., Culver City, (310) 839-6800

Photos by Betty Hallock

Cappuccino eggs

There's always a food angle. I was leafing through Make, a quarterly techno-magazine that's like the old Popular Mechanics but way geekier, with articles on making a 12-sided lampshade or how to unpimp your ride (that is, make your cool bike look like a junker so no self-respecting thief will want to steal it). And there in the back was a note by columnist Saul Griffith saying that his local espresso place scrambles eggs with its milk steamer. It occurred to me that I've heard of this being done elsewhere.

It sounded as if it made sense -- a lot of scrambled egg recipes say to add some liquid (usually milk, rather than water) to give the eggs a softer texture. On the other hand, it sounded impossibly geeky. I had to try it.

Well, the eggs cooked, in a basic sort of way. It was hard to get them evenly cooked, though, and the large, soft curd texture I happen to like was out of the question with all that spitting and bubbling going on. Still, cappuccino-scrambled eggs don't use any butter or fat, so maybe this is useful if you're more afraid of those things than of cholesterol. And if you don't want to just boil some water and poach your eggs.

A couple of things to watch out for: You'll need toothpicks to clean egg debris out of your steamer nozzle. The bowl gets quite hot. And watch for flying bits of hot egg. Jeez.

-- Charles Perry

Photo by Charles Perry

France's chef of the year

The 8,000 chefs represented in France's Guide Michelin voted Anne-Sophie Pic chef of the year on Monday. In February, Pic was the first woman to earn three stars in the guide, for her restaurant Maison Pic in Valence. The restaurant was founded by Pic's great-grandmother, Sophie, in 1891, and the kitchen has always been headed up by a Pic. The prize, created by the trade magazine Le Chef, is meant to recognize the chef in France who best represents the profession.

So what's her menu like? Right now, if you were ordering off the menu posted on the restaurant's website, you might start with le lapin "Rex du Poitu" -- choice morsels of rabbit cooked with sage, served with crudités and saffron vinaigrette. Follow that with le homard bleu ("blue lobster") roasted in a cocotte, flambéed with gentian eau de vie, pressed with young vegetables, and buttered with young peas with Gascon lard. (This one may have lost something in my poor translation.) Next, le cochon de Bigorre -- a chop of famous pork from Bigorre in a salt-and-green-pepper crust, with Nourmoutier potatoes, rhubarb confite and green pepper juice. Since we're at a three-star restaurant, you'd be silly not to follow that with a selection of cheeses, then a hot Grand Marnier soufflé with a fresh mint liquid center.

It all begs two questions: Can 8,000 French be wrong? And when's the next flight to Valence?

-- Leslie Brenner

Photo by Dorie Greenspan

Pasta talk today

Mmmm...fresh pasta. Russ Parsons, the California Cook, has been grooving on it lately. The good news? It's way easier to make at home than you might think. Log onto latimes.com at 1 p.m. to join Russ for a live chat -- he'll share his secrets and answer questions about how to make it and great ways to sauce it.

-- Leslie Brenner

Photo by Robert Lachman

Hello, Melrose Bar & Grill

Melrose Bar & Grill opened at the old Doug Arango's space in West Hollywood on Monday. It's a good place to sip a $10 Hendricks and vermouth (a good deal, in the era of the $15 martini) and ponder this, er, interesting-looking bar snack. (OK, it's pretzel, sausage and mustard.)

Melrose Bar & Grill, 8826 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood; (310) 278-3684.

-- Leslie Brenner

Photo by Leslie Brenner

Frozen lettuce?

I was intrigued as soon as I opened "Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking" to the contents page, where there's a picture of author and Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto's ponytail and the back of his neck. (Weird.) I turned to the introduction and took note of his chevron-striped geta socks -- you know, the kind with the cleft between the big and second toes. (Cool.) Page 11 shows a series of photos that demonstrate how Morimoto ties his kimono in the traditional samurai style. (Gratuitous, though it looks good.) 

And the recipes? There's tuna pizza with anchovy aioli, sushi rice risotto, snapper chips, oyster foie gras, rice-stuffed baby chickens, chocolate-coated sweetfish liver. (Chef-y and mostly weird.)  But there are some traditional Japanese recipes, one of which is nikujaga, a Japanese beef stew. The name comes from niku, or meat, and jagaimo, or potatoes. It's one of my favorite Japanese dishes, partly because the first time my mom -- who's Japanese -- made it for me, I thought she was saying Miku Jaga, the Japanese transliteration for Mick Jagger.

The Times Test Kitchen tested the recipe for frozen lettuce, Morimoto's version of a Caesar. You quarter a head of lettuce and freeze it for one to two hours. It gets topped with a dressing of garlic, mayo, rice vinegar, Worcestershire, miso, grated onion, Parmesan, anchovy paste, mustard, lemon zest and crumbled goat cheese. Then you sprinkle on whole annatto seeds and small croutons. Annatto seeds are really hard and not all that fun to bite into, but the lettuce was actually really crisp, and the dressing was tasty. Still, next time I'm going to try the Mick Jagger recipe.

-- Betty Hallock

Photo by Leslie Brenner

Stalking the Bulgarian pizza

I'm just back from a sort of pizza tour of the Balkans. In Croatia, right across the Adriatic from Italy, they pride themselves on making classic Italian pizzas. However, at a fashionable Zagreb pizza place called Mezzo & Mezzo, I found a distinctly Croatian pizza -- pepperoni topped with sour cream.

It wasn't exactly pepperoni pizza -- it used a Croatian sausage that's larger and a little less rich than pepperoni, and it included chopped onions and finely sliced bell peppers. Altogether it was a well-considered creation and I thought it was terrific, if you don't mind a pretty rich pizza. The only problem was that the sour cream makes the center of the pie kind of soggy, so you have to eat it with a knife and fork. But it turns out that's how the Zagrebines tend to eat pizza anyway.

In Bulgaria, a couple of places put cucumber pickles on pizzas, usually ones that included smoked chicken (which in Bulgaria is pink and hard to tell from ham). The restaurant behind the archeology museum in Sofia had a neat one, with all the ingredients diced very fine, and there was a rowdier one at a Sofia blues and jazz joint called Toucan -- it was my favorite because the pickles were cut in big chunks that stayed crisp. Toucan also had a pizza made with pickles and frankfurters (see photo). Both included lots of Bulgarian yellow cheese and a dose of marjoram.

All this raises a question: Is pizza really an open-faced sandwich on really, really thin bread, served hot? If so, why shouldn't the customer get some pickles with the old ham and cheese, or the cheese dog? Or sour cream whenever the mood strikes?

-- Charles Perry

Photo by Charles Perry

Mountain air

The first day of fall isn't always high season in Oak Glen, the small, family-friendly apple country just north of the Redlands and Yucaipa area, maybe because most mid-Septembers bring hot weather. But this past weekend brought a perfect change -- clear skies after a long-needed rain -- and the U-Pick and U-Buy-Pie apple ranches in Oak Glen were bustling with people who'd had enough summer fun and wanted a hit of cool weather, autumn harvest and fall feeling.

Apples are the main order of business, of course, and after tasting some of the dozens of varieties grown in the area -- Spartans and Jonagolds and Crispins, say -- visitors were loading half-bushel boxes into their SUVs and enthusiastically lugging bottles of cider. Kids and their parents and grandparents were heading off into orchards and berry patches for apple- and raspberry-picking sessions.

But day-trippers do not live by apples alone, and there were a few other specialties sending come-hither aromas into the crisp, bracingly fresh mountain air.

The grilled tri-tip and corn on the cob at Los Rios Rancho had folks lined up at lunchtime and for hours afterward (the pie there is also terrific -- full of several kinds of thickly sliced just-tender apples, deeply cinnamony and not too sweet). And at Snow-Line orchards, teenage doughnut makers in a rustic exhibition kitchen man a mini-doughnut machine that not only sends out enticing smells but is also fun to watch as you wait. For an afternoon snack of hot doughnuts and cold, fresh cider, of course.

-- Susan LaTempa

Photos by Susan LaTempa

Going Slow

The glass ceiling atop Campanile restaurant almost seemed to bulge outward at times Sunday night, filled with the happy din of foodies celebrating the appearance of Chez Panisse’s Alice Waters, who was down from Berkeley raising money for one of her pet projects: Slow Food Nation, a "campaign to change the way America produces and eats food," that will culminate in a four-day food fair held in the Bay Area next May.

After an extremely ambitious start, a new, somewhat scaled-down version of the event is in the works, but details are still a little vague. Still, that didn’t stop the more than 190 people in attendance, or even slow them down. According to the restaurant, more than $60,000 was raised.

Among those happily chowing down on spot prawns over fresh pappardelle and rotisserie rosemary baby lamb were farmers Peter Schaner, Alex Weiser and Maryann and Paul Carpenter, winemaker Maria Sinskey of Napa’s Robert Sinskey Vineyards, chefs Suzanne Goin (shown with Waters at left), David Lentz and Chris Blobaum, and cookbook authors Amelia Saltsman, Alice Medrich and Martha Rose Shulman. Television host Huell Howser made a surprise appearance.

In brief remarks before dinner, Waters praised the generosity of Campanile chef Mark Peel — who worked for her briefly early in his career (as did Goin): “When I called, he didn’t ask what it was for and he didn’t ask me how many people were coming. He just said yes.”

Slow Food, she said, is a counter to those who want “to convince us that everything should be fast, cheap and easy. Slow Food is about taking time. The slow way gives our lives meaning. It’s the process that matters.”

-- Russ Parsons

Photo by Russ Parsons

'Roast Chicken' comes to America

"Roast Chicken and Other Stories," the 1994 cookbook by Simon Hopkinson, founding chef of London's Bibendum restaurant, has long been known in foodie circles as a great cookbook, but when the British magazine Waitrose Food Illustrated named it "the most useful cookbook of all time" in 2005, it really took off.

Now there's an American edition (Hyperion, $24.95). When a copy landed on my desk on Friday, I picked it up ... and had a hard time putting it down all weekend. The book is organized by Hopkinson's favorite ingredients (Anchovy, Brains ... Eggplant, Lamb, Parmesan), and the writing is wonderful. For instance, Hopkinson writes that he loves Welsh lamb, adding: "I love mint sauce, too. And red currant jelly. And crisp fat from a shoulder (the best-tasting roast meat I can think of, save beef) that has been cooked for several hours, until the meat is of such melting texture that it can virtually be eaten with a spoon. Further pleasures from roasts such as this include squashing second helpings of roast potatoes into that half-congealing mixture of lamb fat, gravy, and mint sauce . . . don't try and tell me you don't know what I"m talking about."

How can you not trust someone who can write that? Not to give away the ending, but in the veal chapter, Hopkinson writes, in a headnote to a recipe for roast shin (stinco in Italian) that the shin (shank to us Americans) is his favorite cut of veal "by far." Did I have to run out and buy one? Uh, yeah. I had the butcher prepare it the way Hopkinson suggests -- cutting through the anklebone, releasing the tendons and allowing the meat to shrink down the bone while roasting and " 'collect' at one end." Then I followed his fabulous recipe for roast shin of veal, which you'll find by clicking below on "Read more."

-- Leslie Brenner

Photos by Leslie Brenner