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LA is notorious for fabulous 70 degree weather year around, but this week the weather gods decided to strike us with blistering 105 degree temperatures, which has put much of the valley up in flames. With smokey cloudy air and sweltering temperatures, the last thing on earth I feel like doing is turning on a stove or, gosh forbid, an oven; really the only effort I feel like exerting is trying to find a creative way to keep cool.
I found a summer love this year in LA. No, not the teen angst, straight from the movie “Grease,” boy-kind of summer love, but a reason to truly fall in love with LA: The Hollywood Cemetery Cinespia screenings. During the summer, the Hollywood Cemetery screens a movie against one of their buildings that is conveniently located near an open, grassy area, and every Saturday evening people line up to picnic, watch a movie, and generally be merry. It’s really pretty awesome.
In order to get a good spot to picnic and watch the movie, you have to get there pretty early, which often means you end up picnicking in line while waiting to picnic. Due to this long wait, you need to come prepared with plenty to eat & drink. As you can see, the supply of drink was never a problem for me and my friends.
Butter and pancakes seem to go together like, umm…me, chocolate ice cream and midnight. No? Well, you get my point. They simply make sense together. So when I came across this pancake recipe using olive oil instead of butter I was intrigued, but waaaay skeptical.
Caroline and I have already given up butter when it comes to making eggs…but pancakes? Hadn’t even considered it. But I’m an easy going person—I went with it. When I carefully measured out the olive oil and added it to the batter, I thought to myself, Man, that seems like a lot of olive oil, but hey, that’s the recipe. What the heck do I know? But then I double-checked the recipe and realized I totally botched it. I almost had a little crisis, which I have quite often in the kitchen.
When Caroline and I first set out to do a food blog and were looking for inspiration, we turned to the really popular food blogs: David Lebovitz, Smitten Kitchen, Amateur Gourmet, and through them we stumbled upon Joy’s blog and were totally addicted. It was exactly what we wanted to do–something that felt personal, sweet and familiar. Along with the amazing, though accessible recipes she features, her sparkling personality is the thing that keeps you coming back for more.
Sometimes I decide to cook something because it’s a recipe I’ve done a million times and I know that it’s going to taste amazing, like cheddar & pinto bean patties. Sometimes it’s because I see a recipe in a book, magazine, or blog and am immediately compelled to give it a try, like Smitten Kitchen’s pasta with goat cheese. Then, I have the days when I realize that I’ve had that box of couscous in my cupboard for a year, a YEAR, and by George, I’m going to do SOMETHING with it. That’s when I make things like Couscous Salad with Cherries.
Okay, in my last post we made pizza dough, so now it’s time to add toppings. The pizza Margherita is one of my favorite pizzas, as well as being an Italian classic.
Before we get started, a little history: in the late 1800s Queen Margherita, wife of Umberto I, became quite taken with a bread that was commonly made by Italian peasants. Since it was not considered very “Queenly” of her to like such a common peasant food, she asked one of her chefs to prepare her pizza using this bread that she liked so much. The chef, Rafaelle Esposito, devised a pizza topped with tomatoes, mozzarella cheese and basil, the colors symbolizing the Italian flag. Queen Margherita absolutely fell in love with this delicious concoction, and the rest is history.
Like any kid, I had a sweet love affair with ice cream. It all started with my dad, whom would invite me over, at the ripe age of one, to join him with carton in hand. I, of course, would quickly crawl my little self over there awaiting a massive spoon of chilly chocolate ice cream. When I couldn’t eat anymore, I’d sit with a chocolate covered face, totally content… But really the flavors of my childhood only consisted of the typical chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, pistachio, etc.–nothing too exotic. It wasn’t until I went on a family vacation to San Francisco and visited a little ice cream shop near my aunt’s house called Mitchell’s. Hands down it totally changed my expectations with ice cream. It wasn’t a fancy shop–just a little hole in the wall with a make-shift menu which listed out the most exotic ice creams I’d ever heard of. My brother and I would always get the thai ice tea ice cream on a waffle cone. We thought it was the most genius thing ever.
So, we can all agree that LA has a lot of great food, right? If you’re looking to have some great sushi, Thai, Indian food or even a fabulous cup of coffee you can probably find it on almost any street in the city. The one thing that LA is certainly lacking in, however, is good pizza. I’m not sure why the place I live has fallen into the black whole of delicious pizzas, but there is not one place that I have tried that comes even remotely close to the pesto pizza at Mellow Mushroom, and there are days when I contemplate buying a plane ticket just so I can gorge myself on the pizza at Barley’s.
So, since LA has done nothing to aid in my pizza addiction, I’ve taken matters into my own hands. In this endeavor, the first thing to tackle was the crust. Now, most of my friends are the type that will eat every bite of cheese and toppings and then leave their crusts to be discarded. I, on the other hand, specifically seek out slices with thick, doughy crusts and savor every bite.
Ummm…Papa a la whooo? That’s what you’re thinking, right? Well, that’s why I’m here; to explain, you see. I grew up on this stuff. I remember as a kid my mother making this sauce and me sneaking cubes of queso fresco. I was pretty creative with the stuff and used to put it on everything from chicken to potato chips. In Peru, where my mother was born, this is a pretty common appetizer–it’s sort of like their version of veggies and dip.
Everyone has their own versions of heaven. Those rare occasions where if feels as though life cannot get any better and you hope that it will just float along endlessly in this moment. Here’s one of those moments for me:
Getting up on a weekend before anyone else is awake, making iced coffee, then drinking it on the couch while watching TV AND also reading a magazine. This is heaven, pure and simple. If you go ahead and throw in some of these Honey Pistachio Biscotti for me nibble on, I may never leave my apartment again. Really.
