I do like flowers

It’s spring! Sunshine! Rebirth! Daffodils! Matzo!

Etc.

Time for new stuff, I say. Time for a trip to visit Faith & Flower. It has been open less than a month, but I wanted to visit. I’m trying to be a more intrepid reporter here. I can’t be totally intrepid. Maybe more in-tepid, since I do know one of the folks behind this restaurant, and therefore am not visiting undercover. I’ll save disguises for my glory days.

So, Faith and Flower. IT IS BEAUTIFUL.
And things are big.

It all started with a business card. Would you look at the weight of this thing?!

They say it all starts with first impressions and my first impression was that Faith and Flower wants to impress. The heavy card stock connotes a certain luxury and opulence. Fortunately the actual restaurant follows suit.

It is Luxe with a capital L. A big chandelier (please pronounce French-ishly) welcomes you. There are longgggggg mustard couches for the banquette style seating, that are plush and ridiculously comfortable. I am one of the most persnickety people about comfort of couches and restaurant seating and I loved me some mustard couch.

Sit down and a rather weighty tome or so are put into your hands. There is a wine list. There is a menu. There is a table of contents for handy navigation. Beyond the menu pages there seems to be a book in…Latin? When I go back to Faith and Flower I’m getting the scoop on that one. But seeing as I am The Book Cook I like it.

Also very important? The things you put in your mouth and don’t swallow.
I REALLY did not mean to make it sound like that. I’m talking about the cutlery and stemware. Get your mind out of the trash. This is a place where you drink your water out of chunky rather medieval goblets. I enjoy a glass with some serious weight to it. It feels encouraging to grasp that sort of cup, like it is full of the elixir of life. Actually it kind of is. Hydration is key. Your wine, if you are drinking a red like I was, was out of glasses that are Texas-sized. The better to let the wine breathe, my dear.

Service is also super-duper important to me. Based on our server’s and sommelier’s knowledge and enthusiasm you would not guess Faith and Flower had barely opened. This joint is driving like a well oiled machine: smoothly. No mistakes.

On to the food and drink. They had fantastic salad. You know me. I judge restaurants on salad (please also pronounce French-ishly-sal-AD) and stemware. My friend thoroughly loved her branzino with a blood orange reduction. Induction? Sauce? It was liquid ok? And it was pretty and according to her tasty.

I really do apologize for that shot. It was dark in there. I know. Slap on the back of the hand.
Sommelier Jared Hooper recommended a wine to challenge our palates, an RPM Gamay. Normally you think of Gamay as a Beaujolais grape but this wine tasted like anything but. It was robust and had a pleasant bite. Later he brought a French gamay to the table so we could compare and contrast. The whole wine list is like this: full of wine to challenge and surprise your taste buds. Do the work and you are well rewarded. Later in the evening I sipped a glass of Roederer and upon learning that vodka was her calling, my friend was recommended the Vaudeville, which is the concoction you see at the top of the post.

I honestly need to go back to try more of the food and cocktails. And wine. And to lounge on those couches. I will report back, but if Faith and Flower keeps up the performance I saw it give, it is in excellent shape to be a downtown staple. Not to be confused with the downtown Staples center because that is hell on earth.

Oh, and lastly, goth me wants to smuggle the candelabra home.

Oh, and incidentally I do LOVE flowers.

Faith & Flower
705 W. 9th Street
Los Angeles, CA
90015
213-239-0643

American, Americano

It’s a two-fer! You get a drink, and a dish. An some random facts about me.
The “American” salad got me thinking about this here country, which got me thinking about race issues, which got me to pondering how I seem to have an affinity for being the minority, which is somewhat of a feat for a white girl from the Midwest.
I grew up in a school where being white put me in the minority. In college I played taiko drums, so I hung around a lot of Japanese folks. I acted with the St. Louis Black Rep (token white chick?). So when I moved to LA I moved to Koreatown because it felt good to be in the minority. Now I’m just East of K-town, almost downtown, in a pretty diverse neighborhood.
In general I think I am accustomed to not quite fitting in, to the point that I am actually more comfortable feeling like I am not blending in.
The exception being a trip to, say, Whole Foods, where white English speakers abound but no matter how nice I thought I looked before going I will never measure up to the super-hip clientele in all their lululemon glory. I may be in my demographic but I’m itchy as all get-out.

I get my chia seeds and run.

Safely at home I might just mix up some nibbles. And an almost-a-Negroni drink to make myself feel better. Which is inevitably dumped out before I’m done because I cannot drink too much alone. Nor should I drink whilst trying to chop potatoes for a nice potato salad and simultaneously working on scenes for an audition.

And so it goes.

Americano from The Ultimate Bar Book by Mittie Hellmich
1 1/2 oz. Campari
1 1/2 oz. sweet vermouth
3 oz. club soda
Twist of lemon peel
Twist of orange peel
Stir Campari and vermouth over ice, strain into glass of ice. Add club soda. Stir. Twist peels over and drop in. Salute. And salud.

American Potato Salad (adapted from The Joy of Cooking 75th Anniversary Edition)

1 pound potatoes (not the starchy type)
1 celery rib, dice dice baby
A couple Tbsp. diced bread and butter pickles
6 Tbsp. reduced fat mayo
1 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
1 tsp. brown mustard
Salt and pepper to taste
Sprinkle of dried parsley
Boil taters in salted water until cooked. Drain, chop into whatever bite-sized means to you. Toss with remaining ingredients. Put in fridge until cool.

Teen Witch

I was such a good goth in my teens. I guess I still can be. And I’ve got headshots to prove it. I wear mostly black, am pale as can be, and still listen to Skinny Puppy.

But I also occasionally sport some pink(crazy!) and will admit my ipod has a song or two by Justin Timberlake. Although Nine Inch Nails still occupies more bytes than any other group. Even Siouxie and the Banshees. Even The Cure. No really, I swear I’m over it. Let me just go blow out those black candles.

I did the requisite dabbling in Wicca that was befitting of my teenaged goth splendor. But now, I’m no witch. I appreciate the exultation of nature that is part of Wicca, but could never quite get behind the whole god/goddess thing. Although my friend Meow and I had some splendid nighttime rituals using the bench in the park as our altar. I’m surprised the cops never came to break up our candlelit honoring of the four elements. Hmm.

All this is to say I own The Wicca Cookbook. An old therapist of mine gave it to me. Don’t ask. She also gave me really cool dragon stockings.

The Wicca Cookbook is divided into chapters by the sabbats, or Wiccan holidays. Each recipe has some sort of explanation of a part of the holiday and how the food relates to it, often with a little chant or, um, spell to go with it.
I was flipping through the fall equinox chapter since that just happened last Saturday. I wanted to celebrate that from now on until December the night is getting longer. I prefer night. No really, I swear I’m not goth. Let me just finish this glass of blood and we can chat about it.

Oh, the recipe.

I realized I had everything I needed for the Enchanted Grape Salad. The Wicca Cookbook never quite explained the enchanted part but talked about fall and harvest of grapes and gave this last bit of advice before the recipe:

“Offer the grapes in this salad to the Great Goddess and, if possible, party in a vineyard with passion and abandon”.

I’ll take some passion and abandon. And some grapes.

Enchanting Grape Salad from The Wicca Cookbook by Jamie Wood and Tara Seefeldt
1 cup of greens(I used spinach)
1 cup chopped green apple
1 1/2 cups grapes
1/2 cup crumbled feta
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar(good balsamic)
Toss it up. Exult. Enchant. Ellen-ify. I have no idea what that means. Blow out your candles before you leave the house.

Stupid simple

Simple as in every summer shalt have a stupid simple recipe.
This one uses more of that half n half you bought for the Colorado Bulldog and probably did not use for the Frostbite. Because I said it sucked.

This salad is best accompanied by last summer’s stupid simple: the stupid-simple-summer-sippable taught to me by Sheila.

It looks like wine, tastes like ginger heaven.
Incidentally, a splash of the ginger juice to an iced coffee with a dash of cinnamon and a bit of sweetener is wicked delicious.

When it comes to a simple salad, everyone has preferences that are different so this is barely a recipe because I keep saying “whatever you prefer”. I do tell you what I like so you can make me a salad properly. Someday. Some summer. Suddenly?

The salad snob may want to wield a pepper grinder over this, but taste the dressing first, it packs quite the pepper punch.

My, but I’m into alliteration aujourd’hui.

I tried this salad several ways: one time constructed with slices cheese, one time tossed with Romaine with the cheese shredded. I think like the sliced better, but shredding and blending the cheese certainly made for a more creamy situation. That sounds weird.
But it looks better.

.
I got all inspired one night and did a poached egg/shredded cheese rendition.

The almost-winning combo, seen at the top of this post was verging on not so simple. Arugula for the greens. Half the cheese shredded and tossed with some dressing and the greens. The remainder sliced. Egg poached. Extra dressing on the side.
And only almost a winner because I missed the refreshing crunch of romaine.

I’ve no pictorial evidence but I put an eggs-in-a-nest on it once.

So shred, slice, poach, boil, hell, scramble if you must. But try the dressing. Make yourself a simple salad.
It’s gosh-durned good eating.

Oh, and for a little while I’m only posting once a week, unless major things happen and I feel the need to put up another post. And I may go back to twice a week at some point. But otherwise it’s going to be Wednesdays. Carry on.

Creamy Swiss Salad(adapted from the Betty Crocker published…I’m not sure when. It’s old)

A big bowl o’ salad greens, whichever you prefer. For this salad I like butter lettuce, romaine, spinach, arugula…
2 ounces cubed or sliced reduced fat Swiss cheese
1 hard-boiled egg, cut however you prefer, hopefully not sieved. I despise when they crumble the egg
OR poach that sucker
4 Tbsp. reduced fat vegan mayo
1 Tbsp. half n half
1/2 tsp. dry mustard powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
Put yet greens in a bowl or big plate. Whichever you prefer. I like a big plate.
Either toss eggs and cheese with greens or arrange them on top. I prefer on top. Whisk together mayo, half n half, mustard powder, salt and pepper. Add dressing to taste. If you are me realized you wanted to mix in some dressing first and then arrange the cheese and egg on top so you may have to take them off, toss, then rearrange.
It’s a pain in the ass to be a finicky food separatist.

What comes before a part B

Part A
Partay!
I love cheese.
This post is a wee bit old, but a while back we had a lil’ sit on the floor dinner party.
A small one with these goons:

Since I was hosting I took it a bit easy and tried only one new recipe, this Cucumber Salad from Bon Appetit.
Yeah, I left off the avocado. I had guacamole coming and I already hate avocado. I can only allow so many of these green slimy monsters in my home.
And I have a fork and know how to use it.

Our friend Francis (seated center, above) however, the lone brave male at the fete, foodie that he he is, outdid himself, bringing polenta we broiled with cheese, rolling out dough for pizzettes, making banana nutella ice cream(puree a whole bunch of frozen bananas with some nutella and you get instant ice cream)and bringing two types of ginger beer for Moscow mules-and it was all wonderful.
Damn that was a long sentence.

But I think the winner of the night was Alice’s creation. Perhaps you remember Alice?
Inventrix of the Mo-alicell?
Alice who learned how to get grindy with me?
Poor Alice who I screwed in the birthday cake department?
Alice an I have done some grinding, some screwing, an now we were being boring and chewing. Kumquats.

She concocted a mixture of watermelon, kumquat rind, mint and brown sugar that more or less blew my mind.

I’d ne’er had a kumquat.

I will try to stop using Shakespeare-esque words like ne’er after today.

Tonight is closing night for Midsummer, and I would be promotional and post a link for tickets but we sold out all weekend.

Kumquats, acting, and dinner parties. Life could be a whole hell of a lot worse.

Potatoes for Hamlet

Forgive me, gourmands. For I have sinned. I used dried parsley and chives. I’m sorry. I’ve been acting my bum off but I am on a budget and I’m not gonna buy a bunch of stuff to only use 2 teaspoons of it. Sorry.
Danish potato salad. What makes it Danish? I don’t know. In fact I know very little about Danish, except that in St. Louis, The St. Louis Bread Company(known in other parts of the country as Panera) made a gooey butter danish that rocked.
Hmmm. Danish. Denmark. I think of blonde people. Am I stereotyping? I think of Hamlet. I don’t think he ate potato salad, but if I had dinner with him, this is what I’d make.
I need to play Ophelia someday soon.
Leave me a comment and educate me on anything you know about Denmark, the Danes, or Danish:) Or just tell me the first thing you think of when you hear the word Danish.
UPDATE: According to the comment I got from a real Dane, this salad is not so traditional, but since health is an increasing concern for Denmark, it is not necessarily wrong. So I am renaming this salad Danish Modern:)Check out the comments below for a link to a picture of a more traditional Danish potato salad!
Danish Modern Potato Salad(adapted from Bon Appetit July 2004, yes I do save all my issues)
1 lb. Yukon gold potatoes
2 tsp. dried chives
2 tsp. dried parsley
2 tsp. drained capers
1 T. white wine vinegar
1 tsp. caper liquid
1 tsp. course grained Dijon mustard
salt
freshly ground pepper
Cook potatoes in boiling salted water until tender. Drain and let cool for 30 minutes. Slice about 1/3 of an inch thick. Add chives, parsley and capers. Whisk the remaining ingredients plus 1 tsp. of water and toss with potatoes. Wish you had a gooey butter danish for dessert.
Eat Reese’s peanut butter cups instead.

More questions: How do you like your potatoes? Bonus points for telling me what your favorite Danish is.

Third Chances

Take some ginger, garlic and cumin seed you’ve sauteed. Ignore instructions from Bittman on amounts. Decide how much you like these flavorings and use accordingly. Enter chickpeas, those cuddly tan orbs. Excuse my bad poetic writing. Blend in rice vinegar for sour and honey for the sweet. Enter the bitter greens, arugula. Omit the red onion if you don’t care for tasting onion in you rmouth the rest of the day.
There you have the perfect adaptation of a Mark Bittman recipe for Warm Chickpea and Arugula Salad from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.
I felt betrayed after my double fail on his Cottage Cheese Patties but I gave him a second chance. Third actually, since I made the patties twice.
This salad was goooooood.
I’m taking him back.
Even though he apparently said he does not like pie crust which I find appalling. Appalling.
Nobody’s perfect.
Oh, if you are making this for a vegan use maple syrup or something else sweet instead of honey…

Do you like pie crust? Or are you a filling person? I won’t judge.

I have huge melons, and I’m bitter.

Actually it’s more like I had one huge melon and some Angostura bitters. My own melons are extra petite and I like em’ just that way.

I discovered the love of bitters last summer via the classic champagne cocktail. I’ll do a post about that later. In the meantime, I was excited to see a non-alcoholic, in fact not a beverage at all, recipe using angostura bitters.
I dearly love old, housewive-y cookbooks and as such own a reprint of the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook from 1953.
This little do came from the Appetizers section in a list of Melon-Ball Cocktails. Twas delightful. Subtle. Amazing what little embelishments can do to a simple melon.

Love this recipe. Love this book. Though it is hard to entirely trust when it calls for. For instance, say, a package of pudding mix. I am betting the ones they sell these days are completely different in size and make-up than the ones in the 50’s.
This recipe did not call for pudding, but it did call for preserved ginger. The only type of preserved ginger I am aware of at my local supermarket is the dried and sugared type, and the pickled type. I went with the latter since it is prettier. And rinsed it to taper down on the pickle-y taste.
This recipe did not list amounts. Here is what I concocted:
Old-school Housewife Melon
1 cup of cubed cantaloupe
1 slice of pickled ginger, rinsed and chopped
1 dash of angostura bitters
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lime juice, mixed with a pinch of sugar
Mix it, eat it.
This was so simple and pretty much unbelievably tasty. In the future I will add even more ginger. Actually, I also just tried wrapping a melon wedge in a piece of the ginger. It was like a vegan version of those melon-prociutto things people seem to love. Yup, yup. Seems like these super-simple recipes are always the winners.

Tofu: a (slight) change of heart

I actually found a use for tofu that may cause me to go out and purchase more. I know, I know. I’m a vegetarian. I am supposed to love tofu. And it does, to its credit, soak up the flavors of what it is cooked in. And you can play around with it to change its texture. But all this seems like a lot of trouble when I could cook with something that is delicious without having to be pressed, frozen, thawed, marinated, basted, tied up and smacked around. However, two words that made me reconsider: Ranch Dressing. Good lord, some fries to dip would be good right now.
Who convinced me to give tofu another shot? Chocolate-Covered Katie. Sounds kinky, but she seems pretty un-kinky, which probably means she secretly is? I dunno. Sorry Katie, I will stop contemplating your kink-factor. You seem like a very sweet girl.
Anywho, she posted this recipe for Crazy-Good Ranch Dressing that is so healthy you really could eat a bowl of it, and do no damage, unless you are sensitive to soy. Not only is this stuff healthy but I did not have to do anything to the tofu except mix it with my immersion blender aka the best unsung hero of my kitchen. Love that thing. Less clean-up than a normal blender. I digress. Make this dressing. Go tell Katie she’s awesome for inventing it. I did.
Eat it up with a spoon, if you want. I ate it with broccoli. Then celery. Then roasted beets. Then said what the hell and broke out the spoon. It was worth it.

cruddy cooks + brilliant food

=great dishes, if and only if(is there a mathematical symbol for that, Eleanor do you know?) the cook barely touches the ingredients.
Although I am pretty decent in the kitchen, when it comes to fruits and vegetables I don’t mess with them much. In fact, I love most veggies uncooked, and would rather eat salads undressed and fruits by themselves if the quality is high.
My CSA deliveries are yielding great things these days, so why mess with them? Why gild the lily? It’s like putting butter on butter. Wait, I would probably do that. I love butter. Almost as much as I love Mark Bittman, whose “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian” managed to convince me to play with a couple of the things I got delivered this week. First up was a strawberry and arugula salad. Basically just the berries, some balsamic vinegar, and salt and pepper. I played around with the proportions but got the idea from Bittman’s book. The results:

Perfection. Actually perfection to the nth degree.