Ladurée @ Colette

Ladurée as a mini-corner IN colette at the moment. Gah! To be in Paris.

Flaky Crab in Filo

From a recent DISH party ;)

Mix My Granola

If you read this blog even once a month, you know what a granola fanatic I am. From making it to rating it, there've been many an ode to the stuff. So, when I found Mix My Granola a few weeks back, I knew it'd be turning up on the blog whether I liked it or not.  MMG is one of those ideas to which you say <why didn't I think of that!?>.  The concept is simple: customized granola.  MMG puts ingredient selection in the hands of the consumer - allowing everyone to get exactly what they want.  I remember so many batches of granola I've encountered with coconut - YUCK ... for me. But YUM for others.  I always want more dried fruit and not as many nuts.  I like tons of cinnamon... flax seeds... MMG told me I could have it all.



Visit the website and you can start mixing your own.  Start with a base - cinnamon, organic, low-fat, French vanilla or muesli.  I naturally selected cinnamon.  You can then select the other ingredients, divided into categories: fruits, nuts and seeds, extras and enhancers.  The sky's the limit and there's no adding too much.  You can add doubles of ingredients if you want, all fruits, all nuts.. whatever your granola heart desires. And there's a pretty great variety of everything from which to choose.  Have you heard of chia seeds? What about adding some gotu kola powder?  It's an anti-inflammatory that helps circulation!  But things don't have to get too health.  The extras section is filled with gummy bears, chocolate bits and - my favorite - sesame sticks.

So after you've selected your ingredients, all you do is plug in your shipping address and pay (my granola came out to about $13 for roughly 15 oz). A few days later, a tube of granola arrives to your door! The customized nutrition facts are right there on the back with your ingredient list.



The only extra ingredient they add is love.  Awww how sweet. And in the end my granola was pretty tasty! It didn't have that baked together, crispy crunchy quality that comes when you bake all of the ingredients at once but I did love the fact that everything was in there because I wanted it to be!

Chanukah Latkes

One of the wonderful parts of Chanukah is the latkes. Of course I could make potato pancakes all year round but I could make a giant turkey all year round too and never do.  It's the same with latkes. On the seventh night, I decided to make sweet potato latkes.

I grated 2 sweet potatoes, 1 pink lady apple and 1 yellow onion.  To the grated mixture, I added 1 egg and 1 white from another.  I added about 1/4 cup of flour, a pinch of baking soda, cinnamon, salt and pepper.  I mixed up the ingredients, formed them into patties and sautéed them in canola oil.  It made about 12 latkes - all of which were consumed.

Inspiration from my favorite L.A. restaurant

On our last night in L.A.,  Jill and Taylor suggested dinner at GJelina - a new restaurant on a very hip street in Santa Monica. We were dazzled by the 20 or so choices of vegetable small plates on the menu and our favorite of the ones we tried was roasted cauliflower.
I made my own version tonight that my husband thought was just as delicious. Here's the easy recipe: Place cauliflower florets in a baking dish, drizzle with olive oil, add garlic, salt, pepper, capers, golden raisins and scatter lightly with breadcrumbs. Roast until lightly browned. Serve sprinkled with parsley! Le Yum!

Thanksgiving in L.A.

Thanksgiving this year was very atypical. And very delicious. As a midwestern mother of three, cooking for days to prepare for a Thanksgiving feast was de rigeur. So what a treat it was to be a guest this year. The whole family visited Jill's new home in Malibu and we had Thankgiving dinner with relatives (Jill's dad's brother and very pregnant sister-in-law, Jamie). They made the turkey, but Jill's new L.A. culinista prepared the most scrumptious side dishes! She treated us to the best ever sourdough/mushroom stuffing, cippolini onions with balsamic and raisins, garlicky green beans, adobo chili sweet potatoes, acorn squash with chili lime sauce and fruity cranberry sauce - we devoured it all.
I love to cook, but send me a culinista anytime ... fantastic, homemade food - without the work! We enjoyed the beach and then enjoyed dinner. (Hey, Jill, can we come again next year)?

Himalayan Pizza

My husband and I recently returned from the trip of a lifetime! We spent ten magnificent days in Bhutan, a majestic kingdom high in the Himalayas, a country still relatively untouched by Western culture. We thoroughly immersed ourselves in the Buddhist culture, enjoying clean air, organic food, breaktaking views and a multitude of unfamiliar cultural activities.
Even though I've been living in Ohio for all of my adult life, I am still and will always be a born and bred New Yorker. So when we came across a sign on a "restaurant" in a remote village in the middle of Bhutan that read "Himalayan Pizza" ... well what do you think I did? My mouth started watering, and while I knew that my favorite Two Boots was very far away, I knew I had to try Himalayan Pizza.
Turns out, it's a famous little place run by a fiesty, little Bhutanese woman who has perfected the crust and uses locally made swiss cheese and fresh tomatoes for the sauce. But the best part was the dish of fresh, crushed chilis she brought to top the slice! ( a shake of hot pepper flakes will never be the same)!
After a healthy diet of red rice and organic fresh veggies for every meal, this Himalayan slice was heaven on earth - as was the country itself.

Pure Ohio

I love vising Jill in New York and eating all kinds of new or gourmet or unusual food. But sometimes, simplicity rules.

Olive Oil

I've got an article up on The Daily Beast today about olive oil. If you are interested in learning how to buy it and what the best ones are, check it out!

Gjelina

Gjelina, that trendy but not too trendy restaurant on Abbott Kinney (that trendy but not too trendy street in Venice), is like Craft and Little Giant combined but with that California casualness and breeze that makes it unpretentious – even when it is crowded on a Monday night and Owen Wilson (he checked me out!) is hanging around.

It was round two for me there last night and what struck me this time was how heavily the dishes rely on the natural flavor pairings of only a few ingredients. The items are simple and yet each one packs a flavorful punch. It’s fun to see the star ingredients listed out on the menu – really alluding to the fact that you could make these items yourself (or The Dish’s Dish could do it for you) if you got the balance juuust right.

We repeated a few vegetables from last time – Brussels sprouts and cauliflower – and we added a new one – radicchio. The cauliflower is still my very favorite. There really is something very Little Giant about the dish – the simplicity yet expert preparation, the balance of fat and fresh and sweet/savory equilibrium… sweet vegetable plus a few chili flakes for good measure.

Moving down the menu, we added the trout salad to our order. White fish tossed between curly leaves of arugula, flavored by grapefruit and lemon and punctuated with avocado and shaved red onions – with each bite, I kept saying to myself, “remember to make this at home! This is perfect for a simple supper!” Likewise for the squid… on which we re-upped after we gobbled away the first order… it was such a simple combination of capers, parsley, shaved celery and tiny smashed potatoes. I could so easily imagine the process of composing this dish – the best dishes are always the ones to which you say “why hadn’t I thought of it before?” So Craft.

As a bonus, we threw in some pizzas. Hen of the woods, beet greens and taleggio was my addition. The boys picked the eggplant, tomato, oregano and mozzarella pie. I know better than to eat pizza outside of NYC but these are really pretty good. It’s not so much about the crust/sauce/cheese ratio as it is about the interplay of gourmet ingredients, which sometimes can be just fine with me!

Dessert was chocolate chip banana bread pudding.  It was another of those dishes: "Why didn't I think to do that?!"

Neighborhood Spot

Zooma Sushi, located just down the way from Zuma Beach, for which it’s phonetically named, is a true neighborhood spot – quite, hidden, unpretentious. But it’s no frills atmosphere – like a third world version of Nobu in the country mart – masks excellent rolls that are both inventive and made from incredibly fresh fish.

A favorite was the Fire Roll – spicy tuna on the inside with tuna and sriracha on the out. The salad roll also impressed us – the masters packed four different types of fish plus asparagus, avocado and cucumber into soy paper managing to make it look beautiful and stay together seamlessly. But my favorite roll was one for which I cannot remember the name. It was fresh albacore on the inside topped with broiled albacore on the out and drowned with a garlic ginger sauce that I could have drank!

Zooma Sushi is perfect after a long day at Zuma… or if you live in the neighborhood (wink wink).