LA Story
What's cooking this week and next
First off, I was a guest on my pal Rebecca Echevarria’s radio show Meant to Ferment this week. It’s available on the WGXC archive for listening any time at that link (you can stream or download it). We had a fun discussion centering on the importance (and ease) of approaching our cooking with a goal of minimizing food waste. Give it a listen and let me know what you think—she also plays a song from one of my all-time favorite records, a real desert island disc for me, which I’ve had on vinyl for a very long time and still play frequently.
Next up, I’m in Southern California for a spell, doing some cooking at two different but equally wonderful places. On Saturday July 11th I’ll be doing a one-night popup at Tomat, where Natalie Dial, Harry Posner and their team do extraordinary work—including a highly sophisticated and wide-ranging fermentation program. We have similar approaches to cooking, and this collaboration will be a ton of fun. I brought some vintage ferments from home to play with and we’ve figured out how to incorporate them all into our special menu. If you’re in the area, join us! You can reserve on their site.
After that, I’ll be heading down to the Ecology Center to participate in their Hearth series, where chefs come and spend a week or so on the farm tasting, experimenting, and coming up with a special menu for a feast on the last night. My Hearth dinner will take place on July 18th. I’m the only participant this year who doesn’t have either a James Beard award or a Michelin star (or, in one case, both). Hell—I don’t even have a restaurant. They obviously invited me because of my really great personality.
It’s a fantastic place, with surpassingly gorgeous produce, amazing live-fire cooking gear, and an incomparable vibe. And since they have a café and bakery on site I may be contributing some food in those less formal contexts as well as the week progresses, including a custom pizza for their Peace Pizza event on the 17th that will feature two preparations that I’ve written about here.
If you’re in the area I hope you’ll come say hi at one or both of these events. I’ll be taking pictures and doing my best to document the process of getting ready for both meals, but please bear with me if I’m not quite as regular as usual with posting. I will more than make up for it once I get home. I brought the good camera, so there should be no shortage of good plate shots—maybe even on backgrounds that aren’t my stark white kitchen table!
I’m super excited for all the adventures coming up fast like a runaway freight train full of fun. Honestly, the only thing that detracts at all from this trip is that we finally got real rain back home so the garden is exploding and the woods will be too. But the cucumbers and chanterelles will have to wait until I get home. In the meantime, if you know people who might be interested, please share this with them. And stay tuned for some juicy details…