Cheese Store of Silver Lake

On Saturdays, I usually drive three miles from my house in Los Feliz to my gym in Hollywood. But today I decided to get my daily exercise by walking a mile from my apartment to Sunset Junction, where I checked out the Cheese Store of Silver Lake. While Berkeleyans rave about the Cheese Board in the Gourmet Ghetto, Los Angeles' Eastsiders can boast of their own shop that sells scores of different cheeses hailing of various provenances, half a dozen pates, scrolls of salami and quite a few bottles of olive oil and wine. The shoebox of a store is kept deliberately dim and cool to keep the cheeses fresh. They also had a generous sampling policy, which I tried not to abuse when I tasted the Marcona almonds (roasted or oiled and salted), a cheese that reminded me of Emmental, two types of olive oil and a soft cow cheese paired with a cranberry preserve. I was disappointed that they didn't have any more caramel flavored with fleur de sel. There was some excuse that the candymaker just gave birth to a baby. So the storekeepers tried to sell some of their lemon caramel inventory to me. I resisted. Instead, I picked up a cheese stick, which is basically a demi-baguette covered with cheese and herbs de provence. I also asked for a salami with kick. One of the employees gave me a thin round flavored with black peppercorns. I liked it and asked for 10 slices. She pinched her fingers to indicate that the rounds were the size of silver dollars. "Then 15 slices, please," I told her. I carried my stash three doors down to Casbah Cafe, where I ordered some red Rooibos tea and sat at one of the sidewalk tables.

Watching cars, people and puppies scoot by, I ripped apart the bread with my bare hands and unfurled the salami from its white paper wrapping for an impromptu lunch. I've been loving the quality of the pictures taken on my Lumix camera so much that I decided to enlarge the size of the photos on The Food and Music Club. This is when it's OK for your eye to be bigger than your stomach.

Food Mode

My new Lumix DMC-LX2 has a feature called "food mode." It's not a franglais phrase for food fashion, though my entire life can be summed up as such. Instead, it means my digital camera can "take pictures of food in restaurants, irrespective of the lighting, so that the natural colors of the subject come out," according to the user's manual. Of course, I read the manual after I started snapping photos of my meals.

That's why some of them are blurry, such as this one of the lady who smashed up avocadoes for fresh guacamole on a cart that she pulls up to patrons' tables at La Parilla on Sunset Boulevard.
This is the dish called la parillada chetumal. It is the Mexican version of Japan's robata, on which scallions, shrimp, chicken breasts, pork chops, plaintain and potatos are grilled. My favorites were the shrimp and plaintain.
I took Thursday and Friday off as comp days for the many nights and weekends I've been reporting and cranking out stories. On Thursday, I had some time to kill before my facial at Kinara (Christine Z. is the best!). So I checked out a free exhibit of pre-fab homes at MOCA's outlet at the Pacific Design Center and snacked on a bacon and cheese scone and cup of soy chai latte at Kaffe Wien. The eatery's sign said it's been around since 1683. But the sweet folks behind the counter told me that it actually opened last December. The cafe also sells all of its pastries at half-price about an hour before closing. So I got both the bacon and cheese scone and white chocolate and raspberry scone for the price of one.
I had the white chocolate and raspberry scone at home with matcha latte. On Easter, I bought matcha powder at a grocery store in Little Tokyo. I whisked a spoonful of the green tea powder into milk heated over a flame, dropped a sugar cube in it and then poured it into a café au lait bowl. The sugar tempered the natural bitterness of the matcha. I think I might need to buy one of the wooden whisks made especially for blending the matcha powder in the traditional Japanese tea ceremony.
Having grown up in the South, I'm a big bourbon fan. My favorite is Maker's Mark, although one friend has been trying to turn me on to Labrot & Graham. Last night, I was introduced to another brand called Bulleit, which sponsored a party for a new men's boutique located in a gritty corner of Los Angeles near the Greyhound bus depot. After dropping an orange rind into my glass of Bulleit Revolver, the bartender lit it on fire. While Maker's Mark has touches of cinnamon and raisins, Bulleit evokes coffee and tobacco. I'd like to say that I'm a photographic genius in deciding to set my drink on top of the shop's wooden chair for a picture. But my hands were so full that I almost pulled out a $5 bill with my business card to give to a clothing designer I met at the party. I was tempted to buy the smallest size of Obedient Sons' camp shirt for myself, but I think I'll have to get instead for my dad for Father's Day.

Speaking of family, this was my entree at my cousin's wedding in Oxnard, Calif., last weekend. My sis and I were the only ones at our table who ordered the sea bass. My cousins are carnivores.

Hollywood Farmers Market

Max and I arrived at the Hollywood farmers market about 20 minutes before today's closing. Our late shopping helped us to take advantage of some antsy agriculturalists who wanted to slash their prices and lighten their trucks a little before making the long drive home. I scooped up two baskets of sweet strawberries for $1 each and picked five tiny Page tangerines. The tangerine man let me have a sixth one to tip the scale over half a pound and charged me just a buck. I would have bought verdant veggies such as beets, daikon and mitsuba, or a stringent Japanese parsley, except that I remembered how my inability to reconcile my culinary ambitions with my busy schedule resulted in many casualties inside my refrigerator's crisper. Max, on the other hand, shopped for ingredients to make a Sunday dinner of risotto and asparagus for him and his significant other.

Though I sometimes think farmers markets can be a little pretentious -- the one in Berkeley, Calif., is vegetarian only! -- I love the variety of stalls that cook and sell food on the spot. I was tempted by horchata, roasted corn, sausages, apple dumplings, Russian coffee, tamales and many other cheap eats. Max and I both ordered pupusas stuffed with zucchini, mushrooms and cheese from the pupusa lady. The sun glaring down at us as we ate sitting on the street curb had nothing on the heat meter compared to the homemade salsa. The creamy slices of avocado provided a bit of relief for my tortured tongue. I didn't quite understand why El Salvadorans pile their version of cole slaw on top of their version of a stuffed pancake. But the combination was effectively delicious.

On a side note, this is the last time that I will be practicing ghetto photojournalism with my cell phone camera. I am now the proud owner of a new Panasonic Lumix digital camera. I didn't splurge on a carrying case for the camera; I saved my big bucks for the 2-gigabyte memory card. So I might have to carry my new camera in a sock or something.

Speedreading in the Casbah

Casbah Cafe in the Sunset Junction has become my kitchen and living room away from home. I don't think I'd take down my signed poster from Masami Teraoka on my living room wall and replace it with the Casbah Cafe's black-and-white print of a topless Berber woman. Yet, as coffeeshops go, Casbah Cafe has charm. I got cozy there when I had to speedread a novel in preparation for interviewing its author. Though I'm more inclined to reading Securities and Exchange Commission documents and look books these days, I can zip through some thick tomes pretty fast thanks to the speedreading skills I picked up in grad school.
The baristas happily poured hot water into my cup to replenish my Rooibos tea. I always thought that the herbal tea was available only in a red variety. My pals behind the bar suggested one day that I also try the green Rooibos. I did, and I didn't like it as much as the red one.

The food at Casbah Cafe is also yummy. This is the plate of smoked salmon served with an organic green salad topped with black olives, vine-ripened tomatoes and a baguette.

This is the chicken pita. It's like the smoked salmon plate, except that the salad has been stuffed in half a pita and there's chicken instead of smoked salmon. The cook cracked so much pepper on top that I started coughing after I took one bite. But he readily had a glass of water for me when he heard me hacking across the room. The other reason why I like Casbah Cafe is because it's located across the street from Pazzo Gelato. I like getting some chocolate gelato to cleanse my palate after sipping hot tea. Circus of Books is also on the other side of the street. But I'm not into porn shops.

Happy Easter!

On Easter Sunday, Anita invited me to the Rose Bowl Flea Market, which is held on the second Sunday of each month, rain or shine. Because I couldn't find a bubble suit to wear and protect myself from the horrid pollen swishing in the SoCal air, I suggested that we check out Andrea Zittel's exhibit at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. Anita surprised me with an Easter basket filled with See's chocolates, a yellow rubber bunny and a white plush rabbit. Cute!

The MOCA branch that we visited was a stone's throw from Little Tokyo. Anita and I spent nearly 30 minutes in the Japanese grocery store, where I translated the packaging for at least a dozen green teas and told her about the famous painting in which Buddha was represented by a daikon, surrounded by a colorful array of veggies. The grilled eel was on sale for $4.99 per half-pound. What a yummy deal! For dinner I made my version of unajyu, sans the rice, with some kinpira, or burdock root.

California Carbs

Sometimes you just want to munch on chicken salad and crunchy greens on a sunny afternoon.

Sometimes you just want to nibble on some German chocolate cake and sip hot tea as the evening cools.

Sometimes you just want to "eat these fools like ciabatta bread." (Props to plucky girl reporter Katy in Princeton, N.J., for alerting me to this genius food tribute!)