Hervé This in the house

Hervé This, the French physical chemist (at Paris' Institute National de la Récherche Agronomique) and co-founder of Molecular Gastronomy, is in town promoting his latest book, "Kitchen Mysteries." Earlier this week, This held court at the California School of Culinary Arts in Pasadena, where enthralled students watched This play with eggs.  (Molecular gastronomists love eggs.)  Here he is making a foam, from an egg white, sugar and orange juice, which he later put into a microwave and fed to a student in the front row.

In heavily accented English, This gave a PowerPoint demonstration (lively, endearing, often difficult to understand) that included a diagram of Homer's Odyssey, slides showing shallot cells, pictures of Grant Achatz's food, and a formula for Faraday of Lobster -- ((G + S1 + O)/W)/S2, in which S2 equals foam, or at least I think it does.  This told his audience that he hates whipping eggs, that people should never play with liquid nitrogen without wearing safety "spectacles" (a drop will blind you), and that he does not "collaborate" with Michelin-3-star French chef Pierre Gagnaire.  "We go to the bar, we discuss," said This.  "If Pierre does not cook, he is sad."  This also urged students to go to Gagnaire's website, to which This posts a "new idea" monthly.  (FYI: Both site and ideas are in French.)  This ended his presentation with a rousing, if slightly impenetrable, explanation of Culinary Constructivism, the successor movement to Molecular Gastronomy.  "I long for the lab!" he concluded.  Maybe so, but he looked like he was having quite a bit of fun in CSCA's Lab 3 too.

"Kitchen Mysteries: Revealing the Science of Cooking"  (2007), Columbia University Press.

-- Amy Scattergood

Photo by Amy Scattergood

Pickle pop

So this outfit in Texas makes frozen tubes of dill pickle juice you can squeeze out and eat like popsicles. Or you could let them thaw out and down them as shooters. Whatever floats your tonsils.

PickleSickles, as they're called, sound pretty crazy, but the maker claims they're high in fiber, vitamin A and various minerals. Either because of the health claims or in acknowledgment of the well-known kid taste for extreme sour flavors, the USDA has approved them for public school consumption.

What do they taste like? Exactly what you think: a frozen pickle. Personally, I doubt I'd ever suck on a PickleSickle just because it was a hot day, but I've found they go fine with a barbecued pork sandwich and I expect they'd also work with anything else that usually comes with a pickle.

They're a pretty recherche product around here, but you can order them online (they come thawed and you freeze them yourself), 16 for $17.95.

-- Charles Perry

Photo by Glenn Koenig

Diminutive cakes

I'm having a small-cake moment. In the past couple of days I've had a lot of little cakes, like the individual cakes that pastry chef Elizabeth Belkind (formerly of Grace and Campanile) has created for Cake Monkey, the bakery she launched with her partner, Lisa Olin, from a commercial kitchen (they're currently looking for a retail space).

Belkind makes individual layer cakes -- dense, moist cake (there's brown butter and buttermilk in the batter) with, for the most part, plenty of buttercream frosting. But the favorite around here is her lemon custard cake with huckleberries that's frosted with an Italian meringue (or "toasted marshmallow frosting"). The texture of the meringue is fantastic -- light and smooth and creamy -- and the combination of lemon and huckleberries is dreamy.

And then there are the petit fours from Valerie. Again, the lemon cake is a winner: four layers of lemon cake with layers of tart lemon ganache in between, finished with white chocolate.

Cake Monkey, see website; Valerie, 3360 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, (888) 706-1408.    

-- Betty Hallock

Photos by Betty Hallock

Fante's Kitchen Wares online

Trolling the Web for kitchen gadgets is an occupational hazard around here. Sometimes it's vaguely disappointing; other times you find truly amazing things. A few weeks ago, while looking for bannetons, I came across the website for Fante's Kitchen Wares Shop in Philadelphia. Not only did the 102-year-old company, which has a brick-and-mortar shop in Philadelphia's historic Italian Market, have a terrific and reasonably priced selection of the often difficult-to-find cane baking baskets, it had about 5,000 other things too. 

Can't find escargot utensils at your neighborhood kitchen store?  Fante's has them, along with sourdough starter, beechwood butter paddle sets from Slovenia, marble pastry boards, truffle shavers and hammered copper Turkish coffee pots (for $16.99), complete with instructions on how to make the intense brew. In fact, the site is jammed with history, recipes, descriptions and how-to illustrations.  Need replacement gaskets for your Bellman Espresso maker? Here they are, along with a hand-drawn parts list. Browse for charlotte molds and get a history of the dessert. And underneath the gorgeous photos of that solid brass duck press (a $1,559.99 impulse buy, maybe, since the copper Mongolian fire pots are currently out of stock) read a list of "fun duck facts." There are also links to foodie websites and publications, plus handy links to housewares manufacturers. 

The original Fante family sold the company in 1980 to the Giovannucci family, which took the store online in 1999. Nick Giovannucci, the company's vice president, says they get a lot of their product ideas from their customers: "Sometimes it's a letter from a customer, sometimes it's research, sometimes customers come in who have relatives overseas ... it's the people we know."  As for the stories on the website, Giovannucci says people like information. "There's a lot of interesting stuff," he noted.  A beautiful understatement.

Fante's Kitchen Wares Shop, 1006 S. Ninth St., Philadelphia 

-- Amy Scattergood

Photo by Amy Scattergood

Napkins

It’s an hour before dinner and I’m just about to go downstairs and do my meditation: ironing napkins. If my mother heard about it, she’d laugh like crazy. As a kid, I used to rail against having to iron my dad’s handkerchiefs and shirts. Why couldn’t he do it? I’d complain, wanting to be outside, anywhere but stuck in a gloomy room maneuvering the point of the iron into collar corners. My mother, I guess, didn’t like the task much, either, and had foisted it off on me.

I still don’t iron much. Just my napkins. But somehow I find the act of smoothing those cloth squares with the hot iron oddly soothing. I’m not a perfectionist about it. Not at all. I pick the napkins up at flea markets or brocantes (junk stores) when I’m in France. One set I bought in Alsace at least 20 years ago and I’m still using them.

At home, we always used paper napkins. We might have had one set of cloth ones my mother trotted out with her silver on special occasions, i.e., Thanksgiving and Christmas. But, inspired by my friend Mary who uses beautiful hand-embroidered napkins for everyday, I now use mine all the time. If you wash them the next day, most of the stains come right out. Mary, though, sticks hers in a bucket of Biz the night before. Simple. And such a daily pleasure.
-- S. Irene Virbila

Breakfast at Akasha

Anyone who thinks that vegan pastry is a contradiction in terms should try breakfast at Akasha, the new Culver City restaurant that opened last Tuesday. Dinner is up and running, lunch is coming in two weeks; in the meantime, Akasha's bakery opens at 7 a.m. every day except Sunday.  Chef-owner Akasha Richmond creates the Asian-style shortribs and wild pepper scallops with black rice risotto on the dinner menu, but the bakery is pastry chef Verite Mazzola's domaine. 

Culver City is familiar territory for Mazzola -- before a stint at the Huntley, she did the desserts at Ford's Filling Station, which is only a scone's throw (sorry) down the street. Akasha is in the historic Hull Building; after a lengthy redesign, the space now sports high ceilings, exposed brick-and-iron walls and enormous arched windows that provide the generous lighting for Mazzola's trays of goodies: vegan rustic apple tarts made with spelt, goji-mango-granola cookies, lavender shortbread cookies, vegan Meyer lemon scones, house-made poppyseed bagels, individual pumpkin-seed tea cakes. Everything is organic; many pastries are vegan and some are even gluten-free. And if you're not a morning person, you can always order Mazzola's crème brûlée with confit kumquats for dessert.

Akasha Restaurant Bar and Bakery, 9543 Culver Blvd., Culver City;  (310) 845-1700.

-- Amy Scattergood

Photo by Amy Scattergood

Miner's lettuce

At the Wednesday Santa Monica farmers market last week, under a low marine layer that made everyone clutch their coffee cups that much tighter, James Birch of Florabella Farms had an overflowing crate of gorgeous greens sitting out on his table. The greens were next to a small mountain of breakfast and plum radishes and a thatch of rapini -- the stinging nettles had been snapped up by chefs earlier -- and were, at least to me, quite unidentifiable. They looked like a particularly verdant and fleshy kind of nasturtium.

"It's miner's lettuce," explained Birch. The plant, which is in the purslane family, was named for the Sierra Nevada gold miners who used to eat it in the early spring, when it finally appeared after the difficult winters, to prevent scurvy.

It's gorgeous stuff, but what to do with it?  A few stalls down, Campanile chef Mark Peel -- who had just picked some up from Birch -- supplied the answer. A salad, said Peel, of miner's lettuce, toasted and crushed walnuts, crumbled Stilton cheese, a simple lemon-honey-mustard vinaigrette and some snipped chives. "Five ingredients, 10 minutes," pronounced Peel.  Well, five unless you count the vinaigrette ingredients, he allowed, but still, that's pretty simple.  It was. Utterly delicious and very pretty too (see the picture at left). Birch has been bringing miner's lettuce to the Wednesday and Saturday Santa Monica markets every spring for years. "As long as we keep getting some rain, it'll keep going for the next month or so," said Birch. "This is the kind of weather it likes a lot."

Miner's lettuce, $5 per lb. from Florabella Farms.

-- Amy Scattergood

Photos by Amy Scattergood

Note from Barcelona Climate Change and Wine Conference

It's been two years since the first Climate Change and Wine Conference, and as the second conference -- held, like the first, in Barcelona -- got started Friday morning, it was clear that as far as global warming issues relating to winemaking, two years is a lifetime.

The 2006 gathering of 70 was dominated by a handful of hard-core scientists eagerly making the case that Earth is warming. The audience was skeptical. Today's conference attracted 350 winemakers, wine marketers, wine consultants and, yes, a handful of scientists. (Program details at http://www.cambioclimaticoyvino.com/eng/index.php.) Everyone is quick to say it's a shame the world is warming. But not everyone thinks it is a bad thing for wine. The influx of sponsorship money means some of the sessions are devoted to companies with little to add to the discussion but lots to gain by an association with the "green wine" movement. And there are folks here, including international wine consultant Michel Rolland, who declare global warming to be a gift from Bacchus. Picking through the hype to find the substance can be tricky.

An early takeaway was a real estate tip from Dr. Richard Smart, a leading viticultural authority from Australia. The smart money, he said, is betting on China. Warming temperatures have brought land just north of Bejing into play as a viticultural zone. "China is lucky," he says. "The warming temperatures are opening up new regions." Also on Smart's viticultural real estate tip list in a warming world: Chile, Argentina, Tasmania and New Zealand. The Southern Hemisphere is dominated by oceans, which mitigate the effects of global warming, he says. These places down under won't suffer the temperature shifts that could make life difficult in more established wine regions in the Northern Hemisphere. In each of these regions, it is possible to plant vineyards at elevations 100 meters higher than current plantings. Or they have cool coastal vineyard regions or the ability to move their viticultural zones south, toward Antarctica.

In California, our booming wine business is going to be fighting for a foothold in an ever narrowing slice of the coast. Ouch.

-- Corie Brown

Village coffee from Yemen

Yemen coffee has been described as the wild game of coffee -- you never now what you're going to get. No two beans in a sack may taste the same.

The problem is the disorganization of the coffee market in Yemen. Small farmers in remote mountain villages haul a few sacks of beans to small brokers by donkey, and they in turn sell the coffee to bigger brokers in Sana, who sell it abroad. As a result, beans from various places, which might have distinctive flavors, automatically get mingled.

To many people, the dominant flavor in Yemen coffee is one usually described as winey. It's due to the fact that a lot of the farmers store sacks of coffee beans on the floor of their stone huts until they need some ready cash. It's actually a fermented flavor, and Yemen connoisseurs enjoy it. But the resulting coffee often has a somewhat thin and tart flavor.

Peet's Coffee has just started exploring the possibility of importing single-village coffee. Yemen coffee is always in short supply, and the few sacks of village Yemen imported by the Bay Area-based roaster got bought up right away. Fortunately, we had a taste of one of them, from Meqaab Village.

It was an eye-opener (no caffeine reference intended). Instead of being winey, it had moderately rich notes of prunes or perhaps raisins, with an authoritative smoky quality (thank that old Peet's dark roast), and it was smooth and round in the mouth. Maybe this is what the first Yemen coffees were like, when coffee first set the world on fire 300-odd years ago.

This was just an exploratory venture. Based on the Meqaab, though, there are great possibilities in well-handled Yemen coffee. If Peet's can get a regular supply, there may be village Yemens in our future.

-- Charles Perry

Winter, Seattle farmers markets

A recent Saturday in Seattle was cold enough to require hats, gloves and silk long johns, but we decided to go to the U-District outdoor farmers market anyway. In the summertime it’s spilling over with fresh flowers, berries and vegetables. In February, it’s smaller, but still has some terrific vendors selling some very different things than we find in L.A. One stand sells clams and oysters from up the coast. A sturdy woman in a hand-knit sweater offers various cuts of goat meat, but she’s not getting many takers.

The enticing smell of bacon frying wafts around the corner. I follow it to a stand with a sign for “wooly pigs.” A photo shows a rotund animal covered in a curly pelt. “It’s a special breed from Europe called Mangalitsa,” the man behind the counter tells me, “and we raise it just like they do there.”

The bacon is incredibly delicious, but what caught my eye is the sign for leaf lard for $2 a pound. Coming from these pigs, which are sold to top restaurants in Seattle, it’s got to be great. However, it only comes frozen in 10-pound bags. I could just picture myself trying to explain to an overzealous airport security officer why I was hauling 10 pounds of fat onto the plane with me, so I decided, no, not this time. I haven’t given up on the idea though. You can read about wooly pigs at Wooly Pigs founder Jess Thompson's blog.

For more on the farmers market (and Rolling Fire Pizza), see the jump.

-- S. Irene Virbila

Yummy caramels

When I was a kid, one of my favorite things to eat were those little cubes of caramel. They were so sticky it was hard to unwrap them and so impossibly sweet that the flavor seemed to linger for days. My tastes have changed, but I still love caramels. These days, my favorites are the ones from Béquet, a company in Boseman, Mont. They were recommended to me by Darrell Corti, the legendary Sacramento specialty foods grocer. When we went out to lunch recently, he stuck a handful in his pocket to take along for dessert.

And, of course, Darrell was right — as he almost always is. The dominant flavor of these caramels is not simply sweet, but that distinctive mixture of sweet and rich and just a little bitter from the caramelized sugar. They’re not at all sticky, but have a pleasantly chewy texture that gradually melts in your mouth.

According to their website, the company is run by Robin Béquet, who turned to caramels after the technology crash of 2001. They come in six flavors. I have tasted three of them and would be hard-pressed to pick a favorite. How can you go wrong with the Celtic sea salt? The maple has a wonderful perfume of syrup. And the chipotle has a surprising chile finish.

Béquet’s caramels are available locally at many Whole Foods stores. With this kind of candy, freshness is important, so you might ask how long they’ve been stocked. To be certain, you can order from the company’s website, or call Corti Bros. in Sacramento.

Béquet’s caramels, $6.95 for 4 ounces, plus shipping; from Whole Foods, the company website, or call Corti Bros. at (800) 509-3663.

-- Russ Parsons

Photo by Russ Parsons

Exotic lime 'vinegar'

If you have a lemon or lime tree, you'll be picking golden globes from your lawn for a couple of weeks longer. What do you do with them all? I have both kinds of tree, and I've always turned my citrus glut into Moroccan-style pickled lemons (or limes).

But a few months ago I read that in Oman they make a "vinegar" by adding salt to lime juice, sealing the jar and leaving it outdoors for a couple of weeks. I think it was Oman, anyway -- they grow a lot of limes there -- but somehow I can't find the reference anymore. Anyway, three weeks ago I filled a quart jar with lime juice and added half a cup of salt. It's been sitting in my kitchen since.

The result is rather exotic. It smells like a cross between pickled lemons and that old cocktail ingredient Rose's Lime Juice, without the pine-like aromas of the first and the strange artificiality of the second. 

So far I've tried splashing some on potato salad -- it turned that homey old standard into something mysteriously Asian. I've made a vinaigrette sauce with it; very successful, though I found you need to up the proportion of lime to oil to 3:4 to get the full flavor. (By the same token, mayonnaise is a bust, because the usual proportion of 1 tablespoon to 3/4 cup of oil completely drowns the lime vinegar aroma.)

It wouldn't work as a substitute for lime juice in most cocktails because of the detectable salt flavor, but as soon as I get a chance, I'm going to sprinkle some into tequila. I'll call it the Pickled Margarita.

-- Charles Perry

Photo by Charles Perry

Sourdough crepes for Super/Shrove Tuesday

Tomorrow really is Super Tuesday: Not only is it the date on which primaries or caucuses will be held in 24 states (including the crucial one here in California), but it's also Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), Shrove Tuesday, the last day before Lent.

In England and here in the U.S., many churches mark the day with pancake suppers; it's also a day when people who don't ordinarily make crepes will get out their battered French crepe pans to make the thin French pancakes. As I wrote a year ago in a story about crepes, the tradition was born from kitchen economy: Cooks made pancakes or crepes in order to use up eggs, butter and milk before Lent.

So when a reader -- who also happens to be a Lutheran minister -- e-mailed me his recipe for sourdough crepes after he'd read my recent sourdough starter story, it seemed perfect timing. Sourdough pancakes are fantastic, but I'd never thought of using starter in crepes. Remembering the buckwheat galettes that are traditional in Brittany, I took my white sourdough starter and fed it with buckwheat flour instead. Over the weekend as it grew and grew, the deep, nutty flavor of the buckwheat deepened; this morning, the starter was thick and alive, the texture of French buttercream. 

Pastor Dan Hooper's recipe calls for beating 4 eggs in a bowl, whisking in 1 1/2 cups of active starter, adding 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, then letting the mixture stand for an hour. I used my buckwheat starter, fed the night before with equal parts by weight of organic buckwheat flour and water; I also used fleur de sel for the salt.

While I was waiting for the batter to rest, I whipped up some Chantilly cream laced with lemon peel and apples sautéed until they caramelized (flambéed with Armagnac, finished with lemon juice and a little more fleur de sel). 

The crepes were amazing. The starter made the batter a fantastic consistency, creamy and elastic; and the flavor of the sourdough was a perfect match for the buckwheat. Because of this elasticity, the batter also swirled easily, effortlessly, on the crepe pan -- holding together without tearing, even though the batter was quite thin.  The edges cooked into lacy filigrees, and the center bubbled up almost immediately -- and this with buckwheat batter, which I've always had more difficulty with than batter made with AP flour. 

The crepes were yummy with the apples and cream, or try them with grated Gruyère cheese and thinly sliced ham. Personally, I'm going to cut mine into donkey and elephant shapes for a snack while the returns come in. Well, maybe not: Crepes are already shaped like Os, aren't they?

-- Amy Scattergood

Photos by Amy Scattergood

Update: Kirschner in at Wilshire

Andrew Kirschner, a veteran of such well-known Southern California restaurants as Joe’s, Chadwick, Table 8 and De Mori, will be taking over the kitchen at Wilshire Restaurant in Santa Monica, according to owner Steven Levine. Kirschner, who has worked at Wilshire as chef for the last eight months, steps into the position vacated by the restaurant’s executive chef, Chris Blobaum, when he resigned Friday.

Blobaum, who was a leader in sustainable cooking in the region, quit over a dispute with Levine about the direction the restaurant was going, saying, “He really wants a bar …five kinds of burgers, meatloaf … that would make him happy.”

In an e-mailed statement from the restaurant’s publicist, Levine praised Blobaum’s efforts and promised Wilshire’s menu would continue to feature “the same farmers market, organic and locally sourced dishes Wilshire has been known for, but presented in a less composed and more accessible style."

“It will also include some lower-priced items and have a more rustic sensibility.... The new menu will feature more familiar items such as seasonally inspired pot pies and meatloaf, as well as dishes such as rigatoni with house-made chorizo and a selection of prime, dry-aged steaks and classic sides.”

-- Russ Parsons

Chateau Margaux

If sampling premier cru Bordeaux is on your wish list, then you will want to check out two upcoming wine dinners featuring Paul Pontallier, managing director of Chateau Margaux, pouring wines from the chateau's cellar. On Saturday, March 15, Wally's Wine & Spirits is hosting a dinner at Spago in Beverly Hills for $1,299 a person. The next night, Sunday, March 16, K&L Wine Merchants is hosting a dinner at Masa's in San Francisco for $550 per person. Even with a plane ticket to SFO and a hotel stay, you'll spend less for the K&L dinner. So which is the, um, better value?

Masa and Spago are comparably stellar restaurants. K&L will pour nine wines, while Wally's will offer 10. Both retailers say they are pouring 3-ounce glasses of each wine. But the two retailers are not pouring the same wines. According to the invitation, K&L starts its evening with Laurent Perrier Grand Siecle, and dinner begins with three glasses of the chateau's second wine -- 2004 Pavillon Blanc and 2003 and 2004 Pavillon Rouge. During the course of dinner, K&L will serve 1983, 1989, 1999 and 2004 Chateau Margaux, finishing the meal with a glass of 1989 Chateau Doisy Vedrines Sauternes.

Wally's will skip the Champagne and start with four glasses of the chateau's second wine -- 2004 Pavillon Blanc and 2000, 2003 and 2005 Pavillon Rouge. And Wally's expands the list of Chateau Margaux vintages from four to six -- 1983, 1990, 1996, 2000, 2003 and 2005 -- not bothering with Sauternes. Not only is Wally's pouring more First Growth wines, but they are from more highly rated, expensive vintages.

It's silly to spend the extra money on the best-of-the-best Bordeaux at the Wally's dinner if you aren't intimately familiar with the chateau's wines. Tasting even mediocre vintages of Chateau Margaux is thrill enough for the uninitiated. The serious collector, however, will want nothing less than Wally's lineup of acclaimed vintages. While these folks probably have the same vintages in their own cellars, collectors hate to drink their own wines. Skyrocketing prices now paid at auction for First Growth Bordeaux make these wines far too valuable to drink.

-- Corie Brown

Blobaum out at Wilshire

  Christopher Blobaum, the talented Santa Monica chef who was one of Southern California's leaders in sustainable dining, has left Wilshire Restaurant. "I guess it’s just one of those things they call 'creative differences,' " says Blobaum, who had made a point of using farmers market produce, grass-fed beef and sustainable seafood, and even kept a compost tumbler on site and used a solar-powered dishwasher.

Blobaum's cooking was praised by Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila in a two-star review: "In a restaurant landscape where menus all start to read the same, Blobaum has developed some unique dishes," she wrote. However, she also observed that at the trendy restaurant, "the scene makers far outnumber the foodies" and that "trying to accommodate both must be positively crazy making."

In fact, the chef says, that is exactly what ended up being the root of the dispute between him and owner Steven Levine, a prominent Santa Monica cardiologist. "He really wants a bar," Blobaum says. "I'm more about finding great purveyors and keeping quality products coming in.

"I'm not bitter about what happened. It's just that I have my passion and what I want to do and he wanted something different. When it gets to that point, sometimes it’s better to just say, 'You know what, let’s not butt heads.' "

Representatives at Wilshire could not be reached for comment.

Blobaum says he has no immediate plans. "I have not decided what to do yet and [am] just now reaching out, hoping for a little down time," he wrote in an e-mail. "I have a 2 1/2-year-old daughter that would love to see more of me."

"I didn't take any vacation last year and only a week at the holidays this year to move," he elaborated over the phone. "I'm taking a little time off and just kind of putting out feelers now."

-- Russ Parsons

Photo by Lawrence K. Ho