Archive for the 'Year in Review' Category

The Year in Delicious: Top 10 Recipes of 2012

Published by Gastronomer on December 31, 2012 in Potpourri and Year in Review. 2 Comments

Phở Bò – Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup

This recipe for my grandmother’s pho bo has been adjusted ever-so-slightly to reflect the sensibilities of modern cooks like myself. While I’d love to have a drainage ditch dedicated to soup scum in my backyard, our current one-bedroom in Pasadena doesn’t allow for such luxuries. Additionally, I’ve swapped out the tin can for a flame-licked grill in order to char the aromatics. While I finessed some of Grandma’s cooking techniques, the soul and flavor of her pho hasn’t been fiddled with one bit. After all, perfection shouldn’t be messed with.

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Braised Rabbit with Pappardelle

After bathing in an aromatic brew of onions, garlic, orange zest, cinnamon, and red wine, the meat was fork-tender while the sauce was deeply savory with mellow citrus notes. The flavors whisked our taste buds away to the Mediterranean. Dinner was served outside on our picnic table, with snappy asparagus on the side and glasses of red wine to sip.

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Furikake Kettle Corn

This recipe comes from Chef Roy Choi of Los Angeles’ A-Frame restaurant. I couldn’t keep my hands away from the bowl the first time I tried this Hawaiian-style popcorn. Every fistful of buttery kernels brought a hit of sweetness from Corn Pops, sourness from dried pineapples, savoriness from bacon, spiciness from cayenne pepper and chili flakes, and a whole lot of umami-ness from furikake. This unlikely combination of big, bold flavors had me hooked at first bite.

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The Year in Delicious: Top 10 Sweets of 2012

Published by Gastronomer on December 30, 2012 in Potpourri and Year in Review. 3 Comments

My sweet tooth was treated to squeal-worthy delights practically everywhere I traveled these past 365 days. From an edible winterscape in Chicago to the plushiest jelly- and cream-filled doughnuts in London, here are the 10 very best sweets that I had the pleasure of indulging in this year…

Doughnuts from St. John Bakery in London, England

Jelly doughnuts have a way of being either too sweet or too much of a good thing, but the ones filled with apple and rhubarb jam at St. John Bakery were perfectly sticky and sour and balanced. The custard-filled ones were lighter than expected, while the sugar-dusted dough was as ideal as I had hoped. What impressed me most was that even though the dough wasn’t freshly fried, it tasted like it had been—fresh and fluffy.

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Choux aux Sésames from Pâtisserie Chantilly in Lomita, CA

Chef Keiko Nojima’s French pastries with a Japanese flare are nothing short of spectacular. While every dessert lining the pastry counter is impeccable, it’s the black sesame cream puff that gets all the good press. Each pâte a chou shell is filled to order with black sesame-infused whipped cream, drizzled with mesquite honey, and sprinkled with soy powder. The intense and pure flavor that Chef Nojima is able to extract from the black sesame seeds is incredible—neither too much cream nor sugar cloud the main event.

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The Year in Delicious: Top 10 Savories of 2012

Published by Gastronomer on December 29, 2012 in Potpourri and Year in Review. 6 Comments

2012 goes down in Gastronomy history as the tastiest year yet. There were trips to Vegas, Chicago, Boston, and the coast of Maine early in the year. When summertime rolled around, we whisked my mother away on an epic trip to London and France in celebration of her 60th birthday. Just as soon as the plane from Europe touched ground at LAX, I delved head first into an extraordinary book project that had me gorging all over Los Angeles County, uncovering and documenting the very best of what the city has to eat.

It’s gonna be damn difficult to top this Year in Delicious in the future, but I’m more than willing to try. Without further ado, here are the 10 best savory dishes that I ate this year…

Meat Fruit from Dinner by Heston Blumenthal in London, England

Dipped in a paprika-tinged gelatin mixture at precisely 27 degrees Celsius, the chicken liver parfait looked identical to a mandarin orange. From the stem to the leaves to dimples on the peel, every detail was spot on. While the chicken liver parfait looked like a piece of citrus, it tasted like the silkiest foie gras torchon ever, with the faintest trace of orange. How the kitchen transformed chicken livers into foie gras is a mystery to me, but damn, we were all thoroughly impressed.

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Escargots dans la Coquille from Les Terrasses de Corton in Burgundy, France

The escargots dans la coquille came smothered in a triple-punch of garlic, parsley, and butter. We had a ball spearing the snails with the tiny forks and removing the fleshy coils from their shells. Knowing that escargots are a Burgundian specialty, I held off on eating any while in France until we were officially in the region. These tender and buttery morsels were worth the wait!

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The Year in Delicious: Top 10 Recipes of 2011

Published by Gastronomer on December 31, 2011 in Potpourri and Year in Review. 5 Comments

Thịt Nướng – Vietnamese Grilled Pork

Made from an aromatic mix of shallots, garlic, lemongrass, honey, fish sauce, and sesame oil, the marinade mingled with the meat overnight to ensure that every bit of pork was permeated. The next day, I fired up the grill, loaded up the “meat cage,” and cooked everything up in several batches. With four pounds of pork to plow through, The Astronomer and I were each treated to half a dozen bowls of bún (vermicelli rice noodles), as well as several loaves of bánh mì for the better part of a week. Thịt nướng is truly the gift that keeps on giving.

Monkey Bread

Monkey Bread is an indulgent marriage of sticky buns and doughnut holes. Served hot out of the oven, it’s a gooey, golden, and unabashedly sweet affair. While it may be civilized to eat it with a fork and knife, I prefer to monkey around with my fingers, pulling each nub apart, slowly and deliberately. Monkey Bread is the ultimate brunch time centerpiece.

Scott Conant’s Spaghetti with Tomato and Basil

Published in New York Magazine in 2003, this recipe is originally from the kitchen of L’Impero, where Chef Scott Conant cooked before opening Scarpetta. Due to the straightforward nature of the ingredients and instructions, I was skeptical that it would be able to recreate the true majesty of the original dish. I remained a skeptic up until the moment when the sauce began to come together. As I crushed the fresh tomatoes, melding them with the scorching olive oil, the smells and flavors wafting in the air were wholly familiar. Once I added in the basil, butter, and Parmigiano-Reggiano, and saw how tightly the chunky sauce clung to the strands of spaghetti, I knew for certain that the recipe had not led me astray.

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The Year in Delicious: Top 10 Sweets of 2011

Published by Gastronomer on December 30, 2011 in Potpourri and Year in Review. 11 Comments

I lost my sweet tooth about a month ago. It was the strangest thing ending meals on a savory note and feeling perfectly content with things. While my waistline was thankful for the breather, I missed the heart-pumping pleasure of sinking my teeth into something awesomely sweet. After a few weeks of pining for my sweet tooth, it finally returned to its proper owner. I was seriously getting worried there—whew!

Now that I’m back to my old dessert-loving self, it brings me great excitement to present the ten best sweets of 2011…

Nana Puddin’ from Dreamland BBQ in Birmingham, AL

A feast at Dreamland isn’t complete without a small dish of nana puddin’ to finish. The layers of ripe bananas, wilted ‘Nila wafers, sweet vanilla pudding, and rich whipped cream married together harmoniously. Hands down, this is my favorite dessert in all of Birmingham.

Salted Caramel Bar from Huckleberry in Los Angeles, CA

The absolute highlight of my meal at Huckleberry was the salted caramel bar. Biting through its buttery shortbread crust and silky, salt-flecked caramel, I was seriously in heaven. Move over butterscotch budino, I’ve found a new favorite.

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