Adam D. Roberts's Blog, page 45

Reasons To Make A Crumb Cake This Weekend

1. Because it’s the weekend and you can eat whatever you want and not get fat.

2. Because crumb cake works equally well as breakfast, as an afternoon snack, a post-dinner dessert or a late night treat.

3. You have four sticks of butter in your refrigerator and you don’t know what to do with them.

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Beating Jet Lag

Here’s some great advice on Kottke.org about beating jet lag by changing your diet. This will come in handy in five weeks when I make the 19 hour journey to Perth!

Stuffed Eggplant with Lamb and Pine Nuts

Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem is so popular Julia Moskin of The New York Times did an article about “Jerusalem fever.” Do I have Jerusalem fever? Well, I’ve been cooking from it gradually, making that fattoush a few months ago, and that beet dip I posted about yesterday. The beet dip was for this week’s Clean Plate Club and the entree, also from Jerusalem, is the one you see above: eggplant stuffed with lamb and pine nuts.

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The Clean Plate Club, Episode #9: Whitney Adams, Kyle Buchanan

Our new neighbor here in Atwater Village is the illustrious and delightful Kyle Buchanan who is the movies editor of New York Magazine, the kind of guy who, when you’re talking about Miley Cyrus, is able to say: “I interviewed her for the cover of Cosmo last month.” (Ya, but did he make cookies based on her tongue? I don’t think so!). He joins us for this week’s Clean Plate Club along with another illustrious person: sommelier Whitney Adams, who I met last year at a dinner party, and who–in addition to working at Domaine L.A. and Terroni–runs the blog Brunellos Have More Fun. Whitney teaches us terms like “tertiary vapors” and “natural yeast,” while also gossiping about her time as hostess at Wolfgang Puck’s Cut.

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Beet Dip

“Dip” is a funny word because, really, does it make you hungry? It connotes a drop in the road or a dippy person. It’s also kind of retro. “How about some chips and dip,” says a mom on a black-and-white TV show from the past, doesn’t matter which one. Oh: it also connotes chewing tobacco which my college roommate used to spit into a cup. He’d leave the cup around our dorm room and every so often I’d glance into it and want to puke. So dip, yeah. It’s not the sexiest food word.

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My Heart’s Aflame For Chengdu Taste (My Mouth Too)

This is the place. I’ve been in L.A. for two years, stalking my way around the San Gabriel valley, slurping noodles at Tasty Noodle House and tearing into salted egg yolk pastries at Sea Harbour. Secretly, I was looking for a place that would put our favorite New York Chinese restaurant, Grand Sichuan, to shame. The only thing that was in the same ballpark was Chung King where I went with Zach Brooks last year. It was ok, but it didn’t blow me out of the water. I’d pretty much let go of the idea of supplanting Grand Sichuan since most of my San Gabriel experiences were Cantonese. Then, last week, I met up with Ganda and Zach for lunch at a place that Kat Odell recommended during my podcast: Chengdu Taste. And the rest, as they say, is history.

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Ignore The Sell By Date

According to this Mother Jones article, it’s not for you: it’s “meant for store stockers to keep track of product rotation. It offers little indication of when the milk may actually sour.” The story goes on to connect this to a larger problem, that of food waste. 1/3rd of the global food supply is wasted and “here in America, we’re even worse: Roughly 40 percent of our food goes uneaten, amounting to an economic loss of $165 billion a year.” So keep using that milk until it really is sour.

Miley Cyrus Tongue Cookies

Every generation is given its iconic body part. The 90s gave us Cindy Crawford’s mole. The aughts gave us Janet Jackson’s breast (perfect cupcake fodder). And now the 10s have given us a gift in the form of a pointy, wet protuberance: Miley Cyrus’s tongue.

I first became aware of Miley’s appendage, as most of America did, at the MTV Music Video awards when she appeared onstage with stoned, pink teddy bears (no I’m not talking about Robin Thicke) and she stuck her tongue out in a way that defied the laws of mouth-physics. Was it disturbing? Was it groundbreaking? I’m not sure. But one thing was for certain: that tongue was seared forever into my memory banks.

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Miley’s Tongue Cookies

Every generation is given its iconic body part. The 90s gave us Cindy Crawford’s mole. The aughts gave us Janet Jackson’s breast (perfect cupcake fodder). And now the 10s have given us a gift in the form of a pointy, wet protuberance: Miley Cyrus’s tongue.

I first became aware of Miley’s appendage, as most of America did, at the MTV Music Video awards when she appeared onstage with stoned, pink teddy bears (no I’m not talking about Robin Thicke) and she stuck her tongue out in a way that defied the laws of mouth-physics. Was it disturbing? Was it groundbreaking? I’m not sure. But one thing was for certain: that tongue was seared forever into my memory banks.

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Let’s Talk Breaking Bad While Looking At Pictures of Food From The Oinkster

What you are looking at is a pastrami sandwich from The Oinkster in Eagle Rock. I’ve been meaning to blog about it for a while. I started a post about it on Friday, but kind of lost my motivation; then, this morning, I started to write one again but found myself reading Breaking Bad recaps instead. Which got me thinking: why pretend that I want to talk about this pastrami sandwich when all I want to do is talk about Breaking Bad? So, on the surface, this post will look like any other food blog post, but really it’s a chance to talk Walter White. (Spoilers ahead.)

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