Blackberry Pearl

The email message said -

"I want to steal you this Friday afternoon for lunch and an adventure. Can that be arranged with the powers that be?

C"

I let my supervisor know that on Friday I was leaving for the day at noon. No problem - I would be working extra hours on Thursday anyway, so it was not a problem.

Something was up. [The Man I Love] had done it a couple times before - on my 50th birthday he and Our Son snuck around my back and arranged with my boss to allow them to whisk me away on an impulse trip. Another time, he organized a weekend trip to Wine Country to celebrate his own birthday.

But this time, I wasn't quite sure what he had in mind.

What was it? I grew suspicious. One evening, he read out loud review from the internet about hotels in Paris. Hmmm....had he arranged a weekend trip to Paris?

I checked news listings. Were there any special concerts or events this Friday? Any festivals?

This morning, he offered to take me in to work. He said it would be easier that way when he took me to lunch. Uh huh, I thought.

Something was up.

So at noon he picked me up for lunch. We enjoyed delicious sandwiches at a Venice wine bar. An appetizer of wonderful green olives tasted great with the wine.

"So," I said. "This is a lovely lunch. What kind of adventure did you have in mind?" My mind was busy ticking off other possibilities. A spa escape in Ojai? A trip to Santa Barbara? A night at a luxury hotel? Camping in the desert?

"Well," he said, "first we need to swing by the Credit Union to get some cash."

Off we went to the Credit Union. We pulled in the lot and parked. "Are you going to the machine, or inside?" I asked. "Should I come with you or stay here?"

"I have to go inside, so I think you should come with," he said.

As we walked through the Credit Union parking lot, "Hey," said [The Man I Love]. He indicated a shiny purple Honda Fit parked nearby. "Pretty car."

Then, "Hi, [Our Son]!" There was Our Son! He handed [The Man I Love] the keys to the old Volkswagen and took the keys to [The Man I Love]'s car.

Suddenly it all came together. "You didn't," I said.

He did.

My new Honda Fit. Sport model. Blackberry Pearl - a lovely sparkly purple color!


He's a sneaky one, isn't he?

I'll tell you about my new hat later.

A Pie a Week - Nailed it!

For the next installment of my ongoing pie challenge, I thought I'd make a savory tart instead of a dessert pie. At the farmers' market, they had some wonderful beets - if you don't like beets, stop reading here!

Beets go well with goat cheese or blue cheese and walnuts, so when I saw a recipe for fresh goat cheese, roasted beet and walnut tart, I was intrigued. The recipe is by Boston chef Gordon Hamersley.

I followed his pastry recipe, which called for 1 and 1/2 cup of flour and ten tablespoons of butter - the ratio just between Ken Haedrich's 2 to 1 that seemed to have too little fat, and the richness of a classic French pate brise, with 1 cup of butter to a cup of flour. I've learned my lesson with the ice water - don't hold back.

Hammersly's recipe calls for blending the butter into the flour by hand or with a pastry cutter, then dumping it out of the bowl, making a well in the center and blending the water in on the board.


Then gather it together and push it down and away from you against the work surface with the heel of your hand. This is a technique known as fraisage, and it smears the butter into thin sheets within the dough.


I was a little worried it would stick to my board, but it didn't - as a matter of fact, it was very easy to handle, holding together and not crumbly at all.


I chilled it for a half hour, then brought it out to roll. It was supple and easy. I used my long rectangular tart pan for this tart, and you can see how nicely the dough formed in the pan.

The recipe calls for blind-baking the shell, so I lined it with foil and then filled the foil with raw rice - you can use dried beans too, or they sell pie weights. I've used this cup of rice several times already, and it seems fine to me.


The shell puffed in the middle a bit, but I pricked it with a fork. After it came out, I cooled it for a while. It looked beautiful.

After all that trouble with the butter and shortening recipe, this was a delight. So easy! And you know what? I think I nailed it!! Perfect pastry!

But now let's get to the rest of the tart.

Who likes beets?

I love beets. My family didn't eat them, so I was well into my 30s before I ever tasted a beet. But I love 'em - pickled, roasted, in borscht, in salads....whatever. I love the intense color of them, too - deep red-violet that can turn a Barbie-Pink if blended with sour cream.

The recipe called for red beets cooked with chopped white onion, but after shopping at my farmer's market, I thought I'd turn that idea on its head.

This weekend the market stalls had some nice golden beets. And I had a red onion in the fridge. What about turning the color scheme around? I rubbed the beets with olive oil and roasted them in a 350 degree oven for a couple hours. The skin slipped right off them, and I sliced them into rounds.

They looked as sweet as peaches. I kept some aside for use in salads, and diced up about a cup of them for the tart. Then I diced some of the red onion. I sauteed it in some butter, and then added a splash of white wine.

The acid in the wine intensified the violet color of the onions.

I spread the softened onions in the bottom of the tart shell, then covered it with the finely diced roasted golden beets.

The next step is to make the custard. Hammersly's recipe called for 3 large eggs and 3/4 cup of heavy cream. I had two egg yolks leftover from a project earlier in the day, so I added them, too. I also grated some fresh nutmeg into the custard, since I love it. I poured it carefully into the tart.

Hammersly calls for fresh goat cheese in his recipe, but I had a semi-soft cheese from Spain called "Drunken Goat" - the cheese is soaked in red wine for a couple of days. I grated that and sprinkled it on top of the tart.

My tart pan is small, so I had lots of custard leftover. I buttered a small souffle dish, made a little more sauteed onions and chopped a few more of the beets and made a crustless custard to bake alongside the tart.

Into a 350 degree oven they went, and I set the timer for 20 minutes. While I waited, I chopped up some walnuts - Hammersly calls for a cup of walnuts, and since I had my extra dish of custard, that would be fine.

After the timer rang, I sprinkled the walnuts on top of both the tart and the souffle dish. Another 30 minutes and they came out set and golden browned on top. I sprinkled them with chopped parsley.

We had slices of tart with salad greens and a simple vinaigrette for a room-temperature Sunday dinner. A glass of French rose wine went perfectly with it. The beets were sweet and mild in the creamy custard, and the delicate funk of the goat cheese was a good compliment to the slight tang of earth in the flavor of the beets. I like the fact that the tart was a golden color, and not pinky-red as it would have been with red beets.

It crossed my mind that I could serve this to someone who claims to dislike beets - and they would have loved it, never imagining that such a pretty golden tart contained that despised vegetable.

I wouldn't do that to you....not really.

But maybe you wouldn't have minded. Because the real star of the dinner was the perfect pie crust. This was the best I've made so far. Buttery, rich, flaky....I really nailed it this time!

It was good enough to make anyone eat their vegetables.

Hot

Okay, now it's our turn!

The gloom of June and the chills of July 4th are officially gone - it's summer in L.A. It's bright and sunny and HOT. Here's what the thermometer read at 6:30 IN THE MORNING today! When I got home from work last night around 7:00 pm it was still in the 90s.

The best thing to do when it's hot like this is to take a dip in the pool.

Refreshing! Pull up a lounger and relax.

Enjoy the cool water

Are those fishes in the water?

A Pie a Week - Midweek pie

Sometimes you just want a pie. The other day I realized our tree was full of ripe plums that no one but a fat gray squirrel was appreciating - you could watch the branches tremble as he leapt from one to the next, munching on ripe plums.


I went outside and gathered what I could reach. The ripe ones simply fell into my hand at a touch.


They were so immediate, so fragile, and so fragrant that I knew I couldn't let them stand overnight without cooking them. Plum pie!


Here's where I used a little trick from Ken Haedrich's book "Pie." You know how, whenever you make a pie, you end up with the outer pieces of dough? My mother used to gather those together, roll them out, and bake them on a cookie sheet, sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. But Haedrich has another suggestion - flatten the remaining dough into a disc, put it in a ziplock bag, and freeze it. Every time you make a pie you'll have a little bit of dough. There's not very much dough there but if you freeze these bits each time, soon you will have enough for a whole pie.

Thaw them and stack the discs up and flatten them all together again. It doesn't really matter if the dough is from different recipes - some with butter, some with shortening. (as long as they're all basic dough, not flavored or with different kinds of flour). They will meld and blend together as you roll it out.


You can see here patches where one of my bits of dough perhaps had egg yolk or was all-butter.


But it doesn't matter. You'll soon have a nice pie shell, without the hassle of messing with flour and mixing.

For this plum pie, I cut the plums into chunks and sprinkled them with a cup of sugar. I took a cup of confectioner's sugar and a 1/4 cup of pine nuts and whirled them in the food processor, resulting in a mealy kind of powder. I sprinkled a layer of this powder on the bottom of the crust, then topped it with the fruit - using a slotted spoon to keep some of the liquid out.


I had held back some plums and now I sliced them into prettier slices, which I laid in a pattern on the top. Then I sprinkled the pie with the remaining sugar-pine nut mixture, and then with whole pine nuts.

Into a 350 degree oven it went for 45 minutes.


Then I pulled out a plum pie! Mmmm. The flavor was tart, vivid, and delicious. And the crust? Not bad for a quickie!

Bike rack

A bike rack at the beach. Click to "embiggen."

Surf school

The sun came out this week, and it's a fine, bright day at the beach. All along the sand canopies of surf schools are hung with towels and drying wet-suits that flap in the breeze.

Kneeling in the sand as the wave that brought him ashore recedes.

He carries his surfboard back to the group

The kids have dragged their boards down to the hard-packed wet sand, where they dig holes for the water to fill. Then it's time to go back into the waves.

Click to "embiggen" for all photos.

A Pie a Week - Bumble-berry pie

I was pretty discouraged about the crust I made for the peach pie on the fourth of July weekend. The peaches were great - but the crust, not so much. Too dry, too crumbly. But I thought I should give the recipe another try. After all, it was the one Ken Haedrich in his book "Pie: 300 Tried-and-True Recipes for Delicious Homemade Pie" says he uses most of all. Perhaps it was crumbly the last time because I overprocessed it in the Cuisinart. I decided to try again, and make it by hand.

I finally got out to the store and bought a pyrex pie-plate, and on the way back home stopped at a market where berries were on sale for a great price. So I leafed through the book and came up with his recipe for "Dundee Arms Inn Bumble Berry Pie." It's a mixed fruit pie in a traditional crust - except it has an interesting twist.

You make a batch of pie dough large enough for a double-crust pie. I started by hand, and already I knew that the dough would handle better than it had before with the bits of fat less pulverized. As the recipe said, I divided the dough into two discs, and put one in the refrigerator to chill for an hour, and the other in the freezer.

The dough rolled out was still fragile and a bit crumbly - although where it cracked apart it was easy enough to pull off a little bit from the edge and patch it, before rolling over it again. I lined my pyrex dish with the dough and put it in the freezer, too.

I had blueberries, raspberries and strawberries. The recipe also called for rhubarb, which I didn't have. It called for a total of four cups of berries, but I ended up putting in at least five cups of fruit - I had lots of strawberries and blue berries. I mixed the berries with a cup and a quarter of sugar, and a half cup of flour as the recipe said.

Then I put the fruit into the shell. Looks good, doesn't it?

Next came the interesting part. For a top crust, the recipe instructs you to take the frozen disc of pie dough set aside for the top crust, and, using a box grater, grate it onto the top of the pie as if grating a block of cheese!

Some of the dough flaked and broke off, since my dough was crumbly. But when I thought about it, I realized I'd rather be grating it than trying to roll it. When I was all done, the pie looked like this:

It's kind of like a streusel topping, actually, only a streusel topping includes flour, butter and brown sugar. I put it into the oven and baked it for an hour.

Here's what it looked like when it came out.

Was it good?


Oh, yes.


You bet. It was so good that Our Son ate three slices. With ice cream.

Hooray for Hollywood

There's an odd paradox about people who live in cities other people visit as tourists. We hardly ever set foot in the most popular tourist attractions in our own home town. Thirteen years in Los Angeles, and there are famous places I've still never visited. This weekend, a lucky invitation from kind friends allowed us to visit one of Hollywood's most iconic attractions for the very first time.

Paramount Studios at 5555 Melrose in Hollywood is the oldest operating movie studio in the U.S. The company was started in 1912, and The famous arched entrance, known as the Bronson Gate, was built in 1926 and appears in the film "Sunset Boulevard" as Norma Desmond triumphantly rides her chauffeur-driven limousine through its gates to return to the lot.

We drove onto the lot through the much more pedestrian gates off Van Ness Avenue, and parked in a modern structure behind the warehouses used to store lighting equipment. We flashed our orange parking pass at the guard, and greeted a smiling couple wearing green wristbands, who directed us how to find our way.

Our friends invited us to attend an event for the Concern Foundation, a charity that funds cancer research. The 36th Annual Block Party was being held at Paramount Studios' New York Street backlot - a five-acre outdoor location where building facades mimic New York neighborhoods, and where countless films and TV shows have been shot.

In addition to this outdoor location, the Paramount lot features some 30 sound stages. We wandered through a maze of beige buildings, all bearing signs indicating their function - stages, costume shops, storage rooms, fitness center.


Some of the stages dated from the studios origins - signs listed the names of films that had been shot there.

Bungalows and dressing rooms named for stars are still in use as offices. The lot has many features that function as film locations, including parks made to look like city plazas, office buildings made to look like residential streets, and a giant water-tank with a sky background.


Just past this sky painting we found the entrance to the event - tented and decorated and drawing us in.


The theme of the Block Party this year was "Under the Big Top" and as we walked past the ticket-takers, we entered into a fantasy environment - like the craziest city street fair you'll ever attend. There were stilt walkers and vintage circus banners. There were tents and arbors. The streets were set with brightly colored tables and chairs, and lined with stands featuring delicious samplings of treats from over 50 Los Angeles restaurants.

The streets were lined by building facades that looked just like the Lower East Side but seemed about 3/4 scale somehow. They were perfectly authentic - but you could see they were non-functional - beyond the facade the buildings reverted to the relentless beige paint of the sound stages and warehouses.


The party ranged through the maze of streets, so that as you turned a corner you'd encounter some new attraction, like a carousel, a ferris wheel, or a trapeze act.


Stuffed elephants were on display in front of old '50s style cafes or gothic-arched brick schoolyard entrances.

The columns of Washington Square ranged behind food stands dispensing juicy carved prime rib sandwiches, handrolled sushi, or mango martinis. A separate casino area stood beneath the mock cast-iron storefronts and a turn-of-the-century fire station.

A band played on a stage built before a replica of a lower Manhattan bank. We browsed the food stands. Would you like a bite of curried cauliflower salad? An amuse-bouche of tomatillo gazpacho topped with a crown of tomato aspic? Perhaps a tiny corned-beef sandwich is more your style, or a shrimp quesadilla, or risotto?

The longest line was for the stand operated by Pink's Hot Dogs - which was no surprise. You could get a 10" hot dog on a bun dressed as you wish, with chili or with kraut.


There were plenty of choices for dessert, from do-it-yourself soft ice cream stands to French pastry.


We tried these little fondant-covered bites of cake - one is red velvet, the other carrot cake.

Clowns and fabulously dressed show-girls roamed the streets, alarming small children in the universal manner of clowns, or agreeing to have their picture taken with guests.

It was a wonderful people-watching opportunity. I am terrible at recognizing celebrities, so I am certain that some of the attractive young persons with extraordinary clothing and hair gelled into odd shapes were people I should know. Silver-haired gents in studiedly casual outfits leaned back on the baroque-patterned divans, talking on Blackberries and I-phones. Children with painted faces and twisted balloon hats held the hands of women who looked like nannies and pulled them impatiently toward the carnival rides. A large woman pushed a fancy wheeled and cabled walker imperiously through the crowd like an ocean liner plying the waves. Elderly couples in canvas visors staked out the non-reserved picnic tables, surrounded by dozens of small dishes. Impossibly slender women with layered and flat-ironed hair shrieked in excitement as they encountered one another and pressed their drawn and shiny cheeks together in an air-kiss.


You could have your picture taken at the photo booth - we look pretty good, I must say.

As evening fell, the huge studio lamps mounted on the rooftops washed pink and amber color over the building facades and warmed the faces of the the guests clustered under canopies and umbrellas.

The event also featured a silent auction followed by a live auction and award presentation. We bid for a couple of travel packages, but were outbid pretty quickly. No matter - every bid meant more funds raised for the charity - and hope to those suffering from cancer. The event's goal was to raise $2 million for research.

When the evening ended, we were offered a ride back to the parking garage by an attendant on a multi-seated golf cart - we were whizzed through the darkened passages and alleyways of the sound stages, leaving the pink and gold magic of the party behind.