Author Archives: j

chinese longan honey

chinese longan honey

i’m not sure if this is because of colony collapse disorder, but 99 ranch no longer carries my favorite honey. i used the last of it a few months ago. such sadness…

longan honey

longan honey front

longan honey ingredients

longan honey ingredients

longan honey nutritional info

longan honey nutritional info

that’s right: the distributor is good will food inc 10660 El Poche St, South El Monte, CA 91733

tardy

there are a couple of things i have failed to discuss: our pizza at luggage room and nook.

luggage room pizza caught my eye on tasting table because they advertised 70 year old sourdough starter. we finally tried it out on one of our many trips eastward. we decided to add whatever weight we lost off our heads at the hands of lisa to our tummies. we had the fallen angel and a special farmer’s market ‘za with corn and fresno chiles and goat cheese. i enjoyed the crust as it had a bit of the sour flavor i’m used to in my bread and it had a nice chew, but the ingredients, especially on the fallen angel, were just too heavy-handed. and there was too much cheese which overpowered the crust. i must admit, though, that i loved the fact that the dining room was in the old luggage room of the del mar station and we sat underneath a large wooden sliding door, seemingly original.

nook, on the other hand, has impressed us with its black beluga lentils with merguez sausage and the caesar salad. their soups have also been enjoyable: on two different occasions we enjoyed the pork and green chile stew and black eyed pea soup. my recent craving for mac and cheese was also fulfilled and satisfied by nook as was my curiosity about their shrimp and grits. the shrimp and grits were just as fatty as those at larkin’s but there was a seasoning and elegance to nook’s that i really enjoyed. however, one can only eat so much shrimp and grits in a lifetime. i think i’ve eaten one too many. i would stay away from the squash and zucchini couscous and the burger and the shiitake/gruyere bread pudding. the fries and onion rings were oversalted, but there was a nice crunch to each and they weren’t too oily or thickly battered.

nook | 11628 Santa Monica Blvd #9 Los Angeles, CA 90025 | 310.207.5160

luggage room pizzeria | 260 S. Raymond Avenue pasadena ca | 626-356-4440

in search of bialy

on our recent visit to nook, we peeked in the window of western bagel and saw bialys. sadly, they are not real bialys. they are bread with bialy ingredients baked on top. and our carb-heavy breakfast left my tummy a little upset. not all was lost as the chocolate chip bagel was good with a good crumb and not too sweet. the salt bagel was nothing like that at bagel nosh. it was pillowy, less dense, but when i bit into it, the bitten edge stayed squished so it was also gummy. not my favorite. oh, bagel nosh, why can’t you be open at 630am on weekends?

bialy stick

bialy stick

bialy and salt bagel

the other contestants

Peep jousting

We have way too much free time…

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our night with ml + kcl started with a lovely dinner at nook bistro and ended with all of us guffawing as we watched and then ate year-old peeps and called each other nerds. Ahhhh, good times. Did i mention i also shot video?

eating by jason epstein

what i’ve learned from mr. epstein:

  • secret ingredient in pasta: seeded jalapeno and/or italian red pepper flakes
  • watery sauce will not grip the pasta
  • keep a small bowl of cool water nearby; as pasta cooks you can pick one out w/ slotted spoon and drop into the bowl and taste w/o burning mouth
  • pasta is the main ingredient; not the sauce
  • if serving pasta later, reserve the boiled pasta water and ladle some into the pasta as you reheat to loosen pasta
  • putting mozzarella cheese on basil and not hot pasta will prevent melting and stringiness
  • strattu: fragrant tomato concentrate (infinitely more so than tomato paste)
  • find a quality butcher who trims his own prime beef and grinds the scraps for hamburger
  • he strains freshly beaten eggs and scrambles them over a bain-marie instead of open flame (we did this w/o the straining…m used less butter than i do when i scramble them on open flame so, of course, they weren’t as good)
  • potato chips: russet potatoes sliced almost paper-thin on a mandoline, soaked briefly in cold water to eliminate starch so they don’t stick together, drained, spun, and thoroughly dried in the fridge, three inches of canola or peanut oil heated to 350; the drier the potatoes, the faster they will brown and the less the oil will bubble when you add the potatoes, adjust flame to compensate for temp drop when you add each handful/batch (we just watched cook’s illustrated do the same thing with 1/4″ fries; their recipes were about 90% the same); epstein recommends chips and matchsticks for more crunch and less sog
  • oil floats on water so unless you make an emulsion, or greens are bone dry, add oil to the greens first, vinegar second
scrambled eggs

bain-marie scrambled eggs a la jason epstein and m

easy, girl

today, i vowed to go easy on my bike. and i did. until i didn’t. my ride on san vicente = 11.22 miles / 48.22 minutes / 13.9 mph average speed. i only used a handful of speeds. i felt great. i walked around for a bit to cool down. and then, in my infinite wisdom, decided to stuff a backpack full of computers and books and stuff i didn’t use and attempted to bike to the library. i made it there and back just fine, but it.is.just.so.much.harder to bike with all that crap…i’m not the brightest light bulb or the sharpest knife. to top it all off, i didn’t wear any spf so my arms are a bit red. i blame that on santa monica as i wear a jacket most of the year and now my skin is wimpy. (library = 2.25 miles / 18.04 minutes / 7.3 mph average speed) and just let me tell you…traffic was nasty. everyone angling to get somewhere faster than someone else. i biked like he** to get home just so i could get off the street. and let me repeat this again: it didn’t help that i had about 40 lbs on my back. (what a dupa…)

10 coffee places

i would be remiss if i didn’t record this info…

Coffee aficionados are no longer confined to Espresso Profeta, Caffe Luxxe or Conservatory for Coffee for a decent cup of joe.
LA Weekly’s 10 Places to Get a Damn Good Cup of Coffee

  • Espresso Cielo: Sure, the stretch of Main Street between Santa Monica and Venice has a few coffee shops (Urth, Peet’s-potentially-Starbucks), but keep going towards Venice until you happen upon this blue tinged-shop. It’s French by way of Canada. Serving coffee in distinctly blue cups, Espresso Cielo offers coffee from Vancouver’s 49th Parallel Coffee Roasters, one of the very few cafes outside of Canada to do so. 3101 Main Street, Santa Monica; (310) 314-9999.
  • Balconi Coffee Company: When Cafe Balcony lost its lease in a tucked-away spot at Centinela and Rochester in 2009, broken-hearted lovers of siphon-brewed coffee cried coffee-stained tears. Ray Sato re-opened his coffee shop earlier this year in this new location at Olympic and Sawtelle, much to the relief of his fans. Sato plans to offer a few beans at a time. On a recent visit, he was brewing beans from local roaster Cafecito Organico. Word to the wise: Sato wants to focus on the social aspect of coffee culture, so there is no wifi here. Take that as your sign to disconnect and re-connect. 11301 W. Olympic Blvd #124, Los Angeles; (310) 906-0267.
  • Coffee Commissary: Coffee Commissary’s décor is minimalist, allowing you to focus on the coffee. And what great coffee: one of the few places in LA that offers Portland’s Coava Coffee Roasters, the shop also offers coffee from Sightglass Coffee and Victrola Coffee Roasters. Coffee Commissary is located right next to soon-to-open butcher shop Lindy & Grundy, so it’ll likely become a two-shop stop when you visit. 801 N. Fairfax Ave., #106, Los Angeles; (323) 782-1465.
  • Farmers’ Markets: If you can find Starbucks at Vons, it’s only fitting that you can find an artisan coffee stand at your local farmers’ market. DripBar is a simple stand: two girls, a coffee cart, a few bags of San Francisco’s Blue Bottle Coffee beans and a few Hario V60 cones for pour-overs. Find them at the farmers’ market on Crenshaw, in Los Feliz and on the USC campus. Longshot Coffee was started by Mark Baird, who wanted to introduce us to the art of Australian espresso. He primarily caters to Hollywood sets and events, but starting April 7, you’ll be able to find Longshot at the Yamashiro Farmers’ Market in Hollywood.
  • Cafecito Organico: Cafecito Organico is one of the few coffee shops in LA to source and roast its own coffee. Its beans are carefully selected from sources who engage in sustainable, fair practices. Cafecito has two locations; the second one, on Heliotrope between Scoops and The Bicycle Kitchen, is the more coffee shop-py shop of the two, with plenty of seating. In both locations, the baristas can wax poetic about how South American coffee differs from, say, Indonesian coffee. 534 N. Hoover St., Los Angeles, (213) 537-8367. 710 N. Heliotrope Drive, Los Angeles, (213) 305-4484.
  • Spring for Coffee : To say that Spring for Coffee is small is a bit of an understatement. It’s all of 200 square feet, a tenth of the size of the 2,000 square feet CoffeeBar just a few doors away. Where CoffeeBar’s generous space invites you to stay, Spring for Coffee understands that you’re busy and need to go. Each cup is individually crafted, and you have your pick of coffee, including beans from Portland’s Stumptown Coffee Roasters and San Francisco’s Ritual Coffee Roasters. 548 S. Spring Street, Los Angeles; (213) 228-0041.
  • CoffeeBar: CoffeeBar is Intelligentsia without the pretension, Seattle without the rain (present weather excepted). This is is truly a coffee bar: the shop judiciously features multiple roasters so that on any given day, you can have your pick of specialty beans on tap. Recently, the shop had beans from Noble Coffee Roasters, Verve Coffee Roasters and Four Barrel Coffee. Oh, and CoffeeBar happens to have a very rare Slayer espresso machine, an $18,000 beast that, in the hands of the right barista, may give you the best shot of espresso you’ve ever had. 600 S. Spring St., Los Angeles.
  • Intelligentsia: With the exception of the aforementioned Espresso Profeta, Caffe Luxxe, and Conservatory for Coffee way over on the Westside, Los Angeles was arguably a coffee wasteland until Chicago’s Intelligentsia rolled into Silver Lake. The shop also has locations in Pasadena and Venice. For those who can’t make it out to any location (or for those whose conversion is so recent they prefer not to deal with Intelligentsia’s often holier-than-thou vibe), The Fix in Echo Park and Paper or Plastik in the Mid-City area all brew Intelligentsia beans. 3922 West Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, (323) 663-6173. 1331 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, (310) 399-1233. 55 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, (626) 578-1270.
  • Cognoscenti Coffee: When Yeekai Lim left his pop-up coffee stand at Blue Dot Acai & Yogurt in Eagle Rock and set up shop inside Proof Bakery in Atwater Village, most of his loyal customers followed him — with good reason. An architect-turned-barista, Lim is almost obsessive about details. Ask for a cortado and talk to him about how he decided which milk to use for his drinks. Cognoscenti brews beans from San Francisco’s Four Barrel Coffee. 3156 Glendale Blvd, Los Angeles; (323) 664-8633.
  • Cafe de Leche: Cafe de Leche is either the harbinger of gentrification or a much needed artisan coffee shop in Highland Park. Brewing beans from Stumptown Coffee Roasters, the shop offers the staples (lattes, macchiatos) as well as neighborhood specials like the horchata con espresso. 5000 York Boulevard, Los Angeles; (323) 551-6828.

Honorable mentions

  • Bru Coffee Bar : The coffee shop formerly known as Psychobabble in Los Feliz brews beans from Ritual Coffee Roasters on its La Marzocco machine. The shop is still young, the shots are a bit uneven and the latte art needs work, but give it a few months and it will likely be a contender. 1866 Vermont Ave., Los Angeles; (323) 664-7500.
  • Gelato Bar: While not strictly focused on coffee (it’s called Gelato Bar for a reason), this shop belonging to Gail Silverton (sister of Nancy) acquired a Synesso Cyncra espresso machine in 2009 and procured beans from Sonoma County’s Ecco Caffe. The baristas do a fine job with the machine and the coffee. The highlight is when Gail’s son, Nik Krankl, is in town and pops up behind the counter. Krankl is an award-winning barista, most recently competing in the Southwest Regional Barista Championship. Keep an eye on Gelato Bar’s Facebook page for updates on Krankl’s guest shifts. 4342 1/2 Tujunga Ave., Studio City; (818) 487-1717.