Author Archives: Anne

Guest Blog Post: The Secret Life of Twins, via "An American In Ireland"

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Anne| Leave a comment


Wow, unemployment sure is busy!  It’s amazing how little time I seem to have these days to take photos of what I’m cooking.  I guess I’m also cooking a lot less since J is on the road, so I tend to eat the same things (chicken, Mexican doria which is a baked rice dish I just made up, egg whites, toast) so it isn’t very interesting.

My sister recently wrote a post, “The Secret Life of Twins,” about growing up as an identical twin, and since I’m the other half of that pair, I thought I’d feature her post here.  Her blog, An American in Ireland, chronicles her move to and life in Ireland as an expat and is filled with funny stories of culture shock mixed in with culinary adventures and lots of Irish slang that will leave you scratching your head.  Or noggin.  Is that what they say?

I’ll be back with more food adventures shortly.

Enjoy!

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Posted in An American in Ireland, Ireland, sister, twins

Cappelletti In Brodo

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Anne| 1 Comment

I have a lot to cover in this post, so I guess it’s best to get started!

Before I get into this pasta making experience, I wanted to share with you the experience I was lucky enough to have had with Todd and Diane, AKA White On Rice Couple.  As their many loyal blog readers and Twitter followers know, T&D are extremely talented and gifted photographers, cooks, teachers and just all-around awesome people.  They are also master GIVERS.  I say this because I have been the recipient of their generosity more than once- most recently at their inaugural Food Photography Shoot Out where they invited a few bloggers to come and learn the tricks of their trade, for free.  I learned so much I can barely even begin to put it in this blog, but the biggest lesson I took away from the seminar was that my photos should tell a story.  So I’m trying to keep this in mind from now on when I post photos on this blog, and I hope you’ll all give me feedback on where I can improve (and also what’s working!).  Their words about telling a story made me rethink my blogging a bit- I haven’t included a whole lot of personal information in my blog so far, but I think I may allow myself to be a bit more open in this space from now on.  I mean, words should tell a story too, and maybe after five years my story should include more than just one about making this dish or that dish.  Anyway, many thanks to Todd and Diane for sharing their wisdom, knowledge, humor and confidence with me and the others- I know we’re all better for it and I hope I make you guys proud!   Here’s some of the pics I took during their workshop:

So, since we’re on the topic of telling a story, my story, to be exact, here’s what’s new….well, new to you all, over the last couple of months.  If you’ve been reading Tuna Toast for awhile, you’ve probably gathered that I work in entertainment television, I’m married to a musician, have a cat, lived in Tokyo for a long time and love to cook.  All of those things are still true, except for the first thing: I was laid off at the end of last year.  Before you throw me any pity parties, let me tell you that A) it wasn’t a total surprise and B) it was the extra kick in the pants I needed to pursue my true passion, FOOD.  Don’t worry, I’m not signing up for The Next Food Network Star or making plate after plate of green beans on a line in a kitchen.  I thought long and hard about a field that marries my media experience with my love and knowledge of food and came to a conclusion, which I’ll share with you I as progress a bit further into my journey.  Let’s just say I’ve started an internship to dip my toe into this new adventure, and I’m loving every minute of it!  To wake up excited about work is a feeling I’d been missing for quite awhile, and it’s really, truly a great thing.

Ok, so you’re like, “Can you get to the FOOD already?!”  Yes yes- these lovely little cappelletti were a triumph for me personally, because although I’ve been making fresh pasta for a couple of years, I’d never really gotten mine to the al dente consistency that pasta, ALL pasta, should have.  I’ve played around with recipes that use type 00 flour, use a mix of semolina and all purpose and ones that use oil and eggs and even others that use only eggs, but I’d never gotten that wonderful, chewy texture out of my homemade pasta.  Until now!!  At the aforementioned Food Photography Shoot Out, I was whining to a fellow blogger about how soft my homemade pasta is.  She happened to be Italian, and told me that most pasta recipes tell you to fold and roll the pasta dough through the thickest setting three times, which is true and therefore what I’d always done.  She said Italian grandmothers fold and roll their pasta through the thickest setting at least fifteen times before moving on to the thinner settings since it builds up the gluten in the dough.  Viola!  It made perfect sense and I couldn’t wait to go home and try it.

I’d spied these beautiful cappelletti on Jul’s Kitchen and immediately added it to the top of my list of dishes I’d like to make, which I save on the desktop of my MacBook because, well, I’m a big dork and that’s just what I do.  I made the filling – a combination of ground beef, ground pork, sausage and mortadella, Parmesan, bread crumbs and egg- the day before.  If you could have smelled the kitchen when that mixture was cooking you’d think you’d died and gone to Italian Heaven, I tell you.  It was a pretty good start to what would become a great dish.

The next day I was eager to start the pasta but wanted to decide what type of sauce would be good for the cappelletti so I was looking around the internet when I discovered that 99%, if not all cappelletti, was served en brodo, or in broth.  I’d had my heart set on a marinara but didn’t want to upset any Italian grandmothers, so I researched at length to find a recipe for the perfect brodo.  I realized that the Italian broth for this dish was always made with meat, which was new to me.  I’d made broth before but always from bones, not actual hunks of meat, and I felt a little bit guilty purchasing large slabs of brisket, beef shank with tons of meat on it and chicken just to stew in a big pot of water but I did it anyway.  OMG, am I glad I did.  The meat, onion, carrot, celery and Parmesan rinds (I always keep them and let me tell you- they are the key to this broth!) made the richest, tastiest broth I think I’d ever made.

I made the pasta as instructed by my fellow blogger, and it was far more forgiving as I was rolling up my cappelletti that any other pasta I’d made in the past. It was much more elastic and could take on more filling since it was so durable.  What a difference the extra rolling made!  I wondered if it would hold the texture after I cooked it…

It did!  It was perfectly al dente and kept its shape nicely.  I was so happy to have finally figured out the key to a nice, chewy egg pasta.  The combination of flavors of the different meats in the filling with the broth and a nice dusting of Parmesan was really magical, and I can see why this rich pasta is served in broth instead of coated with a heavier sauce.  It was a great balance of flavor and texture.

For dessert, I made another recipe I’d “clipped” from a blog: David Lebovitz’s Goat Cheese Souffle.  I’m a huge fan of light, fluffy Japanese cheesecake and I knew from the ingredients that this would have a similar flavor.  I made the mistake of putting my souffles too close together so they did ooze a bit, but otherwise they were light, slightly sweet and just cheesy enough.  I’d definitely make this again and maybe serve it with fresh berries.

So, that’s the end of the story, at least for today.  I hope my photos did a better job of telling it than in my previous posts, and I will definitely work harder to become a better storyteller, both with the pictures AND the words!

Now go and make this cappelletti!

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Posted in brodo, broth, cappelletti, fresh pasta, home cooking, Italian cuisine, souffle, stuffed pasta

Super Bowl Food

Posted on February 8, 2011 by Anne| 3 Comments

Ah, The Super Bowl.  It might be the second biggest eating “holiday” in the U.S. after Thanksgiving.  I’m not really sure where the tradition of stuffing your face while watching football started, but I’m not complaining about it!  I mean, any excuse to eat while watching TV can’t be bad (for your soul…but it could be bad for the body!) plus the food gives the football haters something to focus on while the others scream loudly at the television as if the referees can actually hear them.  Which is probably why I made SO much food yesterday.  As you may know from reading this blog, J is a musician.  As you can probably guess, none of his musician friends watch sports of any kind.  So the food was the reason they came, while only a couple of us actually watched the game.  It was a win-win for everyone (OK, maybe not the Steelers…oh well…).
I don’t know why I but I always make way more food than necessary, whether it’s for a special occasion or just a regular ol’ night.  You’d think I was cooking for the Duggars (that family that has like, 100 kids) but I guess I always feel it’s better to have too much that too little.  Of course during the 4th hour of cooking I often wonder what the hell I was thinking, but then I get out of the weeds and it all works out.  Isn’t that the joy of cooking?!  I just have this need to feed people…it’s what makes me happiest, so I’ll come up with any reason to cook mountains of food as long as there are people willing to eat it.  
Since we only had a few people over, I sent each person home with enough food to last them a week.  I think next time I’ll take it down a notch and remind myself that our guests aren’t bears and do not need to eat enough to sustain themselves until spring.  
Here’s what we had:

Lobster salad in endive cups.  Normally I make this with crab, but J and I bought a 5 pound lobster at Shun Fat El Monte Superstore for under $20, so I figured why not?  Do you know how much a container of dungeness crab meat costs?  A lot more than this giant specimen of a lobster!  The claw meat was amazingly tender and worked really well in this dish.

Before:

After:

Two kinds of empanadas: 1) Soyrizo, corn and cheese empanadas and 2) Butternut squash, black bean and salsa verde empanadas.  I find it’s easiest to keep a lot of party dishes vegetarian friendly, and as long as they’re satisfying, the meat eaters won’t even notice.  I took a shortcut by purchasing empanada dough discs from Figueroa Produce- they sell three kinds, all in their freezer section.

Lightly blanched green beans and asparagus with sesame dip.  I just whizzed one block of silken tofu in a blender with some Japanese toasted sesame oil, sesame seeds and sesame salad dressing.  It was thick and delicious- try substituting silken tofu for mayo in your next dip recipe and you’ll see how creamy it is!

Italian sandwiches: Tofurky Italian Sausage sliced thin, provolone cheese, mixed greens and pesto.  I made big sandwiches the day before on ciabatta bread, wrapped them tightly in plastic wrap and compressed them with cans, then unwrapped them the day of the party and sliced them into smaller sandwiches.

Guacamole and three kinds of salsa: I made the guac- you can’t have a Super Bowl party without it- and bought the salsa from Cacao Mexicatessen in Eagle Rock.

Japanese fried chicken drumettes: My mom used to make these for my sister and me on special occasions like birthday parties, and they are absolutely my favorite kind of fried chicken.  Just marinate the chicken in a mixture of soy sauce, mirin, garlic, ginger and green onions for a few hours, coat them in a mixture of equal parts flour and potato starch, then deep fry (I used peanut oil).  You don’t need any sauce since the flavor is built right in.  DEEEELISH!  I garnished it with some extra chopped green onions for color.

Ina Garten’s Macaroni and Cheese: Easy to make in advance so you just pop it in the oven 30 minutes before guests arrive.  Always a hit.

Here’s the whole spread:

What did you eat on Super Bowl Sunday?  

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Posted in appetizers, finger foods, home cooking, Japanese fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, Party food, Super Bowl menu

Whole Wheat Lemon Sweet Rolls

Posted on February 2, 2011 by Anne| 2 Comments

I went through a cinnamon-roll-making phase two years ago, right after I started reading the amazing and uber-popular blog, The Pioneer Woman Cooks.  I spied this recipe and decided to make cinnamon rolls for the first time in my life.  It was so easy and so fun that I made them every week for the next month.  I think my husband, friends and colleagues refer to that time as The Fat and Happy Period...as in, they were fat and happy, not me….wait, as in they were fat emotionally with happiness from eating the cinnamon rolls…oh well, never mind.  You get the idea.

Perhaps making cinnamon rolls so often made the process lose its charm, or more the more likely scenario was I just got distracted by a shiny, glossy photo of something else delicious-looking and moved onto making whatever that was.  Fast forward two years to last week, and alas, another head-turning picture caught my attention, and once again, it was one of some mouth-wateringly gorgeous sweet rolls.  This time, however, they were lemon sweet rolls, and I could not WAIT to start making them.

I changed the recipe just a bit by using a combination of white whole-wheat flour and white flour.  White whole-wheat flour isn’t actually stark white, but much lighter in both color and texture than regular whole wheat flour.  It’s really becoming a favorite to bake with since it imparts a nutty flavor that goes really well with chocolate and other sweet ingredients.  I also decided to use softened butter instead of melted, and made lemon sugar by whizzing sugar and lemon zest in my food processor.

First I rolled out the dough, then spread softened butter all over the surface:

Then added a generous layer of lemon sugar:

Start rolling:

Rolled it up nice and tight:

Cut them into rolls with a serrated knife (es muy importante to use a serrated knife so you aren’t pushing down on the dough!)

Set the rolls in a pan to rest and rise for about 20 minutes before baking for 16-18 minutes:

Then pulled out the freshly baked, sweet and sticky lemon rolls from the oven:

And slathered the still-warm rolls with a simple icing made with lemon juice and powdered sugar:

Yuuuuummmmmm…………

I think I actually prefer these to the traditional cinnamon roll, but I do have a special love for lemons so maybe that’s why.  Also, the combination of lemon, butter and sugar is simply magical.  I’m now thinking of other things to incorporate into sweet rolls- blueberries?  Cream cheese and sugar?  Maple sugar?  Maybe I’ll make savory ones with sauteed greens, cheese and bacon?  The possibilities are endless!

Hope you get a chance to try these- they are really special!  The recipe is here.

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Posted in baked goods, lemon sweet rolls, sweets, white whole wheat flour

Thomas Keller’s Marinated Skirt Steak

Posted on January 28, 2011 by Anne| 7 Comments

We recently had some friends over for dinner so we’d have an excuse to open up some wine that we received as a present.  Our friend Jesse’s parents, who live in Boston, were kind enough to send us some T-Vine Psychedelic Rooser Zinfandel-Petite-Sirah, so we invited Jesse to come and share it with us.  What goes well with such big, bold red?  Beef!

Skirt steak.  It certainly isn’t the prettiest of cuts- all scraggly and uneven- thin in some places and thick in others.  However, it’s one of the most flavorful, beefy parts of the cow and also happens to be J’s favorite, so when I was trying to figure out what to cook for the meal, J jumped all over the gorgeous photo in Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc At Home cookbook and it was decided.  The unglamorous, unpopular kid in the class of steaks would be the main course.  Hmph.
I’ll admit that the amount of olive oil in Thomas Keller’s marinade made me gasp a bit…I mean, 2 CUPS?  I reassured myself that the cut of meat itself had little fat and that most of the marinade would be wiped off anyway, so I went ahead and used the entire 2 cups.  The oil is flavored with rosemary, garlic, bay leaves, peppercorns and thyme before the steak bathes in it for a few hours.  Sounded good to me!  
I needed some pretty sides to go along with the steak, and found some gorgeous little heirloom potatoes at the Pasadena Farmer’s Market which I promptly picked up.  An array of colorful carrots and some fresh arugula also caught my eye, as did some apples and ruby grapefruit.  If you’re ever in a cooking slump,  just hit your local farmer’s market to get inspiration- it works for me every time!
So here’s what we had:
Beecher’s Honey Hazelnut crackers with gruyere cheese.  I’d never had these crackers before and picked them up since they were two for one at Whole Foods.  Holy cow- they are sturdy, nutty and really dangerous since it’s hard to stop eating them.  I like a nice, crunchy cracker and these went so well with the salty cheese.  Instant favorite.
Arugula, red onion and ruby grapefruit salad.  The combination of the spicy greens with the sweet, juicy grapefruit was a hit with the guests.
Salt roasted baby potatoes.  I’d seen this on many blogs before, and was intrigued by the idea of salt-baking, like you would a fish.  I mixed up some Kosher salt with rosemary, then set the potatoes in a bed of it.  My best friend said they looked like little, colorful stones, and the flavor of the rosemary really permeated the potatoes.
Roasted carrots tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper.  I’m a total sucker for multicolored carrots, especially when they are smaller in size.  They are so visually stunning and make an easy side dish to pretty much any meat or fish.  
Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home Marinated Skirt Steak (with the potatoes!).  After wiping off most of the marinade, I just seasoned the steaks with salt and pepper, seared them for a minute on each side and finished them off in the oven for about seven minutes.  I skipped bathing them in butter part in the recipe because, after stewing in all of that olive oil for hours, I didn’t think it was necessary.  Not that I’d know anything about cooking better than Mr. Keller!  I just felt WE didn’t need it, let’s put it that way.  It was tender and tasty nonetheless.  After the potatoes were done I just tossed them with a little olive oil and chives.
French Apple Tart.  This month’s Saveur featured this recipe by Sara Moulton, along with a step-by-step pictorial on how to achieve the beautiful pattern.  It was actually really easy, and the only ingredients in this are flour, butter, apples and sugar.  Simplicity at its best.  
Everything turned out well, and the wine was amazing.  After a couple of hours eating and drinking, we called it a night, red teeth and all. 
Hope you all have a great weekend!

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Posted in carrots, dinner party, home cooking, salt roasted potatoes, side dishes, skirt steak, Thomas Keller

Japanese Dinner + The Blowtorch!

Posted on January 24, 2011 by Anne| 1 Comment



About two years ago, J bought me a blowtorch for my birthday.  No, I’m not going all Flashdance on you with dreams of becoming a food-blogging welder- he figured I’d need it in case I ever wanted to brulée something.  I think the main motivation for him to buy me the torch was because he wanted me aburi something.  Aburi means “flamed” in Japanese, and if you go out to sushi often you’ve probably seen the chef whip out his blowtorch and lightly sear the top of a piece of salmon, toro or mackerel.  The heat of the flame melts the fat in the fish and creates a beautiful, soft, fatty flavor and texture.  If you haven’t had the chance to try any aburi sashimi or sushi, make sure to request it next time because it is, in a word, heavenly.  



Luckily my mom sent us home with some of her world-famous shime saba on New Year’s Day, so I only had to take it out of the freezer, let it thaw, then go all Jennifer Beals on it (ok, I’ll stop with the Flashdance references now!).  To be honest, the reason why I’d never used the blowtorch before was because I was scared.  Visions of a propane explosion in my kitchen (and in my FACE!) kept me from ever even taking it out of the box, but after receiving assurances on it’s safety from my dad and my chef friend, I finally decided to use it.  The verdict?  Let’s put it this way: Once you torch something, you’re hooked.  At least I am.  Now I always look for things to brulée!
So here it is- my first foray into the world of blowtorching food:









Pretty cool, right?  Anyway, here’s the rest of the meal:
I had some beautiful King Trumpet mushrooms which I sliced, brushed with a garlic/soy/agave/sake mixture and grilled in a pan:



I did the same for some yams I had laying around:



Cold, silken tofu topped with ginger and soy sauce:




Japanese cucumber, sugar snap pea and onion salad with sesame dressing:



A couple of Japanese condiments: on the left, taberu rayu, which is the hottest condiment in Japan right now.  Not “hot” as in Scoville scale, but as in it’s super popular.  Rayu is chili/sesame oil and has been around for ages; taberu means “to eat” in Japanese, and taberu rayu is the chili/sesame oil we all know and love combined with toasted garlic, sesame seeds, dried shrimp and other goodies to make to chunky, so you can actually eat it.  My best friend Mika gave it to us, and ohmahgawd it is downright addictive.  As if there aren’t already enough Japanese condiments that make you want to eat buckets of rice!  I could probably eat five pounds of rice with spoonfuls of taberu rayu mixed in.  Seriously good stuff.  The one of the right is shichimi tōgarashi, or seven flavor chili pepper, which is great on yakitori or grilled vegetables.  



The star of the show, aburi saba:



The table:



If you have any great recipes involving the use of a blowtorch, let me know!  I’m totally hooked.



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Posted in blowtorch, home cooking, Japanese cooking, Japanese food, mackerel, tofu dishes

Palm Springs: The Colony Palms Hotel + Cheeky’s

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Anne| 4 Comments

I’m finally posting about the mini-vacation J and I took to Palm Springs last month.  It was only my second time in the desert town, and I have to admit I wasn’t the biggest fan before this last trip.  My sister and I decided to make our maiden voyage to Palm Springs last August, and although I was aware that it gets really hot I wasn’t prepared for the blistering desert heat.  Don’t know what I’m talking about?  Preheat your oven to 500, wait 30 minutes, then open the door and stick your head in it.  There- you’ve just experienced Palm Springs in summer.  Awesome, right?  NOT!

Luckily, Palm Springs in December is mild, warm and beautiful.  The skies were crystal clear and made a stunning backdrop to the purple mountains peering grandly over the small town.  As J and I drove past the giant, white windmills I started to get excited about seeing the hotel we’d chose: The Colony Palms.  We’d never been before, and the photos on the website looked nice, but you know how it is- sometimes a tall, dark and handsome doctor online could be 5’5 with stringy grayish brown hair who occasionally volunteers to brush dogs’ teeth at the local animal shelter and thus fancies himself a member of the medical community.  Not that I’m speaking from personal experience- I’ve had a lot of girlfriends who’ve had bad luck with online dating!  Anyway, I’m the kind of person who researches restaurants and hotels to the point of exhaustion and was hopeful that the Colony Palms would be all that it seemed to be online.

We arrived and parked in front of the Spanish-style hotel and discovered that it was one of those places that makes you take a step back, drink in all of the beauty and then start jumping up and down and clapping your hands in excitement like a little kid.  It was so gorgeously landscaped, with fruit trees lining the stone walkways and a long, immaculate pool taking center stage in the courtyard.  We were upgraded to a junior suite (woot!) which had a luscious king-sized bed, an incredible bar stocked with half-bottles of some very good spirits, a vast selection of both salty and sweet snacks, a claw foot tub and a shower large enough to hold at least seven people (for those of you who are into shower parties).  Needless to say, it was the handsome doctor and we were thrilled!

J and I spent most of the evening taking in the beauty of the hotel, sitting by the pool, sharing a bottle of rosé, soaking in the large, flower shaped jacuzzi and doing what you’re supposed to do on vacation: RELAXING!  We lounged around in our bathrobes, watched a little bit of TV, took long showers and had great conversations with some of the wonderful hotel staff.  I feel relaxed just writing about it!  I’ve stayed at many hotels in my lifetime, and I’d have to say that The Colony Palms is probably one of my top three favorites of all time.  I literally fell head-over-heels for its charm and beauty, and I can’t wait to go back.

For breakfast, we went to Cheeky’s, a place my sister and I discovered on our first trip.  Just take a look at this menu- can you decide what you would order?!

A local favorite, Cheeky’s serves up freshly prepared, creative and delicious breakfast and lunch in a casual atmosphere.  J ordered the Scrambled Eggs with Asparagus, toast and the infamous Bacon Flight: one slice each of jalapeno, sweet & spicy, smokehouse, cinnamon and hickory bacon.  We especially loved the jalapeno bacon.

I ordered the Breakfast Quesadilla with Bacon, Green Onions, Avocado and Tillamook Cheddar.  I got it with egg whites to save at least a few calories (hey, a girl’s gotta try!).  It’s exactly what I ordered on my first trip and it was so delicious, I had to get it again.

Cheeky’s also makes good iced coffee (as in NOT hot coffee poured over ice!) and it comes in a cute glass:

We enjoyed breakfast at Cheeky’s so much, we went back for lunch a few hours later before hitting the road.

Between the awesome food, gorgeous hotel, wonderful service at both places and breathtaking mountain views, J and I had one of the best getaways ever.  We haven’t stopped talking about it since, so I think another trip to Palm Springs/Colony Palms/Cheeky’s can’t be too far around the corner!  The beauty of Palm Springs is that it’s such an easy, 90-minute drive; there’s no jet lag to deal with or time changes to worry about.  You may actually come back from the vacation feeling refreshed which, as odd as it may seem, is rare.  How many of you have taken an amazing European vacation only to need more time off afterward to recover from the vacation itself?  Trust me, I love a long, overseas vacation more than anything but for once it was nice to just chill out and come home reaping the benefits of the time off.

Do you have any Palm Springs favorites?

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Posted in Cheeky's, Colony Palms Hotel, Palm Springs, Weekend getaways

By Request: Seafood Pasta

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Anne| 2 Comments

Last weekend we had the pleasure of having our nephew, Jake, come and stay with us for one night.  He’s a freshman in college and asked J if he had a bass guitar he could borrow, so I jumped at the chance to reduce our number of basses (I lost count after 20, but to be fair, J is a bassist!) and told Jake to hurry over.  Since he lives in the dorms and probably doesn’t get a lot of “real” food, I texted him and asked what he’d like to have for dinner.

Me: Hey Jake, if you could pick anything in the world to eat for dinner, what would you choose?  Don’t say “whatever” either!
Jake: My favorite food is seafood, in particular shellfish, and even more in particular, mussels

I realized Jake had inherited J’s “five star” genes.  J’s bandmates nicknamed him “five star” because of J’s request to always include champagne on the band’s rider.  Anyway, it certainly wasn’t what I was expecting to hear from my teenaged nephew, but I was really happy and excited that dinner wasn’t going to involve chicken fingers, pizza or hot dogs (yes college peeps, I’m stereotyping you, sue me!).  I went to Fish King in Glendale and purchased a gorgeous selection of mussels, clams and shrimp for under $18.00- not bad for two adults and one hungry teen, right?

 

I decided to make seafood pasta, so I got my mise en place ready and got to work.  It all came together very quickly- I simply sautéed the garlic and red chili flakes in some olive oil, deglazed the pan with white wine, added the clams first, then the mussels; tossed in some chopped tomatoes, the shrimp, a dash of cream and a fistful of chopped parsley.  After tossing the whole thing with al dente spaghetti, it was ready to hit the table!

Jake really enjoyed the seafood pasta, and making it really inspired me to cook mussels more often. The ones from Fish King were particularly plump and flavorful and I could easily polish off an entire bowl armed only with a crusty baguette and some butter…oh, and wine, of course!  We always need wine:).

Have you ever gotten any unusual or surprising food requests from the teenagers in your life?

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Posted in clams, mussels, seafood dishes, seafood pasta, shrimp pasta

BLD Restaurant’s Tweet-A-Dish

Posted on January 11, 2011 by Anne| 3 Comments

I was going to call this post, “The One With The Terrible Photos” but I didn’t want to turn you away before you could get an idea of how wonderful the food at BLD Restaurant is.  So, I changed it to what you see above, and you’ll simply have to close your eyes and imagine the lovely plates of food I’m going to tell you about, because clearly these photos do them no justice whatsoever.  Trust me.

Do you tweet?  I have to admit, I’m slightly addicted to the social networking site, Twitter.  It’s a great way to converse (albeit in 140 characters or less!) with fellow food bloggers, chefs, hospitality publicists and other people who share my love of food and dining in our great city.  Many restaurants have started to use Twitter to promote special happy hours or menu items, and BLD Restaurant took it one step further and created a weekly Twitter contest called Tweet-A-Dish.  All you have to do is think of what you’d like to eat for dinner and tweet it at @BLDchefD.  If Chef Diana Stavaridish chooses your idea, she’ll put it on the menu that Thursday night and you + 1 guest eat for free.  Pretty cool, right?  It’s like owning your own restaurant and having an item placed on the menu especially for you.  What do Kobe Bryant and you have in common?  You get a customized dish at a cool, Los Angeles restaurant on the menu.  Ok, I think you get the idea.


Last week, I was waiting in the car while J mailed out a package from the UPS store, and I saw Chef Diana’s tweet to send in ideas for this week’s Tweet-A-Dish.  I didn’t even take a second to think before tweeting, “A really good ahi burger…fine dice, rare w Asian seasoning and a tangy Asian slaw on a whole grain bun.  Sweet potato fries.”  I’m not sure what came over me, but I guess that’s what my stomach was craving, so I hoped for the best and went on with my business for the day.

The next day, I got the tweet from Chef Diana saying I’d won this week’s Tweet-A-Dish, and that she would be making a take on my idea and to please call the restaurant to book my reservation.  Yay!  I wasted no time in making the call, and before we knew it we were on our way to BLD for the much-anticipated tuna burger.

The waiter handed us a menu, and I saw that my item was the Plat du Jour-  Albacore Tuna Burger with Asian Cabbage Slaw, Chili Aioli, Sunchoke Chips.  I’ll totally geek out and say I was thrilled- I mean, how many chances do you get to actually have an item on any menu, ever?  I didn’t even need to look at the rest of the menu because, um, hello- I knew what I was gettin’.  J, on the other hand, opted for something else so we could share two different dishes.

My albacore burger came piled high with Asian-style slaw.  The minute I picked it up I could smell the familiar aromas of garlic, ginger, sesame…it reminded me of the gyoza filling my mom made while I was growing up.  It tasted even better, with a slight kick from the creamy aioli and a brightness from the rice vinegar in the slaw.  It was everything I ever wanted in a burger, for sure.  The sunchoke chips were a real surprise- I’d only had sunchokes once, and decided I wasn’t a huge fan because of their crunchy texture.  However, when deep fried, the natural sugars come out and bring a nice, earthy sweetness to them, similar to taro chips.  I didn’t leave a single one in the tiny cast iron pot they came in.

J’s Barbecue Tofu Chopped Salad was delicious: an array of vegetables, quinoa, black beans and corn sat beneath thick slabs of seasoned tofu drenched in BBQ.  It was like California on a plate, and we finished every bite of that, too.

To end the meal, we shared two warm, chewy chocolate chip cookies sandwiched with oatmeal brown butter ice cream.  Yes, OATMEAL BROWN BUTTER ICE CREAM.  Genius, right?  It’s even better when melting off the edge of a freshly baked cookie.  It’s almost illegal, it’s so good.

Once again, I wish the photos better reflected the meal we had, but you can go and see for yourself- just tweet @BLDchefD a dish you’re craving and maybe she’ll make it for you!  The Tweet-A-Dish is definitely one of the more fun Twitter campaigns there, and I encourage you to participate.

Ok, now go tweet!

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Posted in BLD, Los Angeles restaurants, tofu dishes, tuna burgers, tweet-a-dish, West Hollywood restaurants

Recipe: Miso Glazed Salmon

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Anne| 4 Comments

If you’ve ever dined at a Japanese restaurant, you’ve probably had a miso-glazed fish of some sort..most likely miso-glazed cod.  It’s ubiquitous on most Japanese or sushi restaurant menus, and I really think it’s because it is just plain delicious.  The dish is also very easy to prepare and uses ingredients found in most Japanese kitchens, so you can see why it’s a regular on so many menus.  Now it can be a regular in your household too!

White miso paste- check!
Mirin (sweet cooking wine)- check!
Agave nectar- che….wait, huh? (read on for the recipe!)

J loves it when I make Japanese food, so I thought I would surprise him with this dish.  I kind of mixed things up a little by adding Ginger and Garlic Braised Boy Choy as a side dish, since I rarely even buy boy choy.  I have nothing against it, it just doesn’t fall on my “must-have” items, but one of my new year’s resolutions is to start cooking more creatively (read: stop making the same things!) so I’ve been making an effort to pick up items I wouldn’t normally buy.  Hello boy choy, welcome to my kitchen!

So I used Irish blogger Donal Skehan’s recipe for bok choy.  I know…you’re like, “An Irishman’s recipe for Chinese cabbage?”  I’ve been reading more Irish blogs since my sister moved there (and became an Irish blogger herself) and it happened to catch my eye, plus it looked pretty authentic to me, so why not?!  Also, Donal seems to have such respect for vegetables (he grows his own bok choy) and I liked how the recipe let the cabbage shine more than anything (oh, another thing- this guy is poised to become the Jamie Oliver of Ireland- no joke- check out his blog!).  It was simple, came together quickly and was delicious to boot.  I had such great luck with it, perhaps next time I need to make colcannon I’ll get the recipe from a Chinese blog.

On to the salmon!  I made a simple mixture of white and red miso paste, agave nectar (instead of sugar- it’s already liquid and mixes better, plus it’s better for you!), minced ginger, a touch of sesame oil, mirin and a touch of soy sauce and slathered it onto the salmon fillets to marinate in the refrigerator for an hour.

After a few minutes under the broiler, it was done, and the ginger aroma wafted through the house…yum!

To add a bit more “meat” to the meal I sauteed some sliced shiitake mushrooms in a tiny bit of butter, then splashed it with mirin and soy sauce.  Serve everything with a nice, heaping scoop of fluffy brown rice and you’ve got a quick and healthy meal, but mostly you’ll make it because it tastes really great!

Miso Glazed Salmon

2 TBS white miso paste
1 TBS red miso paste
1 tsp dark toasted sesame oil (make sure it’s dark- the light totally lacks the flavor necessary to make this)
1 1/2 tsp agave nectar (if you use honey, make it 2 tsp since it isn’t as sweet)
2 tsp minced ginger
1 TBD mirin (Japanese sweet cooking wine- you could use sweet vermouth or sake)
1 tsp soy sauce
4 6-ounce salmon fillets, skin off or on, depending on your preference

Mix the first seven ingredients together in a bowl until smooth and well combined.  Put the salmon in a dish and slather the entire mixture onto all sides of the salmon.  Cover and refrigerate for an hour (you could do it less if you like, but I think an hour is good!).

Preheat your broiler, cover your cooking surface (sheet pan, etc) with aluminum foil (for easy cleanup!) and spray the foil with cooking spray.  Lay the salmon skin-side down if you have skin on it, making sure to leave a nice coating of the marinade on the fish and broil for about 4 minutes.  Flip the salmon carefully and broil for another 3-4 minutes.  Alternately, you could do this in an oven- 425 degrees, 4 minutes per side.

Garnish with sesame seeds if you like, and serve.  I highly recommend serving it on a hot pile of rice (brown, white, jasmine, whatever!) since the miso glaze goes really well with it.

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Posted in easy meal, healthy cooking, home cooking, Japanese cooking, Salmon recipe