how to eat like a bird

to do: a caprese granita and other winners from the tomato issue of The Washington Post

I love that The Washington Post has a special tomato issue. It makes me think they featured a prominent front page photo of Karl Rove being peppered with tomatoes, left and right, as he stepped out of the White House for the last time. The caption underneath would detail his favorite preparation for the ripe produce he was dodging.

Of course, unimaginatively enough, the Post relegated its tomato discourse to the Food and Dining section. They do, however, offer a couple of appealing recipes garnered from a readers' contest featuring the tomato and no more than 10 ingredients. I place much faith in readers' recipes because they tend to send in ones that in their experience have been universally validated. They are tried and true and, as the 72-year-old second-place winner said of her fresh tomato sauce, in her head "like it's in steel."

The winning entry (out of over 345 entries), the caprese granita, envelops a small dollop of mascarpone cheese between two layers of tomato granita made from a macerated mixture of tomatoes, garlic, salt, and vinegar. (The mixture is frozen and shaved to make light, icy crystals). It sounds like it would be icy, creamy, and a little acidic all at once, and I have yet to have even a mediocre experience with anything involving mascarpone. I look forward to making this when I have the will to shave ice every 45 minutes for a period of four hours.

And did I learn anything new from The New York Times this week? I learned that you can use the word "farinaceous" outside of your industrial agriculture/food science class, as long as you have the whimsy to say that the corner of Grand and Essex is getting even "wheatier" with the addition of new pizzeria on the block, Isabella's Oven.   

to do: a chef's way with pasta; a grilled cheese fit for a gimlet

First, the gimlet. A reader writes in to the L.A. Times seeking how to make the phenomenal grilled cheese sandwich he very often has for a late-night meal, seated at the bar at Lucques. He washes it down with a gin gimlet. The L.A. Times tells him Suzanne Goin's version showcases a buttery Cantal cheese studded with caramelized onions and "punctuated" with fresh thyme. They further tell the reader to forgo the gimlet in preference of a white Bordeaux or Burgundy, or (gasp!) even a California Chardonnay.

I really appreciate the folks at Culinary SOS--it is one of my very favorite columns, as I love a sleuthing endeavor--but they are crazy. In my Raymond Chandler version of L.A., this guy is eating near midnight after a long day of reading very bad scripts. His girlfriend is at home with her husband and there is something nefarious in the trunk of his car. Let him have his gin. For me, this tantalizing 705-calories-per-serving recipe will have to wait until I pack in some more arugula and dandelion. But it's definitely on the to-do list.                                                                                                                                                             

In exchange for hawking Alain Ducasse's new $238 pasta pot, The New York Times has a helpful tidbit on how Ducasse makes his pasta. Rather than waiting for dry pasta to come to a boil, he sautés aromatics including garlic and onion, adds the uncooked pasta and, slowly, the stock, letting the pasta absorb the liquid until it softens. It should take 20 minutes. Florence Fabricant likens the process to making risotto, and judges the technique to be effective and delicious. She adds that the starch released from the pasta makes for a lush sauce. Only use short pastas like penne, not spaghetti.

For a more specific recipe, you have to buy the pot with booklet included. I think it would work well for a dish like the one I had at Celeste--pasta with shrimp, cabbage, and pecorino. They use fresh tagliatelle, but I think a penne or smooth rigatoni would do at home. I would lightly sauté cabbage along with the aromatics, use a light seafood or vegetable stock, and throw the shrimp in at the end. I did a quick search for a comparable recipe, but only found more raves for Celeste's version from Ed Levine and Bill Telepan. Notably, they're both Upper West Siders and it could be said they perhaps frequent Celeste regularly, in part, because it can sometimes seem as if THERE'S NOTHING ELSE TO EAT in that neighborhood, but I would demur and say Celeste's would have a following anywhere.