Sat, May 31 - Rhubarb Crumble, Thai Town, Cupcake Tasting

10.30am - started off the day by making some lovely rhubarb crumble according to this exquisitely detailed recipe. I used five California-sized (i.e. gargantuan) stalks of rhubarb, and three of Nadya's home-grown oranges, so added an extra 100g of oats (special, Scottish-style porridge oats from Whole Foods) and it turned out great, except for the fact that our oven seems to be a little hotter than others and ended up burning the top a wee bit, although I pulled it out before its time. Or maybe I got the conversion from Celsius to Fahrenheit wrong, which is always a possibility. It has to be said, though, that gas ovens are a bit of a pain. As much as I love cooking on a gas stove, gas ovens I find very hard to handle, and believe me, I've tried. One of the reasons I rarely bake anymore is because it seems impossible to reproduce my favorite recipes from home. A kingdom for an electric oven - with a gas stove top! 13.57h - a Thai Iced Tea at the somewhat prosaically named "Spicy Barbecue" Thai restaurant , with Ritesh. After all the Korean barbecue we had in the last couple of weeks, I was going to pass just based on the name, but what can you do when a place comes recommended by Jonathan Gold? Turns out, there really wasn't much barbecue on the menu, so maybe it's just a bad translation? Anyway, this is a small mom-and-pop operation (six tables in all) in Thai town, where we headed to buy the ingredients for some Thai and Cambodian cooking to come soon. But for now, note the pretty rose-shaped thingie they did with the paper at the end of the straw...

14.03h - grilled pork patties (I guess these do qualify as barbecue, although they're more like meatballs) that were DELICIOUS! Spicy, with a ton of mint inside, plus note the extra fried mint on top - serious competition for last night's meatloaf! The sticky rice on the side goes with the next dish...

14.04h - ...the signature num prik oom, a mix of grilled, mashed up, incredibly spicy serrano chilies (with garlic? fish sauce? it was just too spicy to tell, and our waitress wouldn't say) that you dip your sticky rice in - amazing. We eat a lot of very spicy food but couldn't finish this. Ended up taking at least half of it home (I'm sure it'll be put to good use). And now, four hours later, my stomach is still on fire.

14.07h - kao soi - chicken noodle soup w/ coconut milk and little pickles and fried rice crisps that are served on the side (left) and that you mix in yourself. Good, but this is more familiar Thai stuff.

15.56h - blueberry-apple spritzer, at home.

21.18h - impromptu dinner at Greg and Phinney's - this is Greg's yummy miso soup
21.36h - this is our contribution to dinner, the soba noodle-peanut-citrus salad I'd first made a few weeks ago, w/ snow peas, radishes and red bell peppers. This is my adaptation of somebody else's adaptation of a Nigella Lawson recipe and it still needs a little bit of tweaking to make it perfect, but in my heart of hearts I'm thinking I may start posting some recipes soon, and this should be one of them...22.05h - and voila, the cupcakes. Greg and Phinney are getting married in October and are planning on a cupcake tower instead of a wedding cake. So now the search is on for the perfect cupcakes for the occasion (recommendations are welcome and will be swiftly passed along). This is a selection Phinney picked up from Lark bakery in Silver Lake, clockwise starting top left: chocolate mousse, coconut, red velvet w/ cream cheese frosting, caramel w/ kosher salt, berry shortbread, and black-and-white in the center. Each of us got to try 1/4 of each cupcake, and we all agreed on the berry shortcake as the winner - moist, succulent, and with the most sophisticated frosting (cream cheese is nice but maybe not nice enough for the occasion). But this is only half of Lark's selection, so Phinney is going back to sample more. Maybe a lemon one would be good...
22.33h - in spite of the cupcakes, we managed to squeeze in a quarter each of a tasty, marzipany German almond horn before sugar shock finally made us collapse on the couch.

Fri, May 30 - Ethiopian, and the World's Best Meatloaf

7.58am - the lovely fruit from Nadya's garden - used just one orange today for my Brazilian acai, plus half a banana, at home.8.05am - and here's the result, with some extra banana. Acai by itself has a lovely dark purplish color. Once you add banana and orange, it becomes nice and sweet - but turns this unsightly brownish color. In Rio they often just serve it with crushed ice - when I was teaching there, I had one like that every day on my way to class.

9.09am - a fuji, at work. For those of you who have noticed the conspicuous absence of this my most favorite fruit staple over the last months, let me explain that fujis, as apples in general, are simply not in season right now. Not that you can't find them at the store, but they're flown in from Chile. Now I can live with the carbon footprint of mangos from Mexico or rhubarb from Washington State. But apples all the way from Chile? I'd rather wait until the fall. So this one was an exception...

9.49am - remember that bacon chocolate? well, the same brand has all kinds of interesting flavors, including white chocolate and kalamata olive (not pictured or purchased, as I'm no friend of white chocolate), and the below two, in miniature format: Indian curry and coconut, and a more conventional Gianduja. Both of them pretty darn sweet.

12.22pm - Ehtiopian samussa (filled w/ lentils), at Fassica Ethiopian Restaurant.

12.26pm - the veggie combo - collard greens, cabbage and two kinds of lentils plus salad, served on injera bread, at Fassica, with a very friendly Eritrean gentleman by the name of Solomon who had many interesting views on how extraterrestrials could influence the outcome of the upcoming election. Ah, the people you meet when you go to have lunch on your own...

a close-up of the porous injera bread, made from teff flour. You rip it into pieces and then use it to scoop up the food with your fingers. This was great, home-made Ethiopian food btw. I remember from some of the places in Little Ethiopia on Fairfax that the veggie dishes kind of tasted all alike. I think this may be why Ritesh never wants to go - he thinks of Ethiopian cooking as a lesser cousin of Indian cooking. But this was delicious, and each dish had its own distinct flavor. If only I knew what spices they used, I would report on that, too...

12.56pm - Ethiopian tea (w/ cardamom and cinnamon) on the house, at Fassica.

18.10h - sesame snacks in traffic, on the way to Cindy's.

20.30h - Ritesh's incredible, amazing home-made buffalo meatloaf, potatoes and gravy, leftover green beans amandine, at home, with Ritesh. This was the very best meatloaf I've had in my entire life - just blew me away. Boy, I'm glad I'm married to this guy - and no longer a vegetarian... I made him sit down and write down how he made it (including the barbecue coating), we'll try to reproduce it and if it predictably turns out great, I'll post the recipe.

Thurs, May 29 - Nadya is back!

8.55 - corn bread from Whole Foods, w/ butter and honey, a couple of fresh (organic! local!) peaches, Argentinian mate, at home. 12.44pm - Japanese chili-shrimp spaghetti w/ spinach at the Japanese Curry House on Sawtelle, with Nadya. Nadya is finally back from her trip to Germany and brought a very lovely little surprise that will be featured on this blog very soon. She also brought more treasures from her garden (artichokes! lemons! oranges!) that I can't wait to use - thanks, Nady!
Curry House btw is one of our old favorites. We would go here every time we went for lunch for about a year or two (and always get this dish - it's the best thing on the menu), before we decided to branch out a little, notably to Tofu Ya, which is about three doors up the street...ok, I exaggerate. It's two whole blocks...

15.43h - pear yogurt and some of Cecy's almonds and dried cranberries, at work.

19.59h - veggie beef skewers, green beans amandine, potato pancakes, mushroom gravy, at home, with Ritesh.

20.43h - that lavender ice cream we got the other day is a little hard to eat by itself, so I made some ganache w/ Ritesh's Valrhona chocolate and the leftover creme fraiche. That and some almonds helped a lot....

Wed, May 28 - Little Next Door

10.59am - Totally overslept today and didn't have time to eat breakfast. Now the problem with skipping breakfast is that you end up wolfing down this kind of stuff as a snack before lunch: croissant and hot chocolate from Breadbar, outside work. 13.14h - This is the Little Next Door, a charming French Deli that I've been trying to push on Nadya for one of our lunch dates, without much success (It's really not that far, Nadya! See how pretty it is??).

Since this is a very authentic French cafe, with wait staff hailing from France and all, said wait staff is endowed with an enormous attitude and an uncanny ability to make you wait for literally everything. For some reason though, it totally matched my mood today. Been feeling all day like I'm on vacation, so taking a leisurely 2h lunch felt like just the right thing to do (especially after showing up late this morning...). So I just sat around in a happy daze and waited...

13.37h - until things finally started materializing on my table - first the passion fruit lemonade...

13.40h - and then this croque monsieur - a croque monsieur, I might add, to put all croque messieurs to shame. Delicieux. (As an aside though, don't think it didn't occur to me that this is pretty much the French version of yesterday's panino prosciutto caprese.)

13.56h - and then these little guys, the house macarons. Oh. My. God. I concede they look all frou-frou and cutesy in a little girl's birthday party kind of way. But they are seriously delicious. All puffy-crunchy almond-paste-meringue on the outside and soft, melt-in-your-mouth flavored cream on the inside (except the raspberry ones had raspberry jam, my least favorite). Vanilla and lemon are the best. I really tried to save some to take home to Ritesh, but failed miserably. All I can say in my defense is that they are tiny - shouldn't have zoomed in so much...

19.15h - well, and this is what I did bring home for Ritesh, and did he want it? Nope. So I sacrificed myself ... Pistachio-goat cheese quiche w/ side salad from Little Next Door, at home.

Tues, May 27 - Euro Caffe

8.05am - fresh blueberries, banana, walnut - oh, and there's some oat bran under all of that. At home. 12.23pm - panino prosciutto caprese and an aranciata at the Euro Caffe. Didn't make it to UCLA today because I had to go return some books to the library. This was a GREAT sandwich, though.

The Euro Caffe is a very un-fancy Italian soccer cafe smack in the middle of Beverly Hills, literally around the corner from Rodeo Drive. Didn't quite capture all the decoration, but there's soccer scarves all over the walls, mostly of the various Forzas (Catania, Palermo, Fiorentina, Roma and what have you) but also of Chelsea and Arsenal. Apart from the three soccer aficionados pictured, there were no less than six Italian guys in suits (and a mind-boggling cloud of after shave or eau de toilette or whatever it is they use), drinking espresso at the bar to the left, shouting loudly and just being Italian in that very Italian kind of way that so endears them to the rest of the world. I wish I liked espresso - this would be the place to have one.

13.01h - a little dessert (orange and raspberry sticks) at the Kelly's inside the Beverly Hills Public Library. You can't really tell from the picture, but the book in the middle that I just took out today is Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" - uninspired title, but very inspiring book. She basically did what Simon is doing, packed up her family and moved to a farm. And in an effort to realign their lives with their food chain, they went for a year only eating food that was grown locally, mostly by themselves - and lived to tell the story. Great read.

16.13h - pumpkin seeds (slow roasted! local! sustainably grown!), at work.

17.05h - strawberry-guava yogurt, on the lunchroom balcony at work.

19.53h - flaxseed spaghetti with Ritesh's homemade (in one of the new pots no less!) eggplant-tomato-caper sauce, w/a ton of parmeggiano. At home.

19.54h - chopped salad w/ avocado, spinach, smoked turkey breast, bell pepper etc. At home.

Mon, May 26 - Memorial Day

10.58am - fresh blueberries w/ milk and sugar and some granola, at home.

12.40pm - leftover tortellini soup, at home, shared with Ritesh.

12.40pm - leftover salad, at home, shared with Ritesh.

12.45pm - leftover Ramen, at home, shared with Ritesh.

4.01pm - avocado vinaigrette, at home.

6.04pm - Trader Joe's old-fashioned blister peanuts, at home.

8.16pm - we needed some new pots and pans, and after extensive research and teleconferencing from the store, Ritesh finally decided we just had to splurge on this lovely set. I just wonder how long we'll be able to keep them this sparkling clean...

9.03pm - well, best way to keep them nice and clean is to not use them, so Ritesh used the old wok to make this Chinese-style veggie stir-fry

Sun, May 25 - Downtown, Little Tokyo

10.35am - It's official: this is the very last of Nadya's oranges. Lovely fresh juice, as always, but also very nice in some Orange Pekoe. At home, with Ritesh.10.47am - baked beans w/ maple syrup on toast, fried egg, grilled tomatoes, at home, with Ritesh. I'd had a hankering for baked beans ever since I read about them on Run for the Hills. Hadn't had any since the old undergraduate days in England.

16.04h - roadtrip to downtown LA, which is about 12 miles east from where we live. This is the downtown skyline from the 10 freeway, hence the blur, but the sky was too good to pass up.

16.22h - stumbled across this great hole-in-the-wall Mexican place on Broadway between 7th and 8th Street: 2 excellent, excellent tacos w/ carnitas, salsa and cilantro. Daniel Alarcon, a Peruvian writer living in LA likes to say that LA is really a Latin American megalopolis, not a US city. And it's of course a fact that the Hispanic population outnumbers all the rest of us. You sometimes forget that on the Westside, but thankfully Downtown is always there to remind you...

16.23h - a pupusa de queso ( a Salvadorean corn tortilla made w/ masa de maiz, filled with cheese spiked w/ chilies), w/ some cabbage salad and a spicy salsa, at the same little hole in the wall place. In fact, the best way to find it is to look for the Salvadorean lady frying up these pupusas on the sidewalk outside the restaurant.

16.36pm - a paleta (Mexican ice cream) from the Paleteria "La Michoacana" - the reason for our drive out here. This one is walnut ice cream covered w/ chocolate and coconut. Ritesh got pecan, which was also very good.

16.52h - fresh mango w/ salt, chili and lime juice, from a street vendor on Broadway, with Ritesh.

17.17h - Japantown is just a skip and a jump from Downtown, so we headed over to Little Tokyo for some more tasty adventures. I got these mochi-skewers w/ teriyaki glaze, and Ritesh was not happy because he wanted me to get the fresh pancakes w/red bean paste. Next time, love!

17.29h - we reconciled over frozen yogurt (pomegranate-raspberry and acaiberry, with almonds, mochi and blackberries) at the Japantown CeFiore, a big player in the LA Yogurt Wars. Forget Pinkberry, this one wins hands down.

18.17h - the house ramen at Daikokuya in Little Tokyo. We were relieved to find that it was nowhere near as good as Satsouka's, just because Satsouka is so much closer to our house...