Get in my belly

Spent last weekend in Los Angeles and messed around with the new camera. Four days in photos:

Venice beach.

The Getty.

Christmas pudding (always better aged and doused with custard).

In the UCLA sculpture garden.

At In-n-Out Burger: the double double animal style. With chocolate shake (not pictured, but happily eaten).

And at home:

Pasta with onions, kale, pecans, raisins and feta.

More on flickr.

just a quick post about a new music concert i went to on friday. kalistos is a relatively new new music ensemble in boston (that incidentally just achieved non-profit status). this string orchestra’s concert on friday at longy was uniquely programmed: one short solo work for bansri (indian flute) followed by four works by four different boston composers featuring soloists on koto (japanese plucked stringed instrument), violin, piano, and viola.

as one might expect of a contemporary concert the majority of the music was rather shorter on ideas and longer on textures, but hands down the real find was joanna kurkowicz, the solo violinist who i can’t believe i haven’t come across before. it is no exaggeration to say that it has been a very, very long time since i have heard as thrilling or magnetic a performer as kurkowicz, so much so that i practically rushed home to look her up online. her website has some great sound clips, although as with many other performers the recordings fail to do justice to her live virtuosity and presence. her performance of indian composer korde’s “cranes dancing” made sense of the sprawling, episodic, and (thanks in no small part to her) ultimately engaging work, and she led the orchestra in a deeply musical interpretation. her performance, although informed by a more romantically slavic style, had a glenn gouldian level of clarity of line and expression. and i don’t think i’ve ever heard such sheerly beautiful harmonics and glissandi (haha). anyway, you can be sure that i’ll be attending her next performance in boston, which i believe is the chameleon arts ensemble’s may concert at the goethe-institut. ok, enough gushing.

i thought some of you of the asian persuasion might find this interesting. american born chinese by gene yang is a graphic novel that was released in 2006 that has three storylines relating to growing up asian in america, one about a boy who “just wants to fit in”, another about the monkey king who apparently is a figure in chinese mythology, and the third a mock-sitcom that exploits every possible asian stereotype. i’m usu. not that into asian-american literature, but i def. enjoyed this, more than some more famous graphic novels (e.g. persepolis). the artwork is distinctive, and i can recommend this book w/out reservation. and it turns out this girl from my hometown who was a friend of a friend did the design. check it out, yo.

Not me this week. Cecily brought her housemate Kyle over for dinner on Monday, and somehow he ended up doing all the dirty work. Could be because he actually does this for a living. Just look at how he takes down a bird:

Cecily’s not bad with the bread knife either.

And just in case you didn’t get a good look at the charcuterie + cheese plate:

Kyle actually made both the salame and the chorizo himself and aged them both in his parents’ basement in Jersey. Both were delectable. I’m nearly inspired enough to go looking for some casing. Kyle, you’re my hero!

I made a big stink about doing something with the chicken’s liver (one of my favorite bits of the bird), and so Kyle indulged me and made me a little

chicken liver snack. Sautéed with a nice little winey pan sauce with sage. Yum.

And this is everything, all together (save for the liver, which at this point was long gone, thanks to me): roasted chicken and cauliflower with braised red cabbage (with onions and a little apple).

And then Wednesday, lucky girl that I am, I was treated to a fine homemade Korean meal by my new buddy Jim. I broke out my new Canon Rebel XT for the occasion, and holy shit — check out the difference:

I’m still working my way through the manual, so I haven’t quite figured out all the SLR thingies. Ordinarily, I hatehatehate how the flash will wash out an image, but look at the detail on the daikon kimchi!

I owe Jim big-time for this new (possibly secret) method of cooking fish. And no, I’m not telling.

But the pièce de résistance: soon dubu.

in case you never read it (I never do), there’s an article about Alinea in the Jan/Feb issue of Tech Review.

My eating habits these days range from instant ramen to frozen burritos, so yeah, not much to say by way of food.

I guess I did go to Bar Crudo in nob hill a little while back — it was okay but not great. They try a little too hard — too many flavors in too small a space. The simplier things work better - the steak tartar dish was by far our favorite.

(Cue LCD Soundsystem.)

But first, a trip to the Lower East Side and then another schlep out to Flushing (which is really not so bad on the LIRR, I’ve discovered, thanks to Ganda).

Marisa’s birthday at Freemans:

Flushing Food Court, round 4:

So this is how they make those pork-stuffed fish balls. Huh? How does this thing work?

Delicious omelet surprise. Inside, there’s a flat version of you tiao, plus a sort of intriguing yet cloying sweetly tangy sauce.

And then, back home in Brooklyn:

Bucatini all’Amatriciana, Brian’s mythically-proportioned salad, a lifetime supply of Sullivan St. Bakery bread, an improvised sformato di ricotta, not enough wine.

And though I’d not had the soundness of mind to take better photos of dinner last week, Cecily, luckily for us, did:

From 11 o’clock: Cecily’s version of spring rolls, my mom’s ribs (ribs made by me, recipe made by mom), rice (? That doesn’t really look like rice), and Amy’s delicious Asiany salad.

(What else is new?)

Ganda tells it like it is, and it ain’t pretty.

Seriously, what is going on with that paper?

I actually flew back to Italy a week ago for some meetings and got to see my little town from a whole different point of view — that of someone who isn’t stuck there indefinitely. That’s unfair, I know. Especially when I think about the good times I had over the weekend:

Bra’s notte bianca for Carnevale. Who knew this many people lived in Piedmont?

At La Torre (my favorite osteria in the area) in Cherasco, Daniele shows us that we should cut him off of the drinking portion of the evening.

La Torre’s ethereally toothsome agnolotti.

Severine shows us just how good that torta di cioccolato is. The rest of our adventures can be found here.

And last night, I held the inaugural dinner party chez moi:

(Yeah, I don’t know why it took so long for me to come around to taking pictures of people AND food. But I actually forgot that I was doing that last night. So just the ribs, a bit fuzzy, behind asian-y salads that amy and cecily contributed and my mom’s pickles to go with her ribs.)