The elephants in the kitchen

Getting picky kids to eat their vegetables is an age-old parental problem.  Like age-old: Scientists say that kids are wired to prefer sweet, bland things since they weren't generally poisonous.  (Ironically, they are now.)  Three recent cookbooks, "Deceptively Delicious" by Jessica Seinfeld and "The Sneaky Chef" (and its sequel) by Missy Chase Lapine, suggest that the best way to solve this problem is not by talking to your kids or getting them to gradually expand their immature palates or cutting up carrots like palm trees (worked for us). No, the way to solve this is by sneaking purees of healthful ingredients into popular foods. Your 7-year-old hates broccoli and loves fried chicken nuggets?  Great, just hide the broccoli in the nuggets.   

The books have become bestsellers, maybe because of the legal battle they've generated (charges of "vegetable plagiarism," as Seinfeld's comedian husband termed it), or maybe because they've landed some high-profile play (Oprah!) or maybe because, well, it sounds like the perfect solution for health-conscious parents desperate for a way to get their kids to ingest all that magical spinach without force-feeding. 

But the larger implications (ethical, gastronomic) seem strangely, glaringly missing from the debate.  If you hide the broccoli in the chicken nuggets, or the cauliflower puree in the mac 'n' cheese, or the carrots and avocados in the chocolate fondue, aren't you telling your kids — or your partner, as Lapine's sequel is geared towards picky "husbands" — that it's OK to keep eating junk?  Secrecy is not something I want to teach my kids, nor is the nutritional value of a quarter-cup of avocado puree worth that price.

Sure, the recipes might taste good. Oprah sure seemed to love them, and Seinfeld's chocolate fondue was pretty yummy (albeit the consistency of brownie batter, faint notes of avocado), though how healthy it really is I don't know — there are no calorie or nutrient counts in these books. But I want my kids to learn to appreciate the Hass avocados I buy at the farmers market. Or to crunch into a raw carrot with pleasure instead of cooking it for 12 minutes and hiding it in an avalanche of cocoa powder and sugar. Kids don't appreciate being lied to. And they always find out. "I'd yell at you," said my 7-year-old daughter, Sophie, when I asked her what she'd do if I hid, oh, beet puree in her lasagna. "I'd give you a time-out." 

— Amy Scattergood

Photo credit: Collins ("Deceptively Delicious") and Running Press ("The Sneaky Chef")

Diana Kennedy at the Loteria Grill Hollywood

Last night chef-owner Jimmy Shaw opened the doors, if only for the evening, to his new Loteria Grill Hollywood to host a book signing for cookbook author Diana Kennedy. Kennedy's 1989 classic cookbook, "The Art of Mexican Cooking," has just been reprinted, and Shaw, a devoted fan of both book and author, cooked food from Kennedy's recipes for the party.

It was a nifty way to celebrate Kennedy while allowing a sneak peek inside the new restaurant, set to open on "June 10, 11, 12 -- somewhere in there," said Shaw. The sleek, bright spot, just west of the Geisha House on Hollywood Boulevard, was filled with fans of both chefs. Partygoers happily filled their plates with barbacoa, ensalada de nopalitos and higaditos de pollo en chipotle. Shaw cited the page number from the book for the last dish, and promised it would be on the new menu as a special. At the new restaurant, look for a menu very similar to the current one at the Farmers Market Loteria Grill, "only deeper", says Shaw. Kennedy won't still be there, unfortunately, when the doors officially open -- but she'll definitely be there in spirit.

Loteria Grill Hollywood, 6627 Hollywood Blvd.

-- Amy Scattergood

Photo by Amy Scattergood

'Six Thousand Years of Bread'

Sometimes you run across books that are so well-written or beautifully envisioned that they become obsessive reads; they suffer the trials of coffee stains and seawater; they change your life. Joyce and Beckett; Paula Wolfert and Claudia Roden; "Chez Panisse Cooking" and "The French Laundry Cookbook."  And, for me, a book that is far more obscure than any of those, but deserves not to be. 

"Six Thousand Years of Bread," by H.E. Jacob, is a magnificent survey of bread, from its pre-history (Homer's Greeks roasted barley, while the Scythians preferred oats, a food much disdained by St. Jerome; wheat, meanwhile, originated in Abyssinia) to its first incarnation as risen dough in Egypt (where bread became not only a principal food but a unit of measurement and currency) to the Christian transformative metaphor of bread to a Brothers Grimm fairy tale about a mother who baked shoes for her daughter. Gorgeously written, referencing history, economics, politics and literature, Jacob's book is astonishing not only for its breadth and scope, but for the fact that it was written at all.

Jacob, a German Jew, Viennese newspaper correspondent and author blacklisted by the Nazis, was sent to Dachau and then Buchenwald.  (His wife hid the pages of his unfinished manuscript.)  When he was released in 1939, Jacob fled to the U.S., where he lived in exile and finished his book -- much of it at the New York Public Library.  It was published, in English, in 1944.  A remarkable event, especially considering that the last chapter is about Hitler's methodology of organized famine.  In the penultimate chapter, Jacob describes the bread he and his fellow prisoners ate at Buchenwald, which wasn't really bread at all, but a mixture of potato flour, peas and sawdust: "The inside was the color of lead; the crust looked and tasted like iron.  We called it bread, in memoriam of the real bread we had formerly eaten.... We loved it."

Out of print for many years, the book was reprinted in 1970, and again in 1997 and 2007 -- thanks largely to the many bakers who loved Jacob's book as much as he loved bread.

"Six Thousand Years of Bread," by H.E. Jacob (Skyhorse Publishing; 2007). (The photo is of an earlier edition; Lyons Press, 1997.)  Available (by order) at Cook's Library and Vroman's Bookstore and from www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com and www.borders.com. 

-- Amy Scattergood

Photo by Amy Scattergood

Strunk, White and Ruhlman

With the Food Network going 24/7 and Culinary Chic so widespread that people are quitting real jobs to go to -- gasp -- culinary school (instead of film school or MFA poetry programs, like they used to), there's a greater need than ever to Define Terms in the food world.  Enter Michael Ruhlman, author of "The Soul of a Chef" and coauthor of "The French Laundry Cookbook," whose latest book, "The Elements of Cooking: Translating the Chef's Craft for Every Kitchen," is a reference guide based loosely on Strunk and White's classic grammar treatise, "The Elements of Style."

Ruhlman's book (the color of a school-zone pylon, which seems fitting) is a slim, condensed and workmanlike volume. After a 40-plus-page intro that alerts us to foundational kitchen wisdom (the importance of stock, say), the book yields a lovely catalog of culinary terms. It's far from a comprehensive list, and it's weighted heavily in favor of classic French cuisine. Ruhlman also has a rather mysterious operating principle: "time," "smell" and "oignon pique" are among the terms defined; "harissa" and "banneton" are not.  Whatever.  If you need a more exhaustive reference guide, you've probably already got Alan Davidson's "The Oxford Companion to Food" and "Larousse Gastronomique" weighing down the chaos of paperwork on your desk. 

What sets Ruhlman's book apart, and makes it worth adding to that stack on the desk, is his jaunty tone, the overall happy utility of his project -- and his prose. (You don't reference Strunk and White if you can't string together a well-wrought sentence.) What I missed, though, was more of the vehement humor that laces his blog. OK, we (and more specifically, the youthful Emeril-wannabes who populate cooking schools) can all profit by a lecture on the Importance of the Egg and more reminders of Thomas Keller's brilliance. But what about the grammar of the kitchen? How about the use of an independent clause, with or without a colon, or the use of "definite, specific, concrete language" when your sous chef has lost the shellfish tags or the saucier has broken the beurre blanc?  What I really wanted was a section like Chapter 4 in Strunk and White: "Words and Expressions Commonly Misused." 

Or maybe Ruhlman -- or Anthony Bourdain, come to think of it -- could just come up with a list like the one my editor once stuck to my computer screen on a yellow Post-it. I'll never use the word "bounty" again.

The Elements of Cooking, by Michael Ruhlman. (Scribner, 2007.)

-- Amy Scattergood

Photo by Amy Scattergood

Forever fishing

Remember the good old days when the only thing you needed to know when you were shopping for fish was “bright bulging eyes and firm flesh”? Today, you practically have to take a checklist along with you when you go to the market.

Which fish are endangered by overfishing, and according to whom? Which fish are dangerous to you because of mercury or other kinds of contamination? Sure, farm-raised salmon is renewable and cheap, but what about all of those claims that it is spoiling the ocean?

Thank goodness for Paul Johnson’s new book, “Fish Forever.” Certainly, no one has more credibility on the topic than Johnson. A onetime restaurant cook, he went into the fish business in 1979 at the urging of Alice Waters and now his Monterey Fish Market seems to supply half the restaurants in the Bay Area, including Chez Panisse, Zuni Café and the French Laundry — and that’s in addition to its retail outlet deep in the heart of Berkeley’s gourmet ghetto. Johnson is one of the few people in the fish business to have earned the respect of both the fishing industry and the environmentalists.

“Fish Forever” is at the same time a cookbook and a guidebook.

There are recipes and descriptions of cooking techniques, but there is also all the information you need to make informed choices when you go shopping for dinner. Perhaps the best example is the chapter on swordfish — a fish around which there always seems to be a controversy swirling.

Johnson first tells you how to choose (harpooned whenever possible, tight bloodline, flecks of fat), and lays out the facts on both the Atlantic and Pacific fisheries. (After being declared near collapse in 1998, by 2002 the Atlantic fishery had almost entirely recovered; Pacific stocks are believed to be healthy.)

Then he addresses concerns about mercury. (They apply to pregnant women and children only; occasional eating of swordfish presents little danger.) And he even addresses prickly issues of kosher law (a subject of some debate since swordfish have scales when young, but they disappear in maturity). Then he gets into the cooking (the belly is the best part; the spinal cord is considered a delicacy; scraps are cheap and perfect for brochettes) and recipes (grilled swordfish with caponata). It’s enough to make cooking fish fun again.

“Fish Forever” by Paul Johnson (Wiley, $34.95).

-- Russ Parsons

Fava fava fava

There are certain things -- odd kitchen implements or ingredients -- that I tend to pick up by a kind of culinary reflex, bring home and then don't use.  This is because I don't know what to do with them, or I haven't found the right recipe -- or the other ingredients for the recipe I do have.  Copper canelé tins, smoked black cardamom pods, mulberry molasses, a blissful Mason jar of prunes that have been soaking in Armagnac for upward of two years.  (That's going to be fun.)  And dried fava beans.  Lots of dried fava beans.

I have a bag of them that I picked up at a farmers market here last year, another that I brought back from a market in Seattle, and yet another bag that I found at a tiny corner grocery store in Paris' 4th arrondissement, two doors up from Eric Kayser's bakery in the Latin Quarter.  I brought them back, but hadn't found any recipe that called for them.  But then, a few weeks ago, Martha Rose Shulman's new cookbook, "Mediterranean Harvest," appeared on my desk.  It's a terrific book, containing over 500 recipes from Southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East.  So far I've started curing olives using her method, and have already put up about 10 pounds of preserved lemons. (She's got a great Sauces and Condiments section.)  And then, on Page 309, I found a recipe that called for dried favas. 

Shulman's recipe is simple: The favas are just simmered in salted water until mushy, then allowed to rest before you add a generous pour of olive oil.  Shulman says the warm purée, served with greens cooked with garlic (you can stir them into the purée), is a signature dish of Puglia.  If I'd known that (and how easy it all was), I'd have picked up even more bags of dried favas than I did.

"Mediterranean Harvest," by Martha Rose Shulman, $39.95 (Rodale Trade Books, 2007)

-- Amy Scattergood

Photo by Amy Scattergood

Mind wide open

Before there were food blogs, before there were blogs, period —heck, before there was even an Internet, there was John Thorne. He’s still around and, even today when the number of people writing personal essays about food has metastasized, there is nobody who does it better. For almost 25 years, he has published his work irregularly in a newsletter called Simple Food. (Newsletters, children, are what the self-published used before there were websites.) If you want to check it out for yourself, it is still going today and, almost as good, much of the best of his more recent work has been collected in “Mouth Wide Open,” published this month by North Point Press.

Thorne is a master of the deeply thought personal food essay — as opposed to the off-the-top-of-the-head rant so common today. He can take his affection for two ingredients as seemingly uninspiring as cod and potatoes (as he does in one of the essays collected in this book) and spin them into nearly 10,000 words that seamlessly weave history, cooking and literature into an altogether fascinating whole.

It must be said that Thorne is a better writer and eater than he is a cook. But actually that is one of the pleasures of reading him. He doesn’t propose himself a culinary authority; he’s just a guy who is hungry — for good food and good stories. And he manages to turn up both with regularity. Among the diverse topics collected in “Mouth” are bagna cauda, marmalade, beef kidneys and smoked kielbasa.

Thorne is nothing if not critical — in the best sort of way. He can be cranky, and to admire his writing is not always the same as agreeing with it. At this point I ought to confess that included in “Mouth” is an essay he wrote in 2001 that included references to me and to my first book “How to Read a French Fry.” He liked it, pretty much, I think, with certain reservations and suggested improvements. But coming from Thorne, that meant a lot.

"Mouth Wide Open,” by John Thorne, North Point Press, $26.

-- Russ Parsons

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

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

Padma's new cookbook

Now that "Top Chef" season is over, viewers with Padma withdrawal can pick up a copy of her just-published second cookbook, "Tangy Tart Hot & Sweet."   (Maybe the title came from the same people who dressed her in halter tops for the cooking show.)  The beautifully shot book has plenty of pix of the former model too, along with those of the actual food -- an appealingly international mix of recipes heavy on the Indian spices.  We all know Colicchio can cook, but I've always been curious about his costar; so I took the book home over the weekend and tried it out.

This recipe -- spiced Cornish game hens stuffed with bread, oranges and kumquats -- sounded most intriguing.  Especially as among the catalog of spices going into it was asafetida, an esoteric medieval powder made from gum resin whose name means, literally, "stinking resin."  (We booby-trapped knife kits with it in cooking school.)  The dish looked good -- after I cooked it 35 minutes longer than the recipe's muddled directions called for. (If I had followed directions, it would have been pretty raw.)  But the flavors were haphazard and overwhelming, the spices jammed together without any subtlety or coherence.  My kids loved a recipe for orange blossom waffles, though, and the hot and sweet grilled tilapia was quite good. The chai tea, however, was surprisingly weak, and a fresh mint chutney was an inarticulate mess of greenery rather than an identifiable condiment. 

The book has range and some interesting flavor profiles, but the mechanics don't work as well as they should. Sure, Padma's been busy, what with her TV show and her divorce proceedings. But if she didn't have time to test the recipes, she could have hired professional testers. Or here's an idea for a Quick Fire Challenge: You have 30 minutes to test my new book's recipes! Your time begins NOW.

"Tangy Tart Hot & Sweet: A World of Recipes for Every Day," by Padma Lakshmi, Weinstein Books, $34.95.

-- Amy Scattergood

Photo by Amy Scattergood

A wonderful 'Last Supper'

Melanie Dunea certainly gets this year’s “Silk Purse From a Sow’s Ear Award.” In fact, maybe they just ought to retire the thing in her honor. Dunea’s book “My Last Supper” takes one of the most hackneyed ideas possible — asking 50 great chefs from around the world what they'd like for their last meal — and turns it into a coffee table book that is not just gorgeously photographed but smart, funny and touching. This is a book that everyone who is fascinated by chefs and restaurants ought to own.

Most of the credit, it must be said, goes to Dunea’s photos, which are uncommonly sensitive. Somehow, she manages to capture the essence of the cooks, giving us real insight into their personalities. I love the picture of Jacques Pepin at a table of simple ingredients, looking like an elder statesman. And Gary Danko on a fainting couch surrounded by caviar and what appear to be drag queens. British chef Giorgio Locatelli looks like he’s in an ad for Prada’s mackerel store, and Daniel Boulud seems right at home on the steps of Versailles.

Some of the shots will even make you gasp. Gabrielle Hamilton was photographed nearly nude, breast-feeding her child — as primal an act of cooking as you can imagine. Anthony Bourdain is nude too, completely revealed but for one outsized, strategically placed beef bone. What makes this photo really work, though, is the slightly sheepish expression on his face — Bourdain is revealed as the smart kid who knows he can’t stop himself from being the class clown.

The text is based on a simple Q&A, which mainly shows what absolute control freaks most chefs are —they’ve got the last meal planned course by course with accompanying wines, where they’ll be held, who they’ll eat with, who’ll do the cooking and even what music will be playing. But some of them are nearly poetic. Michel Richard, captured in moody black and white, wants no music at his last supper: “Just the sound of the rain. When I was a kid, we used to play inside a big box carton, like it was a tent, until the rain destroyed the box.”

Of course, nothing matches Guy Savoy’s last words: “Dear Madam, I thank you for your note, and I am touched by your admiration. Nevertheless, I have a phobic rapport with death, and because of this, will never discuss my last meal! This returns me to my life’s philosophy: I talk about openings, not closings.”

"My Last Supper," by Melanie Dunea, Bloomsbury USA, $39.95, will be published Nov. 6.

-- Russ Parsons

Photo courtesy of Melanie Dunea / CPi / Bloomsbury USA

Go ask Russ

Well, these dishes look pretty good. But cooking through Alice Waters' new book, "The Art of Simple Cooking," posed a few problems for Russ Parsons, the California Cook. Oh, Russ ... ? What's the deal? That's Alice Waters you're talking about. Join Russ for a live chat today at 1 p.m. at latimes.com, and get it straight from the Parsons' mouth. He'll be happy to explain what snagged him up in the recipes, what he was expecting, why he was disappointed and which Chez Panisse cookbooks he prefers. If you ask him real nice, he might even tell you about some of his favorite Chez Panisse recipes, and talk you through making them.

-- Leslie Brenner

Photos by Carlos Chavez

The ultimate oyster guide

We’re finally to the months with Rs in them. Thank goodness. And just in time for oyster season is one of the most remarkable single-subject books to come along in a while: Rowan Jacobsen’s “A Geography of Oysters.” Jacobsen, a staff writer for Ed Behr’s The Art of Eating newsletter, covers oysters in exhaustive detail, but with writing so engaging and sprightly that reading about the briny darlings is almost as compulsive as eating them.

Whether you are a timid newcomer or a veteran slurper, this book will improve your oyster eating immeasurably. Jacobsen walks you through some of the oyster basics. This even includes a chapter on “What Kind of Oyster Eater Are You?” that analyzes your slurping style and then recommends specific oysters that are likely to please you (“Shrinking Violets” will probably prefer Beausoleils or Kumamotos; “Connoisseurs”  will be happier with Olympias and Totten Virginicas.) On a more serious note, he addresses issues of aquaculture and oysters and food safety. For a finale, per the title, he details more than 100 specific oysters, giving specifics on variety, growing area and even cultivator. In addition, Jacobsen has a website that shares not only some of the book’s highlights, but also a plethora of links for ordering oysters for yourself.

There may be no more pleasurable food than a raw oyster; there almost certainly is no better guide.

-- Russ Parsons

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

'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

Turkish coffee

The other day, badly in need of a good jolt of caffeine, I remembered a recipe for Turkish coffee from a great book I reviewed last year: Ana Sortun's "Spice" (HarperCollins, 2006).  So I found the coffee pot I'd brought back from Istanbul and made a batch in the Test Kitchen. Turkish coffee is fantastic stuff, brewed by repeatedly heating a mixture of finely ground coffee beans, water and sugar so that it rises up in the pot and then sinks back down. Sortun not only gives a recipe, but tells you how to read your fortune in the grounds too.  A pattern of dots means that you're spending too much money; a circle predicts good fortune; a leaf fortells new friendship.  I'm not really sure what this one meant -- maybe that there's a happy, dancing frog in my future. 

-- Amy Scattergood

Photo by Amy Scattergood

'Food Knit'

At lunchtime I like to walk over to Kinokuniya Bookstore in Little Tokyo and poke around in the food and fashion magazines and books. They also sell wonderful Japanese notebooks with smooth paper for fountain pens and erasers that look like miniature sushi. The other day I turned up a little book titled "Food Knit" (Toho Shuppan, $21) in the crafts section. It's mostly in Japanese with a few English subtitles. Doesn't matter, there's nothing to read. Just feast your eyes on these insanely intricate knitting projects -- a knitted hamburger with frilly mohair lettuce, a fruit tart with a fluted crust, a whole steamed fish, pasta with squid rings, bento boxes, dim sum and, my favorite, a tray of nigiri sushi with knitted nori and tiny faux salmon roe. It's not really a pattern book, though there are instructions (in Japanese) for a few simple items. 

Kinokuniya Bookstore, Weller Court, 123 Astronaut Ellison S. Onizuka St., Suite 205, Los Angeles, (213) 687-4480. 

-- S. Irene Virbila

Illustrations from "Food Knit"

'The Cheese Lover's Companion'

Just published, "The Cheese Lover's Companion" is one of my new favorite books, from first entry (Abbaye de Belloc) to last (Ziegenkase -- that's German for "goat cheese"). In between are entries for hundreds of cheeses and cheesemaking terms interspersed with occasional quotes from food luminaries and literary figures ("Never commit yourself to a cheese without having first examined it." -- T.S. Eliot).

Each cheese entry includes origin, milk, type, appearance, texture and flavor, followed by plenty of additional information: Constant Bliss is made with evening milk, Cashel Blue is made with milk from Friesian cows, and Sottocenere is not only mixed with bits of black truffle but has an ash coating blended with cinnamon, cloves, coriander, fennel, licorice and nutmeg.    

There are tips for cooking with cheese at the beginning of the book. In the back, I love the glossary of cheese descriptors such as "grassy", "mushroomy" -- though I wish there were even more. Indexes are arranged by country of origin, milk type (cow, water buffalo, etc.) or cheese type (semisoft, blue, pasta filata, etc.). One of its best features is the pronuncations. If you don't know how to say Vacherin Fribourgeois, it's [vash-RAN free-boor-ZHWAH].

-- Betty Hallock

Photo courtesy of William Morrow

Fried sage leaves

    I’ve always been a fan of "Pasta Fresca" and "Cucina Rustica," the two cookbooks KCRW "Good Food" host Evan Kleiman wrote with Viana La Place, so when I saw that La Place had written a new book called "My Italian Garden," I picked it up. My garden is running riot with everything Italian right now, and this wonderfully zesty compendium of simple dishes from the garden is just what I need. Flipping through the book, with recipes for barley soup with summer herbs, risotto with pink radicchio and golden beets, broccoli rabe with black olives and fresh bay leaves, I came across one for whole sage leaves in pastella.

The recipe called up a vision of a wonderful long-ago meal at the Montevertine wine estate in Tuscany when the soulful and erudite founder, Sergio Manetti, was still alive. Birds were roasting in the open fireplace. Good smells and the banging of pots came from the kitchen, and someone passed little plates of crisp, fried sage leaves with glasses of wine before we sat down to lunch at a long table in the garden.

Since I go out at least six nights a week, my refrigerator is often half empty. When someone shows up unexpectedly, I’m always casting about for something to serve with a glass of wine. I've got sage growing right outside the kitchen door, so why not try this?

Basically, you just pick some sage leaves (the bigger the better).  To make the pastella, or batter, add water to a little flour until it’s the consistency of cream. I had to experiment a little, starting with 1/4 cup of flour and adding a little more than 1/4 cup water. (La Place uses 2/3 cup flour to about 1 cup water, but I didn't want to make that much batter.) You want the batter to barely coat the leaves.

Pour olive oil into a small skillet to come a half-inch up the sides. Actually, I tried to get away with less, about a third of an inch in an 8-inch skillet, which is plenty big to fry four or five sage leaves at a time.

Heat the oil to hot, but not smoking, and dip several leaves in the batter, letting the excess run off. As you finish frying the leaves, La Place recommends keeping them warm in a 200-degree oven. Good idea, but I found myself gobbling up my test leaves so fast I didn’t need to do that.

Oh, also, don’t use your best extra-virgin olive oil for this. The olive oil you use for normal cooking, like the moderately priced Spanish brand I keep in a bottle with a pour spout near the stove, will do just fine. Don’t substitute canola or another oil: You really need the flavor of the olive oil.   

Cook each whole sage leaf until golden, picking it up with a slotted spoon. Drain on a paper towel, sprinkle with sea salt and serve hot, with a glass of Orvieto or Vermentino. Four sage leaves per person is about right.

"My Italian Garden," by Viana La Place, Broadway Books (2007), paper, $19.95.

-- S. Irene Virbila      
Photo by S. Irene Virbila

Faith's new bible

Italy is a country built on a spider web of connections. To get to the good stuff, you often have to know somebody — or at least know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody. For many Americans for many years, that first point of introduction has been Faith Willinger. And so when her friends Marvin and Judy Zeidler threw her a lawn party Sunday in honor of the publication of her new book, “Adventures of an Italian Food Lover,” several dozen of Southern California’s most ardent Italophiles turned out, including restaurateurs Nancy Silverton (at left in photo with Willinger) and Piero Selvaggio.

An American who has lived in Florence for more than 25 years, Willinger first came to national attention in 1989 with “Eating in Italy,” a food lover’s guide to some of the best restaurants, hotels, food producers and shops in that country's north. For many American lovers of Italian food, it became a kind of bible — I remember standing in line at a small pasticceria in Venice while a group of Americans in front of me ordered straight out of the book (in essence, “I’ll have what Faith is having”).

Willinger’s new book is a kind of tribute to her divine connectedness — as she puts it in her subtitle: “Recipes From 254 of My Very Best Friends.” In it, you’ll find spaghettini with swordfish ragù from Gigi Vianello and Momi di Momi in Venice, grilled steak from the poet butcher Dario Cecchini in Tuscany, and pasta and bean salad with celery pesto from Mario Avallone in Naples.

On the other hand, with friends like these, who needs recipes?

-- Russ Parsons

Photo by Russ Parsons

New beer guide for Southern California

Just what we've been needing: a detailed, up-to-date guide to the craft beer scene in Southern California. Or, as "The Beer Guppy's Guide to Southern California" describes itself, a "regional travel guide for the beer enthusiast."

Burbank-based author Jay Sheveck earns his nom de cerveza, the Beer Guppy -- he really seems to swim in beer. He's been chronicling the craft beer explosion since the early '90s, and he spent five years researching this guide. It lists 300 breweries, brewpubs and serious beer bars and liquor stores between Fresno and the Mexican border, plus southern Nevada, together with the product range, address, phone number, website, hours and a brief characterization of each. Icons show whether a brewery gives tours (with or without samples), whether a pub or tasting room has a beer garden, TVs, live music and pizza, and which places sell bottles and which sell kegs or growlers.

Sheveck celebrates home brew too, listing suppliers and clubs. There are even three pages of beer events, from the Cambria Chili Cook-Off, Car Show and Beer Tasting to the Tijuana International Beer Festival.

The 98-page magazine-format guide, which sells for $9.95, is as up-to-date as can be: Though it was published in June, it includes a couple of places that opened in May -- pretty fast turnaround for a reference work. It's on sale at www.beerguppy.com, Culver City Home Brewing Supply, the Draft Beer Store in Northridge, Hi-Time Wine Cellars in Costa Mesa, the Home Wine, Beer and Cheesemaking Shop in Woodland Hills, the Stuffed Sandwich in San Gabriel and, for some reason, the Holiday Inn in Burbank. It's also available on Amazon.

-- Charles Perry

'The Patience of the Spider'

I love mystery novels almost as much as I love food, but most often I find the marriage of the two troubling. So-called culinary mysteries, which usually seem to involve cats and cookie recipes as much as killers, usually fail both as mysteries and as cookbooks. There is the occasional exception, where good food actually has a sensible place in a good mystery, but it’s usually an exception that proves the rule. That’s because rather than being a main focus, food is best employed as a character-building device — much like the hero’s choice of women, music or (ahem) pets.

The way John Harvey’s Nottingham detective Charlie Resnick eats sloppy sandwiches by himself, leaning over the sink, listening to John Coltrane, tells you a lot about who he is. I also love the way Donna Leon’s Venetian hero, the redoubtable Commissario Guido Brunetti, salves his troubled mind with family dinners (though I can’t help but notice that his wife, Paola, a university professor, does most of the cooking).

But nobody does food in mystery like Andrea Camilleri. His Sicilian detective, Salvo Montalbano, while an admirable crime fighter, spends what to me seems an appropriate amount of time thinking about dinner — which is quite a bit. Whether it’s his housekeeper leaving his refrigerator stocked with casseroles of squid braised in their own ink, or the out-of-the-way trattoria he just happened to stumble across, Montalbano is a heroic eater.

Consider this excerpt from “The Patience of the Spider,” the most recent of the eight Montalbano books to be published in America.

“Signora Angila Zarco, a woman of few words, blonde to the point of looking washed out, served them cavatuna [a pasta shape, according to translator Stephen Sartarelli’s helpful gloss] in tomato sauce that were eminently respectable, followed by coniglio all’agrodolce — sweet-and-sour rabbit — from the day before. Now, preparing coniglio all'agrodolce is a complicated matter, because everything depends on the right proportion of vinegar to honey and on making the pieces of rabbit blend properly with the caponata in which it must cook. Signora Zarco clearly knew how to go about this, and for good measure had thrown in a sprinkling of toasted ground almonds over the whole thing. On top of this, it is well-known that the coniglio all-agrodolce you eat the day it is made is one thing, but when eaten the next day it is something else entirely, because it gains considerably in flavor and aroma. In short, Montalbano had a feast.”

For once in a murder mystery, a genre not generally known for inspiring the appetite (at least not for food), you can’t help wishing you were there.

-- Russ Parsons