Adam D. Roberts's Blog, page 18

Big Fat Coconut Cookies

These days, I don’t worry too much about reinterpreting other people’s recipes. I’m happy just to point you in a direction and say, “Do what they say to do!” Except, in this case, I have one tiny problem. So the recipe that I done made is my friend Deb’s Coconut Brown Butter Cookies. My quibble is that I don’t actually think that you need to brown the butter (!!!). Let me explain.

In my past life as a full-time food blogger, I was quite enamored of brown butter. I made a Vanilla Brown Butter Nectarine Crisp. I made Brown Butter Banana Bread. These recipes are both very good but as I get older and wiser in the kitchen, I’m starting to think that in recipes where there are a lot of other bold flavors, it’s not necessary to brown the butter. My secret suspicion is that we just like to hear “brown butter” when we’re eating something.

Also, if you let something get brown enough in the oven, you don’t need to brown the butter in the first place–you get all those brown, nutty notes anyway. If I’m going to brown butter, I mostly like to do it with things where butter is the star–like when I make pasta with just butter and Parmesan and a little nutmeg, I like to let the butter get brown first. There you really taste it.

Which is all to say, Deb is a hero for nailing the recipe for the City Bakery’s Coconut Cookies. These are really wonderful–you’re going to love them. I’m just giving you permission to skip a step and save the butter browning for whatever browning happens in the oven. You can even still call them “Brown Butter Coconut Cookies,” I promise not to tell a soul.

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Dinner at Orsa & Winston

Confession: we had an amazing dinner on Saturday night at Orsa & Winston here in L.A. and when we left the restaurant, I forgot to ask for a copy of the menu (which changes every day). This is particularly tricky because their website doesn’t feature the menu that we ate and now I have all of these pictures of food and what I remember about them is pretty embarrassing. But you know what? This isn’t an official food blog, this is just my own personal blog, so if you’re mad that I don’t can’t remember things like “nasturtium blossom gastrique” you’ll just have to deal with it! After all, you’ll probably just scroll through the pictures anyway. (P.S. I wrote the restaurant an e-mail asking for the dish names, so when I hear back I’ll repost this post with the menu at the bottom.)

So Orsa & Winston is located next to Bar Ama in downtown; Bar Ama being one of our favorite restaurants, though Craig and I did once get into a fight there because he wanted to just order three raw seafood items for himself because he “wasn’t that hungry” and I ordered the queso and something with beef and he wouldn’t share that stuff with me and I was annoyed. His sister later said that it’s because I’m from a culture where families operate as multi-headed creatures and he’s from a family where everyone’s their own individual. It got very deep. What was I saying?

Oh, so the restaurant has a very reasonably priced $80 tasting menu which may not sound “reasonably priced” when you see that number, but when you see all the food that we got for $80–and also see the quality of everything–it’s a great bargain when compared to fancier places like Providence, etc.

Now for the moment of truth: what do I remember about these pictures? The first bite was a broiled fig and a house-made watermelon sake that was very refreshing.

Then came sliced raw fish–hamachi? I don’t remember–with a habanero jelly that was sweet and spicy. Don’t ask me about the black stuff, just trust that it was good.

Next up was a gorgeous heirloom tomato salad with pluots—a great, unexpected combination.

After that, a gift from the chef (and also the lead picture of this post): milk bread that looked like popovers with incredibly flavorful butter, chicken liver mousse, and radishes. This may have been my favorite bite of the night: slathering the warm bread with all of that fat = heaven.

Although this next course was also a favorite bite of the night—a fresh corn soup with a fish soup combined. Summer explosion and a seafood explosion all at once. I loved it.

Here, a lovely seared scallop with uni on a rice that came all the way from Japan. It’s a certain kind of rice you can’t get here. Please, don’t ask me the name, but I gobbled this up right quick.

Another treat from the kitchen: nectarines with ground hazelnuts and some kind of cheese.

Then, the last savory course: a huge raviolo with a Japanese tomato on top.

After that, a refreshing mix of beets and tomatoes…

Some kind of tapioca pudding with sorbet and cucumbers….

And, finally, an incredibly dense and decadent chocolate hazelnut dessert that tasted like the inside of a candy bar in the best possible way.

Phew! That was tough work—-not eating it, writing about it without a menu for reference. But you got the idea, right? And if you live in L.A., you should do yourself a favor and get thyself to Orsa & Winston stat. It’s the bee’s knees.

UPDATE:

Here’s the full menu, as e-mailed to me by the restaurant.

AMUSE – Amazake soda, caramelized back mission fig, green apple sorrel

1 – Kanpachi crudo, sugarkiss melon jelly, nori

2 – Heirloom tomato salad, pluot, beet pastrami, mouse melon, sake lees dressing

BREAD – Milkbread focaccia, bergamot butter, bone marrow

3 – Mussel & clam chowder, sungold tomato, peewee potato, saffron

4 – Satsuki rice porridge, shellfish béarnaise, snap pea, hokkaido scallop

5 – Egg yolk & ricotta ravioli, momotaro tomato, polenta, braised wagyu beef cheek, pecorino romano

EXTRA – Warabi mochi, strawberry, cherry tomato, beet, saba

EXTRA – Coconut tapioca, lemon sorbet, grapes & melon, vanilla salt meringue

6 – Gianduja bar, malt kinako, chocolate sorbet

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Spaghetti with Crispy Chickpeas and Preserved Lemon

Tom Colicchio’s always like “you didn’t develop any flavor” on Top Chef and most people are probably like “what’s he talking about?” My quick answer is: “He’s talking about making things brown.”

Generally speaking, when you’re cooking something, you want it to turn brown (or, to use a prettier word, you want it to “caramelize.”) What that really comes down to is taking things further than you might otherwise feel comfortable. The hard part is if you take them too far, there’s no going back. So you’ve gotta get in there, hover over the pan, but don’t hover too much–if you stare, you’ll be tempted to stir, and that stops the browning. It’s a delicate dance, developing flavor, but if you do it the right way you can create a dish that’s way more dynamic than it has any right to be–like this dish of spaghetti with crispy chickpeas and preserved lemon.

Riffing on a recipe from the Franny’s cookbook, I drained a can of chickpeas and patted them dry with paper towels. Then I heated about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of olive oil in a large skillet while bringing a big pot of water to a boil for the pasta. When the olive oil was good and hot, I added the chickpeas:

A loud sizzle will happen: don’t be scared. Here’s where you should leave them alone for a few minutes so they turn brown. If you stir, they’ll break up and you’ll have chickpea mush. After about 4 minutes, they had some color:

At this moment, I adde about 4 cloves of sliced garlic and an anchovy which I stirred into the mix:

Here’s where things got really deep and dark and exciting (Tom Colicchio would be proud)–I cooked the mix until the garlic was just golden brown and the chickpeas almost chestnut-colored:

It’s at this moment that you want to stop the cooking so you add about a half a ladleful of salted pasta water (don’t be shy with the salt in the water). There’ll be another loud sizzle! (Oil and water, as you know.) But then you stir the water in, let it evaporate a bit, and set the chickpea pan aside.

This is a good time to drop in your spaghetti. Let it go for about a minute or two less than the package says it should; meanwhile, take a preserved lemon (I bought mine from the Cheese Store of Silverlake) and cut off the rind and chop it.

To finish, turn the heat back on the chickpea pan and when the spaghetti is super al dente, lift it out of the water with tongs and stir into the chickpea mixture, adding some pasta cooking water if the pan is dry. Stir all around with tongs on medium heat until the liquid is absorbed and everything is coated; then add the preserved lemon, stir that in, and finally lots of chopped parsley.

It’s hard to convey how flavorful this was, but maybe it’s not hard to convey when you see how brown everything got in the pictures. See, I’m not lying. That’s the secret to developing flavor–brown food. You could win Top Chef on the premise alone!

So get yourself a can of chickpeas and some spaghetti and get practicing. If you can make those two ingredients taste this good, there’s no telling what you might do. Welcome to Brown Town.

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When A Frenchman Cooks You Dinner

For a while, our friend Cris has wanted to cook us dinner. The fact that we didn’t make it happen immediately won’t seem like a big deal until I tell you that Cris is French. Yes, we had the opportunity to have dinner cooked for us by a French person and we didn’t take him up on it until last week when he and his boyfriend Harry had us over to their Echo Park apartment.

Here’s the thing about having a French person cook you dinner: it’s not about health, it’s not about showing off, it’s about the most important thing you can ask for when someone’s standing behind a stove–and that’s pleasure.

To wit, here’s what Cris made: he took a pork loin and he sliced it thinly. Then he browned it in butter with garlic and when it got some color, he took the pork and the garlic out of the pan and immediately deglazed with half a bottle of white wine. After reducing that for a while, he added (and yes this is very French) three cups of cream. He reduced that by half and then added the pork back in, which simmered in there until it was cooked through, just 10 minutes or so:

Here he is in action (notice how easy he makes it look; he doesn’t even need a spatula, he just uses a fork):

With that, Cris served mashed potatoes which he boiled with a variety of herbs and then mashed by hand with cream (of course) and butter:

And, finally, a beautiful ratatouille that he made by slicing eggplant, zucchini, and tomatoes thinly, placing them like petals in an oiled mold, studding them with garlic and herbs and drizzling them with more olive oil before baking in the oven:

To serve, he flipped them out on a plate making them even prettier:

The finished plate was oh so perfect and oh so French:

It may look kind of simple, but every element was très chic. And that’s the thing about the French, the beauty is in the details. Like, when we had red wine, Cris decanted it:

And the tea he served after the meal, while something he bought at the store, perfectly hit the spot with its combination of citrus and camomile:

I also enjoyed flipping through the cookbook from which Cris got the pork recipe, which was all in French, but I was surprised at how much I could translate just because I’ve seen so many French words on menus over the years:

The recipes were amusing because the most complex dishes–like Coq au Vin Rouge en Gelee–had the tiniest bit of text to tell you what to do. The assumption is that you don’t need your hand held along the way, assuming that you’re French:

I also got a kick out of this book from Cris’s collection:

So thanks Cris for such a special meal–and thanks Harry for your hospitality.

Now it’s my turn and I’ll have to reciprocate with an All-American feast. That’s right, Big Macs and Big Gulps for everyone!

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Chocolate Chip Cookie Hacks

Controversial statement: all chocolate chip cookie recipes are basically the same.

Sure, some are better than others (The New York Times recipe is probably the best one out there) but they’re all different ratios of butter, brown sugar, regular sugar, eggs, vanilla, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and chocolate. And though different ratios will yield slightly different results, in my experience what matters much more than the recipe are the specific techniques you use to make your cookies. For internet purposes, let’s call them hacks and I’ve got six of ’em that’ll work with any chocolate chip cookie recipe and produce consistently good cookies every time.

CCC Hack #1: Use European-Style Butter.

The chocolate chip cookie master in my life is my friend Diana who makes the best cookies I’ve ever had. When I asked her about it, she offered up one major secret about why her cookies are so good: she uses Plugra European-Style butter when she makes them. The higher fat content creates cookies that are richer than your every day cookies. Also, it feels extra fancy to use butter that comes in shiny gold packaging. You’ll see.

CCC Hack #2. Chop The Chocolate Yourself.

Buying a bag of chocolate chips from the store is a loser-move when it comes to making quality cookies. Buy bars of chocolate–I like Ghiardelli 70% bittersweet, but sometimes I splurge on the Scharffen Berger–and use a big chefs knife and chop it into big chunks. Those chunks make the cookies so much more dynamic; sometimes you get a big bite of chocolate, sometimes you get just a sliver. But that textural complexity makes for a major difference in your finished cookies.

CCC Hack #3. Use An Ice Cream Scoop.

Whenever a TV cooking host talked about using an ice cream scoop with a lever to make cookies, I thought “who needs that?” Then I got one and now I can’t imagine making cookies without it. Not only does it ensure that all the cookies will be equally sized, it also just produces really nicely shaped cookies. My strategy is to scoop the dough onto parchment-lined baking sheets, flatten them a bit, and then sprinkle them with salt. Actually that’s another hack.

CCC Hack #4: Don’t Be Shy With Salt.

Some pastry chefs advise doubling the salt in any given recipe, but I wouldn’t go that far. I’ll just say that sprinkling your cookie dough with Maldon sea salt before it hits the oven is a little flourish that goes a long way. The large crystals add another textural dynamic that make everyday cookies feel like Prom Night.

CCC Hack #5. Age the dough.

This comes from that New York Times recipe, and it’s such good advice. If you can, make the dough two days ahead, keep it in the refrigerator, and then scoop it. The cookies will be that much nuttier and take on a caramel-like flavor. If you can’t wait that long, do what I do: make more cookie dough than you need. Scoop the cookies you want to bake immediately onto a Silat-lined sheet (see next hack); as for the other cookies, scoop the dough on to a parchment-lined sheet and then stick that sheet into the freezer. The next morning, pop those raw cookie mounts into a freezer bag and keep them in your freezer for up to a month (or sometimes longer). The cookies will age the way they need to age, but also you can bake delicious cookies whenever you want straight from the freezer. Just pop into a 350-degree oven and bake a few minutes longer than you normally do. This is the secret to my happy marriage.

CCC Hack #6: Use a Silpat.

My final hack is one that I’ve only settled on recently. Normally, I just bake chocolate chip cookies on parchment paper, but I find that with a Silpat sheet, the cookies are more protected from the hot metal and don’t end up as dark on the bottom. Not a major hack, but a nice hack still.

Are you sick of the word “hack” yet? I know I am. But that’s ok, we’ve reached the end of this post. Happy cookie-ing.

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My Friend Josh

One of the best people that I know is my friend Josh Phillipson. You may recognize Josh’s name because he was the one who urged me to start The Amateur Gourmet in the first place. When I took Craig to Atlanta for the first time, Josh and his wonderful wife Katy hosted us. Josh and Katy have two of the most adorable children you’ve ever met, Lucy and Bea. And last May, when Craig and I got married, Josh and Katy flew all the way across the country to help us celebrate.

Now Josh is facing a battle with cancer, specifically Ewing Sarcoma. It’s an aggressive form of cancer and, despite having health insurance, it’s a very expensive ordeal. And though you don’t know Josh personally, if you enjoyed reading this blog at any point over the past 12 years, I ask that you donate some money to help Josh and his family. You can make your donation and read more about Josh by clicking here.

My Secret Blog

Hi Amateur Gourmet readers, I have a secret: I’ve been blogging behind your back. A few weeks ago, I started a blog using my own name: heyadamroberts.com. The idea is that I still write about food, just much more casually. Also, sometimes I write about not-food things. So far I’ve blogged some Chocolate Chip Cookie Hacks, a dinner that my French friend Cris cooked for us, a pretty killer recipe for Spaghetti with Chickpeas and Preserved Lemon, and a dinner that we had at Orsa & Winston in downtown L.A. There’s also an essay about Penn & Teller’s “Fool Us,” a TV show that I very much enjoy. So come on by and say hello. It’s very low-key; no ads, nice fonts. It’ll be fun.

OK, I Lied: It Sucks To Cook After Work

Remember that time that I was a full-time food blogger? And I had the nerve to say things like: “You can cook after work! It’s easy.” Well I’d like to take that person, pin him against a wall, and say: “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Because now that I have a full-time job, I come home happily exhausted (I love where I’m working) and the idea of making a big mess in the kitchen at 6:45 PM (when I get home) and then cleaning it up holds very little appeal to me on a weekday night. So the picture you see above is my saving grace: Dune Falafel is on the other side of Atwater Village from me, so my new favorite thing is to come home, give the cat some treats, and to go for a 20 minute walk along GlenFeliz Blvd to procure the hummus plate you see above (it really is the most dazzling hummus plate I’ve ever experienced). And then, every so often, I do manage to make a dinner.

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We Got Married (The Wedding Post)

I was never a wedding person. Growing up, I’d watch the wedding scene in The Sound of Music and fantasize about writing a great musical someday. The idea of walking down an aisle held very little appeal for me (even if there’d be nuns singing a slowed-down version of “How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?”) So when Craig and I got engaged almost two years ago at Rustic Canyon, I imagined us having a simple wedding at a nice restaurant somewhere. Maybe just our families and a few close friends at Blue Hill Stone Barns or The French Laundry; 12 to 15 people max. The only problem? My betrothed had a very different idea of what our wedding would be. “I want a big party,” he informed me soon after we told our families that we were getting married. “A big party with lots and lots of people!”

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My New Career: T.V. Writer

Ok, it’s time to spill the beans: starting next month, I’m going to be a staff writer on the new ABC Dan Savage-inspired sitcom “The Real O’Neals,” starring Martha Plimpton! To say that I’m excited would be a profound understatement. The show, based loosely on Dan Savage’s life, is one of only three new comedies that ABC is debuting this year and based on what I know so far, it’s going to be a great one. I hope you’ll all watch.

Of course, this probably leaves you wondering: “What’s going to happen to the blog?” The answer is: “I’m not sure, yet!” In the meantime, the best way to connect with me is via Instagram (@amateurgourmet): I update that more than anything else (though there’s also Twitter and Facebook). Thanks for being so patient during this crazy career shift and I promise, no matter what, I’ll continue entertaining you—either here on your computer or over there on your T.V. screen. Here goes nothing!