Walking in LA

People don't walk in LA unless they are absolutely forced. Couldn't park close to the elevator at the Grove? Walk. No street parking outside your friend's apartment in West Hollywood? Walk. I, however, chose to walk around downtown LA on Monday-- something people DEFINITELY don't do. Angelenos avoid downtown like the plague. A few hip rebels live in the newly renovated lofts down there and swear by their neighborhood choice, but I suspect there are many people born and raised in LA who have never set foot south of the 101 and east of the 110.

It's a shame really, because if you get out of your car for a second and look up, you get the idea that LA is much more culturally rich than Hollywood has lead you to believe-- and the evidence is in the architecture. I'm writing a historical design analysis paper for my interior design class this week, and I've chosen to focus on the Eastern Columbia Building. I'm an Art Decophile. F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of my favorite authors, and I'm fascinated by the Jazz Age; Art Deco is the architectural extension of that period, marked by post-war exuberance and the desire to let loose and rebel against the pre-war Victorian era and wartime austerity. Take a look at these pictures and tell me you don't feel the same way...

Turquoise terra cotta-- it's how LA does Art Deco

A great example of zig-zag Art Deco

These are the original terrazzo sidewalks, which were restored when the building underwent a condo conversion in 2007

Enough procrastinating! Back to the paper. I'll update this post with more detail and interior shots of the Eastern Columbia Building (ID by Kelly Wearstler, the grand dame of Los Angeles maximalist interior design, which plays quite well with Art Deco. You'll see!)

The Devil is a Chocolate Salted Caramel Cake.

Easter Sunday was not the finest day for our household. We planned our day around a tutoring session Miles had at 11; we thought we'd go to an early service, Miles would go to tutoring, then we'd relax for the rest of the day. Ha. So we thought. We missed church due to an internet snafu (services were at 10:30, not at 9 as the website said), and Miles' student canceled the lesson right as he was walking out the door (how thoughtful.). In an attempt to turn our day around, I decided to bake a cake.

I may never bake again.

For starters, I should have listened to my mother when she told me it was insane to bake a cake when my kitchen sink was clogged. How many dirty dishes can it possibly make, I thought. I work in a bakery. I should have KNOWN how many dirty dishes it would cause. Mountains of them.

Lesson number 2: always read the recipe in its entirety before you commit to the project. Had I done that, I would have noticed that the recipe required me to make caramel-- twice-- which is something I'd never done before. That may have given me pause. Oh, if only I had been given pause...

The cake baking went fantastically. I have some new Chicago Metallic 8" round pans that performed like magic. While the layers were cooling, I worked on the salted caramel and whipped caramel ganache. Cue the ominous music. I thought caramel batch #1 was a little burned, so I seriously erred on the side of caution for batch #2, which was for the whipped ganache. As a result, the ganache never really achieved the "fluffy" consistency the recipe indicated, even after HOURS of whipping. I'm not exaggerating. We had an EARTHQUAKE, and my little KitchenAid artisan stand mixer was still there in the corner, whipping away.

At Miles's suggestion, I made a 3rd batch of caramel; the idea was that if I added more caramel to my ganache milkshake, maybe it would thicken up. This third batch was PERFECT. The most beautiful batch of caramel you've ever seen. It did nothing for my milkshake. Finally, I decided to just start over with the frosting (keep in mind that we're washing dishes in the bathroom sink because the kitchen sink is so clogged that water is backing up out of the dishwasher. By the end of all of this, I've washed so much chocolate down the bathroom sink that it's coming out of the toilet. That was exciting.).

Batch #4 of caramel was somewhere between batch #3 and batch #1, and when I whipped it, a liquid came out of it that I thought was unusual but just went with. What did I know?? After all of that, the frosting really didn't look that much different than the first batch. At this point, I had made Miles make me a whiskey. I could hardly bear to look at the cake, let alone frost it. But I soldiered through (I know! I'm tough, that's what you're thinking. It's true. I am.). However, at this point, my cake layers had been cooling for about 9 hours. One of the layers had the consistency of almost-dried concrete. Great. I didn't care. I was frosting this cake if it was the last thing I was going to do. As you can imagine, milkshake frosting doesn't exactly stick so well to the side of the cake, so after a little refrigeration, I could get it to do my bidding (must keep this in mind when dealing with Miles).

I'm getting stressed out reliving this, so let's just get to the pictures:

No, they don't let me frost cupcakes at the bakery, if that's what you're wondering. But not toooo bad looking, right? "Rustic" maybe, but not hideously ugly. Take a look at what it looked like the next day:

Sigh.

At least it tasted good. Unfortunately, I now feel like I have to defend my baking skills to Miles, so I think I'll tackle banana cupcakes next. To be continued (cue ominous music)...

Cookbooks I can't live without.

I would make an amazing housewife. Just ask my old roommate, Lindsay. I went through an unemployed period after college, and Lindsay worked for Smith Barney. Since I had nothing else to do with my time, I spent my days pondering what we were going to fix for dinner and getting it ready. Times have since changed-- I'm employed, Lindsay's not (she's in school!), we're both married-- but I still love to cook.

I also love to collect cookbooks. Few things in this world hold my attention like a really well designed cookbook. Rule number one: it must have pictures. Cookbooks need to be visually pleasing in my book. I'm instantly suspicious of a cookbook that doesn't have pictures. There are exceptions to this rule, the main one being The Joy of Cooking, but I'll get to that later.  Rule number two: it needs to have ingredients that you can actually find in the grocery store. This stems from growing up in a small town in South Carolina, where running to the Asian market wasn't exactly an option.

I've never had much use for coffee table books-- they're gigantic, they're expensive, and my coffee table is crowded enough without a 1000 page tome on fashion adding to the mess. But cookbooks-- especially beautiful and fun cookbooks-- make ideal coffee table books.

I'll be writing this post in segments, since I have too many books to name and not enough time to do so. Without further ado... (drumroll) Here are ones that I love:

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA:

The Joy of Cooking, by Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker (image courtesy of amazon.com).

If you have a stove, you need this book. I have yet to find a cooking question this book cannot answer.  The Rombauer-Beckers give you the basics-- how to prepare and how to simply cook the ingredient-- then they elaborate with recipes that incorporate it. Currently my bookmark is on page 104, lentil soup.  Need to know how to cook kohlrabi? Have no idea what kohlrabi is? Joy of Cooking. (Kohlrabi, by the way, appears to be a cross between a turnip and cabbage, but is neither a root or a leafy vegetable. In fact, it is a "swollen stem". True story!)

To be continued...