A Birthday

When you're 13, you don't know to be modest. You might be shy or bashful but you won't deflect flattery whether justified or convenient with a gracious smile. When you're 13, your birthday means your wishes come true with your pimpled friends, a cake and pizza.

The day I turned 33, I was modest. I hadn't planned a party or a fancy dinner or a masquerade ball in the French Quarter with doormen and coat check girls like I've always dreamed. My plan was to hang out afterhours at McCall's Meat & Fish Co. and maybe eat a hamburger. No cake.

Instead, at the last minute, one of my closest (in proximity) friends got tickets to see David Sedaris speak at UCLA and he invited me to go. David Sedaris is one of my favorite writers; his calm, resigned observations bring giggles up from my belly like bubbles in ginger ale. This friend and I once sat at my kitchen table, me with David and he with a script for a pilot TV show. I sporadically laughed so hard that I had no choice but to read passages aloud. One passage was about Halloween candy in a chapter from "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim". My friend knew how much I loved Mr. Sedaris and I was grateful that he remembered.

On the evening of May 5, since my friend had already had a snack, my birthday dinner was eaten from its plastic wrapper in the car on the way to UCLA. I had a leftover fresh&easy Italian Sub Sandwich with spicy, salty sliced meats, provolone cheese hugging slowly drying ciabatta bread. Pepperoncinis were pretty much for decoration as they packed a tepid but helpful punch. I was so hungry that the sandwich was delicious.

What might have followed as a cake monstrosity in previous years was replaced by kind and witty company and a writer who was funny, inspiring and shared with an auditorium full of people. For he's a jolly, good fellow and I was satisfied by just being there. The gift of presence was more than enough.

links

My friend Karen and I have shared a lot of great memories. I've known her since we were just freshly graduated from college and since those youthful days, we've lived together in New York, gone to Hawaii for her wedding and among other silly girl miscellany I can now tell our children one day that their mother and I stuffed ground pork with fennel and orange zest into pig intestines called hanks. We made sausages by hand.

Karen and her husband Nathan have opened a butcher shop on Hillhurst Ave. in Los Feliz. If you are a discerning carnivore, you must stop by to marvel at all kinds of meaty madness, carved and curated by two professional chefs who love food. When Nathan cuts a steak, he thinks of the final dish as he guides his knife. How many butchers do you know that can say they've worked in three Michelin star restaurants? It's like your school nurse telling you she was a neurosurgeon at the Mayo Clinic before she came to hand out band-aids and condoms.

Every morning, before I even begin to have weird dreams about orange blue cheese (true story), Nathan is headed downtown to the fish market. By 6:30am, he's given a humble nod to Mr. Nozawa, yes, of Sushi Nozawa, an unofficial mentor and a McCall's customer. Traffic isn't even an issue this early as he heads back with incredibly fresh seafood that's in season. Salmon, tuna, oysters, scallops, mussels...they're all sitting in the case early everyday, shiny and briny and begging to be devoured. The array changes every day so if you're on Twitter, you can follow them to know what's wriggling. I follow them. And Lady Gaga.

I bought a tiny bit of Alaskan black cod the other night and poached it. I concocted a simple sauce of soy, mirin, rice vinegar and sesame oil in which the black cod was dipped. After the first white flake of fish met my taste buds, I immediately wished that I had bought a pound of it. All for me. The texture was silky with a slight bounce. It possessed a hint of fishiness, mainly from the skin, that was beautiful with the acidity of the rice vinegar.

On dry land, they're sourcing cuts from purveyors that only sell to restaurants. So when you wonder why you're such a bad cook because you can't seem to get things to taste like what they serve at your favorite restaurant, know that not all ingredients are created nor available equally. A flimsy Vons pork chop isn't a Berkshire pork chop. One night before they opened, we were all chatting when they told me that they could find super-foodie ingredients like white truffles and foie gras...things that you can't normally get at the market. My mind started to wander into the land of things I can shave white truffles onto. It was an endless landscape dotted with pretty much anything edible.

If farms were strip clubs, Nathan and Karen would be bouncers who can get you into the champagne room while discreetly slipping you your $100 bill back in ones. I've now discovered my new food love: the very hard-to-find natural certified angus beef prime dry aged short loin (where you get a T-bone from). Nathan had fried up a tiny bit to test and the flavor was complex with notes of Parmesan. As I chewed and let the juice seep out from the sinews, I knew that some people won't ever get to experience a steak like that. You know, an extra lap dance from the hottest stripper at the strip club type of steak.

And not to go on and on even though I am, I just have to tell you about the eggs. I haven't had them personally but the chickens and the eggs are apparently the most incredible tasting chickens and eggs that both of them have ever tasted. Kendor Farms is in Van Nuys so the which came firsts are local. But the best tidbit is that they mix a little olive oil into the chicken feed. Uh, I'd be pretty delicious if I ate olive oil every day. I'd be fat-astic.

And of course...the sausage. As a bonus for randomly being there the night sausages needed to be stuffed and helping Karen while Nathan butchered some fish, they gave me a sausage I had "made." Nathan's mixture of pork butt, orange and fennel was amazing. A little salt, a little love and into the pig intestine it went. I fried it up at home one night along with a little bit of extra, unformed stuffing and I had to stop myself from eating the entire pound of seasoned juicyness in one sitting. The fennel is potent and the orange comes in towards the end and the fattiness of the pork just made me want to hug someone.

At any rate, I'm always excited to pop-in to their tiny, maroon shop on Hillhurst. Where my best friend Karen wraps up protein jewels in brown paper and sends me home with little projects. I gave them an old book I found at a used book store simply titled Meat. I hadn't paid much attention to the author but upon presenting them with it, we took it as a sign that it had in fact been written by the Lobels of the eponymous butcher shop in Manhattan; the shop that sold them the steak that inspired them to do what they did. I'm fortunate to have them be my culinary guides but we're all lucky that they've put the entirety of their time and energy from the past year into an endeavor that I hope will change the way people shop for meat and fish...and eggs...oh my.

The Worst Aversion

On Sunday night, around 9:15pm, I ate a slurp of stir fried chow fun noodles sliding under an egg drop sauce with slices of cod and green onion. My father's leftovers. For dessert, I finished what was left of a small square of chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and washed a bowl of Mexican blueberries I had purchased the day before at the farmer's market. I went to sleep happy and full until around 3:30am when I woke up feeling slightly strange. After playing a mental game of Battleship with my stomach, I had to surrender when my devilish dinner wanted OUT.

I know you're not supposed to blame the most recent thing you've eaten when food poisoning strikes, but after 9 hours of sweaty fits, troubled sleep and undignified bathroom behavior, I'm pretty sure I can't stand the sight of blueberries anymore. I caught a glimpse of some in a photograph today and I had to blink away my disgust. I suspect it was the blueberries since everything else I ate on Sunday had been shared with people who weren't sick at all. But worse than this reasonable deduction...am I really to believe that I won't love chocolate cake anymore? This cannot be.

Taste aversion is a well-studied topic amongst psychologists and behavioral scientists. I once read a report about wolves that happened to feed on strategically placed rabbits injected with a solution designed to induce vomiting. The result? Farmers had more bountiful hare crops that year.

But to take away one of my true loves? The food fairies have done me wrong. I'm hopeful that the passion for my favorite dessert will return because at the moment nothing sounds tempting to me, not chocolate cake, not the wonderful leftover bouillabaisse in my fridge, not pizza from Lamonica's. I can't hate ALL of these things forever, can I? Oh, this is a very sad day. Despite the fact that I lost 5 pounds overnight, if I can get my appetite back, I won't mind the return of the pudge. Seems like those two might go hand in chubby hand.

adam and eve

The last time I had BBQ ribs, it was at Baby Blues BBQ on Santa Monica, just a few blocks from my apartment. It was a disappointing though lively place and the ribs were tough and less than acceptable. I ate there with a friend from Atlanta and he said "You don't know BBQ until you've eaten BBQ in the South." Well, now I have.

I have often written about life changing foods. Delicious, paradigm-shifting dishes that have set my culinary trajectory one enormous degree closer to a lifetime of enjoyment. Over time, that one degree will have sent me to a place of flavors that I may have missed otherwise. Missed by a long shot.

At Fat Matt's, I ate my first bite of ribs. Surpassing all other bones protecting the hearts of pigs that I have tried, this first bite of soft, fatty, sweet, tangy pork and I will never be the same. I also had "Brunswick" Stew which is like pot roast with a little bit of tang blended into a chili-like consistency...with corn. It was delicious. I also had a bit of a pulled pork sandwich, a few forkful of coleslaw and some mac and cheese. You can see the menu exactly like I did here.

A white-haired man with a guitar sang silly country songs on the small stage. Men from Alabama in their Crimson Tide jackets jawed on cellphones. Black ladies on their lunch break waited for a table to open up and I, with my messy fingers and white sweater ("You wore the wrong color," said my friend Matthew) sat there, smiling next to a case of BBQ sauce for the trip home. A case.

If the bible-lovers here are right, I, my sisters, all women, nay, all people have descended from a man and his rib. And that's a great lineage I'd say.

neck bones for Jesus

I don't usually go to church but yesterday I went to the United House of Prayer to have lunch at their Kitchen Café. We stood in line with our trays under the portraits of black reverends and a black Jesus. In the skylit dining room, black and white guests chatted about work as they enjoyed their lunch break.

Plates of lemon cake sat wrapped in plastic. Banana pudding in To Go clamshells. Greg ordered neck bones and rice. Karen had BBQ chicken. We shared sides of turnip greens, mac and cheese, black eyed peas and yams. I ordered crappy spaghetti bake because I LOVE crappy spaghetti bake particularly when it's covered with melted cheddar cheese. Meat sauce that has been stewed for a day combined with pasta that has been boiled for almost as long makes a squishy, lovely lunch.

The neck bones were served with brown gravy and the BBQ chicken was slathered in a dark burgundy sauce. I enjoyed the braised neck bones, the beef softened by lingering, low heat. It reminded me of oxtail which I guess is the opposite end extension to a neck. I nibbled at the sides, discovering the wilted turnip greens, slightly acidic from the vinegar used to break down the tough fibers. The mac and cheese was great and so were the yams although they were almost too incredibly sweet. We joked that this was the only way one could spread the word of obesity. Or Type II diabetes.

For dinner, Karen and I went to Wild Wing where I satisfied a craving for hot wings. We happened upon "Two-fer Tuesday" where buying 8 wings got us 8 more. I'm a wimp when it comes to wings so we had medium spicy hot wings and Jamaican jerk wings. Not to be remiss with the terrible appetizers, we also ordered loaded potato skins with cheese, bacon and jalapeños. With a dessert of peanut butter, chocolate and caramel flavors piled into a stack of wafers, cake, cream and gooey layers, our bill came to $21 between the two of us and we were stuffed. It's amazing to me how much food doesn't cost here.

As we looked around the restaurant, Karen pointed out the many tables of black and white friends dining together. You actually see less of that in LA, a more melting pot city by most accounts. How does that happen in a place that everyone claims is so racist? I suppose that calories might be the answer to a common love that transcends external appearances.

"are y'all doin' ok?"

That's what the waitress asked my friends and me about 6 times during the course of our dinner. Not once annoying, not once perfunctory...it was sincere and southern and so very different from LA!

I'm in Augusta, Georgia this week for a mini-vacation and tonight, I ate dinner at a place that had a wooden bear in the entry way and my name "Katie" tagged with a knife into one of the plexiglass windows. I was destined to eat here.

Rhinehart's has picnic tables each with a roll of paper towels on it. As he tried to explain the cuisine to me, my friend Greg said simply "It's a lot of fried seafood." So, fried seafood I had; served on paper placed on paper plates. Oysters, shrimp and instead of fries or grits, a side salad with honey mustard dressing. We all shared a paper plate of boiled, peel-and-eat shrimp dunked into cocktail sauce. The paper towels marched off their roll one at a time as our fingers became slick with shrimp juice.

Greg told me he was interested in what I thought of the "chain restaurant hell" that is Augusta's food scene. I told him that after many fine dining experiences, you start to become a little jaded. Then, something natural happens. You rebel against the foams and veloutés and search for the perfect cheese enchilada or the ultimate corn dog. In Augusta, Georgia, you don't have to look too hard though because here, the corn dog (and funnel cake) booth from the county fair pops up in the Wal-Mart parking lot now and again. I took a photo of it today.

Speaking of chains, at the airport, I fell in love with a Hawaiian pizza from Domino's. It was an unfortunate but delicious misstep. After 5 hours and two planes, I waited for my friends to pick me up and devoured this cheesy, doughy disc and bought the Sunday New York Times. As I read, an airport worker sat down at my table with her own Domino's pizza. Then her friend joined with her soda. Then a third friend sat with his baked potato, the green scent of it rising to my nose. I listened to them talk about how tired they were. I took in their "mmmmmm HM"s and wondered about their fatigue. Of course they were hard workers, two of them wearing navy blue dickies and fluorescent vests. Maybe they weren't eating properly. Surely they weren't. The newspaper cost more than my meal. If that isn't an indicator of the state of this state, then butter my butt and call me a biscuit.

cake pops

There is a thin layer of brown dust on my kitchen. The stove, the counter, the handles of the fridge. This is what happens when I play with cocoa powder.

Last week I baked a cake for my sister's birthday, a Devil's Food cake with a dark chocolate whipped cream frosting. It seems excessive but I had to use a $300 sashimi knife from Osaka to cut cake layers because I don't own a bread knife or a similarly serrated knife of the appropriate length for the task. In producing even layers for the cake, the crumbs I sliced off were kept in a take-out container for tonight's experiment: cake pops.

Cake Pops have somehow become a cottage industry for bloggers who like sweets. There's a company in Irvine that makes them in an actual bakery and packages them for you as gifts. A friend brought some to a party I went to and I was hooked. Basically, you have cake bits mixed with adhesive (frosting works) dipped in chocolate and stuck on a lollipop stick.

I had cake crumbs but no lollipop sticks so I just decided to make them into little cake truffles. I mixed the crumbs with a mixture of cream cheese, unsalted butter, confectioner's sugar and cocoa powder. I cooled the mixture, formed them into balls and then dipped them into chocolate melted in a glass bowl on top of a pot of boiling water. In the future, I'll freeze the balls before dipping them in COOLED melted chocolate. The temperatures were too high all around and my first attempt became a soggy mound of shiny, runny chocolate on top of a slowly oozing cake falling through the grate of a cake rack.

When I gave everything a chance to cool, I resumed and produced some lovely looking truffles dusted, like the kitchen, in cocoa powder. I ate a tester and between the few that I ate to ensure the right flavor, I feel sick and jittery. This coupled with the brown smears across my chef's coat make me look like someone you'd stay away from. But I bet you can't...because I've got all the cake pops.