09 Oct 2012 12 Comments
in On the Road, Recipes, Video Tags: Baja California, food, huachinango, Mexican cooking, Mexico, Puerto Vallarta, recipes, salsa, Sea of Cortez
I did finally get my sea urchin. It was our last full day in Mexico, the water was calm, so I dove down into the rocky crevices off la playa de Conchas Chinas, and returned with a spiny prize.
It was the biggest one I could find. Yet, it looked smaller than I had thought once I got it onshore. I’d been talking about the erisos for a few days, still Marilu looked surprised when I brought the creature into the kitchen. More
17 Sep 2012 15 Comments
in Food, Humor, Observations, Video Tags: car chase, chiles rellenos, food, humor, Le Creuset, los angeles, Mexican food, O.J. Simpson, police
I was in kitchen, making dinner, when my 8-year-old son yelled from the family room. “Dad, car chase!”
Here in Los Angeles, we have our share of high-speed car chases — if you’re old enough to remember the O.J. Simpson murders, you’ll recall we even have slow-speed car chases. We’ve got a lot of cars, a lot of freeways, and a fair percentage of people doing things they shouldn’t be. I typically don’t pay much attention — it seems prurient, like staring at a car wreck or a topless woman on a European beach. But once in awhile, I get sucked in. Which is what happened the other night, as I cooked chiles rellenos. More
07 Sep 2012 11 Comments
in Recipes, Video Tags: bacon, breakfast, cooking, Egg McMuffin, food, French toast, recipes, sandwich, smoked salmon
Once, many eons ago, when tweets and clouds were still part of nature, when “kindle” meant to build a fire and men knew not of their brethren’s minute-by-minute status, there was the Egg McMuffin. The prototypical breakfast sandwich, the one that started it all.
French toast bacon breakfast sandwich
In reality, there have probably been breakfast sandwiches for as long as there has been two slices of bread and an egg to put between them. More
30 Aug 2012 Leave a comment
in On the Road, Recipes, Video Tags: fish, food, Mazatlán, Mexican cooking, Mexico, Pacifico, recipes, seafood
One afternoon my wife and our (at the time) young son were strolling down a wide, deserted beach along a malecón in Mazatlán, Mexico. It was around lunchtime, and the tall spires of the Pacifico Brewery in the distance were inspiring an almost religious-like thirst.
Su amigo, on the beach in Mazatlán
As fortune would have it, a gentleman came running from one of the dilapidated fish joins lining the malecón down the beach after us, promising delicious food and cold beer. A fisherman had just come in, he said, with a particular fish they rarely ever had — one of the best in all of Mexico! However skeptical we may have been about the story, we were ready for the pitch, so we followed him back up to the empty plastic tables and chairs and Tecaté umbrellas awaiting us away from the water. More
24 Aug 2012 14 Comments
in Observations, Video Tags: Cat & Fiddle, Douglas Fairbanks, food, Hollywood Forever Cemetery, kadesh, los angeles, Portland, queso anejo, Sigur Ros, Topanga Canyon
I was sitting on the grass the other evening at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, shaded by the opulent mausoleum of Los Angeles royalty — Douglas Fairbanks and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. — waiting for one of my favorite bands, Iceland’s Sigur Ros, to begin playing a concert… when I felt a bony tap on my shoulder.
Amplifiers playing ambient music as you entered Hollywood Forever
It was not the mummified finger of a famous corpse that I had feared, but a young couple from Canada sitting behind me. “Hello,” they said. “Are you from around here?” More
skinny girls & mayonnaise 