Of course some have gone way too far. You go to a restaurant where they introduce you to a carrot and say this carrot was born on the 9th of December and tell you where. [Laughs.] It is a carrot!
Jacques Pepin, who I just adore, in 2012.
Month: July 2014
African Chevdo
Here’s the plan the next time you’re in LA and you’ve got a hankering for a spicy and perfectly spiced Indian snack mix of crunchy peas, peanuts, lentils, cashews, and a dusting of salt and sugar mixed in with deep fried finely shredded potatoes and tikhi sev (they remind me of Indian-spiced finely cut instant ramen noodles) that you can shovel into your mouth all afternoon long.
1) Find some other errands you need to run in Artesia. Because it’s a long way to drive just for some snack mix, and you’re not that snack-obsessed, are you?
2) Head to Surati Farsan Market.
3) Buy a pound of African chevdo. A pound! It looks like a lot. But half a pound will go so quickly, some even along the drive home. What if you get back to LA and half of your half pound is gone already? How sad will you be then?
4) Pour your African chevdo into a small bowl and eat it, with a spoon. This tip comes from Manish, who says the correct way to be an African chevdo snack monster is to eat it as if you had a bowl of (dry) cereal in front of you. It’s a pretty fine snack mix, so a lot will fall out of your grasp if you’re trying to be dainty about it and just use your finger tips. Bowl and spoon!
5) Once done, contemplate the possibility of making it at home. Recipes exist, after all. Contemplate some more.
6) Repeat steps 1-5.
Bacon, Fresh Pea, Lemon, Parmesan Orecchiette
A few weeks back I was overcome by pea-shelling urges, and that led me to this Jamie Oliver pasta. I had a pretty specific idea of what I wanted to make, likely filed away in my mental flavor cabinet (do you have one? I would love to know what’s in yours) by a past viewing of a Jamie at Home episode. It so happened I had just about everything on hand: the parmesan, the lemon, even mint. It was a cheerful and bright-tasting dish. A quintessentially spring pasta.
Shelling peas reminds me of an evening Narinda and I spent debating the best frozen substitutes (lima beans? shelled edamame?) for fresh broad beans for, incidentally, another Jamie Oliver recipe we were tackling. N and I have built part of our long friendship off of our shared affection for Jamie Oliver (Jamie at Home, specifically). When we get together we usually shop for and cook one ambitious dish, and speak in ridiculous British accents (the accents predate Jamie entering our friendship, I feel like I must note for some reason) while we shout kitchen commands to each other and catch up on life. We started this in college and the tradition was cemented not long after when we made samosas–dough wrapping, boiled potato stuffing and all–from scratch. It was an ambitious proposition from the start, and for some reason we never changed course even when it was clear we were in over our heads. We cooked until 4am that night. I am able to recall this because in my delirium I took a photo of the clock.
I was in the throes of one of my usual “but will there be enough?!?” panics while I was grocery shopping for us, and bought probably 5 pounds too many potatoes. Still, we ended up cooking everything I bought, and Narinda worked her dough magic and rolled out enough samosa wrappings to cover the length of my parents’ kitchen counter, and we inexpertly wrapped them into awkward pockets. One by one we deep fried dozens of adorable, lumpy samosas long into the night. We ended up with so many, and so many were so oddly shaped, that we had enough to make the United States of Samosa.
Cooking alongside people in the kitchen isn’t always a joy, but cooking with Narinda is a treat for me. It’s one of the friend traditions I treasure most. We got our life trajectories all wrong though and she moved to the Bay from LA just as I moved to LA from SF, so our plans for world domination via home cooking adventures have so far been put on hold.
Anyway, this Narinda aside is apropos of nothing, except that I miss her. And it feels nice to write about her and us and food and friendship here.