Los Angeles Times/January 2008
“EXPECT the expected” is usually the best slogan when you’re invited for brunch, but what a new friend had waiting on his kitchen counter a few Saturdays ago was not just a fresh idea. It could be the greatest thing since sliced pizza.
My host Bruce Stutz, a writer and obsessive cook recently back from Barcelona,
Los Angeles Times/December 2007
EXCEPT when it comes to caviar, effortless extravagance sounds like a contradiction in terms. But there is no better description of a seafood pan roast.
Los Angeles Times/Christmas 2007
WALK into the cookbook section of a good bookstore these days and it’s what you don’t see that’s the biggest gift of the season. Instead of the miles of aisles of Food Network-packaged slickness, the interchangeable Paula/Rachael/Giadas that have been so inescapable all year, there are small piles of serious recipe collections from serious cooks. And some big piles, too.
There are so many tantalizing cookbooks out there that I resorted to speed dating — dipping in and out of the most immediately appealing — to see which would work as presents. I soon learned that counterintuitive bits — a promise of foolproof focaccia, say, or a demand to boil oranges for an hour and a half before starting a cake — are likely to lead straight to heartbreak. But I also learned new tricks with a favorite vegetable (squash), found some wild combinations (Brussels sprouts, chestnuts and smoked salmon rock together) and came away with a really nice pile of books to settle down with. Continue reading
Media Dish: Reality Bites/LATimes/September 2007
“Top Chef” is the jackhammer of the food world. Even with earplugs, it is impossible to tune out.
The reality show in which cooks compete in various staged challenges is already in its third season on the Bravo channel. But even for someone who might be fortunate enough not to know a remote from a microwave, there is no escape: “Top Chef” is also covered relentlessly — exhaustively, even — on blogs and websites and online discussion boards.
Los Angeles Times/August 2007
All I was hoping for at lunch in the Nice-Cote d’Azur airport was something slightly better than the chicken or “beef” Air France would undoubtedly be shoveling out. What I got was a good table with a view of the sea (and runway), an even better rosé and the best idea for late summer cooking. Continue reading
Los Angeles Times/August 2007
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Hugo Liu says he hates recipes; the whole concept seems hopelessly antiquated to a guy who starts cooking by sniffing spices and thinking. Yet he has invented a revolutionary way of developing them. Continue reading