Cooking seasonally doesn’t just mean winter, spring, summer, fall. It also means looking out your window and getting inspired. If you live in L.A. and you’ve been looking out the window lately, you may have noticed a little rain falling from the sky. Actually, a lot of rain. God knows, L.A. needs it, and I love the rain, so this isn’t me complaining. This is me explaining why today, for lunch, I decided to make red lentil soup with harissa.
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Cooking clichés are cliché for a reason: they usually contain some wisdom. Take this one: “The simplest things to make are often the hardest.” I had this lesson hammered home to me in Japan, where just a tiny wedge of sweet potato was somehow the most incredible sweet potato of my life. Or in Kyoto where we ate a whole carrot that was battered and fried-tempura style, arriving at the table like a work of art. The American version of that, I believe, is pie. Simple to behold, challenging to make. And perhaps the most simple and challenging of all is the lemon meringue pie.
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When celebrated food writer David Lebovitz is coming to dinner, you have a lot of planning to do. Do you make something fancy? Something casual? Something French? American? After lots of cookbook perusing and soul-searching, I remembered a Yotam Ottolenghi recipe I saw in The Guardian for Swiss Chard lasagna with Gruyère and hazelnuts. And I thought: “Now that’s something David won’t be expecting!”
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When it comes to granola, we’re all living in denial. The word evokes such feelings of healthfulness, it’s actually become an adjective to describe somebody who’s wholesome. “They’re a little too granola,” you might say about that guitar-playing, “aw-shucks” guy in your reading group. But the truth is that granola is PACKED with sugar. I read on the interwebs that 1/2 cup can contain up to 20 grams of sugar. Which is why I was so excited to find a recipe for naturally-sweetened granola in Marco Canora’s wonderful book, A Good Food Day.
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When Craig told me our friend Lucci was coming for dinner on Monday night, I said “great!” I figured I could throw something together, it being a Monday and all. But when Monday rolled around I was at a loss. Do I make something complex, like a stew? Do I make a simple and satisfying soup, like a ribollita? And then it came to me in a flash: Crispy Parmesan Chicken with Escarole Salad. Aka: the fanciest-looking, easiest dinner in the world.
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When the Oscars rolled around this year, I went through all of my dessert cookbooks looking for the most elegant dessert. And then I remembered: people like to drink wine during the Oscars. And when they’re done with their pizza, and eating dessert, what dessert still goes well with wine? Something salty. Which is why I had the idea to make these Salted Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies.
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Some desserts just elicit an “ooh” or an “ahh” when you bring them to the table. This citrus upside-down cake is one of them!
I’ve made this cake (which comes to us from Melissa Clark) several times for dinner parties over the past few years. Every time I bring it out people stop their conversation to marvel at the grid of reds and oranges and yellows from the variety of citrus that I use. To put it in layman’s terms, it’s a showstopper! (Do laymen use the word “showstopper”?) And it’s actually a cinch to make.
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Now that the secret’s out (the secret being that we’re moving back to NY after twelve years in L.A.), it’s time to talk about what I’ll miss the most about California. Will it be the beaches? It won’t be the beaches. Will it be the glamorous movie premieres? It won’t be the glamorous movie premieres. No, the thing that I’ll miss the most about L.A. is very simple: it’s the produce. Every trip to our farmer’s market is like a trip to an edible jewelry store: the bright orange persimmons in December, the juicy blood red oranges in January, and the huge array of chilies and tomatoes and summer squash when we’re in the height of August. Which is why I imagine, when the time comes for me to conjure up our L.A. years from our much smaller NY kitchen, I’ll turn to the California Veggie Sandwich.
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