Jeremy Blachman's Weblog: 2009

Miracle Fruit?

This is a totally wild article from the Times about a fruit that makes sour foods taste sweet, and this group that puts on food-tasting parties to explore what the fruit can do.  Sounds fascinating, and makes me want to try it.  Like, went to the website and would e-mail them to get on their mailing list if I wasn't worried this is all sort of code for something else and these are actually weird psychotropic drug parties, and also frankly the idea of going to any sort of rooftop party with strangers is something that makes me extremely unexcited generally, so even the idea that it's based around food isn't enough to get me actually interested.  Apparently one can buy these berries, but it's $90 for 30 of them, which seems a little excessive for something that will make food taste funny for an hour. 

(But, re: my post below, once I see what actual food costs when, say, I don't know, planning a wedding, $90 for 30 berries might seem cheap, and, hey, perhaps cheap enough to throw -- without a label -- onto a wedding buffet and completely  rock the tastebud world of all of the guests.  Hey, that's actually kind of a cool idea, no?  Hide tastebud-changing berries on the buffet table and anyone who happens to eat one gets to enjoy the rest of the wedding food in a whole new way.  In fact, since the sit-down meals at most weddings are less-than-thrilling anyway, maybe this would make them better and awesome and the taste-changing berry should be mandatory eating.  Is it scary that I'm really thinking about this as a cool thing to subject wedding guests to?  I think it would be totally awesome, if this berry is actually safe and real and this isn't some hoax being pulled on the New York Times and they're actually talking about eating poison sumac and suffering anaphylactic shock, to have stuff like this at a wedding, make it interesting and different -- maybe not just these berries, but have it be some sort of molecular gastronomy kind of thing, with liquids that taste like solids, and solids that taste like liquids, and savory desserts (mustard flavored ice cream?) and, ooh, I'm a lot more excited than I should be about a paragraph that's totally going to freak out at least one of my most loyal blog readers!)

The Stupidest Thing I Did Today

Kraft Easy Mac is apparently not easy enough.

Put the macaroni in a bowl, put the bowl in the microwave.

After about two minutes, I thought to myself, "Hmm, something smells like microwave popcorn."

After about two minutes and eight seconds, I thought to myself, "No, that actually smells like burning microwave popcorn."

After about two minutes and twelve seconds, I thought to myself, "No, that's actually my Easy Mac, because I forgot to add water.  Oops."

At least the bowl (and the microwave) survived.  The pasta did not.  My apartment smells like burnt microwave popcorn now.  Oops.

Top Chef

I love Top Chef.  Just watched the season premiere of Top Chef: Chicago.  I don't think I've missed an episode of Top Chef in all four seasons, and this one's got me hooked again.  They have a formula, it doesn't change, but it totally works.  And somehow, even though you'd think that a competition show about food would be a disaster when there are so many contestants that you can't really get to know any of them all that well, you get only the tiniest of back stories, and, of course, you can't taste the dishes.  And they totally foreshadow everything -- you know as soon as someone is shown saying anything with any confidence at all, they're going to lose, and the person who's worried, nervous, scared is going to win.  But even with all of that, it's such good television, season after season.

I'm going to go out on a completely uninformed limb and say that Dale is going to win.  He wasn't featured much tonight, wasn't in the top four, but he was in a bunch of the clips at the end -- "coming up on this season of Top Chef..." -- and he seemed to be getting the kind of edit that made him seem competent and confident without trying to stir up trouble.  So that's my pick.  Not sure why.

Also, while I'm picking reality show winners, my pick to win American Idol is David Cook, and I swear I would have said that even before his last two stand-out weeks.  He seems smarter than the other contestants, and even though that doesn't have anything to do with how well or poorly he sings, I think it helps make smart song choices.  So he's my pick for American Idol.

And just to prove that I do more than watch TV... I finished reading a terrific novel this afternoon -- "Who Stole The Funny," by actor/singer/director Robby Benson.  It's about a TV director dealing with crazy showrunners, actors, and a liar of an agent.  Maybe you have to be doing this kind of stuff to appreciate it, but I thought it was really funny and a super-quick and enjoyable read.  It will likely end up on my year's 10 best list.

Gazpacho, and Other Random Adventures With A Blender

I made gazpacho the other day.  I think.  I was in Whole Foods, hoping to get inspired by something I'd want for dinner, but wasn't really sure what I was in the mood for.  And it was warm out.  And my roommate has a blender.  So I figured I could try and make gazpacho.  I didn't have a recipe, but that didn't seem to be a problem.  I bought some celery, some green onions, a couple of green chiles to add a little heat, a lime (I assumed there should be some citrus in there somewhere, to cut the spice I guess), a bunch of cilantro, a little piece of ginger (I don't think there's ginger in gazpacho, but I figured it might be a nice touch), and a can of roasted tomatoes, since the real tomatoes didn't look all that awesome and I figured I'd get more flavor from the canned kind.  I wanted to buy a cucumber, but they didn't look that good.  And then I came home, cut the vegetables, opened the can of tomatoes, added some salt, pepper and oregano, a little bit of vinegar, and put it in the blender.  And it was gazpacho.  Maybe.  I bought a nice roll to go with it, and quickly seared a piece of tuna.  And... dinner.  A nice dinner, really.  About 15 or 20 minutes of preparation time.  And vegetables are pretty cheap, even at Whole Foods.

I realized as I was eating it that I'm not sure what the line is between salsa and gazpacho.  I mean, is it a thickness issue?  Proportion of tomato to other ingredients?  Did the cilantro and green chile automatically turn it into salsa?  Did I have a bowl of salsa for dinner?  And if I did, is that a bad thing?  I don't really know.

And then yesterday I went to a Farmers Market, where I burned the roof of my mouth on a tamale.  I bought 3 cucumbers for a dollar and tried to recreate a cucumber-mint lemonade I had at a restaurant in Manhattan last month.  I failed, but ended up with a sort of interesting cucumber slush instead.  A cucumber, peeled and seeded.  A little bit of sugar.  Ice, water, and the juice from a lemon.  Blender.  Cucumber slush.  Pretty refreshing, but I'm not sure if it's something I'll make again.  Maybe mixed with some other fruit.  Or if I'd added some milk or cream.  But without the lemon juice, since that would make the milk curdle I guess.  And that would be really pretty awful.

I saw a cast member from The Office in Whole Foods today.  He was looking at the sushi.  I feel like I probably see more celebrities than I realize, but I just don't pay enough attention to notice.  I was about to write that I think it could be funny to have some stupid Gawker Stalker knockoff describing really mundane things celebrities are doing, but then I just looked at Gawker Stalker and that's pretty much what it is, so oh well.

Al Bap

I may have said this a few weeks ago, but one of the big differences I'm finding between New York and LA -- in New York, you go into a restaurant anywhere -- in the middle of Queens, in Chinatown, wherever -- and even if they're used to mostly dealing with people of whatever ethnicity the restaurant is, and even if they don't speak perfect English, it's pretty easy to order food, pretty obvious they know enough English to deal with you, pretty clear they're used to having people come into their restaurant who aren't necessarily whatever ethnicity the restaurant is.  That simply doesn't seem to be the case here.  It's not that I care at all, it's just surprising.  I've been reading the LA Weekly 2007 list of 99 LA restaurants, and thought I'd grab some take-out last night from a Korean sushi place called A-Won.  The blurb in LA Weekly talked about their bowls of sashimi over rice, and this one thing they make called Al Bap -- assorted fish eggs over sushi rice.  It sounded really neat.  So I drove over there, about a 15 minute drive from my sublet, and it was a little baffling -- I asked "Can I order something to go?" and the woman clearly didn't understand and went to get someone else to deal with me.  I asked again.  This woman shrugged her shoulders and went to get someone else.  I asked again.  "To.  Go."  She said it slowly.  She understood.  She gave me a menu.  I pointed to what I wanted.  She looked at me.  She looked at the menu.  It's their menu, so I don't know what the issue really was.  Anyway, she got it, she wrote down the order.  I go to pay.  I hand them a $20 bill.  She looks at it, like it's foreign currency.  This I really didn't understand.  Even if everyone in there is Korean, they still take U.S. dollars, probably exclusively, don't they?  Anyway, I got my change, I got the food, I took it.  I ate it.  It was very good.  There's a picture of it on someone else's blog here.  It's very colorful.  Is it just the case that everyone in LA eats fast food and no one goes to ethnic restaurants?  Eating different kinds of food is fun.  This is like the 3rd or 4th time it's happened here where I totally felt like I was the first non-whatever-ethnicity person the restaurant had ever seen.  Never happened in New York.  Strange.  Anyway, the fish egg and rice thing was good, I recommend.

How To Run An Indian Buffet

I have a crazy restaurant story from this afternoon, but I don't know how to best set it up.  See, I feel like it would be an awesome post if I was actually angry, but even when I have a right to be angry I have a hard time getting angry, so mostly I was just amused and excited because I knew it would make a good story to tell.  And hopefully a good blog post.  So... we'll see....

2:42 PM -- A friend and I walk into Chola, an Indian restaurant on 58th street just off 3rd Avenue.  They have a lunch buffet.  My friend said he'd eaten there before and it was good.  It looks good.  They show us to a table.  We go up and get food.

2:46 PM -- They bring some additional stuff to the table -- a plate of little crispy things, a little rice crepe for each of us, a basket of bread.  Food's good.  One of the tastier Indian buffets I've ever had, lots of choices.  Feeling pretty pleased with it.

2:49 PM -- My friend gets up to go to the bathroom.

2:50 PM -- The waiter comes over and says to me, "Just to let you know, we are closing at 3:00, so take your food before then."  I look at my watch.  Hmmm.  That's pretty soon.

2:51 PM -- My friend returns from the bathroom.  I tell him the waiter said they're closing at 3:00.  "But we just sat down," he says.  "And even if they take away the food, I'm sure we can still sit and eat it."  We look around.  There are people at 7 or 8 other tables.  The waiter is telling them about the 3:00 closing thing too.

2:55 PM -- Worried that they will take the food away, I get up and get another plate of food, and some dessert.  Rice pudding.  Which, like the rest of the food, was pretty good.  No issues with the food.

2:58 PM -- The restaurant staff removes the food from the buffet, very quickly.

2:59 PM -- A different waiter comes over to us.  He asks my friend, "Are you finished?" and tries to take away his plate.  "No," my friend says.  "I'm still working on it."  The waiter hovers over my friend's shoulder for about 15 awkward seconds, and then reaches for the bread basket.  "No," my friend says.  "I'm still working on it."  The waiter hovers for 15 awkward seconds.  We look at the waiter.  He looks at the plates. 

3:00 PM -- The aggressive waiter brings over the other waiter, who asks if we are done yet.  He says to my friend, "I told your friend we are closing at 3:00."  In an uncharacteristically bold step, I say to the waiter, "Yes, you said that, but you didn't say anything when we came in and you seated us.  Why would you seat us if we only had 15 minutes to eat?"  "I gave you a ten-minute warning," the waiter says.  We look at him, sort of incredulous.  "It is nothing personal," the waiter says.  We look at him, still sort of incredulous.  "Everyone knows restaurants close at 3:00," he says.  "What?" I say, confused.  "All restaurants close at 3:00," he says.  "You look surprised," he says, "like you did not know this.  We assume everyone knows this."  "Restaurants have all different hours," I say, meekly, and sort of confused.  "We need to clean," the waiter says.  "We're almost done," my friend says.  "But I gave you warning," the waiter says, and then walks away.

3:02 PM -- The waiter returns, somewhat embarrassed perhaps.  "I tell you what," he says.  "I get you dessert, from the kitchen.  I go back in there and bring you dessert, okay?"  "I already took dessert," I say.  "It was good."  " I don't want dessert," my friend says.  "But I will bring you dessert," the waiter says.  "No, thank you, just the check," my friend says.  "Come on, I will get you dessert, I will go in the back, let me bring you dessert," the waiter says, forcefully, as if he has already poisoned it for us.  "No, just the check," my friend says.  "No, come on, I will get you dessert," the waiter says.  "No," my friend says.

3:04 PM -- The waiter brings us the check.  We pay and leave, very confused.  There's still people at one or two other tables when we leave, incidentally.  No one seems to be bothering them about still being there.  Which is even more confusing.

Mozza

The NY Times has a review of Pizzeria Mozza in LA, which I just wrote about a couple weeks ago.  It's a good review.  Only going to add to the crowds.

Hot out here.  Apparently hit 97 downtown today, 23 degrees above normal.  Said the girl I'm subletting an apartment from for these two weeks: "Even though there's no air conditioning, I've never even really had to use the fan."  Not in 97 degree weather.  It's a sauna in here.

My grandma turns 91 today.  I hope I'm as active as she is when I'm 91.  I'm not even sure I'm as active now.

Scoops

Went to Scoops, an ice cream place on a small LA street called Heliotrope, that no one's ever heard of.  Scoops was listed in an article about the best ice cream in LA; the blurb mentioned  that the owner likes to make weird flavors.  Apparently he's done Foie Gras ice cream.  And peppercorn.  Neither were there today.  I tried a sample of gooseberry/juniper berry.  I tried a sample of dragonfruit/lychee.  Both good.  I ultimately went with "brown bread," which tasted something like what you might get if you turned a piece of pumpernickel bread spread with butter and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar into ice cream.  It was very very good.  Chowhound threads on the place here and here, and an article about the owner here.  Go.  It's good.

Also, it was crowded enough that I was forced to parallel park, and I did it perfectly.  Not to toot my own horn.  But I've spent a week here avoiding parallel parking because I'm a baby, and so I'm proud to have done it without incident.  It's been a while.

Pizzeria Mozza, and other things LA-related

I read an article a few months ago on Serious Eats about an LA restaurant called Pizzeria Mozza.  Didn't really remember reading it, but I happened to pass the place a couple of days ago out here, and the name rang a bell and so I googled it when I got back.  Seemed sort of random that the one LA restaurant I'd read something about pretty recently would be something I'd happen to pass by and notice.  In any case, tried to make a reservation for me and a friend on Wednesday night, but the first open seating was 11:30PM.  No better for Thursday.  But called again about lunch today and they had a noon cancellation.  So we ate there for lunch today.  It was really good.  It's upscale pizza, very similar to Franny's in Park Slope, which is very good.  The two menus are very close.  I had a pizza with white anchovies, tomato, and chilies, and just found a picture of it on Flickr.  I was impressed.

Also found an article in the LA Times with cheap/good LA eats, and I had nothing to do for lunch on Thursday, so I drove to "Little Tokyo" and got a bento box at a place called Izayoi (#11 in the article).  Not sure why you can only get it if you're one of the first 20 people who order it, but I made sure to get there at 11:30 (and there was a line waiting for them to open), and it was totally worth it.  Found a blog post about it here.  Scroll down for a photo.  Miso soup, salad, egg custard with some fish cake and vegetables, steak with a grated ginger topping, tempura fish and vegetables, three pieces of sushi, some pickled cabbage, some spinach, a bean curd thing, a bowl of rice... all for $9.50.  It was really excellent.

Have also eaten at a pretty cheap Cuban place called Versailles (saw a bunch of posts on Chowhound recommending their chicken with a lime-garlic sauce, which was very good), and a very ordinary Chinese place called Hu's Szechwan that had some decent reviews but apparently there's no good Chinese food in the area outside of the San Gabriel Valley, which is beyond the scope of my map.  :)

Until this week, I really hadn't driven regularly at all since before law school when I lived for 18 months in Texas.  I'd borrowed my mom's car and driven locally, and a few times from NY to Princeton, or to my uncle's in Staten Island, but not much street driving.  The first day I was very tentative, but after a couple of days, I'm feeling more comfortable.  I've completely lost the ability to know how far I am from the curb, and find parking to be no fun at all.  Parked in a garage the other day for a meeting where the ramps up to each level seemed much too steep, and the sides of the ramps were made of a reflective surface so it seemed like there was a car right next to me when it was really just me.  Didn't love that.  I've been avoiding poles and other cars when I park in garages, driving all the way to the bottom or top to where no one else is.  I just don't want to hit anything.  I'm sure a few more days and it'll all come back to me.

I've taken for granted how easy it is to not drive in NY -- how you can walk to things.  The friend I'm staying with lives in a perfectly nice area, but there's not much to walk to.  There's a supermarket about a block away, and a Rite Aid.  An outdoor mall is about a 10 minute walk away.  I found a Japanese restaurant about a 10 minute walk away.  Anything else requires driving, and even the stuff that's close by, no one's walking on the streets.  They're completely empty, day and night.  That's weird.  I don't know if I like having to drive everywhere.

Flying to DC on Wednesday for my book event on Thursday, which you can still RSVP to.  I'll paste the info below.  On Friday I'm taking the train to NY, spending the weekend in NY, and then back to LA next Monday for some more meetings.  Too much traveling.  Anyway, the event details:

"Moment Magazine Presents An Evening of Humor With Jeremy Blachman, author of Anonymous Lawyer"

Date: Thursday, April 26, 2007
Time: 7:30-9:30 pm
Location: 3008 45th Street, NW, Washington, DC

To reserve your spot, please contact Nonna at ngorilovskaya@momentmag.com or (202) 363-6423.

Michael Pollan...

...has a lengthy lead article in this week's New York Times Magazine about how everything we think we know about nutrition is wrong and people should eat food, not nutrients.  It's a cool article.  Pollan's most recent book is "The Omnivore's Dilemma," which made my top 10 list last year. (It also made the New York Times Book Review's list...)