I have food on my mind right now. It's
been a busy week, cooking wise, so there is much to report. I even
ate out at a couple of very enjoyable places this past week. I'd like
to talk about those experiences. Also, today is super Bowl Sunday, a
day for eating, drinking and watching the last professional football
game until pre-season many months from now. Those are reason enough
for thinking and writing about food. But there is one more reason
food is on my mind. I have to go on a liquid fast on Monday for a
diagnostic test I have on Tuesday. After a frenzy of Buffalo wings,
sides and beer, there will be naught but clear liquids for me on
Monday. That's no solid food until sometime Tuesday afternoon. It's
been almost two years since I've had to do this kind of drastic fast.
Back then, I didn't have an appetite to battle against. Oh, how times
have changed. This will be fun. I wonder if beer or white wine count
as clear liquids? Probably not.
Biscuit Battle and Other Skirmishes
I have made many attempts at baking
buttermilk biscuits. The results have been satisfactory at best. I
continue the fight, because I want to get away from fast food or
supermarket biscuits and their applications (breakfast sandwiches,
for instance). I am certain I have been following the directions in
the recipes closely and correctly. Yet they would never be quite
right. And then one day, Natalie Dupree announced on Facebook that
her new book, Southern Biscuits
was on sale for $1.99 on Kindle. This did me absolutely no good until
she also announced that there was a free PC app for Kindle out as
well. I uploaded the latter and downloaded the former immediately.
This book is a revelation about the proper ingredients and techniques
involved in making biscuits. Everything is simply but very carefully
explained, including how to substitute ingredients that aren't
available anywhere but the south. Because I viewed it as a simple
dough, I don't think I took the same care with it as I would
croissants or puff pastry. Truth be told, the methods for kneading
and shaping are very similar just not as time consuming. I can see
that one could make them quite quickly and easily with practice. This
batch still didn't rise as much as I would have liked, but they were
flaky, tender and melty. Jon found them to be a great accompaniment
with the buttermilk fried chicken (I had a lot of buttermilk to get
rid of). I've always like Natalie Dupree's shows on PBS. In fact, it
is her recipe I use to make my Thanksgiving Turkey over 20 years
after learning it. I was delighted that it was her book that put me
on the path to biscuit righteousness.
I returned to the Culver City Farmer's
Market on Tuesday. This time, I didn't have anything in particular in
mind. I just wanted to really explore the tables. I was fairly
certain that I would get more heirloom tomatoes, but that was all I
really had in mind. I really wasn't expecting to get collard greens.
I didn't expect to see any there. This isn't the south, so I didn't
expect them to be grown widely at local farms. But I had forgotten
that this hardy vegetable that was a staple for poor folk had become
chic in Los Angeles. That's why it's selling at high class markets
like Gelson's in Marina del Rey for nearly 4 bucks a bunch (crazy, I
tell you). Well, I found collard greens at more than one booth. I
bought the cutest little bunches I've ever seen – baby organic
collards! My grandmother would have never stopped laughing, but I
found them adorable at a quarter the size of a regular leaf. They
were also incredibly tender when cooked with a little olive oil,
garlic, onion and a cup of chicken stock. Lovely. The price was
really great, too. They were about the same per bunch as at my
favorite discount market. I will definitely look for those again.
Being chic can have an upside, I suppose. The other meatless dishes I
made this week was a French Onion soup. I like mine pureed and
without the cheese and crouton topper. I did make a goat cheese
souffle to go with the soup though. It's one that is baked twice thus
I can freeze them and finish them later. This is important for me
with these specialty dishes that only I like. If I can't freeze them,
most of the batch would go to waste. I think I'm well set for yummy
meatless dishes going into Lent.
Great Eats
I had errands to run in downtown Santa
Monica early last week. It was a lovely day for strolling about, and
I enjoyed just doing that a great deal. I don't get to that part of
Santa Monica often anymore. Most of the reason is that I don't work
there anymore. But part of me also has a negative association with
the area. It's usually full of tourists who are problematic when you
have stuff to do. And then the downtown is often teeming with the
very entitled folks from Brentwood, the Pallisades and Malibu. They
were all difficult customers for me when I worked at the Borders
there. They aren't any better when I need to get a bunch of things on
a list accomplished. But it was a chilly Monday, so the area was only
sparsely populated.
 | |
| Ozumo's Bar |
Once I finished with my tasks, I was
hungry. Once there were a lot of inexpensive restaurants of all types
in downtown Santa Monica. They were a great resource for retail workers
and tourists on a tight budget. As the area became more popular,
everything changed. All those little food joints were replaced by
upscale clothing shops. There is very little in the way of choices
for retail workers now. I was not very hopeful. Still, I made my way
to the rooftop dining deck on the poshly renovated Santa Monica
Place. There, I found something quite unexpected. There was an
Izakaya
(a Japanese bistro) called Ozumo. I found this intriguing as I had read about Izakayas but didn't
think I'd run into one outside of Little Tokyo. There were Japanese
tourists looking very happy in the outdoor beer garden. The bartender
told me it was happy hour (2:30pm!) and there was a menu of
appetizers. There was one item that I had yet to find outside of my
kitchen, Karaage Fried Chicken. And then there was an Udon noodle
soup that looked very much like one Anthony Bourdain had on his last
show in Japan. They were very inexpensive, so I took a chance. The
bartender also suggested the beer special, Primo Beer from Hawaii. Everything was delicious. For appetizers, the portions were
generous. Those items with the beer were more than enough for me.
Incidentally, that beer was amazing. I was stoked to find it at my
nearby Beverage Warehouse, because it isn't carried in many places.
Ozumo's servers were very sweet and knowledgeable. The place was
gorgeous. It was a pleasant enough experience to possibly lure me
back to that area for something other than an errand.
Updates
Ensnared Volume Two is Live! All
versions of e-book are available at Smashwords HERE. There is also a full synopsis on that page. For those who prefer to order directly from Kindle, that should be
live tomorrow or Tuesday. The print version will be live by the end
of the week (hopefully). The print distributor has been on the slow
side of late. Thank you for you patience. Fans of the Soldiers and Ensnared books
may want to check out the blog on my yaoi page that covers why my
characters are obsessed with food HERE. Don't worry, there aren't any major spoilers.
I don't have much else for this week.
My mind is on that last test and the oncology appointment that
follows. I have every indication that things are still clear, but
it's impossible not to think about it. I am working with more speed
on the latest Soldiers book and my Manga editing is coming along
nicely. I'm actually being encouraged by my bosses at Digital Manga
to blog about that experience. I'll be doing that starting next week.
I'm certain I'll have some tales to
tell about the appointment Tuesday. Craig is my escort.
Stay tuned.
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