Over the years I’ve written about a lot things I like (food, drinks, travel, cars, books, design, technology, and so on) for a lot of publications I like (Bon Appétit, Wired, Cookie, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, GQ, Details, Travel and Leisure, and so forth). I’ve been quoted here and there, including the New York Times, Wired, and Cookie, and have appeared on Martha Stewart Radio, The Absolutely Mindy Show, CNN, Who Will Be the Next Food Network Star, and Hell’s Kitchen.  I’m co-author of The Gastrokid Cookbook: Feeding a Foodie Family in a Fast Food World and West Coast Editor at Bon Appétit magazine. Here’s some of my work:

Less is More on the Amalfi Coast (Bon Appétit Magazine) We took a family vacation on Italy’s Amalfi coast and I tried to replicate the feeling and flavors at home in a recipe for calamari pasta. Amalfi.

The Gastrokid Cookbook: Feeding a Foodie Family in a Fast Food World (John Wiley & Sons) I co-authored this book with my friend Matthew Yeomans. It’s based on our blog gastrokid.com and is in its second printing. You can order it on amazon here.

Tokyo, Cocktail Capital of the World (Bon Appétit Magazine) Not only was this just about the most fun travel story I’ve ever reported, it was included in the anthology, Best Food Writing 2009. Click the link to read: Tokyo, Cocktail Capital of the World

The Road to River Cottage (Bon Appétit Magazine) British ethical eating guru Hugh Fearnly Whittingstall is one of my heroes. I took my family to his headquarters in England to interview him. The Road to River Cottage

Floor Show (T: The New York Times Style Magazine) I miss my manual transmission. Here’s how much.

Take Back Your Car (Cookie Magazine) A story about how to dodge the minivan bullet, from the dearly departed Cookie, undoubtedly the finest parenting magazine in history. Take Back Your Car

Tusk to Tail Dining in Hawaii (Bon Appétit Magazine). I went wild boar hunting on the Big Island to kill my dinner for the first time. Wild Boar.

Spain: State of the Art (Bon Appétit Magazine) Back when everyone was going to Spain to gawk at foam and other delicious abominations, I wrote this story about anchovy-flavored chocolate and eating simple food with Ferran Adria. Spain

LA in the Raw (Bon Appétit Magazine) A report on the pinnacle of the Los Angeles sushi boom, before Masa decamped to the Time Warner center and The Hump shut down after being busted for selling whale meat. Sushi

Television, radio, commentary, QAs, internet appearances etc: Hell’s Kitchen, Who Will Be the Next Food Network Star, CNN International, CNN.com, Martha Stewart Radio, The Absolutely Mindy Show, The New York Times, ParentDish, LA Weekly Squidink

And here is a video clip of me “cooking” a dish from the Gastrokid Cookbook:  ABC7 San Francisco as well as an edit with the highlights and a quick visit to Hell’s Kitchen:

Hay-smoked bunny

McCall’s meat market had a big fat juicy fresh rabbit in the case. (Smoke. McCall’s. Protein. A theme.)  At 14 bucks a pound it was a mighty pricey, a far cry from the “pets or meat” variety in Roger & Me, but with weather turning spring-like in LA, I figured it was a solid Sunday project and a chance to practice a couple of underdeveloped culinary skills: bunny butchery and hay smoking.

With a small bag each of city-priced Timothy and Alfalfa hays (7 dollars a bag!) from Petco (complete with bunny picture on the package), my new Staub coccote, and my rabbit, I’m happy to say it clocked in at only around 2 hours start to finish (a one-hour thyme salt rub on the chicken; a 45 minute 375 degree roast on the chicken; a 10 minute hay smoke on the grill side burner; subtract the 30 minutes Frenching the tiny little rib racks. Not worth the time.). Crazy smokey results, tempered by preserved lemon and a peppery arugula salad. I’m not happy to say that the Staub, the hay, and the rabbit added up to about 300 bucks total. That’s the cost of modern peasant cooking.

Quick Smoked Albacore

The excellent McCalls meats on Hillhurst in Los Feliz stocks some good fish, too. The owner Nathan gave me a good idea of how to treat the albacore I bought their the other day: blast it in the smoker for a few minutes until it picks up the flavor of the wood, but remains rare inside.

It’s a trick he learned at Arzak in Spain, where they cube it first and then toss it in Jerez vinegar. Lacking a true smoker and any Jerez, I torched some oak on a makeshift fire brick grill with a weber lid on top, put the albacore in some pans and let them soak up the smoke for about 5 minutes. The intense heat cooked them just enough. I paired it with some blanched cauliflower tossed with a caper vinaigrette. Excellent crunch bright counterpoint to the intense albacore. You could easily do this on a standard Weber, but building a grill yourself is pretty darned fun. It’s like Legos for pyros.

The Venison Also Rises

I’m feeling like Natty Bumpo, having cooked and eaten, oh, 15 or so pounds of venison that made its way to my fridge a couple of weeks ago.

There was:

Venison Bolognese: in the British style, with bacon, mirepoix, tomato, and that awesome Barilla thick spaghetti.

5-day dry aged loin with brown butter and meyer lemon: My second try at a quick pan roast of a tender cut. High heat. Sear it. Drop the heat. Take temperature. Don’t let it pass 125 f.

Venison Stew: sinewy trimmings slowly simmered with the classic aromatics and a bay leaf.

Bacon and wine braised venison: bummerly dissapointing, despite a being simmered in a bottle of wine, with a half cup of bacon, and other braising basics fully employed. Lean and clean and too tough. Looks good tho:

Quick-Roasted Winter Tomato Tart

A tomato tart in December? Heck yeah. With concurrent cold snaps in LA and NY and a miraculous hot house heirloom tomato skidding across the freakishly long LA tomato season finish line onto my kitchen counter, I took it all as a dare to see if I could make something truly tomato-ish and delish with what I had on hand: a tired roll of filo dough, some fresh thyme, and a half remembered admonition from Tom Colicchio’s pre-TV cookbook Think Life Chef to slow roast your tomatoes. But life was in fast-motion, so I did this instead:

sliced the tomato and put it on a cookie sheet, drizzled it with olive oil, sprinkled it with thyme and chopped garlic, salted and peppered it, and put it in a 500 degree oven for 20 minutes until it looked like this…

put a couple of cups of cottage cheese into a fine mesh strainer and pushed out the water with the back of a spoon, mashing it, dreaming of ricotta. it came darned close.

draped about 6 or so layers of the filo dough onto an olive oiled baking sheet

spooned the ricottage cheese here and there

fanned the roasted tomatoes on it

drizzled olive oil on it

sprinkled fresh thyme on it

salted and peppered it until it looked like this…

baked it at 425 f until it looked like this…

I’m guessing it’ll work with thinly sliced hot house plum tomatoes too.

10 Awesome Kitchen Knives

Sure you could go out and buy a good set of German knives in a block and cook happily for the rest of your life. Or you could slowly, over the years, develop a sort of culinary fetish for their beauty, history, design, and specific usefulness in the kitchen, the feel in the hand (either yours or those you share your kitchen with). Here are a the 10 knives I use most depending on application or whim:

1. The Glestain Gyotu is insane. It’s got the deep dimples on the blade so food doesn’t stick to it, is surgically sharp, and is awesome for cutting homemade sushi. I was psyched to see Mark Ladner slicing and dicing with his on Iron Chef. Get it at korin.com

2. The Henckels Miyabi santoku knife is made in Japan by a German company. Nuff said. The handle is gorgeous and comfortable.

3. The Togiharu Inox steel-Yo Deba: a Japanese butcher knife, useful for hacking through bone. I broke down an entire roast pig to feed 100 with this thing. It’s weight does a ton of the work you. A cross between a cleaver and a machete. Also at korin.com

4. Deep bladed wushtoff chef’s knife: I bought this one after watching one too many Molto Marios on the early food network. Its almost cleaver like in its heft thanks to the additional 1/3 of an inch or so depth to the blade. The pronounced curve of the cutting edge is also helpful for speedy chiffonade.

5. Culinary Institute of America Santoku: CIA designed; great slim handle that fits my wife’s hand perfectly. Elegant lines too.

6. Wusthoff “avant garde” scalloped offset serrated: my old chef buddy James from New York told me to get this one 15 years ago. The handle is some strange out-of-vogue plastic, it’s stamped metal, the blade is scalloped, and it’s awesome for bread. Not sure if the “avant garde” line still exists.

7. Henckels boning knife: good grippy handle, light and narrow blade does the trick when breaking down some meat is in order.

8. Opinel folding knife: my dad gave me this over 25 years ago and I still have it in my tool box for quick culinary applications in the field. I once watched a guy skin a boar with one of these in Hawaii, but I like it for sharpening pencils and slicing apples and cheese.

9. Kershaw folding knife with spring assist: It flicks open like a switchblade and is handy for stealthy urban foraging. The half serrated blade makes quick work of the neighbor’s rosemary branches.

10. Wusthoff Classic paring knife: Of my four paring knives, this one has the most beautiful and comfortable handle.

Venison With Meyer Lemon and Thyme Brown Butter

My kind of Tuesday night:

My friend Josiah calls and tells me his dad sent him a shipment of venison from a deer he killed in Nebraska over the weekend. More than he can he feed his family or give away. Josiah’s dad is of the generation that rightly thinks the term foodie is a strange neologism. Josiah’s dad also hung out with Johnny Apple in London before Johnny Apple started writing about food. That generation.

I go over to Josiah’s and am met with this sight:

Butchers neither of us, we clean it all up, remove the silver skin, and turn the mess of meat into a number of cuts we can imagine going into stews, braises, roasts, and the like.

I put some of it in on a rack in my refrigerator to age a few days. I earmark the odd bits for a stew. I freeze a couple of roasts.

I take what I’m guessing is the mock tender and sear it on the stove and roast it in the oven for a few minutes. While it rests, I deglaze the pan with brown butter, throw in some sprigs of thyme, and a few slices of meyer lemon from our charter school garden. I have this for dinner.

The thyme echoes the grassy-sweet taste of the meat. The butter enriches its lean-ness. The mild acid of the meyer lemon cuts through it all just right.

The best free dinner of the month so far.