Lost and Found in Tokyo

Staying at the Lost in Translation Park Hyatt Tokyo, a beautifully sleek and elegant hotel. Last night I had  dinner at restaurant Kozue in the hotel. 

The tasting menu had 28 "things" to taste that covered raw, grilled and simmered. 

The beef was amazingly delicate and melt-in-the-mouth tender. 

The soups had clear broths.

Salt pickled vegetables were simple and clean tasting.

Soba with duck broth and leeks, delicious.

The trip is crazy-short. Only one day in Tokyo, then a bullet train trip to Kyoto. Two days there, then back to Tokyo to return to LA.

Nutty and such great fun.

Here are some photographs from last night's dinner.

More to come.

An Oscar Party's Best Snacks

Unless you use a dvr to record the Oscars so you can compress the show to fifteen or twenty minutes of highlights, you'll need some good snacks to keep you going during the 3+ hour festivities.

The easiest route is to order-in.

A large pizza with your favorite toppings and a green salad will do nicely. Getting one from Dominos is ok. From Pizzeria Mozza in West Hollywood or Milo + Olive in Santa Monica would be even better.

If you want to treat yourself but do very little cooking--just enough so you showed you care about what you eat--a big bowl of freshly made popcorn, seasoned with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and tossed with a goodly amount of melted sweet butter will definitely keep you happily snacking through the first hour. (Be sure to have plenty of napkins for buttery finger-and-face-clean up.)

On the other hand, you could put in the time to prepare an elegant dinner party, served in front of the television.

Prosciutto and a soft cheese like triple cream with crackers for an appetizer, home made gnocchi with fresh vegetables, grilled lobsters stuffed with sautéed onions and shiitake mushrooms and a banana walnut chocolate cake and coffee at the end would be delicious.

This year, we'll have a simplified version of a dinner party for our friends who are coming over to watch the Oscars.

During the opening monologue and the first awards, we'll have a homemade tapenade with butter-olive oil fried lavash crisps as an appetizer.

For the main course, we'll have a tossed arugula salad with carrot rounds and a reduced balsamic-olive oil dressing and a spaghetti with farmers market vegetables.

We'll save dessert for the last half hour so. As the final awards are announced, we can be enjoying a plate of Valencia orange sections and a selection of the chocolates I've been making (and devouring at an alarming rate).

Tapenade


Better quality olives produce a better tasting tapenade. Use whatever olives you enjoy. Green, black or red. The choice is yours.

Yield: 4

Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

2 cups, pitted olives, black oil cured or cracked green

1 cup Italian parsley, washed, finely chopped

2 tablespoon capers

1 garlic clove, peeled, chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

¼ freshly ground black pepper

Cayenne, a light dusting

2 anchovies (optional)

1/4 teaspoon lemon zest (optional)

Directions

Put all the ingredients into a blender and pulse until the olives, capers, and parsley have combined into a paste. Slowly drizzle olive oil into the pulsing blender until you have the desired consistency.

Lavash Crisps

Fresh lavash is available in most supermarkets. If you live near a Middle Eastern market, you will find a good selection of whole wheat and white flour lavash. Check the labels and find ones without chemicals.
Yield: 4 servings

Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

2 large sheets of lavash

2 tablespoons butter

1/4 cup olive oil

Sea salt and black pepper

Directions

Spread a single sheet of lavash on a cutting board. Using a sharp knife, cut the sheet in half. Lay that sheet on top of the first and cut in half again. Cut the lavish into pieces approximately 2" square.  Stack them up and put aside. 

The uncooked squares can be stored for several hours in the refrigerator in sealed plastic bags.

Place a layer of paper towels on a large plate or cookie sheet.

In a large frying pan, melt half the butter, add half the olive oil and season with sea salt and pepper. Heat the oil over a low flame. Cook the lavash in batches. 

Add lavash squares to the pan being careful to avoid overlaps.

As they cook, be careful they don't burn. Turn when they brown on one side and remove when they are brown on the second side. 

Remove the lavish crisps and place on the paper towel. Do not overlap. Place a paper towel on top.

As you fry the crisps, add more butter and olive oil as needed.

Serve the crisps at room temperature. To keep them crisp, serve immediately or store in an airtight container.

Variation

Just before serving, on top of the lavash crisps sprinkle freshly grated Romano or Parmesan cheese with rosemary.

Special Menus at La Sandia and Zengo at Santa Monica Place

If you live near Santa Monica, you have already visited the open air Dining Deck on the top floor of Santa Monica Place. For anyone who used to visit the old mall, what a difference!

The old food court was on the bottom floor of the mall. Dark and airless, the fast food restaurants weren't especially inviting.

The remodeled mall improved in many ways, most notably with the elevation of the food court to the top floor. For restaurant patrons, free valet parking is available with validation at the Second Street entrance.

Recently I participated in a tasting for food writers at the side-by-side restaurants, La Sandia and the fusion restaurant, Zengo, both owned by the prolific chef Richard Sandoval.

A side note: if you are ever in a restaurant and you see a group of diners all taking photographs of each course as it is placed on the table, you are probably watching food writers doing "research."

During February at La Sandia, chef Sandoval celebrates the regional variations of the Mexican tamale with a "Tamal Festival," featuring two seasonal blanco tequila cocktails (a fresh pomegranate margarita and a passion fruit Mexican mojito) and eight tamals.

The tamal, as described by chef Sandoval:

From Mayan origin, meaning ‘wrapped;’ A traditional Latin American dish made of stuffed masa wrapped in corn husks or banana leaves, that is steamed or boiled. Viewed as a comfort food, tamales are enjoyed throughout all parts of the day. Dating back to 1200 BC, tamales have traditionally been prepared for feasts and celebrations. Mexican tradition states that on Dia de Reyes, all enjoy a special bread, containing a hidden doll. He who finds the doll hosts a Tamal Party in February. Over time, tamales have taken on regional influences, resulting in hundreds of varieties of fillings and wrappings found throughout Latin America. 

My favorite was the Torta de Tamal, in the style of Mexico City. Shredded chicken is tucked inside a corn tamal which is placed inside a biscuit-like bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, salsa verde and a spicy chipotle aioli. Speared by the long toothpick holding the sandwich together was a slice of radish, pickled in salt and lime juice.

Ah, carbo inside carbo, the definition of comfort food. Delicious. The heat from the spicy aioli and salsa verde countered all that starchy creaminess in the right way.

Vegetarians will enjoy the tamals with the tamal de frijol con queso. Sweet black beans and melted cheese fill this tamal, which is topped with an entomatada salsa--the result of sautéing Roma tomatoes, onions, garlic, fresh oregano and chipotle peppers--and poblano crema.

If you are a pescaterian, you can have a filet of mahi mahi cooked perfectly in the tamal de pescado a la Campeche. The fish is topped with a slab of moist masa, seasoned with the herb epazote, tomatoes and spiced with cilantro and Serrano.

Myself, I'm a meat eater and I thoroughly enjoyed the shredded chicken in the tamal frito Toluca and the pork tamal estilo Oaxaca.

For dessert, chef Sandoval offers sweet yellow corn tamales wrapped in corn husks and topped with masticated raisins. The dessert tamales were good but the crispy churros were excellent.

La Sandia's sister restaurant, Zengo feels like the men's club you always dreamed about. A wide deck wraps around the dining room with views to the Promenade below. At night a refreshing ocean breeze gives the deck the proper amount of romance. With heat lamps a blaze on cooler evenings, the deck is the perfect spot to enjoy drinks, appetizers and a meal with your significant other and friends.

The dark wood and low lighting take some eye-adjusting. A long bar divides the restaurant into an inside dining room and the outside deck. Our waitress explained that "Zengo" means "give and take," which she suggested meant that the courses are supposed to be shared so everyone can have a taste of the varied and innovative menu.

Of course, "give and take" also refers to the fusion that is the menus focus. Latin American and Asian cuisines are mashed up in the most elegant way. From February 15-March 31, chef Sandoval brings together ingredients and techniques from Brazilian (Sao Paulo) and Chinese (Shanghai) cooking.

One of the best appetizers, the crispy Shanghai spring rolls look like traditional Asian fried spring rolls and they taste like very good ones indeed. Adding to the success of the spring rolls are the Brazilian tempero baiano spice mixture and juice from the acai berry added to the ginger dipping sauce.

The salt cod fritters, popular in Brazil, here called coconut crusted bolinhos de bacalhau, are delightfully crisp on the outside, and soft, warm and sweet inside. The sweet and sour sauce, Chinese in spirit, is better than you've probably had in an LA Chinese restaurant. If you have been to Brazil, the bolinhos de bacalhau will bring back sense memories of women from Bahia, cooking their fritters on make-shift set ups on the beach.

I'm happy to say my wife and I have when we visited our older son, Franklin, when he was studying in Rio.

We enjoyed days on the beach, eating the delicious snack food carried by vendors who walk up and down the sandy beaches selling fried shrimp, crisps, fresh fruit and ice cold drinks. We also ate at dozens of restaurants as our son showed off his Portuguese and treated us to his favorite restaurants.

During February and March, at Zengo you can enjoy the national dish of Brazil, feijoada, a meat, bean and vegetable stew. Cooked low and slow, the flavors of pork, beef, bacon, black beans and a dozen herbs combine into comforting deliciousness.

Zengo's version is refined and well-made. The black beans are cooked perfectly. Their sweetness blanketing the salty pork sausage and braised beef. Be sure to order rice with the feijoada. The salty sauce would benefit from the neutral rice.

The traditional Brazilian drink is the caipirinha, a stronger version of the Cuban mojito, made with cachaça. Zengo makes a very good caipirinha. The special drinks for the Shanghai-Sa Paulo festival are also worth trying: the pomegranate kumquat cocktail and the coconut caipirinha.

For dessert, the Shanghai-Sao Paulo menu offers a coconut tapioca with a mix of mango, kumquat, lychee, coquito nuts and shiso. All that is a mouth-full and you'll definitely enjoy every mouthful of tapioca, the perfect way to finish your tour of Brazil by way of China.

Tailgating in Your Dining Room for Super Bowl Sunday

Super Bowl Sunday is only a few days after my birthday so for the past couple of years, I've had a Super Bowl Sunday Birthday Party.

What fun!

Lots of friends come over an hour before the game begins. We have time to catch up and eat some food. My version of tail-gating is to put a lot of plates on the dining room table, buffet style. That way everyone can fill up a plate before the kick off and return for refills during the game.

After the game, we have dessert (and the birthday cake with candles!), coffee and tea.

What to serve

Picnic food is perfect for watching the game: rosemary fried chicken, egg salad with grilled vegetables and bacon, lobster salad, carrot salad with lemon soaked golden raisins, green salad, oven roasted beets tossed in seasoned olive oil, chicken wings, Caesar salad with grilled shrimp, baked parsley-garlic chicken breasts, sage and shallot stuffed porchetta, and brown sugar pork ribs.

And for desserts, we'll have some choices: handmade chocolates, apple pie with candied ginger crust, ice creams, banana chocolate chip-walnut cake, vanilla custard, dried fruit compote and fresh fruit (Valencia orange wedges and Fuji apples).

My favorite


I love chicken wings. Deep southern fried wings with a light, seasoned flour dusting or marinated and roasted with Korean (kimchi) or Vietnamese (nouc cham) spices.

For this Super Bowl Sunday, I'm making the Nuoc Cham Gung version. Spicy, sweet, moist and delicious. They are a crowd pleaser.

Spicy Sweet Ginger-Garlic Chicken Wings

Serves 4 as an entrée or 8 as an appetizer

Ingredients

2 pounds chicken wings, washed, disjointed, wing tips discarded or reserved and used to make stock

½ cup white sugar

½ cup warm water

¼ cup fish sauce--preferably a light caramel colored brand

¼ cup white vinegar

2 teaspoons fresh lime juice

4 cloves garlic minced

1 dried Chinese Szechuan pepper, stem removed, seeds and skin minced

3 tablespoons or 3” ginger, peeled, minced

2 tablespoons brown sugar, to taste

Directions

1.       In a large non-reactive bowl, dissolve the white sugar in warm water. Add the other ingredients, stir to mix well and add the chicken wings. Transfer to a sealable plastic bag and refrigerate one hour or, preferably, overnight.

2.       Remove the wings and transfer the marinade to a small saucepan, adding the brown sugar. Stir to dissolve and reduce by a half or, if you want a thicker glaze, by two-thirds over a medium flame to create a glaze that should have a good balance of sweetness and heat. Taste and adjust for more sweetness if desired by adding another tablespoon of brown sugar.

3.      The wings can either be grilled on a barbecue or baked in a 350 F oven on a rack on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil for easy clean up. Turn every ten minutes. Cook until tender, about 30 minutes.

4.       Place the wings on a large plate of Asian noodles, steamed rice, or shredded lettuce. Just before serving, pour the hot glaze over the top.

Bacon Braised Chicken

Braising is a perfect one-pot, cold weather cooking technique that doesn't take much effort. The resulting meat is fall-off the bone tender. Adding fresh vegetables and herbs completes the dish.

As the braise simmers, the kitchen fills with a warming sweetness, further helping to banish the cold.

Using bacon with it's smoky flavor and good fat content adds even more flavor to the succulent chicken.

For Zesterdaily, I wrote a recipe for Bacon Braised Chicken that is perfect any time of the year, but especially on those cold and damp days when nothing gets you warm.

Chocolates! Chocolates! Chocolates!

I am obsessed with chocolates. Milk chocolate. Bitter sweet chocolate. White chocolate. Ok, maybe not white chocolate.

So versatile.  Chocolate goes well with nuts. I've been experimenting with raw and caramelized almonds, hazelnuts and pecans. 

Chocolate with a bit of heat is delicious as well. A touch of cayenne or a  bit of crystallized ginger.

Dried fruit and chocolate are great too. Dried apricots with dark chocolate are a favorite.

CUSTOMIZE CHOCOLATES THE WAY YOU WANT THEM

What's most fun about making chocolates is I can customize them. A friend tried my milk and dark chocolate mini-bar with caramelized almonds and said, "I'd like to try them with just dark chocolate," so that's what he ordered.

Another friend wanted the almonds toasted but not caramelized. 

My wife said, "Use peanut butter" and those have become a big seller.

Email me at davidjlatt@earthlink.net and tell me what you would like and order as many as you want (with a three dozen minimum).

10 Delicious Holiday Recipes

I'm happy to say I published my first cookbook, 10 Delicious Holiday Recipes.

I wanted to create a cookbook with ten easy-to-make recipes perfect for the holidays.

I'd like to hear what you think about the recipes and I would certainly like it if you would buy the book. For $2.99 you get a great collection of cocktails, appetizers, salads, sides, entrees and a couple of dynamite desserts.

I used Amazon and Kindle, but if you don't own a Kindle, no problem. You can download the Kindle App that works for your smart phone, computer or iPad. It's free and downloads easily.

I'm looking forward to hearing from you.  Have a great holiday!