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