'Fit for a King: The Merle Armitage Book of Food' at LACMA

LACMA's "California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way" exhibition opened at the beginning of this month. The study of midcentury modern design examines the work and influence of the state's native designers and transplants from other parts of the country as well as from Europe.

Among its 300 objects, including furniture, ceramics and fashion, are examples of midcentury modern graphic design with large, bold and experimental typefaces. Featured in the exhibition is Merle Armitage's Art Deco designed cookbook "Fit for a King: The Merle Armitage Book of Food." Armitage was a jack of many trades; in addition to being a theater impresario (he founded the Los Angeles Grand Opera Assn. and later managed the Philharmonic Auditorium), he was also an avant-garde book designer.

Published in 1939, the cookbook rejected standard hidebound rules of the field and used bold title spreads that served as poster-like introductions to Armitage's texts. Featured recipes were from the leading cultural figures of the day, and from Armitage's circle of artistic friends, including critic Lewis Mumford, designer Raymond Loewy and photographer Edward Weston. The book also features black-and-white portraits of vegetables, including a pepper, an artichoke (halved), kale (halved) and an eggplant, photographed by Weston.

The exhibition runs through June 3, 2012.

5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A., (323) 857-6000, lacma.org.

ALSO:

Japanese hot pot workshop in Venice

Gainsbourg and wine at the Pacific Design Center 

Food Events: Good Girl Dinette; Valerie Confections; Fig & Olive

-- Caitlin Keller

Bottom image: "Fit for a King: The Merle Armitage Book of Food." Credit: Designarchives.aiga.org

'Bought, Borrowed & Stolen': 20 years of Allegra McEvedy's secrets

Allegra McEvedy has been cooking professionally for more than 20 years, working her way through a batch of restaurants in London, most notably the River Café and the Cow, in addition to stints at American eateries Rubicon (now closed) and Jardinière in San Francisco, and New York's Tribeca Grill. The Cordon Bleu alumnus was chef-in-residence at the Guardian for three years, has had a column in the Evening Standard and a seasonal food slot on Robert Elms' show for BBC London.

McEvedy's fifth book "Bought, Borrowed & Stolen: Recipes and Knives from a Travelling Chef" comes out this month. The cookbook traces 20 years of recipes, not to mention knives, from food diaries recorded during her travels. The English chef discusses her favorite fall food, her recently released cookbook and the time she spent on the West Coast, with the Los Angeles Times:

Q: What knife, of your collection, is your current favorite or most used?

A: Well, as you probably can tell I have a bit of an emotional attachment to all of my knives, so although it's hard to choose a favorite I am finding myself reaching for a beautiful example of the craft that I bought in New York about five years ago. It's the younger sibling of one I picked up when I was working at Tribeca Grill in '96; both are made by Michael Moses Lishinsky [of Wildfire Cutlery]. All his knives are full tang meaning the metal extends all the way to the base of the handle. And being someone who embraces difference, I love that he uses heat-treated steel, as opposed to the more fashionable stainless. I also like the fact that it's one of only two knives in my 70 strong collection that I can trace back to the maker. My favorite job for this beauty, where it really excels, is smashing cloves of garlic; Mr. Lishinsky may have created the perfect shape of the flat of the blade with this one purpose in mind!

Peko Peko: A cookbook to support Japan's recovery

By design, the emblem atop the Peko Peko cookbook evokes a red teardrop. Or a drop of blood. Or perhaps a drip of water -- or the red disk at the center of Japan's national flag.

"It symbolizes all those things," said Rachael Hutchings of Corona, better known in the blogosphere as "La Fuji Mama." She co-created the cookbook along with fellow bloggers Stacie Billis ("One Hungry Mama") and Marc Matsumoto ("No Recipes") in the wake of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan. At least 25,000 are either confirmed or presumed dead.

Tamasin Day-Lewis on jewels and radishes

 

Tamasin Day-Lewis — English chef, food writer and sister of "There Will Be Blood" star Daniel Day-Lewis — and the design house of Hemmerle have collaborated to conceive "Delicious Jewels," a book that simultaneously explores the tastes, textures, shapes and bold colors of both jewelry making and cooking, two different but equally eminent art forms. [Updated 11 a.m. July 18: An earlier version of this post described Hemmerle as a publishing house.]

"Both rely on technique, long experience and tradition, purism and originality without pretentiousness," says Day-Lewis. She adds, "Elegant simplicity at best, both are beautiful to the eye and a joy to the senses."

In celebration of summer and its agricultural offerings, we've asked Day-Lewis to share her thoughts on the recently released book, her favorite California eats, and what she's cooking up this season:

Cookbook Watch: Times Food editor Russ Parsons on growing your own with Sunset

At this time of year, the thoughts of even the most urban Southern Californian begin to turn to matters agrarian and bucolic. And, as it has been for more than 100 years, Sunset magazine is here to help. With its blend of gardening, travel and cooking, Sunset is as much a part of the California ethos as Craftsman furniture, Case Study houses and beach barbecues. Though the magazine may seem a little breathless at times, the core of information is always solid.

And because part of being a Californian these days, even in the most urban settings, means a fascination with that thing we're calling "locavorism," it was no surprise last year when the magazine devoted several pages to a project it called "the one-block feast." But several pages weren't nearly enough to cover the subject and so now they've turned it into a book called, fittingly enough, "The One-Block Feast." And it's pretty terrific.

Written by Sunset food editor Margo True and the magazine staff, it lays out in sufficient detail what you need to know to keep bees or chickens, grow tomatoes or morels, and make your own wine. There's also a very active blog called "The One-Block Diet" that furthers the conversation.

Though it's not a cookbook, per se, there are plenty of recipes, and they are just what we've come to expect from this old friend: sophisticated but not off-puttingly so. Summer recommendations include things such as watermelon-chile salad and lemongrass custards. They're one step ahead of the simply trendy, but one step behind the bleeding edge.

Whether you plan to grow hops to brew your own beer or simply want to know some good zucchini varieties to plant in your vegetable garden, this is a terrific place to start.

ALSO:

The pleasures of verbena

Good food at LAX?

Vote for your favorite burger

--Russ Parsons

Cover photo courtesy of Sunset

Praising a foreign 'Plenty'

The American cookbook market tends to be somewhat chauvinistic. We like our own. This does not make us unique -- Julia Child was as little appreciated in England, relatively speaking, as Delia Smith is here. But every once in a great while a book crosses over, at least among a certain segment of the cookbook-buying public. The last great British cookbook I remember having to buy was Fergus Henderson's "Nose to Tail Eating." I paid quite a lot for it and then a couple of years later they brought out an American edition, called "The Whole Beast."

Yotam Ottolengthi's "Plenty" prompted a similar urge to buy, but fortunately this time I held off, because it's just been published in a very nice American edition by Chronicle. Ottolenghi is a vegetarian cook, but in the same manner as Deborah Madison -- that is, he's a very good cook who happens to cook vegetarian food.

I can't wait to dig in to "Plenty." The recipes are an intriguing mix of familiar and strange. Somehow, despite the fact that he uses some ingredients and techniques that aren't part of my usual kitchen habits, the dishes sound like exactly the kind of food I want to eat. Eggplant with buttermilk sauce; watercress, pistachio and orange blossom salad; yogurt flatbreads with barley and mushrooms.

Everything seems at once familiar and vaguely exotic. Foreign, but not so much.

"Plenty" by Yotam Ottolenghi, Chronicle Books, $35.

-- Russ Parsons

--Favas from S. Irene Virbila's garden

--How to store potatoes

 --Diana Kennedy tops Beard cookbook awards

Blessed be the biscuit bakers: Food editor Russ Parsons on 'Southern Biscuits'

When was the last time someone served you biscuits at dinner? When was the last time you made them yourself? That's what I thought; me neither. But a really well-made biscuit is one of the finest things you can put in your mouth. And, perhaps surprisingly, they're pretty easy to make –- at least going by the ingredient list -– flour, fat, leavener and liquid; that's about it.

But as with any simple recipe, the trick is in the doing. Biscuits are technique-heavy, and they repay extensive contemplation. There aren't many people who have been doing that longer than my old friend Nathalie Dupree. The queen of Southern cooking, she started teaching at Atlanta's flagship Rich's Department Store back in the 1970s. Many books and television shows later, she's better than ever.

Her latest entry, written with Cynthia Graubart and photographed by Rick McKee, is "Southern Biscuits," and if you think you can't fill a 200-page cookbook with recipes for biscuits, then you haven't met Ms. Dupree. They're all here, with countless variations. There are simple recipes like what the authors call "Sturdy Dorm Biscuits" that almost anyone should be able to put together. And there are more involved recipes such as beaten biscuits. Traditionally, these were smacked 1,001 times with a rolling pin to develop a smooth dough (old-time households had biscuit breaks to help out). Dupree does it in the food processor -– with breaks when the machine starts to overheat (or as she describes it "to whine or stagger on the board").

Best yet, there are all kinds of tips and step-by-step photos to get you through those anxious initial attempts. I know what my next cooking project is going to be.

"Southern Biscuits" by Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart, $21.99

-- Russ Parsons

Cookbook Watch: 'America's Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook'

You can't make a low-fat pie crust. It just won't work.

That's the sad conclusion that Jack Bishop came to during a two-year-long endeavor to put together "Healthy Family Cookbook," the first-ever healthy recipes cookbook to come out of America's Test Kitchen.

"We haven't really tackled the subject in such a comprehensive way, but there's huge interest in this area, we always get people asking, 'Why can't you guys do more healthy recipes?' " says Bishop, who served as editorial director on the project and will be signing copies of the book Thursday night at Barnes & Noble in Santa Monica.

It took a team of 10 people more than two years to test and develop the recipes. Some dishes are inspired by other recipes from America's Test Kitchen's archives, but all are original for the book, Bishop says. The team quickly found out that you can't just do the obvious -- slash the sugar or butter in half, eliminate the oil, or substitute whole wheat flour for white flour. The testing group also decided it would be cheating to simply scale back portion sizes. "We didn't take a biscuit recipe for 12, cut the portions in half, and then say 'Look, we cut the fat in these biscuits by 50%," Bishop said.

Cookbook Watch: Is this the "MasterChef" finale? Or just the beginning?

Tonight may be the finale to name America's best home chef -- the first-ever American "MasterChef." But this brand isn't going anywhere.

A second season of the hit Fox show is already in the works. There's a new companion cookbook featuring many of the most popular dishes of the series. And now there's a "MasterChef" iPhone app that features more than 45 how-to videos that offer step-by-step instructions covering everything from hard-boiling an egg to frenching a rack of lamb to making perfect mashed potatoes; 300 Master Class Pressure Test questions that challenge your culinary knowledge (with correct answers leading to more secret tips); and more than 40 exclusive recipes. Cost: $4.99.

So, as for the finale, which is going toe-to-toe with that other culinary contest, "Top Chef"...who's it going to be? Whitney? Lee? Sheetal? David? Some in the blogosphere have tried to read the tea leaves by poring over the new cookbook that accompanies the show: If Whitney has more recipes in the cookbook, does that mean...she won? Could be. Or maybe it just means Whitney has more recipes.

This softback cookbook has over 80 recipes -- all with photos, which is much appreciated -- from the contestants, judges and even guests. Highlights include: Sharone's hazelnut and pistachio cupcake with hazelnut cream cheese icing, Whitney's profiteroles with vanilla chantilly cream and caramelized bananas, and Iron Chef Cat Cora's halibut with sweet corn zabaglione and fava bean salad.

And for those MasterChefs in training, the cookbook has several handy primers -- must-have cookware, a guide to necessary spices -- plus tips for stocking your pantry. There are also wine notes by judge (and winemaker) Joe Bastianich, who urges you to get comfortable with making wine notes of your own: "Take tasting notes...the objective is to create a database of wine experiences that you can refer to when seeking out a specific wine or trying to evaluate a new one."

I would say that this cookbook would make a cook holiday stocking stuffer, but I doubt "MasterChef" fans will want to wait that long. 

You know what's the first recipe I looked for? Chef Graham Elliot's Texas-style chili. (Click here for the recipe.)

That's the dish that completely stumped contestants during an early "pressure challenge." Among the ingredients that the players couldn't seem to name: dark beer and cinnamon. I'm definitely putting this recipe on the "will make" list.

--Rene Lynch
Twitter / renelynch

Credit: "MasterChef" cookbook photography: Vanessa Stump

Cookbook Watch: 'Ready for Dessert' by David Lebovitz

I have worked at the Los Angeles Times for nearly 18 years. It’s a collegial, friendly, trustworthy place. I think nothing of walking away from my desk with my wallet, purse or other valuables in plain sight. And I have never had something stolen -- until now.

When I left work one night, there was a copy of David Lebovitz’s new cookbook, “Ready for Dessert,” sitting on my desk. Within a span of 12 or so hours, someone walked off with it (with my notes still in it).

And I have to say, I totally understand.

The cover photo by Maren Caruso alone is a show-stopper: A banana layer cake as it is being slathered with glossy mocha frosting. Perhaps the most beguiling element of the photo – at least to my eye -- is the smear of frosting on the back of the spatula. It’s as if someone had happened by and ran their finger down the length of it for a 'lil taste.

That’s the kind of kitchen I like to be in.