'Godfather' cooking class at Ombra Ristorante

On Sunday, Feb. 12, Ombra Ristorante is hosting a "Godfather"-inspired cooking class taught by executive chef Michael Young. This class is designed with couples in mind (possible Valentine's Day gift, because what says love like mob warfare?). Participants will prepare a four-course meal including braciole (a filled slice of meat braised in a tomato sauce), meatballs and Sunday sauce, mostaccioli (a baked pasta dish) and Sicilian cannoli. In addition, students will receive a recipe packet, wooden spoon and 1 pound of dried pasta to help them re-create these dishes at home.

The class is $99 per person, or $169 per couple. Space is limited and reservations can be made by calling (818) 985-7337. Hopeless romantics and 1970s mobster movie fans welcome. 3737 Cahuenga Blvd., Studio City, (818) 985-7337, www.ombrala.com.

ALSO:

Royal Clayton's Pub to reopen in downtown LA

Vegan Super Bowl specials at Tony's Darts Away

Good Food Awards winner: Dandelion Chocolate

--Leah Rodrigues

twitter.com/ LeahRodrigues24

Photo: Chef Michael Young of Ombra Credit: Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times

Rome for Foodies now for iPhone, iPad and Android

Rome for Foodies, an app designed for both iPhone and iPad, is just out from food writer and Rome blogger Katie Parla. And at $3.99, it’s a steal compared to travel guides that may be already out of date by the time they’re published.

Parla, a food journalist and culinary historian who has contributed to 15 guidebooks, knows her territory and collects her favorite trattorie, wine bars, markets and more in Rome for Foodies. You don’t have to trawl through hundreds of entries: this is a curated list of 135 foodie-centric addresses (with phone numbers and websites as well). The brilliant thing about an app is that it can be easily updated to include the latest hot spots.

If you have your phone GPS turned on, hitting the button labeled nearby at the bottom of the screen will show what's nearby. But even if you're offline, you can still use the content and maps to navigate the city. 

Parla also includes itineraries and a top picks list for quick reference.

The app is also available for the Android at the odd price of $2.79.

For more information, check http://www.parlafood.com/rome-for-foodies.

ALSO:

Eat Florence, an app

Tar & Roses opens in Santa Monica

Good Food Awards winner: Dandelion Chocolate

-- S. Irene Virbila
Twitter.com/sirenevirbila

Photos: Screenshots from Rome for Foodies. Credit: Katie Parla.

International foodie spring flings

If you're thinking about traveling this spring -- and not by car -- here are a few international destinations to consider:

The world's largest cookbook fair will take place in Paris in the spring. "Ooh la la" is right. The Paris Cookbook Fair happens March 7 to 11 with the first three days set aside for professionals to gather, with the final two days opened to the public. The fair brings together cookbook devotees for book presentations, cooking demonstrations, cheese and wine tastings, food exhibitions and of course cookbook purchasing. For more information, check out www.cookbookfair.com.

The Mast Brothers, Rick and Michael, are heading to Belize to connect with their cacao suppliers and celebrate chocolate during their first annual Chocolate Week in April, from the 14th to 21st. The two brothers own and operate Mast Brothers Chocolate in Brooklyn where their handcrafted bars of chocolate are individually, not to mention beautifully, wrapped and sold at their tasting room, on their website and at online stores such as Dean & Deluca. The brothers are inviting chocolate lovers to join them on their voyage to Belize to visit their farmers, eat, drink and partake in other adventures while abroad. For more information, email chocolateweek@mastbrothers.com.

ALSO:

Coachella 2012: What will you be eating?

5 Questions for Charlie Parker

Folklore: Pity the parsnip

--Caitlin Keller

Very last-minute gift for kitchen gardeners: Seeds from Italy

One of my favorite seed sources is Seeds from Italy, which brings in Italian heirloom vegetable seeds from Franchi Sementi, a company that's been family-owned for more than 200 years.

Right up until the last minute you can get a gift certificate in any amount from $10 to $300, good for anything on its website, www.growitalian.com. That means purple Roman artichokes, eccentric chicories and radicchio, cima di rapa, ciliegia piccante (spicy cherry peppers), big yellow peppers from Piedmont and red marbled cippollini onions, to name a few. If you want to collect your own fennel pollen, it's got seeds for wild pollen, too.

You can speed things up by ordering an email gift certificate. To send your giftee a catalog via snail mail to help in spending that gift, fill out a catalog request with your recipient's name and address. The new edition comes out just after New Year's.

ALSO:

Last-minute gift: Lucky Peach subscription

Champagne flutes with which to party

Sugar cookies from the "Holiday Cookies" e-book

-- S. Irene Virbila

Twitter.com/sirenevirbila

Image: Cover of Seeds from Italy catalog. Credit: Seeds from Italy

Last minute? Give a gift certificate to Mozza’s family-style pigfest

No time left for shopping? Swing by Mozza2go on Melrose Avenue for a gift certificate to one of Chad Colby’s family-style dinners at La Scuola di Pizza next door. The large communal table in front of the open kitchen seats 22 or so, making for a very different kind of restaurant experience. Held a couple of nights a week, the meals are festive and fun. Food is served on big platters and in great abundance, so come hungry. Saturday nights are devoted to a sumptuous “whole hog” fest celebrating heirloom breed pigs. Friday night's theme varies with the season -- mushrooms, fish, tomatoes, crab, etc. The cost is $75 per person, excluding beverage, tax and gratuity. 

Another idea: gift a 3 1/2-hour pizza or pasta class, $150. A 2 1/2-hour pig butchery demonstration class is $50. Classes are limited to 12 participants, so reserving ahead is essential.

Mozza2Go, 6610 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles; (323) 297-1130; www.mozza2go.com. Monday to Friday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday noon to 10 p.m.

ALSO:

Seriously Pig

Sugar cookies from the "Holiday Cookies" e-book

Like Japanese food? Check out Common Grains

-- S. Irene Virbila
Twitter.com/sirenevirbila

Photos: A sample whole hog dinner menu. Credit: Mozza2Go

 

Eat Florence, an app

A friend heading to Florence next week just asked me for some suggestions re where to eat. I could give him a couple of the usual suspects. But for more up-to-date info, I checked in with two blogs from food writers living in Italy:  Faith Willinger and Elizabeth Minchilli in Rome.  Emiko Davies in Tuscany is a good source of information, too.

It turns out Minchilli, who writes for Food & Wine, Bon Appétit, Travel & Leisure, etc., has a new mobile app called Eat Florence, joining her Eat Rome app. Though Minchilli now divides her time between Rome and Umbria, she’s lived in Florence in the past and frequently visits. 

The new app is certainly not slick, but may be just the ticket for anybody visiting Florence: a selection of beloved places to eat and drink from someone who’s plugged into the food scene there. Basically, it's the same list of favorite places Minchilli's been passing out to friends forever — turned into an app. 

What makes it genius is that you can search by category (coffee, enoteche, food stores, gelato, markets, restaurants, street food), name, neighborhood, cost and distance. Hmm, everything seems to be about 9,951 kilometers from me at the moment. Each entry is marked on a Google map for easy reference. The comments about each establishment are personal and pointed.

This is just the first version of Eat Florence. Minchilli plans to add more places and categories -- and hopefully better photos. 

Since buying the app yesterday, I've been finding myself in spare moments reading through the entries, looking for the places I already know and what's new and interesting, already planning my next trip to Florence. It’s $2.99 well spent, if only to daydream.

Eat Florence, $2.99, in the iTunes store.

ALSO:

A week of food on "Fresh Air"

Thomas Keller in the Test Kitchen

-- S. Irene Virbila

twitter.com/sirenevirbila

Photos: Screen shots from the Eat Florence app. Credit: Elizabeth Minchilli

Il Garage at Park Ave.

Lovely how these balmy summer nights just keep rolling on. San Franciscans may be shivering on their porches, but here in Southern California we can eat out every night. 

This season chef-owner David Slay of Park Ave. Restaurant in Stanton unveiled a 60-seat Italian café dubbed Il Garage. Housed in what was once (just last year!) a tractor garage, it’s behind the restaurant on the former dairy farm where Slay grows produce in a series of generously proportioned raised planters. Seeing those beds last year made me want to rethink my kitchen garden.

That garden -- and breezy seating area -- makes the new café unique in this part of town. Slay simply has to survey his beds to write the week's menu. And there's something very appealing about eating in that open-sided garage with the garden just steps away. 

The menu has symbols to indicate which dishes are prepared with produce from the garden or their farm, Sage Ranch — bruschetta with eggplant caponata with sultanas and pine nuts, tomato salads from the garden or spinach tagliatelle with chopped shrimp, peppers and garden tomatoes. The menu capitalizes on the vegetables, with only a handful of main courses, such as lemon sole piccata-style or baby lamb chops, all served with veggies. 

A tractor is parked in the garage dining room, sort of the mascot for the place. Red-and-white tablecloths complete the look. For relaxed al fresco dining in the O.C., check out Il Garage.

Il Garage at Park Ave., 11200 Beach Blvd., Stanton, (714) 901-4400, www.parkavedining.com. Al fresco dining Tuesday to Saturday, 5 to 9 p.m.

ALSO:

'True Blood' cookbook?

Test Kitchen tips: Making macarons

Shin-Sen-Gumi to open in Little Tokyo

— S. Irene Virbila

Photo: Il Garage at Park Ave. Credit: Park Ave.

Tomato Wednesdays at Il Grano

 
At Il Grano in West Los Angeles, chef-owner Sal Marino is deep into his seventh year of Tomato Wednesdays. From now until the end of tomato season, he’s cooking and serving a splendiferous menu based on tomatoes grown in his own garden.

We’re talking an entire menu, which he changes every Wednesday. He might put a Sunrise or Green Zebra gazpacho on as a starter, a Caprese salad made with Black Cherokee tomatoes and imported bufala mozzarella, or grilled albacore with Momotaro panzanella. He might embellish a dish of spaghetti and clams with oven-dried Amish Gold and Sweet Million tomatoes.  Or ladle San Marzano tomato sauce over a branzino cannelloni. Even a couple of meat dishes get the tomato love: veal pizzaiola with San Marzano tomato sauce and pink oregano, or even better, veal sorrentina with bufala, basil and that same loose Neapolitan-style tomato sauce. Of course, you’re free to order anything from the regular menu as well.

If you love tomatoes, decide which tomatoes to plant next year by eating your way through Il Grano’s tomato menu. A passionate gardener, Marino is growing some 22 varieties this year and even has some 7-foot-tall plants ripening their fruit just steps from the restaurant’s kitchen.

Il Grano Restaurant, 11359 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles; (310) 477-7886; www.ilgrano.com. Tomato menu Wednesdays only. Starters, $7 to $18; panini, $12; pizza, $14 to $15; pasta, $12 to $14; meat, $14 to $15.

ALSO:

Manzke lands, finally!

OOF-da tacos in Minnesota

5 questions for Aaron Sanchez

 — S. Irene Virbila

Photo: Some of the home-grown tomatoes at Il Grano in 2005. Credit: Jamie Rector / For The Times

 

Video: Pronouncing Italian wine names

 

Hilarious and endearing: The wine blog Do Bianchi features the Italian Grape Name Pronunciation Project “inspired by a desire to share the aural experience of Italian ampelography, vinography and toponymy — in the voice of the winemakers and grapegrowers themselves."

Not just a disembodied voice, but a brief (under one minute) YouTube video with an Italian speaker (a different one each time) pronouncing the name of a grape. The current one up is Freisa, in which Chiara Martinotti of Cascina Gilli pronounces the word several times. That’s it. In the text below, blogger and Italian wine maven Jeremy Parven contributes a concise history of the grape in Italy.

Let’s take a somewhat more difficult pronunciation assignment: Aglianico (pronounced by Bruno de Conciliis of Viticoltori De Conciliis or Teroldego spoken by Elisabetta Foradori of Azienda Agrigola Elisabetta Foradori. 

The blog has much more, though, from blogger, food and wine historian, Italian translator and rock musician Jeremy Parzen. A local boy (La Jolla) now living in Austin, Texas, he did his doctorate at UCLA and taught Italian literature and cinema there for several years. Lately, he’s been visiting Los Angeles more often, collaborating with Steve Samson on the wine list for Sotto, the Italian restaurant that replaces the Test Kitchen on Pico Boulevard.

Don’t be caught mispronouncing Italian wine names. Even highly trained sommeliers sometimes make mistakes, though more likely with French wine names than Italian. Check out Do Bianchi and learn a little about Italian wines in a relaxed, easy manner. Parven has fun with his blog, and is incredibly generous with information. Through him, you can vicariously attend Italian wine tastings, visit vineyard area, and meet the winemakers.

Do Bianchi also includes a very nice listing of other wine blogs to check out.

ALSO:

Enter the L.A. Times' Battle of the Burgers -- if you dare

Food and drinks the Korean way

Nancy Silverton answers your focaccia questions

— S. Irene Virbila

Finding authentic trattorie and osterie in Italy

Putting away the reference books from my last trip to Italy (over a year ago now), I picked up my copy of "Osterie & Locande d'Italia: A guide to traditional places to eat and stay in Italy" from Slow Food Editore. If you're headed to Italy this summer, you must have this book. Translated from Italian, it's yet another fine travel guide from Slow Food Editore, based in Piedmont.

Slow Food has done tremendous work in identifying small trattorie and locande (inns) that serve traditional dishes based on regional ingredients. These are not the sorts of places with international menus. They may not, and probably won't, have menus in English, but they will give you an education in traditional cuisine.  

For example, you can be traveling through the remote reaches of the Maremma in Tuscany and come up with a place to eat that stands out in memory. Most are small, modest places, like the little trattoria in Treiso, Piedmont -- where you could go for rabbit stewed with peppers --that only the locals knew until Slow Food started publishing its guides. Sadly, that place is now gone, but there are hundreds more in the book.   

If you care about wine, a wine-bottle symbol next to a listing indicates a place with an excellent list of regional wines. Wine bars are included too, and the write-ups for each place are concise and informative, pointing out the kitchen's strengths.  A snail symbol next to an entry indicates "an address that, in terms of cooking and atmosphere, reflects the philosophy of Slow Food." There's a cheese symbol too, for addresses that stock "a particularly interesting selection of cheeses."  

When I'm wandering around the countryside, I often use the book's listings to find somewhere to stay -- a bed and breakfast, small hotel or agriturismo (holiday farm stay).  

My copy of "Osterie & Locande d'Italia" dates from 2006, I realize (how time flies). The 2007 edition, which appears to be the last edition translated into English, is in stock at Amazon and possibly in bookshops with a well-stocked travel section. Even better, pick up the 2011 edition of the original Italian edition at bookstores in Italy for 20 euros, or about $28. Not to worry: What's most important are the addresses, and with the help of an Italian dictionary you can translate whatever dishes you don't already know.

ALSO:

113 wine picks

Beard Awards: Jose Andres wins top chef, another SoCal shutout

A sneak peek at Echo Park's Mohawk Bend

-- S. Irene Virbila

Photo credit: Slow Food Editore