The Cooking Critic

Maggie wants the world to know she isn’t a mooch. If you look over my posts in the last couple of months, it may look like she’s constantly stopping by on the off chance that something just came out of the oven, and why doesn’t she join me for dinner? But I must set the record straight. Not only did Maggie have Shahan and I over for a meal recently, she, in fact, had me over for dinner long before I ever returned the favor.

Maggie planned the meal, set the date and I said I’d bring an appetizer—the Vegetable-Avocado Salsa I made was an easy choice. I’d been eyeing the recipe for a while; the small picture of it in the upper left-hand corner of my Complete Outdoor Living Cookbook has been beckoning to me for a long time what with its festive colors and all. I even tried once to convince my non-avocado
-enamored mother to make it and bring it to a gathering because I wanted her to report back to me on how it tasted. On top of all this, I also had some Trader Joe’s avocados—despite my love for the avocado, I always have a hard time using up the four that come in a bag, and this salsa was a way to check one of my list. The dish required no oven either, a major bonus due to a recent heat wave and lack of air-conditioning in my apartment.

So I chopped and chopped and chopped the vegetables into fine little bits but left out the avocado initially because it makes the dip soupy if it joins the party but then sits around too long. I called Maggie and told her I’d be a little late because I needed to pick up a jicama on the way to her place. Maggie responded, “A jigga-what?” And I said, “It’s a bulbous, root vegetable that has the crunch of an apple but is mostly flavorless.” “Oh,” she replied.

I picked up my jicama and added both it and the avocado to the dip at Maggie’s place. And we happily munched on the dip then happily ate up Maggie’s red wine-themed meal. I’m not sure how I only just recently discovered intimate dinner parties are a great way to spend an evening, but I did. First we had cocktails with the appetizer, next we had wine with our meal served al fresco on the patio—it included a salad topped with blue-cheese stuffed mushrooms, eggplant parmesan and strawberries soaked in red wine sauce served over ice cream. As far as I can tell, the latter is the perfect summer dessert: wonderful, unusual and no stove or oven required (the heat has made me obsessed with the last criteria of late). After the meal, Maggie read our Tarot cards, which determined Shahan will never ever find love or happiness. I fared slightly better, though the multiple reference to “moving houses” made me nervous since there’s a For Sale sign in front of my apartment complex right now that I’m not pleased about at all. But the tarot cards predicted that in the end I’d be happy with the move. Perhaps my new place will have air-conditioning?

Adjustments: I used a jalapeño instead of a serrano chile but will try the spicier latter next time. And I used frozen corn instead of fresh since I’m on a freezer initiative right now. I ignored the instructions to make your own baked tortilla chips and instead bought some blue corn Tostitos.

Assessment: Shahan called this dip “a winner” and declared it a great fancy alternative to traditional salsa or guacamole. The different textures are wonderful: soft avocados, crunchy carrots and crisp jicama (of course, now I’m looking for recipes to help me use up the rest of the jicama). Be sure to salt and pepper the salsa appropriately since the seasonings help the flavors meld. Also, Vegetable-Avocado Dip is very beautiful. And while this dish wasn’t difficult to make, there is a lot of chopping, so I’m going to say it’s relatively easy with an emphasis on the “relatively.”

People like to tell you the weather is perfect in Los Angeles. This is an out-and-out lie, created, I think, to increase the glamour of a city hell-bent on being glamorous. One of my biggest beefs about Los Angeles (besides traffic and no discernable autumn) is that nights are cool and pretty much always require a jacket, which is sure to ruin adorable summer ensembles. But I had to send my complaints a-packing the other night when we were blessed with a truly perfect warm evening. I, an always-cold person, was comfortable in short sleeves, pants and sandals, and my friends and I got to watch the sun sink below a row of particularly tall palm trees. It was a wonderful night to be an Angeleno, and luckily, we chose the perfect activity for such a night: another picnic/movie outside at Hollywood Forever.

This night also seemed a great chance to hold another round of the Great American Dip-Off since Trader Joe’s dips are a favorite toteable at these events. This week’s contenders: Artichoke Antipasto and Spicy Feta Dip. And the judges: Adam, Maggie, Rob, Shayna and myself.

This match-up was a little bit like watching a game only to see who’s going to compete against your favorite team in the second round. The judges had quite a bit of wine and had difficulty focusing, but then the dips weren’t really interesting enough to warrant our attention, no slam dunks, no fancy footwork. They just plodded along and seemed more or less happy to be in the game at all. Spicy Feta Dip ended up winning 4-2 since Adam voted twice, even though the group generally felt Artichoke Antipasto had more potential. Still, we determined it’s better off as a sandwich spread than as a true dip—it has a strong artichoke taste (as it should) but needs the balance of other flavors to truly appreciate its artichokiness. I recommend spreading some of the antipasto on bread, top with sautéed mushrooms, cover with provolone, then broil.

Our winner, Spicy Feta Dip, true to its name, was mildly spicy and very feta-y, and some people said, yeah, sure, I’d serve it at a party. But Maggie and I decided later that these people were wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. While it’s a perfectly acceptable dip, and we probably wouldn’t shun it altogether at a party, it just doesn’t make sense to invite Spicy Feta Dip when there are so many other better dips out there. In short, expect Spicy Feta Dip to get stomped in the next round . . . unless there’s another equally weak bracket.

P.S. You must put Over the Edge, Matt Dillon’s first movie, on your Netflix queue, the movie we viewed at Hollywood Forever. It’s part actually-funny, part dated-funny, even though it’s primarily a drama. And I pictured it here, since I forgot to take a photograph of the dips before we tossed them.

Until this past Memorial Day, I’ve never attempted to make corn on the cob. There’s really no excuse for it, other than I don’t own a barbecue, so I don’t host barbecues, so I don’t make corn on the cob, which has barbecue associations for me. All the same, I think about making corn on the cob a decent bit—there are a few recipes I’ve often admired from afar, one involving a lemon-chive butter and another with a chile-salt rub. Since many of my past barbecues have involved one boyfriend or another at the helm of the barbecue, I’d run my fancy corn-on-the-cob aspirations by him first. Inevitably I received a stare that seemed to say, why would you make a lemon-chive butter or a chile-salt rub when you can have excellent corn just by throwing it on the grill or tossing it in boiling water? Or maybe the look simply said, please don’t make things more difficult than they need to be. But since boiling or grilling regular old corn doesn’t exactly capture my imagination, I lost interest in the project and couldn’t be counted on to assist with the corn. I typically ended up making dessert.

So when a Memorial Day barbecue was announced with no boyfriend in sight, I went about making the dressed up corn I’ve always contemplated: not one of the recipes mentioned above, but a Cherry Tomato and Corn Salad made from corn on the cob that’s easy to make, easy to transport and easy to eat.

Assessment: Despite the many eases associated with this corn salad and though it pains me to admit it, I have to say I see the old boyfriends point with this one. Fresh corn on the cob is really good, so why make any adjustments to it by adding a dressing that might be best described as faint? The taste of the salad was pleasant enough, but I think I might prefer my corn slathered in butter. (Of course, I also adore butter more than any person should, so you might not want to listen to me on this one.) But corn salad does have some advantages you may want to consider: A) It’s a great portable dish that requires no last minute prep and will keep you out of the host/hostesses’ hair and B) You don’t have to worry about corn all over your face and teeth like you do with corn on the cob, a difficult food to eat gracefully. Also, you could easily substitute frozen corn for the fresh and speed up this already speedy recipe even more.

I have come to an important conclusion: people are hungry for brunch recipes. What first tipped me off (actually, what solely tipped me off) was the amount of hits my various brunch recipes received from my Easter brunch post. I knew that brunch was a popular activity for many, but I didn’t realize that making brunch was also popular. Far be it for me to deny the public what they want. If they want brunch recipes, goshdarnit, they’ll get them.

While I’m a big fan of brunch myself, I’m not a big fan of cooking in the mornings, or even mid-mornings for that matter, which perhaps led me to my earlier erroneous assumption that everybody preferred dining out for brunch instead of dining in—everybody’s like me, right? I’m exceedingly slow out of the gate when I wake up, and often I can’t be bothered with anything more than eating a piece of fruit. My other staples include: yogurt, banana smoothies (before my blender abruptly died and left me very lonely) and oatmeal with brown sugar, dried cranberries and flaxseed mixed in. The latter is about as labor-intensive as I get for breakfast, until now. Since I’ve determined the world wants brunch recipes, I’ll attempt at least one a month. Yes, I’m doing this for you.

My first once-a-month-public-brunch-promise selection wasn’t difficult. I had some goat cheese in the refrigerator, and I came across a Savory Bread Pudding with Goat Cheese and Ham recipe. It was sufficiently different from the usual brunch recipes, and I was intrigued by the idea of a savory bread pudding, having only had sweet ones before. I’m sure you’re intrigued too. And I hope you’re not scrunching your nose at the thought of goat cheese or bread pudding because I’ve known people to do that before. But I certainly wouldn’t expect that of you. (You’re my favorite by the way. Shhh, don’t tell the others.)

Of course, there was still the can’t-think-in-the- mornings-much-less-cook issue to deal with it, which was solved easily enough by making this a dinner entrée. In fact, it became an impromptu dinner party, very similar to my last dinner party. Savory Bread Pudding with Goat Cheese and Ham was substituted for the Green Beans and Saffron Pasta, and all the other elements remained the same: Trader Joe’s Dips for appetizers, Hearts of Palm Salad as an accompaniment and Raspberry Brownies for dessert. Why mess with a formula that works? And I suspect the reason this dish isn’t pictured in the cookbook is because it doesn’t photograph so well, as I’ve learned. Try not to hold this against it. And don’t laugh at my pathetic attempt to scatter ham evenly. You would think I’d try a little harder knowing I’m going to photograph the evidence later….

Adjustments: As you can see above, I separated the ham and olives into different sections to satisfy dueling palates: vegetarians vs olive haters. Also, I found the recipe could use more goat cheese, ham and olives, but maybe this was because I used a long dish, instead of the deep one called for and this spread out the flavors of the fixins more than usual.

Assessment: Maggie dubbed this sophisticated comfort food, and I thought the olives, goat cheese and ham were a nice sharp/salty/tangy combination. Also, since I get bored easily with the regular brunch fare at restaurants (sometimes I want more options than pancakes and omelets), this dish gets major bonus points for originality. But while not difficult, it is a time commitment with an hour baking time in the oven. If I were to make this again, and I certainly would if I found myself with a log of goat cheese in the refrigerator, I would see how it works cooked up like a French toast sandwich, which would take a lot less time and is basically what it tasted like.

When I invited Maggie over for dinner, I mentioned very coolly in passing, “Saffron will be there.” “Saffron?” she said, just as coolly back, pretending she didn’t care. Then I mentioned green beans, and her cool veneer slipped just a little because, frankly, nobody worries about being cool in front of green beans, and she admitted that she’s on a green bean kick where she likes to cook them up and then salt the hell out of them. Then the conversation turned back to saffron, and she got all blasé since that’s the thing you do when it comes to the most sought-after spice around and said, “Well, maybe I’ll stop by.” And so she did.

Saffron is effortlessly cool, and he thinks he’s pretty special because, well, he is. According to The New Food Lover’s Companion, he’s the most expensive spice in the world. And unlike some items where the high price seems arbitrary, saffron actually has a good reason for being so expensive. Saffron comes from a flower that produces only three saffron stigmas per flower. On top of this, these stigmas are handpicked. Can you imagine handpicking saffron? I’ve always maintained that the worst job I ever had was a soccer referee—this claim is questionable since I’ve had my share of bad jobs, but between the fact it was my very first job and everybody loves to yell at you when you’re a referee, it doesn’t seem like such an outrageous notion. Still, I imagine being a stigma-picker is worse. At the very least, it sounds extremely tedious.

But we’ll move away from the plight of the stigma-picker, which I have no knowledge of, and on to meals containing said stigmas, of which I have a little more knowledge but not a lot since I can count the number of times I’ve used saffron on one hand. That number is two.

Basically, saffron is an easy way to impress guests since it’s familiar enough not to be scary but still has some exotic shimmer to it. Sure enough, with saffron mixed in, a dish becomes vibrant, and the taste of saffron is its very own and hard to describe. I’d like to think it has a slightly buttery/faintly floral taste. Of course, I like to think all sorts of things—for instance, that eventually I’ll live in one of those gorgeous houses in Los Feliz and not have to fret over purchasing things such as saffron—so who knows how accurate my description is.

For something not terribly planned out, Maggie and I had a nice little feast with our Trader Joe’s appetizer dips, Hearts of Palm Salad, Green Beans and Saffron Pasta and Raspberry Brownies. As a bonus for any host, none of these dishes were labor-intensive, and the meal as a whole was completely feasible to pull off. Yea feasibility!

Adjustments: Instead of garganelli pasta (a ribbed penne, more or less), I used bowtie because I just can’t justify buying other pastas when I have such an assortment (if an incomplete one) in my house.

Assessment: This dish had a nice flavor heigtened by the kicky pecorinio cheese, and I liked it even better the second day, but overall it was subtler than I would have liked. I also didn’t love the instruction to include “2 pinches of saffron threads”; it wasn’t nearly exact enough for me, a Virgo, obviously. I found myself wondering if my pinch would be more or less than the average pinch. At first I blamed my stingy pinches for the low-key flavor, but I have since read that you need to use saffron within six months for optimum flavor, and saffron had been hanging out at my place for far longer than that. What can I say? I enjoy his company.

I’m going to call this dish “relatively easy” though I have some doubts. It’s not hard, but it took longer than 30 minutes. Still, I think the time might have more to do with the fact I haven’t quite mastered the art of chatting with guests while cooking rather than how long the dish actually takes. As for recommending this dish: I think it’s a good base for exploring saffron but feel free to freestyle cook with this one—no need to be a slave to the recipe. And use fresher saffron than I did.

There’s nothing more American than dips, and in celebration of this unquestionable fact, I’m going to hold an unofficial taste test of Trader Joe’s dips at least once a month. Two dips will face off head to head, and the winner will go to the next round to battle the other winners until there is only one remaining dip champion. For the premiere event, we have Blue Cheese Roasted Pecan Dip competing against Sun Dried Tomato & Pesto Torta. Maggie and myself are the judges; think of us as Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson respectively.

First came the blue cheese dip, a risky and unusual rendition of the creamy dip, and I said, “Yo, dawg, I’ve worked with blue cheese before, and your version worked all right for me tonight.” Maggie’s response was to weep maniacally at how good the dip tasted.

Then the torta took the stage—it was a layered performance of sun dried tomatoes topped with pesto topped with cream cheese, and I said, “The vocals had too many runs for me and you started out pitchy, but you worked your thing.” Maggie told the torta it looked beautiful in that dress.

Then our curmudgeon showed up late to the show—we will call him Simon—and said, “I don’t know what Paula and Randy are talking about, blue cheese dip is thrashing about on stage like a drunk dad at a wedding, and I don’t even taste the roasted pecans in this.” But since Simon came late, he didn’t get a say, and Blue Cheese Roasted Pecan Dip was the unanimous winner.

Assessment: We all agreed both dips are good. They’ve earned their place in the competition and are worthy of party appetizer status, but Maggie and I thought the blue cheese dip was more unusual—it’s also very strong, so you can’t be a blue cheese waffler with this one.

Applications: You can serve this dip with crackers, apples and pears, but here’s a way to turn it into an easy, elegant appetizer: smear baguette slices with a thin layer of blue cheese dip, fold a layer of prosciutto on top, top with pear wedges, sprinkle with brown sugar and toast in the oven.

Sooner or later, people begin to expect baked goods of me. My monthly poker game started about a year ago with no such expectations, but some brownies there, a strawberry lemon curd pie here, and suddenly my reputation is sealed, one that has followed me around nearly my entire life. If I show up without food, people are disappointed. And I hate to disappoint.

Since there have been no brownies present at the last few poker games, a fact the guys like to remind me of often, I decided to make the fudgiest brownies known to man in order to make it up to them. Mission accomplished.

Adjustments: I don’t have the 11×13-inch baking pan called for, so I used my 11×9 one and a muffin tin for the extra brownie mixture. Still, it was hard to guess how much of the mixture should go in the pan and how much in the muffin tin. I guessed as best as I could, but when the 30 minutes cooking time was up, I added on 10 more since the brownies were still slightly wobbly in the center. Eventually, the brownies set, but I could never get the toothpick to come out clean–my mother had the same experience with these. That’s just the way things go sometimes when baking super fudgey foods. Still, what I call “fudgey,” others may call “undercooked.”

Assessment: When I made Raspberry Brownies before, Dave Crocco dubbed them the best brownies he’s ever tasted. As far as I know, he doesn’t go around saying that about every brownie he encounters. But they aren’t for the lily-livered—they’re more of a cross between a brownie and a piece of fudge, so be prepared for the dense chocolate intake you’re about to experience when tasting these. A layer of tart raspberry jam helps cut the chocolateness.

There are some recipes that you will glance at and consider every time you thumb through a cookbook, yet they will never make it to your kitchen table. Honestly, I thought that would be the fate of Hearts of Palm Salad. It was interesting, but didn’t seem interesting enough to purchase ingredients I normally don’t. While I like to try new foods, I’m also keenly aware that I don’t know what I’m doing when I work with them, nor do I really know what to expect.

Then came a five-day stint with my family in Mississippi where a kind neighbor with a poultry farm (yes, I know someone who owns a poultry farm) treated us to chicken ‘n dumpling, chicken Tetrazzini and chicken salad sandwiches. I loved indulging in the heavy Southern foods, but by the time I came back to California, I was ready for something light and leafy. Once more, Hearts of Palm Salad caught my eye. Since I bore easily when it comes to salads, the idea of adding of an unusual ingredient like hearts of palm was actually appealing, and really only more so because I wasn’t entirely sure what it was. Strangely, it is what it says it is, which is the heart of cabbage palm tree—its edible core that looks not unlike a bamboo shoot. They come canned since fresh is nearly impossible to find, and since they’re soft and perfectly straight, it’s hard not to feel like a pro when chopping them up.

The flavor of hearts of palm is much like an artichoke. In fact, if you can’t find or don’t want to pay for the sometimes pricey hearts of palm, a marinated artichoke makes a good substitute. Still, I prefer the palm’s heart because it’s not as pungent. It’s got the tang without the overkill, and the texture is nice and soft with no worries about chewiness that the marinated artichoke sometimes troubles me with. Not to say the artichoke is generally troublesome. Normally I find him quite sophisticated and charming. But you don’t have to work as hard with hearts of palm who’s always laid back and never fussy. You get all the class but none of the stress of feeling like you’re socializing outside of your bracket.

Adjustments: The recipe calls for “salad herbs,” and I’m not sure if this was a vague suggestion to use whatever herbs you feel go with a salad or if there were a specific set of herbs designated for salads or maybe even a product, like jarred fines herbes. A quick Internet search provided no conclusive evidence, so I used fresh dill, which tasted good.

Assessment: This is a flavorful, spunky salad that’s not substantial enough to be a main dish but is a great accompaniment to just about anything because of both its taste and the ease in assembling it.

The pizza craving is a difficult urge to resist, as I have documented before. On one particular day, visions of pizza danced in my head and then visions of me eating a few slices at Hard Times Pizza soon followed. This didn’t seem like such an unreasonable thought but was a little excessive when my refrigerator was chock-full of goods from a recent grocery store run. So I figured I’d sensibly use what I had on hand while simultaneously fulfilling my pizza craving as best I could. The result? Turkish Pizza Turnover.

Turkish Pizza Turnover is very cleverly named since it really resembles a quesadilla more than a pizza. As much as I like quesadillas, pizza has some sort of primal pull on me—sometimes nothing in the world will do except a big cheesy slice of pizza. Turkish Pizza Turnovers aren’t that cheesy and don’t have an ounce of red sauce. Some might even describe them as healthy. Actually, I don’t know if some would, but I would—my standards for healthy are pretty loose. Still, when the primary ingredient for a dish is a vegetable—in this case spinach—I think I have something resembling a solid argument.

Adjustments: I’m sure the homemade dough described in this recipe is delicious, and it doesn’t look hard. But I was on a quest to use up my lavash, and since the resulting homemade bread in the picture next to the Turkish Pizza Turnover recipe looked identical to the lavash in my refrigerator, there’s was really no question about what to do. So lavash was used and mascarpone cheese omitted since I didn’t have any. In retrospect, I wish I would have thrown in a little mozzarella or Monterey Jack since cheesy pizza was what I was craving, but oh well.

Assessment: This was a nice change from my typical lunch fare. It reminded me of a flat spanakopita. But unlike the other spanakopita taste-alike I made recently–Greek Chicken Strudel, which was so time-consuming that in the end it just wasn’t worth the effort–this dish was an easy thrown-together meal, and so, gets my endorsement. But it’s something more for yourself than a crowd. Stick to the puffy store-bought spanakopita for the latter.

Either Shahan Sannossian or a character from one of his stories once said, good lavash is hard to come by. Actually, I’m sure he or his character put it far more eloquently than that, but the general idea of it stuck with me because I had never really considered lavash before. In case you have gone through your life lavash-less, it’s a thin, soft, flat bread used in wraps and often coming in large squares—it’s also called Armenian Cracker Bread and is not unlike the flour tortilla in many ways. According to Shahan or his character, lavash likes to become stale almost immediately (perhaps because it’s related in name to the cracker?) Anyhow, I tucked that bit of information about staleness away, and when I purchased some lavash recently for a picnic outing, determined the only solution to prevent stale lavash was to use the lavash in as many meals as possible pronto. A sensible solution indeed.

BLT Wraps with Tahini Sauce is one way to consume lavash, a recipe I’ve tried before. Instead of mayonnaise, perhaps my least favorite condiment and a traditional BLT accompaniment, this sandwich makes use of a slightly spicy tahini concoction (tahini is just ground sesame seeds, btw.) So you get your summery BLT but with some exotic flavor interplay.

Adjustments: I just shook in some red pepper flakes rather than measuring it out with a teaspoon since I prefer spiciness to remain a hint rather than a full-on flavor. I fried up prosciutto instead of bacon since that’s what I had on hand.

Assessment: Good, but something to do with leftover lavash rather than something to purchase lavash for.