Cast in Iron

Time flies, doesn't it? There are big changes afoot this year and it seems as though nothing is written in stone. Fewer dinner parties and more nesting suits me fine. There are new found friends and, rather sadly, lost or fading friends. Sometimes there is hardship or suffering, but personally I am finding the now a pleasant time of adjustment and a veritable cleaning out of the cobwebs. Dead wood and new buds, and like vines, new buds on old wood. My father passed away while I held him in my arms on a mid-summer's night, an hour short of his 84th Birthday. He had been afflicted for some good time but perhaps the saddest part was that he could not swallow and so could not eat. For a man who relished his own salads at lunch and dinner (a fondness for which he passed on to me amongst other things), this was a cruel turn of events. He loved the bonhomie of the table and the impromptu circus of his sons' antics that inevitably surfaced when we were all together and which he mischievously spurred on. Life will never be quite as complete without him.

It's been a whole summer between posts and, on the verge of feeling negligent, I realize that this has been an intense and eventful period in my life. Cooking for family on multiple trips out east, and to make sure I keep my strength up, I've been able to add some new dishes to my repertoire which I hope to share with you soon. Familiar friends came back into my cooking life in a big way recently and one of them is Lodge's cast iron cookware. Think of it as being like Le Creuset without the enamel coating, and indeed Lodge makes its own line of enameled ware. Cast iron developed a stigma due to the risk of it rusting and the ingrained oily buildup carrying rancid flavors and grit, but this is ironware that settled the Wild West and with proper care that is much easier than one might think, it can last forever. A Lodge skillet's unrivaled heat conduction is a real joy and rediscovery. Because it retains and radiates heat so very well I find it easier to clean than most enameled or non stick pans and the caramelization of juices and sugars is unbeatable. Up top is photo of a skillet and griddle on the stovetop, the skillet roasting some pepitas for a Mexican sauce.

More on all this soon. I'm leaving you with a picture of my first East Coast oysters of the season, pricey Blue Points from Fire Island in New York, a stand in for my beloved Washington State Hama Hamas. Pretty shells, plump cucumbery centers!

Last of Summer?

Marissa Roth gave a small dinner party last night which started poolside with plump green olives and sliced salami, creamy pastry cheese twists and a very potable chilled Riesling. When called to table we found a huge platter laden with fresh buffalo mozzarella, baby arugula, avocado, capers and a mild vinaigrette. Food maven, LA Times columnist and author Russ Parsons, brought along two varieties of Brandywine heirloom tomatoes grown in his Long Beach garden which Marissa substituted for her tiny heirlooms, and they were plump flavorful and lusciously tasty. After we had laid waste to that she served up wild organic salmon poached in orange juice with fresh dill, steamed french green beans with plenty of parsley, and deliciously crisp pan roasted fingerling potatoes. A French Muscadet and a dry, buttery Carneros Clos Du Val Chardonnay, which Russ also supplied, complemented it all with plenty of sparkling mineral water. If that wasn't enough we went back poolside to taste fresh nectarine gelato. All the ingredients were from her local South Pasadena farmer's market, including the gelato by Carmela Ice Cream who sells online and at the Hollywood and South Pasadena farmer's markets, with the exception of Russ's homegrown tomatoes and the salmon which Marissa caught herself at Bristol farms. It was a superb dinner.

We talked a bit about whether summer was over or not, a bit about food as Russ is a goldmine of information on resources and the way things are in foodland, and we talked about Bakersfield and Fresno and their anomalies. For all that hard work Marissa looked remarkably relaxed and glowed throughout the evening like the bloom on one of the sweet nectarines she garnished the gelato with. Perhaps this cool summer will linger on and I for one won't mind. Next week fall will officially be here for me as I harvest my Bakersfield Chardonnays and start to turn them into wine. I tasted them last week and they were intensely sweet but I bought a refractometer so as to measure the brix before I start getting sharp with the shears.

Deviled Morsels

I am always captivated by Love is the Devil, a most excellent film about the painter Francis Bacon. which I watched on DVD three times in the background while I was doing other stuff today. It has food content in that there are oyster slurping scenes set in a seafood restaurant: Bacon was a nightly regular at the now closed Wheeler's of St. James, traditionally a rich man's haunt. In print, I just finished The Devil's Picnic by Taras Grescoe, a wonderful journey exploring taboo food, drink and plant life. And I'm on to a new book, by Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Delight, which is well written and interesting but far less engaging than Picnic mainly because Grescoe's prose is illuminatingly precise and economical but personally engaging unlike Pollen's fan dancish style, though it is full of fascinating facts, and, reader friendly. I look forward to Grescoe's new book on seafood. Picnic and Love are different media and it it amuses me to join the two in this entry as the word Devil figures in both titles. They both speak to life on the edge and are about dark and disturbing things.

Yesterday my mother told me she was going to make 200 deviled eggs for a wedding. At her age she should not be making eggs deviled , or sainted for that matter, but for her own family. And especially not the deviled ones since she is a devout Christian.

Love Ridge

Please excuse the posting gap - blogspot.com has had problems here in LA and I have been unable to post.

My maternal grandmother, who recently passed on into the afterlife, was born in rural Kentucky, one of the most beautiful states within our national borders. Her husband-to-be courted her on the aptly named Love Ridge, where they watched cows swoon in the moonlight, drunk on sour mash dregs which farmers regularly dumped in the hills from their illegal stills. My grandfather was restless, so he and his new bride left the family tobacco plantation, and they bought a small farm in Ohio where they prospered together, and were blessed with five children. My mother was the fourth child, and the only girl in the bunch, and somewhere along the way her parents bought a larger farm in a pastoral spot a half hour west of Dayton with a creek and good soil. I have mixed memories of my times there as a child, where I would often be placed while my parents traveled. More fun were the family reunions back in Nelson County, Kentucky,close to various famous-name distilleries and Stephen Foster's Old Kentucky Home. In these more innocent times, we youngsters would play in amongst the huge gray, green and yellow tobacco plants after the jellos and turkeys, hams and kool-aid had been consumed at such occasions back then there in the early sixties.

My Grandmother's fried chicken has not been matched by anyone I know, including her daughter, my mother, who makes her own excellent version. Even though Grandma gladly shared the recipe with all who asked, including marinating the meat in salt water for a short time before flouring it, no one has duplicated the end result. Her chicken was one of the strongest arguments I know for the sleight of the human hand making a difference in every activity including cooking. You can give the same recipe to twenty people and have them execute it exactly, and you will always get 20 different results. Some folks just have better hands and correspondingly quirky brains and produce a better fried chicken dinner. I'm not going to pass on the family recipe as that's just for us.

Using hints from my Grandmother's fried chicken recipe, I do make chicken livers into paté and into small delicacies that I love served cold . Buy the best livers (so inexpensive) and cut out the fatty membrane and wash in cold running water. Discard any yellowish livers they should be richly red brown and glistening. You will be left with two lobes which can be cut and divided into two pieces. Drain them, flour them all while still damp (don't pat dry) in a combination of flour, salt and pepper, mixed dried herbs, and a small amount of home made breadcrumbs. Turn the livers in the flour mixture again and again and let some of the juices coagulate in the flour. Heat a liberal amount of canola oil in a deep skillet and turn down to a medium heat and then add the coated livers. As they cook sprinkle some of the flour mixture lightly on top. Turn after five minutes and then cook for another five. Do not over cook.

At this point I let them cool on a towel in a bowl and put them in the fridge, covered. I snack on them or add them to light lunches. The livers are incredibly rich but with a little home made mayonnaise they are fantastically so, or gingerly dip them in dijon mustard for a more spicy accompaniment.

This now - paté, sweetbreads and kidneys, later.