22 Aug 2014
by scolgin
in Beverages, Recipes
Tags: cinchona, cocktails, Colgin, Culver City, Daniel Nevins, gin & tonic, Hendrick's gin, Oldfield's Liquor Room, Saveur
I’m a sucker for a great classic cocktail — and by great, I mean a drink made with few ingredients, where you can taste the high-quality spirit the beverage is built around. A perfect margarita, for example — lime, agave syrup, good tequila.
A lady gets her close up
I used to think the rechristening of bartenders as “mixologists” was a bit silly. (What would be next — busboys would now be “dishware reutilization engineers”!??) But then on one of our rare evening adventures into civilization without the kids, our pal Alex took us to an establishment in Culver City called Oldfield’s Liquor Room that he liked to frequent with his mistress. The bartender, who was also apparently the proprietor, was a buxom woman in pointy glasses and an old timey baby doll dress. The mercifully manageable bar menu contained a dozen or so “house drinks” based on classics and made with house-infused syrups and bitters. Those we tried were delicious, and I thought, “Okay, she’s more like a chef — and maybe they do deserve something more elevated than ‘bartender'”. More
14 Aug 2014
by scolgin
in Recipes
Tags: calamari, food, Greece, Greek food, humor, kolokithokeftedes, octopus, ouzo, recipes, squid
We missed our Tuesday sushi night. But the Schneiders were hungry and still wanted to eat. So we switched over to Wednesday, and at Monica’s suggestion, changed the menu to Greek.
I was pleased, as I’d been craving Greek food and had even purchased stuff to make a Greek dinner. Earlier that week Don had even accidentally smashed a plate at our house — all signs were pointing toward Greece. More
08 Aug 2014
by scolgin
in Recipes
Tags: beet pickle, chicken liver, crostini, Irish humor, Italian food, Italy, Mario Batali, offal, recipes
I often get feeling like I should be eating more offal. I’ve gotten okay with pig ears and cracklings, and will plow my way through a plate of sweetbreads. But I’m still a bit skittish when it comes to brains, stomachs, kidneys and so forth.
Crostini with beet pickles
I love the idea of eating the whole animal. And when I purchase a duck, for example, I’ll be mindful to get five or six separate dishes out of the bird — breasts, leg confit, liver pate, bone stock and demi glaze, skin cracklings, and rendered fat. More
05 Aug 2014
by scolgin
in Eating Out, World's Best Sandwiches
Tags: Bachi Burger, Ballast Point, Father's Office, food trends, gastropub, Greg Berman, hamburgers, Jonathan Gold, Plan Check, Sawtelle
Heading to lunch at a local restaurant called Plan Check with my friend and business associate Greg, we got talking about burger saturation.
The “smokey and spicy PCB” (Plan Check Burger)
Our local Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic, Jonathan Gold, named Plan Check #71 in his 101 Best Restaurants in L.A. 2014. It is the poster child of the now overused designation of “gastropub.” A superb restaurant indeed, it served a delicious selection of craft beers — including my current favorite, Ballast Point Sculpin IPA — a variety of fingery bar foods and artisan pickles, and several carefully curated hamburgers. More
01 Aug 2014
by scolgin
in Observations
Tags: Anniversary, Antarctica, blogging, food, humor, Le Creuset, Lex Luthor, Skinny Girls & Mayonnaise
I was blogging along happily one day, when I realized I was approaching my 400th post.
I launched Skinny Girls & Mayonnaise on August 8, 2010, with a volley of posts I had written and prepared — there were posts on the great Yucatan pork speciality, cochinita pibil, and how with it I’d converted two vegetarians; the spectacular torta cubano; the importance of salt, and the unimportance of quinoa — a grain that would, for the purposes of this blog, play Lex Luthor to my Superman. I wanted the blog to look like it had been around for awhile, so within the first week I published a total of nineteen posts.
The old pan, circa 2014
One of the earliest posts was about an old pan I had inherited in my 20s from whomever lived in my Santa Monica rent control apartment before me. Some two decades later, I still had the pan. And still used it more than the various Emile Henry, Le Creuset and other fancy bakeware I now had in my cupboard. More
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