Asymptotia

Prepping for a Sunday roast (I decided to have for a few friends over for it at relatively short notice):

The result (just as they were about to be carved, and the cornmeal-walnut-celery-etc stuffing removed):

Continue reading ‘Sunday Roast’

Well, that turned out to be a very productive Walkabout. I set up an office there, taking some of the essentials of the things I was working on and disappearing for most of the week. No computers, just pens, pencils, and paper. My office? A chair and a shelter made of thin fabric, string, two poles, and some large stones to weigh down the pegs against the wind. The shelter was against the sun, since I was in Death Valley, camping. As I sometimes do.

My routine was simple: I’d wake up at about sunrise or shortly thereafter and after a visit to the restrooms across the way to freshen up a bit, I’d get my old whisperlite stove going to make some water boiling for tea. Once that’s done, I’d make a pot of oatmeal for breakfast and sitting eating it while flicking at the gnats that seem to begin to swarm during the morning’s first heat, I’d watch the morning move along for a while, with campers across the way getting ready for their day’s hikes or drives in the area. (My hiking boots and other gear were with me just in case I wanted to hike, but that was not my focus, and I didn’t in the end.) Next I’d make a large pot of coffee (sweetened with dark brown sugar), have a cup of it then and there, and pour the rest into a thermos flash for consumption during the day. Then I’d wash up everything, put them away, and take my work materials to my office, situated just behind my tent. By then, most people have left for good or for the day in the neighboring campsites, and it is quiet, except for the large ravens that tour the Continue reading ‘And Back…’

Yes, two of your favorite things, right?

I thought so. Well, consider signing up to my friend Amy Rowat’s special new course at UCLA on the subject. It will feature many fantastic chefs from some of the finest restaurants around the city and beyond, as well as some excellent food writers. The course will have a wealth of wonderful information (like at the answers to why carrots are sweeter in the Winter), and hands on practice to get involved in. I think the course is only open to UCLA students (who should be sure to register fast to get on the limited list), but there are four public events (I think you might have to register for those too, as space it limited). See the list of events here. I’ve mentioned Amy and her work here on the blog before, soho and have a look at the earlier post for more about her work at UCLA, and go here for more on the Rowat Lab. (See also a recent article featuring her lab’s work on food science in UCLA’s Prime magazine’s Winter 2012 edition.)

Now, even if you do not make it over to UCLA, you can check you the excellent Continue reading ‘Science and Food!’

One of my favourite things to do when I have a bunch of left over sweet potato in the morning is turn it into sweet potato biscuits. A nice recipe can be found in one of my favorite standby cookbooks (was a favourite since it came out in 1995), The Welcome Table, by Jessica B. Harris. There are versions online that you can find I imagine, and in other recipe books. Without going over the recipe in the book verbatim, which sometimes seems a bit unfair to me, I’ll say that it involves just a bit of butter (with Continue reading ‘Sweet, Quick Treat’

I hope the holiday period is (or has been) going well for you. As you may know from reading this blog, there’s often a lot of cooking going on in my kitchen, especially during the big Fall and Winter holidays. This weekend was no exception…and there were several elements of the meal, each the product of delightful collaboration among myself and my visitors. I did not document all the food that was prepared this time around, but I am happy to report that it was a great meal… I did grab a before and after shot of a lattice coconut tart that materialized.

You might have seen a lattice tart on here before… not sure. I did the lattice work Continue reading ‘Tart Grab’

Ah, the Bleak Midwinter is here. My mum has come to visit and so I’ve started bringing out some of the fruits of Summer that I wanted to share with her… the figs! My plan was/is to make a batch of fig jam (see here and here for some of the earlier posts on that), and I still might, since I’ve a fair amount left in the freezer (as I got a set off the trees I’d chop them up and bag them and freeze them). But one thing you can do with them (actually with any fruit – I experimented with apples the other day) is make a quick tasty fruit compote to go on fresh pancakes! (Or yoghurt, or other item.)

I make mine by simply chopping up the fruit into small pieces, putting into a small pan with a little water, a bit of brown sugar, and some cinnamon and nutmeg, and just cooking it down slowly for ten or fifteen minutes. Stir frequently in the later stages as it begins to thicken. Don’t overwhelm the taste of the fruit with too much sugar – it’ll add its own sugars too, which you don’t want to drown Continue reading ‘Fig Resurrection’

For those celebrating it today, Happy Thanksgiving! I’ll be doing only a little cooking today, making one or two dishes to take over to some friends’ for a meal where ten people are bringing items together for what I expect will be a great meal. So I’ll be working for a chunk of the morning and then breaking to make Southern-style collard greens, and maybe also a sweet potato pie… Are you cooking? If so, good luck, and have fun!

Some people sit at thanksgiving dinner and in turn call out something they’re thankful for (or at least do so internally)… Well, if looking for some new things to be Continue reading ‘Happy Thanksgiving!’

For some reason yesterday morning, I got the urge to taste a good old-fashioned meat pie. Perhaps it is the Winter feeling that has come over everything with the switch to chillier weather, rain, and the delightful seasonal hint of vegetative decay in the air… I was in a strong maker-mood and so this urge built into the desire to make the thing for real with my own hands. I had leeks and beef in mind, but it is not time for leeks yet in the Hollywood Farmer’s market, so I picked up some red potatoes, two types of mushrooms (shitakes and white buttons), two red peppers, some yellow onions and some garlic (forgot to get some green onions), and returned home (after stopping at Trader Joe’s for some good tenderloin beef).

I made some flaky pastry (half butter half shortening this time… figure it would be Continue reading ‘A Humble Pie’

The new season of Categorically Not! gatherings started last Sunday night. It went very well. You may recall that it is held at the Santa Monica Art Studios. It’s a series – started and run by science writer K. C. Cole – of fun and informative conversations deliberately ignoring the traditional boundaries between art, science, humanities, and other subjects. Here is the website that describes past ones, and upcoming ones.

This one was about food, and had musings on food and bringing people together at New York’s Cornelia Street Cafe, by the founder Robin Hirsch. He talked about the history of the place, read some extract from his writings about it, and also described the beginnings of the “Entertaining Science” series that got going when K C Cole, Roald Hoffman, and Oliver Sacks did a performance there many years ago. The Categorically Not! series, now five years or so in age, was a spiritual outgrowth of that series, and so it was great to see Robin speak at it. He was very pleasant and interesting to talk to before and after the event too. (I did a quick, rough, sketch during his 20 minute segment – with some tidying up later – and have included it for you to see. Click for slightly larger view.)

Robin was followed by Amy Rowat, of UCLA. Amy gave us a nice overview of what’s going on in her lab. She’s a physicist, and  spends a lot of her time looking at food through that lens. The concerns she  described were largely ones of structural, Continue reading ‘Categorically Not! – Food’

The garden is suffering quite a bit from the heat. I think I am going to lose some of those lovely tomato plants that are producing this sort of bounty:

and the beans that have been producing a lovely variety (I don’t recall the name) that is now drying out on the vine rapidly before maturity*:
Continue reading ‘Hot Plants’

One of the great things that greeted me upon my return to Los Angeles was a varied Continue reading ‘Red, Gold, and Green’

Sunday: What to do with a lot of nectarines and very soft plums obtained in the farmer’s market?

Make an upside-down cake of course!

It was delicious… and makes great (sinful) breakfast food in following days too (a slice goes very well with an espresso).

-cvj

Last Saturday at the Aspen farmers’ market (which seems to have got larger than in previous years) was pleasant. I found several tasty things that formed the bulk of my dinners over the week:

The heavy leaning toward Summer squashes is maybe partly attributable to not Continue reading ‘Bounty’

These are lovely. The dark ones are very unusual, perhaps. They are Purple Russians, usually thought of alongside the Black Russian varieties that I think are usually more round.

There’s a whole black tomato category in the tomato-growing world, and this is one of many. (Click for a larger view.) These were the second of the clusters of handsome green tomatoes in a previous post.

The garden continues to produce a variety of tasty things. These were from a little over a week ago. The downside is that one part of the garden is under attack from Continue reading ‘Dark Red and Orange’

…And the green of a few posts back is now a tasty red:

Very tasty, it turned out.

-cvj

One day a few days ago I decided to make a quick meal from some things I’d find in the garden: Two orange food items were available – some crookneck squash and a few small orange tomatoes. Excellent.

How did the meal take shape? Quickly, simply, and tastily.

I chopped an onion, diced the squashes, crushed a few cloves of garlic, and chopped a red tomato into small pieces too (the three tiny orange cherry toms were not enough). I also finely chopped a small piece of ginger. I heated a tablespoon or two of olive oil in my large deep (high-sided) frying pan (another All-Clad treasure), and Continue reading ‘Orange on the Table’

The tomatoes are coming! Here are two of several clusters of tomato-ey goodness about to go from garden to table. The benefits of having remembered to plant early this year… (Click for larger view.)

Continue reading ‘Green Anticipation’

(I think that perhaps Prince ought to write a song with this as the title. Hmmm…)

So to accompany the other types of squash that have begun to appear (see previous post), I’ve some courgettes (or zucchini) coming along nicely. It seems I have two plants of these this year (with a bit of leaf mould infection that I ought to see to), and so in the next few weeks I should have some nice additions to various meals…

Still to be unveiled are some Mystery Squash plants that I put into the soil a bit late. I grew them from some seeds that Continue reading ‘Little Green Courgette’

Ok… So that was a bit unexpected. I was not expecting these when I planted them. Crookneck Summer squash.

I’ve got several of them coming along in three clusters… They look very much like tough, inedible gourds, and I imagine that they can be like that if picked at the wrong time. So I’ve picked a few small ones and the bigger one in the second photograph (below) and will see how they deal with being tossed into a stir-fry.

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Continue reading ‘Gourdy Goodness’

Ok, so it is last week’s Sunday bread, but you get the idea. This week’s is actually in the oven this very minute. I feel that all is more or less ticking away alright in my life’s day to day scheduling if I am getting bread made each week.

I set myself simple (and tasty) goals to achieve, you see.

(Thumbnail to the right is of the dough phase.) In a related thought, earlier this week I was at lunch Continue reading ‘Give Us, This Day…’

The hankering I had for some marmalade on fresh bread on Sunday last was satisfied a bit later by simply making some. It was a lot of fun. I always like making bread as it Continue reading ‘Bread and Marmalade’

Yesterday I had a hankering for marmalade. Perhaps with bits of ginger in it. Maybe a bit of whisky. On fresh bread.
Continue reading ‘Orange in Green’

I love packing picnics. It has been a while since I’ve done it**, and so this morning, upon seeing sunshine behind my bedroom curtains, I decided to take the visitors off for a picnic. After breakfast I set about giving them a time to get ready to leave, and busied myself in the kitchen. I made sandwiches (mustard, pastrami, tomato), cut slices of the delicious Christmas fruit cake my mum made two days earlier, put in some fruit (grapes and satsumas/clementines/tangerines/Idontremember), and made two thermos flasks of tea (mint and honey, and ordinary black tea with milk and sugar), and a couple of kitkats for emergencies.

My smaller Sainsbury’s shopping bag (imported) is just perfect for carrying all this, I discovered.

Our destination? Santa Monica beach and pier! It was a perfect Continue reading ‘Picnicking’

While waiting on a phone call and various other things in my errand-run over to the West side in Santa Monica, I find myself sitting in one of my favourite places for coffee or lunch, eating my favourite thing on their menu. It is a branch of Le Pain Quotidien, and it is their ricotta, fig and honey open faced sandwich. Food of the Gods.

I have a few hours of interlude on this away mission, and so I’ve brought a bit of work with me since I don’t know exactly how long things will take. I’ve made some decent progress on The Project in the last few days, and although I need to do a lot more, I’ve been planning another stage of it, sketching out ideas and expanding on them. Some of this process was begun some time back on the iPad, and I’m now adding to the ideas on actual real paper, and pushing one of them to a slightly more refined level. It is a fun process, and certainly nice to be able to call up old scribblings wherever I am, since I now try to have everything on the pad. (see my earlier posts here and here for more on how I use this excellent tool for work, and I’ll be saying a bit more soon in relation to The Project.)

The teaching part of the semester is over. At least, the classroom Continue reading ‘Waiting, Planning’

… and then I assembled it all together with more ingredients:

Round Three. (Continuing the work of the night before… (click images for larger view.))

So here is another group of ingredients. These are largely the vegetables that will accompany the polenta and the salsa roja I made the night before. Notice that the polenta has been sliced into 24 triangles, ready for the next step. Those are red bell pepper choppings in front, along with majoram and cilantro. Mushrooms being suatéed in olive oil- what a lovely smell that always produces! After some minutes, half of the garlic is added, and then after another 5 minutes or so I put everything aside in a bowl. Then on to the zucchini (or “courgette” – I used half a yellow and half a green, for variety), suatéing again for about five minutes with the remaining garlic Continue reading ‘Thanksgiving Offering’

Last night, after a long day and some time recovering from it on the sofa, I got up and went back to the kitchen. It was time to prepare some of the food I would need in order to assemble the dish I am taking to some friends’ gathering for Thanksgiving dinner. It was very nice of them to invite me and so I am making something special to take along to contribute. It has been a busy semester, so it is nice to put aside a bit of time to do some slightly more elaborate culinary endeavours than normal. (Click any photo for a larger view.)

Round one.

First off was a preparation of a salsa roja, which I prefer to make from scratch and have a fresh warm flavour to it. You can see in the photograph most of my ingredients laid out, ready to go for quick assembly. This is all about intense flavours combining together and letting each other shine through, and not making something that is overwhelming in one aspect, like too much of one type of pepper or another. I’ve ground some cinnamon (actually, cassia bark – see recent post) to simmer into it as well, which I think will help the salsa bring a lovely component to the whole dish once it is assembled later today. One starts with sautéing of the onions for a while (in olive oil), later adding the salt, cumin, cinnamon, and so forth. Then once that’s all nicely Continue reading ‘Thanksgiving Preparation’

Well, it is a bit after midnight, and I’ve a long day tomorrow, but somehow instead of going to sleep, what am I doing? Taking pictures of tree bark and blogging. The things I do for you, Dear Reader …

Let me explain. I learned something the other day that sort of clears up a little mystery that has not really been at the front of my mind, to be honest, but just sort of off to the side, if you know what it mean. It has to do with one of my favorite spices, cinnamon. While it has been a bit of time since I’ve done an Asymptotia Goes To The Kitchen sort of post (which reminds me, I did almost do one about six weeks ago, and took photos and everything, but somehow it did not get written), you will surely have noticed that cinnamon is a spice that gets featured a lot in my culinary endeavours. I had, I am sure, noticed that cinnamon seems to vary a bit in its appearance and texture depending upon where I am, by which I mean that the type I recall in the UK is a bit different from what I get in the USA, (well, maybe slightly), and certainly different from the softer, flakier sort I remember from the Caribbean. But I never really tried to make something of this. It is just one of those things you notice but don’t really get bothered by enough to want to dig further.

Well, I accidentally found out that the reason they are different is because Continue reading ‘On Bark and Bite’

Not having hosted any dinner gatherings myself this Summer, for one reason or another (I seemed to have had a lot in the previous two Spring/Summers, so perhaps this was a good rest), last Sunday I was delighted to go along to one of the underground dining phenomena that some are whispering about excitedly in Los Angeles in recent times (part of, but different in spirit to, the pop-up restaurant movement). I was a bit tired and poorly (and had spent a big chunk of that day and the one before holed up, interviewing candidates for our new Provost. Announcement of the -fantastic- result here) but was determined to go and take up the spot I’d promised to fill.

The Dining Society has no fixed abode and pops up in a variety of interesting places Continue reading ‘The Dining Society’

Getting ready to disappear off to explore the route. Should be fun, although it is a tad too hot a day for it to be perfect for cycling and wandering long in the sun. On the other hand, that will bring a lot of people out to enjoy their Sunday outdoors, I hope, walking, cycling, rollerblading, skateboarding, running, etc.

Continue reading ‘Off to CicLAvia…’

Noticed this on the shelves in a supermarket yesterday. (I was hunting for clotted cream, but that’s another story.) I can’t recall if I’ve known before that “quark” was also a kind of cheese.

I suspect that this might have potentially amusing physics joke uses in the future.

To further my education, I looked up quark cheese on Wikipedia. All very interesting. Continue reading ‘Quark Constituents’

So I had a big payoff.

The War has dragged on for a long chunk of the Summer, with attacks on three fronts, air (Flitty), ground (Slinky), and, most annoyingly, tree (Fluffy). While I do counterattack, including pointless and potentially embarrassing bouts of fury that see me rush outside early in the morning, sometimes in various states of undress, waving a broom, towel, pan, cup of tea, machete, or whatever I can lay my hands on, most gain is made by thinking through useful purely defensive countermeasures (perhaps in another post I will share with you a rogue’s gallery of the results of other countermeasures – see e.g. here). These were first laid on in July, while the figs were still far from interesting to the enemy, and also while they Continue reading ‘The Rewards of Countermeasures’

Vienna. (Yes, the 80s song’s refrain did ring in my head as I arrived. No, I still have no clue what the lyrics mean.)

I am at the Erwin Schrodinger Institute (named after one of the co-discoverers of the modern Quantum theory upon which so much of our science and technology depends, in case you were wondering – he with the cat) for a while. There is a workshop here on the study of aspects of nuclear physics using holographic methods from string theory, a topic I’ve told you quite a bit about before. This is week one, and there are some longer survey talks that have been put on to set the scene and get everyone on the same page. It is an excellent way to start a workshop. As a bonus, present are some of my old friends from my postdoc days who I last saw in Madrid earlier this year, Karl Landsteiner (one of the organizers) and Esperanza Lopez, (you may recall me chatting a bit about those days in an earlier post), and, as icing on the cake, to my surprise Rob Myers, a friend and collaborator from even further back, is here too.

It is not just about old friends and colleagues, but new ones too. I’ve met and re-met Continue reading ‘Oh Vienna!’

After spending more than half the day writing a report, fiddling with data gathering for the report, and dealing with various annoying issues in background over email, it is nice sometimes to be able to walk outside into the garden, pause to take a deep breath in the warm sunlight, and harvest some lovely tasty things.

Aaaahh…

I really need this sometimes. It is good.

Continue reading ‘A Vial of Calm’

The experiment seems to have been a success.

Some of our best people were on site working on diagnostics. Here’s one of them engrossed in their work. (Photo on the left. Click to enlarge.)

In short, they vanished like, er,… Hot cakes.

-cvj

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Well, this morning I did an experiment. It began with zesting some lemons from the garden, and rapidly got into the business of mixing cupcake batter (recipe here – big on the lemon zest this time, and some of the juice), to make cupcakes… then melting chocolate (7 oz), pouring it over whipped butter (1 cup!), folding in some confectioner’s sugar (three cups or so), and a few drops of vanilla essence…. to make a chocolate frosting. More photos below, which you can click for larger views.

This (and my dutiful munching on tester cakes that ensued this morning) was all in aid of a nice test of a lemon cake plus chocolate question raised earlier. You will recall from an earlier post that author Aimee Bender‘s reading at Skylight of her new Continue reading ‘Lemon and Chocolate for Breakfast’

No, I am not going mad. Well, no more so than normal, perhaps. The Green Zebra tomatoes are here, and they are lovely. (Click for larger view.)

Continue reading ‘The Zebras are Here!’

Well, here’s the first batch of the season (not counting the onesies and twosies I’ve nibbled over the last few weeks as I go by), representing four different varieties… By the way, my compost played a role in all this, so it is quite satisfying.

If the War goes well, I ought to get more of these soon. Several plants are producing tomatoes.

News from the Front? Fluffy has started the above ground Continue reading ‘Produce’

In other news…

It’s a long story. You should refer to last year’s start of The Troubles, starting with the Great Tomato Atrocity. This year it began with the lovely tomato on the right… (click for a larger view).

At first I thought it was an early attack by Fluffy (in the 3.x series, presumably – I did battle with series 1 and 2 last Summer – especially since I’d deployed the first level of countermeasures already this season, the shields around the main tomato area of the garden.) Had Fluffy found a way past those? Would I have to fortify them? I was very annoyed since I wanted to make a gift of that tomato and had been admiring it every day since it began to ripen, waiting for the moment to pick it. Evidently mine were not the only admiring eyes. And my paws were not the first to get to it. So I decided to launch more level one of the offensive countermeasures, to test the possibility that something other than Fluffy was a work here. Perhaps one of Fluffy’s allies. The Fluffy series with less good PR: Slinky. I might need to be fighting a war on two fronts.

Seems I was right. Slinky is involved, and I caught one of its agents a day later. Peanut butter is a great bait… A picture of the result is after the fold. Don’t go there if squeamish!!

Continue reading ‘Victory!(?)’

Yeah, I know I’ve used this post title before, but I do love it. So… sorry.

One of the things that really sets my week up nicely is my Sunday visit to the Hollywood Farmer’s Market. Today was an exceptionally nice day for it, but weatherwise and just the overall atmosphere of the market. The people making their food purchases and simply socializing, the vendors, the many musicians (even the corny ones sounded really good today), and of course – the food itself.

One of the highlights for me today was a new (ish) vendor, specializing entirely in mushrooms.

The variety was fascinating, and I stood there with a friend sniffing and sampling for a while (encouraged by the vendors, I hasten to add) before purchasing a lovely persimmon enoki (the ones in the middle of the first photo):

Continue reading ‘A Short Cut to Mushrooms (Again)’

There’s something enduringly lovely about local independent bookstores. I love stopping by to visit them, try to give my local ones the first shot at supplying me with a book I’m looking for, but most of all I value them as community centres at the heart of the villages (real and virtual) that exist in our neighbourhoods, even in a vast city like Los Angeles. People gather and linger at them, bonding over the written word for the most part, but sometimes just for the sake of gathering and lingering. In that role they are a lot like public libraries, another favourite of mine. Much of what I said can apply to the large chain bookstores too, but somehow I find them less likely to have that community feel that independent stores have. I’m not sure why (location? focus? less of a personal touch in the organization of the material?), but this is the way it seems to me. (I’m speaking about the USA; the feel of bookstores is different to me in different countries.)

Last night, after a quiet evening meal after a long day of working on the Project, I went for a nice long walk, heading to Skylight books in Los Feliz. (That’s the neighbourhood at the base of the hills of Griffith Park, in case you don’t know.) My friend and colleague Aimee Bender was launching her new (long awaited) novel “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake”, and I thought I’d go along to support the launch, hear about the book, and absorb a bit of the buzz. And buzz there was, since in addition to Continue reading ‘Summer Reading: Of Bookstores and Lemon Cake’