Apricot cordial for the holidays

Is there still time to make your own liqueur for the holidays, for toasting or giving? Sure. And it's much less demanding than making something like limoncello.

Just buy a pound of dried apricots (get California apricots, which are tangier and more aromatic than the cheap imported kind). Put them in a large jar, add two cups of sugar and enough vodka to cover the apricots by about an inch -- up to one and a half 750-ml bottles of vodka. You can vary this to taste. Put in more sugar if you want it sweeter, more apricots if you want it tangier. Light rum can substitute for the vodka, or part of it.

Then seal the jar and wait, shaking it once a day until the sugar dissolves. Immediately the liquor will start taking on a beautiful tawny color. Add more vodka if it sinks below the level of the apricots. This will make about a quart.

The flavor will improve for up to six weeks, but the cordial is thoroughly drinkable after four -- mellow and soothing, a taste of drowsy summer. Throw some into Champagne to make an apricot Bellini. (If you like the flavor of prunes, you can make a prune cordial the same way, but go a little easy on the sugar -- you can always add some when you're ready to decant the result.)

Here's a little trick. To punch up the apricot flavor, add half a teaspoon or so of almond extract.

And here's another. When you've strained the apricot cordial from the fruit, save the apricots. They make a grown-up garnish for ice cream.

-- Charles Perry

Photo by Charles Perry

Madeleines for Sophie

My daughter Sophie, who is 6 1/2, adores madeleines. (More than pasta or chocolate or even duck confit.) And so last weekend, when she told me that I hadn't made her madeleines for "two whole years," I had a slight panic attack. Store-bought madeleines are not -- all tired Proust references aside -- what I wanted her to remember from childhood. And since she also loves to bake, it was time to get out the madeleine tins. Below right is Soph filling the tins, which I have in two sizes.

   My favorite recipe for the little baked cakes is Alain Giraud's, published here last year as part of our cookie contest. (He came in second, behind Sherry Yard, with his tiny almond-orange madeleines.) But Sophie prefers Paula Wolfert's recipe, from her book "The Cooking of South-West France." Russ Parsons included the recipe in a 2005 profile of Wolfert. (Click on "Read more 'Madeleines for Sophie' " to find it.) For the record, it had not been two years since I baked them for her. Wolfert makes her madeleines with orange flower water and clarified butter. (Easy to make, clarified butter keeps for ages in the refrigerator for moments of crisis like this one.) They're light, floral -- and totally addictive. After eating the first half-dozen, Soph even shared the rest with her sister, who ate hers with (yes), a cup of tea.

This blank space ________________ is for your Proust joke.

"The Cooking of South-West France," by Paula Wolfert (Wiley, 2005).

-- Amy Scattergood

Photos by Robert Lachman (madeleines on plate) and Amy Scattergood

AVA upset

The American wine industry is headed for a hair-pulling, eye-gouging, bloody brawl -- that's the view of industry insiders who have read the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), Department of the Treasury, proposed regulatory changes (Notice No. 78) concerning AVAs, or American viticultural areas, issued last week. Federal regulators have proposed rewriting the fundamental framework for identifying American wines, the AVAs, to expand the number of allowable brand names that are also the names of AVAs. These brand names would not be required to adhere to the AVA rules that wines contain a minimum of 85% grapes grown in that AVA. So, for instance, wines from Calistoga Cellars would not have to use any grapes from a Calistoga AVA.

"It's a huge change," says Terry Hall, spokesman for the Napa Valley Vintners Assn. "This reverses the regulatory direction that the industry has taken for the last several decades." The Wine Institute, the foremost trade association for the industry, is meeting this week to begin formulating a response to the proposal, a meeting that many expect will be the opening round in an industrywide brawl.

The proposal reopens a deep fissure in the American wine industry. Big companies like Constellation Brands, E&J Gallo and Bronco Winery traditionally have pushed for commercial interests (brand names) to take precedence over place names (AVAs). High-end wineries and regional associations like the Napa Valley Vintners Assn. have lined up on the other side of the issue to fight for the sanctity of place names.

You don't have to be a wine geek to care about AVAs. While the American system of geographic indicators doesn't stipulate wine quality, consumers can form opinions about particular regions by the quality of the wines produced there. Muddying the difference between AVAs and brand names would leave consumers little choice other than to judge wines by brand name alone. And, in that world, the marketing juggernauts -- those big wine companies that can afford huge advertising campaigns -- would be the winners.

In 1986, when the existing AVA rules were established, the two factions were at each other's throats until the advocates of place names finally backed down. Existing brand names were allowed to continue being used without adhering to the new AVA rules. This new federal proposal to allow more brand names that are also AVA names, industry insiders say, reignites that old battle. Only now the stakes are higher, Hall says. The American wine industry will lose hard-won credibility in the international wine world if it allows the meaning of American place names to be confused with brand names. At the same time, there is far more money at stake for companies with successful brand names.

The federal action is an outgrowth of a controversy that erupted when Calistoga Cellars objected to the establishment of a Calistoga AVA. Rather than resolving the dispute with that one brand name owner, federal regulators decided to rethink the AVA rules in general.

-- Corie Brown

What I ate for Thanksgiving

After weeks (months, years) of cooking, for my job, for fun, for stories and families and friends and just the normal repeating cycles of daily sustenance, I decided on my Thanksgiving menu: nothing.  With the kids out of town, I declined the kind invitations that came my way and, on the single biggest feast day in this country, I fasted.  This was not for any political, religious or social reason (though it could, probably even should, have been), but out of sheer fatigue. 

My dog and I hiked up Runyon Canyon (right), walked along the beach, watched football. No turkey, no cranberry sauce, no dishes or performance anxiety. (Note to PETA: I fed my dog.) It was difficult not to think about food, especially in my line of work, but for the most part I managed. I was grateful for things: food, of course; that my daughters were eating a feast in a cabin in Mammoth; and that their world is one filled with a relative privilege that many do not have. Also empty freeways and the happiness of strangers at rest. At sundown, I broke my fast with a bowl of soup, an approved method in many of the world's religions, which recognize that hunger is a problematic, most difficult subject.

Here's a picture of my soup. It's chocolate soup, made with 71% Valrhona chocolate spiked with cayenne and cinnamon and frothed by pouring it back and forth to mix it, as the Mayans and Aztecs did. A quick thumb through "Larousse Gastronomique" (my cultural and religious reference guide) revealed that in the early days of European chocolate, the church set so little store in the New World food that they didn't even consider the consumption of it to be breaking Lenten fast. A happy fact for many contemporary Christians. I don't know if that's still the rule, but it worked for me. Add that to the long, long litany of things I was thankful for this holiday. 

-- Amy Scattergood

Photos by Amy Scattergood

Expedition to orange country

The local orange season is upon us -- Valencias are in season and navels are about to come on line. Fifty years ago, Angelenos would drive out to the orange-growing parts of town and load up on oranges at farm stands. These days, the orange groves of the San Fernando Valley and Orange County have been replaced by housing tracts, but we still have a vigorous orange-growing district in the lower Santa Clarita Valley.

This is where you can take a nice drive in the country and come back with 20 pounds of oranges for $5 or $6. One time I bought a box of 100 Valencias for $9, which worked out to 33 tall glasses of fresh OJ at 27 cents a glass.

To get there, take Highway 126 west just north of Magic Mountain. Nine miles later, just past Piru (where the highway has taken on the name of Telegraph Road), you'll be surrounded by orange groves. There are four major produce stands in the next eight miles, all on the south side of the street.

Besides oranges, all the stands carry other local produce, such as avocados (yellow-speckled Zutanos and little blackish Pueblas, as well as the ubiquitous Hass and Fuerte), winter squashes (monstrous blue Hubbards, grotesque green bottle gourds, "fairytale" pumpkins that look just like Cinderella's carriage) and honey.

From east to west, the big stands are: Camulos Ranch, 5164 E. Telegraph Road, Piru, (805) 521-1561; J&R Fruits, 2852 E. Telegraph Road, Fillmore (no phone); Francisco's Fruit, 1762 E. Telegraph Road, Fillmore, (805) 524-4616; Cornejo's Produce Stand, 768 E. Telegraph Road, Fillmore, (805) 524-2776.

-- Charles Perry

Photo by Stephen Osman

Octopus, uncorked

Ever since I first had the octopus at Osteria Mozza, I've been a little obsessed. With the octopus, that is. I love Mirko Paderno's octopus carpaccio at All' Angelo, the spicy octopus cooked at-table at My Secret Recipe in Koreatown, the charred octopus at Joe's in Venice -- which Joe Miller has said he'll definitely have on the menu at his new Bar Pintxo. (No, I haven't had the Craft octopus yet, though maybe with the writers strike, now would be a good time to brave the CAA neighborhood.)

Some weeks ago, when I told the boyfriend (ex-chef, seafood importer) that I wanted to grill octopus at home, he gave me a 4 1/2-pound whole Spanish cephalopod (ah, love), which has been taking up valuable space in my freezer ever since. Last night, however, I got home to find that the boyfriend had thawed it out, spent an hour braising it in olive oil spiked with oregano, cumin and cayenne and was just about to throw it on the hot grill outside. 

I didn't have any celery or fingerling potatoes (Mozza) or an enormous bowl of Asian vegetables (My Secret Recipe), but I did have a pot of Umbrian lentils that I'd cooked the day before with carrots, onions, Aleppo pepper and water spiked with veal demi-glace.  A little fresh flat-leaf parsley, and it paired perfectly with the grilled tentacles. The octopus was terrific and surprisingly tender. Why surprising? Because the boyfriend had not put wine corks in the braising pot.

Many chefs, particularly Italian chefs, claim that wine corks somehow tenderize the often rubbery tentacles, and so they routinely add corks to the braising liquid. Angelini Osteria's Gino Angelini does: He was taught the trick at cooking school in Italy. And they do at Mozza, where the octopus recipe comes from Mario Batali's mother. When I e-mailed food science writer Harold McGee about it, he wrote that he'd actually tested the theory in blind-tasting demos and that he can't tell any difference. As for Providence's Michael Cimarusti, he says he knows it's an old wives' tale, but he throws a few corks in anyway, just in case. The boyfriend shrugged when I asked if he'd added them, and said he couldn't find any. It didn't seem to matter much, and since we were watching "Monday Night Football" now that baseball season's over, I couldn't make any Sammy Sosa corked-bat jokes anyway.

My Secret Recipe, 4177 W. 3rd St., Koreatown, (213) 380-8382.  For other restaurant addresses, click the links above.

-- Amy Scattergood

photos by Amy Scattergood

Another Italian authority

Reference books certainly serve a purpose, but rarely is that purpose pleasure. So imagine my surprise when I sat down to thumb through Gillian Riley’s new “The Oxford Companion to Italian Food” and wound up reading straight through the letter C before I looked up. Of course, part of this book’s appeal for me is my still-rampant Italophilia. I got a bad case of it back in the 1980s and am still in its thrall. But mostly it’s the sheer joy of reading a good, spunky writer who really knows what she’s talking about.

In truth, Riley -- a member of the late Alan Davidson's Oxford Symposium collective of passionate amateur historians -- does concentrate much more on the cultural context of Italian cooking than she does specific recipes. But she has a telling eye for the key ingredient or technique. And she writes like a good cook. Her analysis of various cookbook writers' use of chile in spaghetti con aglio e olio is deft and knowing.

Riley's appreciations of the too-often-derided 19th century cookbook writer Pellegrino Artusi and his 20th century counterpart Ada Boni are fine and nuanced. Both played important roles not only in Italian cuisine, but also in building a coherent Italian identity: Riley points out the role Artusi’s “La Scienza in Cucina e l’Arte di Mangiar Bene” had in establishing the Tuscan dialect as the default national language. “Artusi’s book made a greater contribution to the unification of Italy than all the efforts by politicians and linguists,” she writes. To make her points, Riley is equally comfortable pulling entries from Bartolomeo Scappi, the 16th century cookbook author, and Andrea Camilleri, the great modern detective writer.

Riley is a master of the pithy observation. Consider her entry on Italian cookbooks: “[They] are used more in Italy today than they were in the past. Until recently, women learnt to cook, and men to criticize and evaluate, from their mothers and grandmothers.”

“The Oxford Companion to Italian Food,” by Gillian Riley. Oxford University Press, $35.

-- Russ Parsons

The Campanile soup kitchen

Campanile restaurant has always served as a kind of meeting room and hangout for a lot of screenwriters. With writers on strike, chef Mark Peel decided he wanted to give something back. So he’s started what he’s calling a “writer’s soup kitchen.”

Here’s how it works: Every Wednesday, there will be a fixed-price lunch menu that starts with a choice of two soups, followed by a choice of four entrees and capped by a couple of scoops of ice cream. The whole thing costs $18. Entrees will include things like braised beef with sauerkraut, grilled albacore, grilled chicken and a vegetarian choice of sauteed polenta with sheep's milk cheese and glazed cauliflower.

Peel says the deal is offered only to card-carrying screenwriters, but then he had to ask around the office to find out whether screenwriters actually carried cards. The answer was unclear, but he allows that “we’re not going to be like the public library. We’re probably not going to get all that assiduous about checking cards. I’ve got a feeling nobody's going to lie that much.”

Peel says the writers strike is hurting the entire community that depends on writers’ business —everybody from dry cleaners to restaurants. “We’re all hurting,” he says. “We’re not going to make any money on this. But I hope we’ll contribute to a sense of community, and that’s the whole point.”

Campanile, 624 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 938-1447

Photo by Ken Hively

Martini, hold the twist

As everybody knows, an old-school Martini is just gin (or vodka) and dry vermouth, garnished with either an olive or a twist of lemon. Now there's a more emphatic way to apply the lemon.

Fee Brothers, which has put out a line of rather mild-mannered bitters in recent years (including a mint bitters and a peach bitters with scarcely any bitterness to them), recently introduced a lemon bitters that is anything but mild-mannered. It's a mixture of lemon oils and lemon grass with a distinct bitter edge and a glowing lemon fragrance. Add a drop or two to a Martini and you have a Lemon Martini -- cheerful, but not that far from thoughtfulness.

So far we haven't been able to find Fee Brothers Lemon Bitters at any stores but Surfas, but that should change. This is great stuff.

We are definitely living in a bitters renaissance. Last year the Stirrings company of Fall River, Mass., better known for its drink mixes, announced a blood orange bitters. It's finally become widely available, and it does have a marvelous nose of orange and sweet spices. It's scarcely bitter at all (and apparently contains no alcohol because you have to refrigerate it), but just a few drops will add wonderful poetry and complexity to many a cocktail. 

Fee Brothers Lemon Bitters, $4.75 for a 4-ounce bottle at Surfas Restaurant and Supply, 8824 National Blvd., Culver City, (310) 559-4770.

Stirrings' Blood Orange Bitters, available at Hi-Time Wine Cellars, 250 Ogle St., Costa Mesa, (800) 331-3005; Wine and Liquor Depot, 16938 Saticoy St., Van Nuys, (888) 622-1414; Wine House, 2311 Cotner Ave., West L.A., (800) 626-9463; Surfas; Beverages and More stores and Sur La Table stores. About $4.50 for a 12-ounce bottle.

-- Charles Perry

Photo by Charles Perry

Jancis Robinson

It's easy to fall in love with wine while talking with British wine writer Jancis Robinson. She knows everything about wine and happily shares that knowledge without the attitude you find so often among wine experts. When she stopped off in Los Angeles last week as part of a two-week swing through the United States promoting the recently published "The World Atlas of Wine, Sixth Edition" she authored with fellow Briton Hugh Johnson, she was buzzing about climate change. It took her and her assistant, Julia Harding, both Masters of Wine, two years of dogged reporting to update the atlas, she says, because the wines from nearly every region of the world have changed as a result of global warming. Whether it's "respectable wine from England" or the fact that "Germany now can reliably ripen its grapes," rising temperatures are changing wines everywhere, Robinson says. Why else would the European Union for the first time be considering a ban on chaptalization -- the practice of adding sugar to wine? Chaptalization was a necessary bit of winemaking trickery when the French climate wasn't warm enough to guarantee a successful vintage each year. Now it's hardly ever vital.

Wine criticism is Robinson's stock in trade and the reason people like me subscribe to her Purple Pages wine blog. After a book-signing at the Wine House, three dozen wine enthusiasts joined Robinson at the West L.A. retailer's upstairs dining room for a dinner prepared by chef de cuisine Todd Barrie. For each course, Robinson selected two wines that, though strikingly different from each other, were well matched for the course. In that way she made the point that food and wine pairing is an elastic concept.

Grilled shrimp wrapped in prosciutto was paired with 2004 Wittmann Scheurebe Trocken from Germany and 2001 La Monacesca Mirum Verdicchio RS from Italy. Mushroom-crusted halibut with red wine sauce was paired with 2006 Descendientes de Jose Palacios Petalos Bierzo from Spain and 2004 Neudorf Pinot Noir Moutere from New Zealand.

A venison course was paired with two more Spanish wines: a 2004 Finca Sandoval Tinto made by Victor de la Serna, one of Spain's leading wine experts, and a 2004 Venta Mazzaron Tinto de Toro de Zamora. Why so much Spanish wine? "It's not a policy. More of an accident, really," Robinson says. It's just that there are so many emerging wine regions in Spain making extraordinary wines. "It was the most difficult entry in the atlas. Things are changing there so quickly," she says. Considering that the latest edition of the atlas weighs in at 400 pages, 50 more than the previous edition, published in 2001, it's clear that wine regions around the globe are changing and growing.

"The World Atlas of Wine, Sixth Edition" by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson, (Mitchell Beazley, $50)

-- Corie Brown

Photo by Matt Prince

I heart Nutella

We all have secret junk food, the beloved bag of this or fix of that we reserve for those down moments. (Thomas Keller and In-N-Out burgers, anyone?) Nutella, the Italian chocolate-hazelnut spread that comes in jars like peanut butter, has long been mine. My Nutella habit dates to my senior year in high school, a semester of which I spent in Hamburg, Germany. For breakfast, for afternoon snacks after Gymnasium, on a ski trip to the Dolomites and one very long car ride in a VW bus through East Germany and the DMZ to Berlin (this was before German Reunification), we ate Nutella, spread on thick slabs of bread from the Bäckerei with strata of sweet French butter. Twenty-five years later, I still crave the stuff when I watch World Cup games or see snow. I mostly eat it with bread and butter, but I've put it on pancakes and waffles, made ice cream with it, or just ate it on a spoon.

And I'm not the only person with a secret passion for the stuff. At the Food & Wine party at Spago last spring, Spago pastry chef Sherry Yard sent out tuile cigarettes stuffed with Nutella. Alice Medrich includes a recipe for Nutella bread pudding in her new cookbook. And when I interviewed former Bastide chef Alain Giraud for a story about crepes and asked him what he liked best with them, he gave me a long litany of fillings -- simple ones from his childhood in France, haute cheffy recipes from his restaurant and catering menus -- then confided that he best likes crepes spread with Nutella. Though normally, he went on, he just eats it out of the jar. I felt so much better.

Nutella, $4.50 and up (13-oz. jars), and $8 and up (26.5-oz. jars); available at most grocery stores and Italian delis, including Ralph's, Pavilions, Bay Cities and La Bottega Marino. Or see Nutella's website for its really cool store locator.

-- Amy Scattergood

Photo by Amy Scattergood

Michelin -- the actual book -- arrives

Though it's been some years since I've cared how many stars Michelin bestows in France and elsewhere, I must confess that somehow, in the last few days, I got swept up in the buzz about the publication of the first Michelin guide for L.A. There was all the commotion over the results being leaked, and who got how many stars, and I don't know, on Friday, when Food's assistant editor Betty Hallock found her way onto the unpublished list on the Michelin website, it suddenly seemed exciting.

Tonight, much of L.A.'s food press is celebrating the publication at a party at Les Deux, but I took home my copy of the Michelin Guide Los Angeles 2008 and skimmed it over bad pizza and a glass of red.

I was stunned at what I read. Beyond the stars and the fourchettes, there are the descriptions themselves. The Foundry's Eric Greenspan, I find, "learned from El Bulli disciplines in Spain." (What does that mean?) At Chameau, you can "end your Moroccan respite with a Spanish Muscatel." At Water Grill, diners "can drop anchor" and "the chef's busy brigade creates swells of satisfaction." The writing makes the Zagat guide look like "Ulysses."

Who could write such stuff, and where are their editors? Meanwhile, if the "anonymous inspectors" who bestowed the stars had reasons for anointing some chefs and dissing others, it's hard to understand them. Unlike in the European guides, the L.A.-edition entries read like little puff pieces, and one doesn't have the sense that the writers know much at all about food. At Wilshire, "there's no mistaking the components of diver scallops seared in clarified butter and served with creamy roasted fingerling and spicy chorizo." The chef there, we're told, is Warren Schwartz. (Don't tell Chris Blobaum!) Tre Venezie in Pasadena gets a star. Why? "Dishes here are not based on thick tomato sauces, olive oil and basil as they are elsewhere." Yup, we're getting pretty fed up with them thick tomato sauces too.

And Asian cooking? Nope, they don't get it.

Japanese food gets the most respect, but little understanding. Here's an excerpt from the listing for Mori Sushi in West L.A., which gets one star: "This, as chef/owner Morihiro Onodera asserts, is a sushi restaurant, serving only fish and vegetables." At Urasawa, which gets two stars, we're told that "sushi placed atop warm rice mixed with grated wasabi must be eaten within ten seconds." Beyond that, the only dishes mentioned are a carved turnip filled with "a fragrant garlic and ginger shrimp paste" and "cubes of Wagyu beef cooked in smoky-sweet ponzu sauce" that "fall apart on the tongue."

Meanwhile, only four Chinese restaurants -- Empress Pavilion, Mr. Chow, Yang Chow and Yujean Kang's -- are included. I'm sorry, but that's just wrong in the city whose Chinese restaurants arguably rival Hong Kong's. (Triumphal Palace, Elite and Ocean Star apparently aren't serious enough for inclusion.)

As for Thai, Michelin includes Cholada, Saladang Song and Talesai. It's enough to make you cry.

The book is filled with errors (Monte Alban, it tells us, is Spanish for "white mountain"), omissions (if you're going to give Spago two stars, it might be worth mentioning that the chef is Lee Hefter) and weirdnesses (Bar Marmont but not Chateau Marmont).

So, ye chefs who are fretting because you didn't get the stars you feel you deserve, relax. Once L.A.'s food lovers get their hands on the red book in question, it's hard to imagine they'll take it seriously.

Michelin Guide Los Angeles 2008, available in bookstores beginning Wednesday, $14.95.

-- Leslie Brenner

Biodynamic wine forum

Biodynamic viticulture is oh-so-cool in California right now. It's ultra-organic, mildly metaphysical and full of buzz that helps sell the wine. And it might just be for real. I've been tasting biodynamic wines from Alsace, Alto Adige and Burgundy, European regions where the holistic approach to making wine is firmly established, and many of the wines have a vibrancy that can be almost electric.

At last Friday's Biodynamics Forum "Biodynamics in American Wine" at the Presidio Officers Club in San Francisco, more than 300 members of the press and wine industry insiders gathered to listen to a keynote panel of long-standing believers in biodynamics, including viticultural consultant Alan York (pictured); Paul Dolan, Mendocino Wine Co.; Katrina Fetzer, Ceago; Mike Benziger, Benziger; Doug Tunnell, Brickhouse Wines; and Dave Koball, Bonterra Vineyards. The panelists are united in their belief that for the U.S. biodynamic movement to gain credibilty, vintners need to move from experimentation to certification by Demeter, the international organization that has established standards for biodynamic farming. The movement's often faith-based practices -- yes, this is the group that plants cow horns filled with manure and tends vineyards according to the phases of the moon -- are difficult to follow in the disciplined manner dictated by Demeter. In other words, it's a lot easier to talk about biodynamic viticultural than to practice it. Which brings me to the last person to join the panel, Randall Grahm, president of Bonny Doon Vineyard. In his inimitably charming way, Grahm added his thoughts on how biodynamics enhances the expression of terroir in wine. The problem is that he's been talking about biodynamics and the importance of terroir for years ... and he hasn't practiced many of the things he's been preaching. In the last year, though, he's changed his vineyard practices to hew closer to what he says. And, yes, he says, certification by Demeter is the goal.

-- Corie Brown

Photo by M.J. Wickham

Muffin tricks

Pastry chefs have a lot of very cool tricks, and sometimes it's comforting to learn the little ones, the simpler techniques that don't require professional kitchens and obscure cooking tools. Thanks to former Campanile pastry chef Kim Boyce, I've been baking a lot of muffins lately -- and thinking about how Boyce uses whole grains to improve both their flavors and health benefits. So this morning I made the raspberry-chocolate muffins from Alice Medrich's new cookbook, a book I brought home after Betty Hallock gave it great reviews. Whole wheat flour, fresh fruit -- and chocolate's healthy, right? (Especially chunks of 70% Valrhona.) But I'd run out of whole wheat flour. So instead I used unbleached white flour and added a generous dose of wheat germ -- a trick I'd learned from Nancy Silverton, Boyce's former boss. Medrich's muffin recipe is a pretty simple one, but her suggestion for the raspberries was one I'd never tried. Instead of folding fresh raspberries into the batter, which is what you'd expect, she has you freeze the berries first. This incredibly simple trick solves two problems simultaneously: It keeps the juice of the berries from bleeding into the batter, and it also prevents the muffins from getting too mushy when you bake them. So when you add the numbers, the muffins took 5 minutes to mix, 15 minutes to bake, and three pastry chefs to bring them together. Oh, and two people ate six of them in under 10 minutes.

"Pure Dessert" by Alice Medrich (Artisan).

-- Amy Scattergood

Photo by Amy Scattergood

Luckytown

We're so lucky to live in L.A. Whatever high-end dining rooms Michelin decides to sanctify with stars (which will become clear next week, when the first L.A. and Las Vegas guides will be published), it's hard to understand this town as a food lover unless you live here. There's deliciousness around every corner, from the carnitas on the taco truck to the big bowl of pho in the strip mall.

Take lunch, if you work downtown. Corie Brown and I decided to grab a quick bite of dim sum at Ocean Seafood -- just a quick bite.

Here's what we got. A big plate of the most beautiful baby-baby bok choy. Delicate scallop dumplings with transparent pink skin. A bowl of soup that was almost completely taken up with a ruffled dumpling filled with seafood and vegetables. Fantastic BBQ duck. I won't even tell you what else because there were just the two of us. (OK, we brought plenty of stuff back to the office.)

So what if Michelin decides nothing here is worthy of three stars. We can eat like royalty here, every day of the week.

Ocean Seafood, 750 N. Hill St., Los Angeles, (213) 687-3088.

-- Leslie Brenner

Photos by Leslie Brenner

Silverlake Wine face-lift

The action at Silverlake Wine has been on a three-day hiatus while the store gets a long-planned face-lift; it will reopen Thursday. I stopped by yesterday and found co-owner George Cossette rushing to finish the work. Expanding to 2,000 square feet, Cossette says, will allow him to enlarge his portfolio of wines by a third and begin offering a broad range of spirits, including single malt Scotches, small-batch bourbons, aperitifs and digestifs. But initially, it'll just be the American and French wine selections that will be expanded. “They are our bestsellers,” Cossette says. “We’ll be able to have more depth, a broader selection of all of the major regions of France, particularly in the $55-to-$75 range, a midrange of wines that we didn’t have room to handle before.”

The best news for the regulars at Silverlake’s Sunday wine tastings is the expanded tasting bar. It now stretches down the side of the store, three times the length it was before and long enough to handle a crowd. When Cossette and partners Randy Clement and April Langford host their first tasting in the remodeled store this Thursday (5 to 9 p.m.), the shelves won’t be completely stocked and the paint may still be wet. Still, they are eager to toast a future with more elbowroom … and more wines.

Silverlake Wine, 2395 Glendale Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 662-9024.

-- Corie Brown

Photo by Corie Brown

Backstage at the L.A. Times Food section

In the Test Kitchen here at the L.A. Times downtown, we test all the recipes that appear in the Food section, and most of them we also shoot -- in the adjacent photo studio. The shoot for today's cover story by Betty Hallock on plateaux de fruits de mer -- multitiered seafood platters -- was one of the most challenging we've done in a long time. For the cover, we weren't sure whether we'd use a photo of one of the beautiful plateaux showing up in L.A. restaurants lately, such as those at Comme Ça or Water Grill.

But we knew that the seafood we assembled and prepared for our plateaux-to-make-at-home (you can find the recipe in the story at latimes.com) was pretty spectacular-looking, so we were hopeful we'd get a great shot.

It was tricky because we had to cover big platters with crushed ice, lay out all the prepared seafood, style the platters, stack one atop the other, and photograph it before the ice melted. We didn't want to shuck the oysters or clams too long in advance, or they wouldn't look great; ditto the sea urchin, which we wanted to look pristine.

Although Test Kitchen director Donna Deane had some previous experience wrestling with live sea urchins, neither Betty Hallock nor recipe tester Noelle Carter nor I did, and we were eager to see how it was done. Photographer Carlos Chavez, who did the cover shoot, had plenty of experience with them -- he loves to pick them up to eat at home ("with salsa," he said; "they're amazing).

Noelle, who spent three months in New Orleans, much of it shucking and eating oysters, shucked all the oysters and clams for the photo (then later taught me how -- I'd long been wanting to learn). She had already cooked the lobster, shrimp, crab, periwinkles, cockles and mussels in court bouillon and chilled them, and dressed the mussels, made the sauces, etc. She and Donna split the lobsters and cracked the crab and we arranged it all on the ice, and put it in the fridge.

Then Donna prepped the sea urchins -- there were three of them waving their quills around gently. Using a knife, then kitchen shears, she cut a circle out of the top of one. It was filled with horrible-looking liquid and other icky stuff -- then Carlos jumped in. He showed us how to pour out the liquid, discard the black parts, and gently pull the sections of roe off the inside of the shell, keeping them intact. I tasted one -- and though I've eaten uni in some of the best restaurants in Japan, this was really something special -- so unbelievably fresh and sweet. Spectacular. It's one of the great treats in life. Donna prepped the prettiest one; we rinsed it out and filled it with crushed ice, and laid the roe on top. We placed it smack in the center of the top tier.

Then quickly, we brought the two trays into the studio and stacked one on the other, using a stand like you'd see for placing a pizza on a table. Carlos, who had lighted the spot he'd be shooting beforehand -- a beige tablecloth laid on the floor -- started shooting. He could see the shots instantly on his computer, so we started rearranging the plateau a bit, filling in here and there with more oysters, making a pretty sea snail more prominent, moving some of the clams. He shot some more, but the tablecloth showed wrinkles, so we got down on the floor and pulled it tight. And he shot some more. Another touch to the plateau here and there, and more shooting, and what Carlos got was so spectacular we decided to use it for the cover. (Stephen Osman later shot a step-by-step of Donna preparing the urchin; you can find that online, with other step-by-steps, in the story.)

There was nothing left to do -- except eat all that wonderful seafood.

-- Leslie Brenner

Photos by Leslie Brenner (the amateurish ones), Carlos Chavez (the professional one you see last) and Stephen Osman (the professional one of the uni)

Whole Foods Pasadena

The new Whole Foods Market in Pasadena doesn't officially open its doors until 9 a.m. tomorrow, but here's a sneak preview. Today the 76,700-square-foot space was filled with workers unpacking boxes and firing up the nut and coffee roasters, the donut makers, the tortilla machines and the pizza oven and getting the chocolate fountains working. Yes, chocolate fountains: There will be three, each bubbling Scharffen Berger white, dark or milk chocolate. 

There's also an upstairs food court with a shwarma bar, a hot and cold dessert bar, sushi and gelato bars -- and a wine and tapas lounge that will feature daily wine tastings. With squishy couches in the wine bar, a massage room, free wireless Internet and parking for 300 in the underground garage, you might do your shopping -- and then be temped to move right in.

The new store is the biggest Whole Foods west of the Rockies and the only one climbing two stories in the Southern Pacific region. The Pasadena foothills location gets much of its height and light from its previous incarnation as a train station. Starting tomorrow, it'll probably get as much traffic.

Whole Foods Market, 465 S. Arroyo Parkway, Pasadena, (626) 204-2266. Wednesday, Nov. 7, open 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.; after opening day, open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.

-- Amy Scattergood

Photos by Amy Scattergood

Dixie reborn

One casualty of Hurricane Katrina was New Orleans' beloved Dixie beer. After the storm, the 100-year-old Dixie brewery was under water for a full three weeks, a complete loss. A new brewery is being built on the site, but it won't be functional for at least a year and a half.

However, Dixie is back in a small way, because its brewmaster is making Dixie Lager, Jazz Amber Light and Voodoo Blackened Lager at a contract brewery in Wisconsin. A shipment of Dixie brews was delivered to California around Halloween, so you might see some at the occasional store.

Or maybe not. They tend to get snatched up because there's not much Dixie to go around. The first post-Katrina shipment went to Louisiana, California and four other states; another nine states will get a delivery in mid-November, and the rest of the country will just have to wait 'til January.

Dixie Lager, Dixie Jazz Amber Light and Dixie Voodoo Blackened Lager, $8.99-$10.95 per six-pack, at Whole Foods Markets (Brentwood and Woodland Hills), Fountain Liquor in West Hollywood and Galco's Old World Grocery in Highland Park.

-- Charles Perry

Japanese maids with yuzu spray

The Royal/T cafe in the Royal/T gallery-retail space isn't open yet, but the website describes it as "L.A.'s first Japanese-style maid cafe" (as in all the servers are dressed as maids ... those crazy Japanese!).

The maids (and a couple of man-aides) were making the rounds in the high-ceilinged, lofty-industrial Culver City space, scheduled to open next month. The preview exhibition by New York collector Susan Hancock included pieces from art stars such as Cecily Brown, Tracey Emin, Yayoi Kusama and Takashi Murakami. Tray-passed goodies included fruit salad on a stick spritzed with yuzu spray à la minute, tricolor tomato soup and little paper cups of Japanese curry.  A grassy knoll set up in the cafe space was covered with sweets from Jin Patisserie; every time someone picked up a fruit tart or green tea petit four, a maid was on hand to immediately replace it. Overlooking the cafe area was a giant Murakami stuffed animal. Tiny treats, big art.   

Royal/T, set to open December, 8910 Washington Blvd., Culver City.

-- Betty Hallock

Photos by Betty Hallock

Can a technique be life-changing?

We think so! In any case, Russ Parsons writes in his "The California Cook" column this week that he's "shocked" by how terrific he finds the results when he roasts pork tenderloin -- or fingerling potatoes or California spiny lobsters or whole Tai snapper in a coating of salt. Want to grill him on how to do it? Or what else he has salt-roasted and loved? Or even what he's planning to make for Thanksgiving dinner? Join him for a live chat today at 1 p.m. at latimes.com.

-- Leslie Brenner

Photo by Mel Melcon

California spiny lobsters

Oops! In Russ Parsons' story this week, "Salt-roasting: It's white magic," we neglected to include a list of where you can buy California spiny lobsters. When they're in season (now through mid-March), the following seafood markets usually carry them (it's best to call ahead to check):

99 Ranch Markets (various locations)

Fish King, 722 N. Glendale Ave., Glendale, (818) 244-2161

Santa Monica Seafood, 1205 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 393-5244

Los Angeles Fish Company, 420 Stanford Ave., Los Angeles, (213) 629-1213

Oceanside Seafood, Redondo Pier, 100-F Fisherman's Wharf, Redondo Beach, (310) 376-2244

Pearson's Port, 100 E. Coast Highway, Newport Beach, (949) 675-6771

Also, select Bristol Farms and Gelson's markets will order them for you.

-- Leslie Brenner

Photo by Carlos Chavez