Adam D. Roberts's Blog, page 102

The Apple Pan, Gjelina Take Away & The Lazy Ox Canteen

I'm terrible at geography (please don't ask me to find Iowa on a map) but I'm wonderful at food geography, especially when I know a city really well. In New York, friends would call me on a regular basis with queries like: "I'm going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and need a place for an afternoon snack before going to a 5 PM chamber music concert at The Frick." (Answer: Cafe Sabarsky.) Here in L.A., though, I'm on shaky ground (earthquakes notwithstanding). I'm new here and when a food geography issue arises, I'm not as quick on my feet. But I'm getting better.

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How To Make Eggnog For One

Check Me Out in Food & Wine

I'm so excited to finally share with you images from the latest issue of Food & Wine in which I have an article called "Real Heroes Don't Tweet." The article's about following my food heroes on Twitter and how it's changed my perception of them from untouchable gods and goddesses to just ordinary, everyday people. What's funny is that Twitter played a prominent role in this article happening in the first place: Dana Cowin (editor-in-chief of Food and Wine) ReTweeted something I wrote, I thanked her and we made a date to meet for lunch. It was at lunch (at a place called Junoon) that I started talking about what I liked and what I didn't like about Twitter and that's when Dana suggested I write this article. So get thee to a grocery store to buy a copy and let me know what you think! Oh, and as far as that most memorable New Year's Eve dinner that Molly made? You can read about that here.

Mann Ziti

Aimee Mann is one of my favorite musicians of all time. On the way to her Christmas concert at the Wiltern, Craig asked me why I liked her so much. "Because she's unsentimental yet emotional, cold but vulnerable at the same time; plus, she's funny." She writes lyrics like, "And I'm the only one who knows / that Disneyland's about to close." And: "Finals blew I barely knew my graduation speech / with college out of reach / if I don't find a job it's down to dad and Myrtle Beach." With little time to spare before the concert, I decided to whip up a pasta dish without a recipe. And it turns out that this pasta–which I'm calling Mann Ziti in Aimee Mann's honor–has a lot in common with the music: it lives on the edge of darkness.

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The Mole Negro at Guelaguetza

According to Jonathan Gold, when the mayor of Oaxaca comes to Los Angeles, he eats at Guelaguetza. It's listed on Gold's 99 Essential L.A. Restaurants 2011 and in his original review he calls it "one of the best Oaxacan restaurants in the country." Clearly, then, I knew I had to go there; and I knew I had to go especially for the mole negro which Gold describes as "black as midnight, black as tar, black as Dick Cheney's heart."

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Oh, Ottolenghi: Fennel and Feta with Pomegranate Seeds and Sumac / Couscous with Apricots and Butternut Squash

A year or two ago, my friends Lauren and Amy gifted me with a cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi called "Ottolenghi: The Cookbook." And even though it's a beautiful, tall book with colorful pictures and herb-flecked recipes from Israel by way of London, I hardly ever used it. I made mental notes to cook from it–the sumac chicken, for example–but nothing ever happened. And then something did, finally, happen: Ottolenghi published another book,

Our Brainwashed Bellies

The commercial goes something like this: a female college student unwraps a package sent to her from her mother, who's on the phone, standing near a window where sunlight illuminates her smiling face. The girl's face soon lights up too when she discovers the gift that her mother so thoughtfully sent her way: a jar of Jif peanut butter. "I love you mommy," says the girl or maybe it's the mom who says, "I love you." Either way, I watched this commercial at the gym, while running on a treadmill, and I remembered it. And I've been thinking about it ever since.

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How To Make a Manhattan

Cocktail-wise, Craig–who's now our official bartender–has two drinks up his sleeve. The first, a Sidecar, I wrote about a few weeks ago. Now he has a new one, perfect for these chilly-weather months: a Manhattan.

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Stuffed Cabbage

At that same Jewish dinner where I made the chopped liver, I decided to try my hand at stuffed cabbage. Over Thanksgiving, my brother's wife's sister's boyfriend's grandmother (did you follow all that?), a Holocaust survivor named Anka, told me her recipe for stuffed cabbage. "The secret," she let me know, "is raisins in the tomato sauce." After that, stuffed cabbage was on my mind and when I started planning this dinner of Judaism I knew it would be my entree.

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Guess This Pie Scene from a Movie

Last night, at DuPar's in the Farmer's Market, Craig ordered an apple pie and decided to reenact a scene from one of our favorite movies. Can you name it?