Digging in the Dirt

I spent the afternoon digging in the dirt and was so very happy to be there. It's February, which means brrrrr! in most of the country, but it's a sunny, pleasant day in southern California (please don't hate me. I really do miss the four seasons!).

Actually, I feel a bit like a bird let out of its cage. While I've enjoyed editing the current and upcoming issues of Edible Los Angeles, I'm ready to get back to writing and having time for other things, like catering an Oscar party this weekend, getting ready to teach a cooking class and preparing to present a talk on the history of Irish cuisine. Writing assignments are suddenly coming out of the woodwork (and even a couple of photography assignments)! Seems like it's all or nothing, so I think I'll be happy with all right now. All is good. And all is well. And all's well that ends wel....okay, that's enough.

And I'm happy to get back to the garden (cue the Crosby, Stills & Nash). It's easy to forget what's out there once winter comes. But when I creep out back and start to nose around, I'm always delighted to find things still at work there. They don't take a breather just because I'm not paying attention. The grapevine has the bright green beginnings of this year's leaves just popping out. The fennel is holding its own much better than its identical-cousin dill plant. The new fig tree has put out five timid little sprouts and one starter-fig. At least that's what I call it. It fell off during the recent rains, but I guess the tree just needed to get that one out there. Priming its fig pump, I guess. The catnip is beginning to recover after having had at least one cat lose her dignity all over it. The oh-I-forgot-I-planted-those spring flower bulbs are showing green and getting ready to send up blossoms in time for Easter.

I've always wanted one of those terra cotta strawberry condominium thingies, so I finally splurged got myself one, along with a dozen strawberry plants to nestle into all those little pockets. Between working on that and planting tomatoes, cilantro, swiss chard and microgreens, I had a great time of it. I even planted an artichoke in the hope that it will help increase my appreciation for that prickly so-and-so. I find that's often the case with difficult foods. Get to know them well and you develop at least a grudging respect for them...and possibly even decide you like them after all. Sometimes that happens with people, too. It's the darndest thing.

A Shout-Out To Edible Los Angeles

I'm so very proud of everyone involved in putting together the winter issue of Edible Los Angeles. I edited this issue, and I must say having good writers and good photographers really made the work smooth sailing.

If you haven't seen Edible Los Angeles, do check it out. You can find it all over town (town being the Los Angeles area, of course!).

I'm excited to also be editing the spring issue. With its seasonal focus, this magazine keeps me attuned to the seasons as nothing else has since I was a kid growing up on the farm.

I just love it when work is fun!

(Time) Traveling in the Kitchen

These days my blog is sighing in loneliness. I've been busy as guest editor of the winter issue of Edible Los Angeles. It's taking up a lot of time, but I'm having a blast, so blog, just deal with it!

One of the articles I assigned for the issue is "What's In Your Pantry?" I'd asked food writer and culinary historian (and legendary Rolling Stone editor) Charles Perry to write the piece. Typically the writer will interview a chef or some other noted food person. But I knew that Charlie would have the most interesting pantry in town, so I asked him to write about his own stash of exotic flavorings accumulated over his many years of travel throughout the Middle East.

Yesterday, our amazing photographer Tony Molina and I went to Charlie's for a photo shoot and some dajaj mutajjan, a dish from 13th century Baghdad. It's made of really basic elements, so anyone could make it, but because it vanished from the Iraqi diet centuries ago, if you visited a restaurant in Baghdad now in search of it, they wouldn't have a clue what you were asking for!

It was rich and savory and wonderfully flavorful. It was also healthy, easy and fairly quick to make. And it filled the house with the smells of exotic lands and bazaars and my head with dreams of faraway places.

We enjoyed dajaj mutajjan cooked up in this soapstone pot, which, like cast iron, heats slowly, but cooks evenly and oh so well. This dish was made with chicken, but Charlie assured us that goat works really well, too.

Food history may sound like an odd or quaint area of interest to some, but it has the power to transport you to another place and time in a most wonderful way, because you can savor the smells, flavors and textures that reveal how people lived in different times and places. Visiting historic sites is important, no doubt, but sampling the food of other places gives you a truly personal way of experiencing the culture as those who live there do (and as their predecessors did).

Language experts like to say that Latin isn't dead--only the people who spoke it are. Well, these ancient cuisines aren't dead either. But the taste buds that have never tried them are sound asleep.