A Burger in the Eye (and Hands) of the Beholder

"Drugstore Style Hamburger" by Jeff Jackson

Today’s New York Times article about burgers struck me as odd. Not because there was an article about burgers. Burger stories is what food publications do for the Fourth of July, which might as well be called: National Burger and Hot Dog Day because four out of five Americans probably couldn’t tell you: Independence from what? But I digress… There’s only so much you can say about burgers and the author pretty much covered the bases. She even tried to go national on the story. But here in Los Angeles, she chose to cover, of all places, the French bistro, Comme Ca. Huh? Okay, so evidently they serve one, but… does anyone in this town talk about the Comme Ca burger or wonder about the secrets behind it? In L.A., when it comes to burgers, people talk about the Pug Burger at the Hungry Cat, Nancy Silverton’s burgers, based on her signature fatty burger grind sold at Huntington Meats, and the have-it-their-way burger at Father’s Office (to be clear, that’s, the restaurant’s way, not the customers’), and that new joint on La Brea whose name I can’t remember that offers nothing but burgers–including nothing in the way of ambience.

When people ask me what my favorite burger is in Los Angeles, my standard response is that the best burger in L.A. is in San Diego. The one I’m referring to is the Drugstore Style Hamburger made by chef Jeff Jackson at the Lodge at Torrey Pines, an Arts & Crafts style architectural wonder perched over what many say is the nation’s best public golf course on the cliffs of La Jolla that may also be my favorite hotel on the planet. Jeff is from Oklahoma, and he named his burger after those you buy at drugstores. You know? All those burgers you’ve eaten at drugstores!? I don’t have the heart to tell him that those of us who grew up in Southern California (or maybe anywhere but Oklahoma) did not eat burgers in drugstores, and what’s the point, really? Because his burger is just so good. Chef Jeff uses all the best ingredients, of course–good meat, makes his own mayonnaise, farmers market veggies, and all that. But what I like best about this burger is that it is just a burger. Nothing fancy. No foie gras. No short ribs. It looks pretty much exactly like Big Mac without the useless third slice–right down to the shredded lettuce, pickles, and soft, sesame seed bun. You can even pick it up with your hands and put it in your mouth. Try doing that with a Pug Burger. Or at a French restaurant for that matter. God bless America.

This is a Big Mac, which I would never actually eat, but, you have to admit, makes a pretty good model for future burgers of America. Hold the third slice.

Life is a (Hollywood) Bowl of Cherries

Friday night I went to the Hollywood Bowl for the first time, which a lot of people found surprising (and I, admittedly, find a bit embarrassing), since, until I moved a few weeks ago, I lived within walking distance. But that’s just the thing. The worst part about the Hollywood Bowl, everyone knows, is parking in their lots, which means h. bowlers often park in what was my neighborhood, making this wonderful Los Angeles summer ritual into a ritual nightmare for those of us who lived nearby and dreamed of parking any where near our very own homes.

Plus, and more importantly, in the four years that I lived near the bowl, nobody ever said what my friend Michael said to me last week: “I got four free tickets to the Hollywood Bowl Friday night to see Aretha Franklin. Wanna go?”

As much as I regretted not having seen Van Morrison play Astral Weeks last November, I have to say, I was glad to have waited as long as I did to lose my Hollywood Bowl virginity, because the night was perfect. We had VIP parking, which means we pulled right up front and were the first out when the concert let out. It was a warm, beautiful night on one of the longest days of the year. And we had great tickets–in a box. Halle Barry, who was seated two boxes away, didn’t have it as good as we did.

What I didn’t know, because I’d never been, was that the Hollywood Bowl is really about what you bring to eat and drink there. The four of us just brought what we felt like eating, and we ended up with a really random picnic that included a selection of sliced Italian meats from Mozza, courtesy of Michael. Daryl carried a Marni shopping bag filled with bottles of wine. I went with a traditional picnic theme that included fried chicken, farmers market crudites, Frito’s, Oreo’s, and checkered cloth napkins. And Ralph brought, among other things, the very same tub of hummous that we later saw Halle eating. I’d also brought a bottle of white wine from Orvietto with a picture of that Umbrian hill town on the label, which is the entire reason I buy this wine—in memory of my Umbrian Holiday that was last summer. But as we sat there and drank our wine and ate our cold fried chicken and dipped our farmers market veggies into that Trader Joe’s hummous fit for a star, I had no desire whatsoever to be there, or anywhere but right where I was. It’s a simple thing, to want for nothing. Even if only for the time it takes Aretha to say: “You make me feel like a natural woman.”

So what’s the point of my telling you this? Just to say: When life hands you tickets: take them. Eat. Them. Up.

Summer Gold

Standing in Line for Corn

Anyone who says there are no seasons in Southern California has never been to Chino Ranch in the summertime. I stopped by the farm today–after a morning hike on the secret horse trails of Rancho Santa Fe that, along with a lifetime of free firewood and a covenant that insures your neighbor can never build a McMansion on his land, is one of the perks of living in this precious place, and found the parking lot spilling over and a long line outside the stand. Everything the Chinos grow is divine–including, at this time of year, melons of all kinds, green beans that Alice Waters famously declared tasted just like green beans when she discovered them (the beans and the Chino family) in 1972, and the most glorious tomatoes of every shape and color imaginable. But the line is for the Chino’s famous corn. They grow yellow and white (I don’t know the names, though I should) and sell it by the half dozen or dozen, and fans of the corn line up before the stand opens in the summertime to get their hands on some before the farm sells out, which they invariably will. Some people complain about the price (a dollar an ear, I think, as opposed to the can’t-give-the-stuff-away-prices at places like … basically everywhere else that sells corn), but these are often the same people who pull up in leased Range Rovers and shirts that cost the same as some people’s rent, so never mind them. Besides, talking about the price of corn is boring. If you ever have the privilege of getting your hands on some of these golden ears, you might want to make this soup, a puree of pretty much nothing but corn that I learned to make during a week I had the privilege of doing an internship at Chez Panisse.

Corn Corn Soup

Take a couple of sweet yellow onions, trim them and throw all the trimmings into a soup pot filled with water placed over high heat. If you happen to have some cheesecloth lying around, make a bouquet with some peppercorns, parsley, and whatever other fresh herbs you have that you think go well with corn and throw that into the water, too. Meanwhile, shuck some corn. Let’s say half a dozen ears, though the soup is so good you might as well make it with a dozen ears because it will all get eaten. Guaranteed. Shuck the ears, remove the silks, cut the kernels from the cob, set the kernels aside, and throw the cobs into the pot with the onion trimmings. (What you’re doing in case you haven’t figured it out yet is making corn broth.) Now dice the onions and saute them in a separate soup pot with butter and a sprinkling of kosher salt over medium heat–or lower. You want to get the onions soft and sweet, but you don’t want a speck of color on them. If the onions start to color, turn down the heat, and if that doesn’t do the trick, add a splash of water. When the onion is really soft and smushy, after about 20 minutes, add the corn kernels and some more kosher salt. Saute the corn and onion together for 5 or 10 minutes. Then add some of the corn stock and puree the soup with an immersion blender, adding more corn stock and pureeing away until what you are looking at is corn soup. That’s it. No cream. Nothing fancy. Just corn. Serve it warm, with a few turns of pepper if you like. At CP, they used Marash pepper, which I have never used (or even seen) since but am going to pick up in honor of corn season. I’m not sure I have the palate to tell the difference in a particular type of pepper, but I can tell you that appreciating the flavor of this corn takes no skill whatsoever.

Letter to the Man I Robbed

Dear Quentin Bacon:

How’s it going? Remember me? We worked together on the Sara Foster books, and other projects around town. It was nice knowing you, and nice working with you on the two (or was it three) books that we both worked on. You know I am a huge fan. I hope to work with you on another book one day. That is… if you will ever talk to me again!

You see, I stole a photograph of yours off the world wide web. I have felt bad about it ever since it happened (like the passive voice?). But I felt especially bad ever since my friends Brooke and Leah wrote the now e-famous Food Blog Code of Ethics. The truth is, like Julia Powell, although I write a blog and although it occasionally (okay closer to “always”) features food, I don’t actually consider myself a food blogger. Because I am not—or at least I don’t think I am—part of the food blogging conversation. But that’s another story. The bottom line is that I broke one of the “code’s” five rules. Only five—granted it was last—and I still couldn’t manage. Geez. The code was a bit wordy and self-serious, but Ruhlman distilled it more simply, into just four one-line rules. And what I did to you and your picture clearly falls between 1). Don’t Be an Asshole, and 3). Ask Before You Use Other People’s Stuff. With a sprinkling of 2). Don’t Make Shit Up. And 4). Dude. Karma.

In my own defense, Quentin, I tried credit you. I wrote a long thing about how guilty I felt about stealing the photo, and how much I like your work (and also how I don’t even put tomatoes in my guacamole, which there obviously are in the photograph). But seeing as how I hardly know my way around a computer, much less WordPress, the part where I credit you seems to be “backstage” someplace. What I am saying is that although I did mean to steal the guacamole photo, I do not want to steal the guacamole, and I did mean to credit you.

I hope you don’t mind. Or to be clear: I  hope you don’t sue me. I’ll get my own guacamole picture soon enough and if you want, you can use it for free. In fact, I’ll throw in the guacamole to boot. I hope you understand!

Very Truly Yours,

Carolynn Carreño.

To Each His (or Her) Own Mom

The reason I’ve been away is that I’ve been moving, and all I can say about that is: you really find out who loves you when you move. In my case, turns out it was my mother. While I like to give my mom a hard time for not being much of a cook, or for not baking my birthday cakes now or ever, the truth is if she were to bake me a cake I’d probably think of the ways I would do it better. And besides, no cake-baking mom would endure what she did in the last week as I/we engaged in the tedious and seemingly endless process of transferring every one of my earthly belongings from one location to another.

When I’d thought about my impending move, I’d imagined, get this, a party. My logic was, “If Tom Sawyer can get people to pay him to whitewash his fence, why won’t my friends pack my boxes for me? For free!?” My party would involve my many colorful friends, lots of strong and funny men making us girls laugh all while dealing with various tasks I didn’t want to, and just when we needed it, having already put in a hard day’s work with hours yet to go, the perfectly timed, heroic appearance of warm, molten, still crisp pizza from Mozza. What I got instead was this: a nice few hours from Sara, my intern, who spent a gorgeous post Guac-Off Sunday packing every damned book in the place. Some real dedication from my pal, Camille, who took on the worst part, the kitchen, as if she were being paid. Daily phone calls from my friend Ralph, whose promises to help me move as the move approached had given me the courage and confidence I needed at the time. When he called, though, it occurred to me: This is his day off. He doesn’t want to pack my boxes. He is just being nice. “If you want to come over, I’d love to see you,” I said each time. “But we have it under control.” (I never saw him.) And then there was my mom. Day in and day out, driving from Santa Monica, where she lives, picking up Cobb salads at La Brea Bakery on the way, and packing stuff.

Those warm pizzas never arrived, but we didn’t go hungry. In additon to the salads my mom brought, I cooked off the contents of my freezer, which included half a dozen chicken apple sausages from Huntington Meats, eight servings of frozen lasagna verde that had been there since February, from Osteria Angelini. A beef pot pie, also from Huntington Meats, which I heated up and served upside down with a mountain of warmed-up frozen petite peas on top, which–substitute a Swanson’s Pot Pie–was one of the staple home cooked meals my mother raised me on. And lots and lots of Progresso Lentil Soup, which I consider to be canned food perfection. All in all it was its own sort of festive. Moves are exciting. New beginnings, and all that. And my mom and I really did have a great time. “Boy did I have fun!” she wrote in an email to me this morning. “Just a great weekend!” To which all I can say is: Thank God for moms. And to each his own.

World Famous, Award-Winning, Heralded, Celebrated, and Time-Honored Guacamole

I seriously considered not sharing my guacamole recipe here. I mean really. There is a recession going on and you never know when I might have to open up a guacamole stand or sell my recipe to some big corporation like Kraft Foods or Mario Batali. But in the name of being a good winner, here it is.

First, before i go further, let’s be realistic here. There is only so much you can do to–or with–guacamole. I mean give or take a few cilantro leaves here, a tomato there, there’s not a lot of room to move. What this means is that whatever you do, it better be good. Like God, the secret to guacamole, is all in the details.

Preparing Guac is a Serious Affair

My Very Famous Award-Winning Guacamole

Getting Started:

1. Buy a  100% lava, authentic Mexican molcajete and . If it has been sold to you as “pre-seasoned,” know that you have been had. There are certain things in life for which there are no shortcuts. One is getting to know, really know, the person that you love. Another is getting a piece of lava (the molcajete) to quit producing sand when you grind it with another piece of lava (the tejolote). Both of these things simply take time. So how to season a molcajete? Throw a handful of rice in the bottom of your primitive mortar and grind until it looks like dried Cream of Wheat. Toss and repeat as many times as it takes until the guacamole you make in your molcajete does not turn out sandy, or roughly 1,000 to 1,200 times.

2. Taste several different types of avocados, paying special attention to texture, mouth feel, and flavor, at the occupational hazard of about 17 pounds, until you finally give in to the fact that you cannot, no matter how clever you try to be, find a rare, secret, little-know, overlooked, or otherwise undiscovered avocado that makes better guacamole than the Hass.

3. Remember that no matter how much salt you’ve added to your guacamole, it probably needs more. Serving your guac with nicely salted corn tortilla chips, still warm from the oil you fried them in, would put you at an unfair advantage in a competition, but would surely win you friends off the playing field.

Now Buy Your Ingredients:

4 serrano chiles, halved and seeds removed (Why anyone would ever eat a jalapeño pepper after tasting one of these is beyond me. Probably because, like my very own self before preparing for competition, they never actually tasted one in any deliberate way. Once you do, you’ll realize that jalapeños are sort of bitter and disgusting tasting and, given the choice, you should always reach for the smaller, slimmer, and infinitely tastier serrano).

Rock salt (I suppose you could use kosher salt but my grandmother Josefina uses rock salt, plus it is just a cool thing to do.)

A lopped off piece of white onion (I’d say for four avocados, this would be about 1/8 of an onion; no idea why but it has to be white; this is the Mexican way.)

4 4ipe Hass avocados, halved, pitted, and scooped out of the peel

1 or 2 Key (Aka Mexican) limes

1 red jalapeño pepper, halved, seeded, and minced

Fleur de sel
Instructions:

Throw the peppers and lopped off bit of onion in your seasoned molcajete. It will be less onion than you think. Trust me on this one. Sprinkle with rock salt and start grinding away, I mean really channeling your inner Aztec and grinding, adding more salt if you feel like this will help your peppers and onion break down, until what you have are not peppers and onion, but an acid-green colored, slimy paste.

Add the avocados and smash them with your tejolote until they are 1) smashed. and 2) integrated with the paste. Stir in the gorgeous minced red jalapeños and the juice of 1 key lime. Taste for seasoning and add more lime juice if necessary. It definitely needs more salt, so add some more of that, too. Taste it again, adjust it again, and just when you think that your guacamole is perfect, add some more salt, and serve.

Guac-ing The Line to Victory

I am moving today, and therefor have no time for much of anything other than pace around the house thinking of all the things I have to do, but I felt I had to touch down here, to gloat, errr…. write about my guacamole victory at the First Annual Competitive Guac-Off on Saturday. I wish I could go into the long version—about how, not liking the look of my avocados at six that morning, I called a farmer (JJ’s Lone Daughter Ranch) and had her put aside some ripe avocados for my mom to pick up at the Santa Monica market when they opened at eight; or the molcajete—loaned to me by John Sedlar of the wonderful Rivera Restaurant for the purpose of this competition—that crashed in on itself minutes before competition, and how I came through anyway with a trophy bottle of Casa Noble Reposada Tequila (suddenly I have so many “friends”). For now, all I can do is show you some pictures, stolen some might say unethically, from The Foodinista. In the wake of my win, I was too busy with interviews and photo opps to be able to take any myself. Then there’s also the fact that I don’t have a camera.

Warring Molcajetes

Foodi’s molcajete has a name, Mortimer. Here he is next to my nameless, but painstakingly polished molcajete, getting ready for battle.

MY Award Winning Guac

I’m not one for lily-gilding, but I couldn’t resist these beautiful, fire-engine red jalapeños. Especially once I tasted them. The difference between those and the green ones is like that between sweet summer red bell peppers and green bell peppers, which are vile year-round. They were a last-minute addition, but I believe they may have been the key to my victory.

Gracious in My Victory

I didn’t realize how much I wanted to win until I did. I was so happy and such the center of attention, I felt like a bride. I even forgot to eat, which is something I never, ever do. Perhaps as important as the overall election was the fact that Nancy Silverton, AKA “The Palate,” voted for my guac. We were both a bit nervous during the reveal. But once we realized she’d voted for numero uno (that was me), she also revealed that she liked the texture of quatro , which was Katie-the-Irish-Guacamole-Maker-O’Kennedy’s, better. As some of us competitors sat around afterwards, sipping tequila mixed with Andrea Arria-Devoe’s muy famoso cucumber agua fresca, and eating what must be the world’s best wedding cookies, Mexican or not (I’ll get that recipe if it kills me!), I mentioned this to Katie. “So easy to be gracious in victory, isn’t it?” her husband said, with the trace bitternes of green jalapeños. Well, yes. Indeed. It is…

Happiness is a Warm Tortilla Chip

Turns out everyone wants to be invited to the Foodinsta’s Guac-Off this Saturday. My next-door neighbor, Nick, was over yesterday, grabbing food, which is what my neighbors do because I am always trying to get rid of food, and people–especially single men people–seem to like that. Nick is from Saint Louis, his folks own an old school Italian restaurant there, so we are used to talking pesto and piccata. Yesterday, however, he caught me polishing my molcajete (something I’ve been doing a lot of lately). He had never seen such a thing.

“I guess it’s like a mortar, right?” he said, looking at it like some strange sort of beast.

“It is a mortar!” I told him. I explained that its name came from the verb “moler,” meaning “to grind,” which is the base of the word MOLE, and also guaca-mole. I don’t speak Nuhuatl, so really I was talking smack, but I think there might be some truth to what I was saying.

“Will you teach me how to make guacamole?” he said with uncharacteristic humility. I told him I would give him a quick tutorial on my grandmother Josefina’s very basic version, which I wrote here and just deleted, having decided not to give it out until after Saturday.

While Nick went back home to get a White Russian he’d just mixed up for himself (go figure!), I put some corn oil in a skillet to heat and when he came back, I handed him a baggie of stale corn tortillas I’d cut into wedges for just such a moment. “Fry these.” I said as I began the elbow-greasing task of mashing the beginnings of guacamole.

He overcooked them slightly, but he promised to work on his craft. “Tell your friend I will make warm tortilla chips at her party if I can come.” The word “party” sort of stuck in my molcajete–but then a lot of things do.

“This is a competition!” I reminded him, but he was only interested in his late night loot. As he dug into a batch of guacamole with his warm, sea-salty (slightly over-browned) chips, all the while sipping on his White Russian, Nick told me it had never occurred to him that tortilla chips ever started with an actual tortilla. I once had the same eye-opening experience when I discovered that tomato sauce began with actual tomatoes. Somewhere here, I am convinced, is the answer to mutual cultural understanding. Perhaps world peace. Or at least Nick’s ticket into the Guac-Off.

Nancy Silverton’s Great Buns

Here in L.A., when it comes to burgers, people talk about Nancy Silverton’s hamburger meat, but strangely, nobody ever mentions her buns. I was making Nancy’s classic burger buffet for my family recently, and in addition to the famously fatty blend of 18% fat prime chuck with an extra, whopping 20% fat (that’s fat trimmed from all the best cuts of meat) ground in, sold as “Nancy Silverton Grind” at Huntington Meats in the Original Farmers Market at Third and Fairfax, I went to buy the buns she now also insists on.

NS used to serve her burgers on crusty European-style rolls. It’s not that I have anything against crusty European-style anything, it’s just not what I want in a hamburger bun. Me and her boyfriend, a crime reporter who sometimes writes under the pen name Morty Goldstein, often rebelled and bought soft, cheap grocery store buns for ourselves. Then Nancy found these—Thees Continental Pastries.

When I asked the guy behind the counter, who turned out to the be the owner, Thee—just to be sure—if this was where Nancy Silverton got her buns, he showed me the buns, and also a blank stare. I asked him for 18 of them. As he was ringing me up, he told me I’d bought his every bun. “We’ve been selling a lot of them lately,” Thee said. “You might want to call and place a special order  next time.”  I told him that the reason for the sudden spike in sales may be because Nancy’s been talking them up to her food-obsessed friends, which is pretty much all of them. Then he indicated that he didn’t know who she was, “But I’m glad to hear she likes our buns.” I loved his innocence. More than anything, I loved the buns. Soft and ever-so-slightly sweet with the thinnest, crustiest of crusts. Split them open, brush them lightly (but all the way to the edges!) with melted butter, and put them on the grill for a minute or two just to get some color and crispness. A great American burger bun if ever there was one. I mean, if hamburgers were French, it might be a different story.

Here’s the Goods
Thee’s Continental Pastries
The Original Farmers Market
(Third & Fairfax)
Los Angeles
(323) 937-1968‎

You might want to call and put in an order…

The Secrets of an Authentic Guacamole Maker

I wonder if the guy at Sur La Table can sell me one of these?

I actually got out of bed to get my laptop after I got this email, on my bedside iPhone, from my whole-Mexican half-sister, Iridia, in response to the letter I sent her yesterday. (I mean, look at this picture!)

So aunt Rosita said to use a “escobeta de maiz” since it is obvios that i don’t know how to translate that, i decided to send you an image so you can know what i’m talking about. And you can also smash corn (instead/besides rice), should repeat 2 or 3 times after cleaning with the escobeta, and at the end you again use the escobeta.

Let me know how this turns out!
Suerte!

There you go. From a real live, molcajete using Mexican guacamole maker. (As opposed to the guy on the phone at Sur la Table.) I assume that I am supposed to buy the broom, presumably made with some part of corn, and not the smiling corn cobber. Assuming they don’t sell them at SLT, I  know where I’m going Memorial Day weekend… Getting my hands on one of these is worth a trip to Tijuana for sure! I think I’ll stop by Tia Rosita’s while I’m there. Get some guaca-pointers.