Earthly Delights

::accoutrements::

In the last two months we've had ample opportunity to try out all of our amazing new kitchen gadgets. Disguised as wedding gifts, they've plunked themselves down into our lives and contributed to many amazing meals and drinks. Here are some of the highlights:

Rice cooker: I would never have imagined that we would want something like this, because of course, I think first of where it will fit in our kitchen. Now I understand. I understand deeply. Rice cookers make rice taste like what it's supposed to taste like. Our brown rice, especially, tastes like the finer Thai restaurant rice I've had--nutty flavor, complex taste. I wouldn't do without the rice cooker now, ever.

Large baking pans: how amazing to turn in our two black, crusty, gunky pans and start using fresh, oversized, silver, clean pans. It's like an unexpected treat everytime we break them out.

Dutch oven: I've been wanting one of these for so long, if only because I was stopped in my tracks everytime I came across a mouth-watering recipe in winter because a Dutch oven was absent in our combined cupboards. Now we have one. The first meal S. made in it was a rich lamb, basmati rice, and yogurt stew. A whole new slew of recipes is now at our fingertips.

Stemless wine glasses: These are easily portable, sexy in their own right, and very wonderful when you're tipsy.

Serving dishes, plates, cups, diner buffet plates, mugs, and more from that one store everyone seems to get registered at: Ours are the design called "Audrey," while the diner plates are humongous and excellent for big, scrumptious dinner nights. To our friends who sent them: we're slurping off them, as you suggested!

Pitcher with ice container: We are about to use this fine piece, because the thermometer has hit ninety degrees...

Tea press: This, too, opens up a whole new world of loose teas to us!

New coffee presses: Excellent, since ours had traveled far and wide with us, developed age spots and wear, and they make us feel shiny and new.

Kitchen timer: With its white face and black numbers, the lovely seconds-passing-by clicks and the old-fashioned ring, I am seriously digging this retro gadget.

I'd like to extend a special thanks to all of our friends and family who chipped in to gift us with these marvelous and very well-used kitchen tools, and thanks to everyone, too, who gave us kitchen tools I haven't even mentioned here!

::one morsel, small, of Olympia days and nights::

I was hungry there. The rain crept through like the mold in the seams of the walls, and I hungered. Big fat fresh breads and strong coffee. Butter over a warmer, and crème brulee beside. I wanted no dinner, only the appetizers and desserts. Instead, I often settled for cigarettes, Oly stubbies after brunch at the forgotten café in the marina, the party jello in the shape of a dark red human heart on the second floor of an apartment in Tumwater, a bad rice dish that would flower green and then black in my refrigerator. I hungered for something adult, for the ways of the adult world I was just barely stepping into, mouthing the words I was learning and feeding from, all the while hungry for something else, like the pan-melted Mexican chocolate my Gemini lover fixed me, or the garlic cloves tight in the bread slices that got soft and seductive in the oven, or the soup that was as hearty and full as the girl I was falling in love with; or the cookie, smart, barely crumbly, holding together with proper ingredients, crunchy, sweet, that I was becoming.

Wine Glass: Full

A wonderful website and newsletter just came to my attention directly from the writer herself, and I was instantly fascinated with an article on organic wines--loads of information, and even available on podcast! I'd been asking around a lot lately about people's experiences of organic wines, and what the 'sulfite-free' meant to them, if anything. This article explains everything. Natalie McLean's site and newsletter, Nat Decants, is clearly an excellent reference --there are links to books, guides, even movies; a glossary; a lengthy, and I imagine, very complete chronological list of suggestions ranging from 'vintage' to 'values'--and many more inviting links I've yet to uncover. And she has a book! This looks like an excellent late-summer read, when I have time off from school. As a wine writer, speaker, and judge, as her biography states, she is clearly presenting a top-notch perspective. And I even note a sense of humor. She's not afraid to slog along with sipping and spitting. I like that.

Educating Wendy

Nearly 34, and I know next to nothing about wine: except what I like (as in the taste) and what I don't like. It usually takes me just a moment to gage my interest, but I've never swirled, spat, or put too much effort into nosing. Somewhere in my 20s I remember picking up a book that was purely educational, and could fit into my pocket should I remember to take it anywhere I might pick up a bottle or stick around for a glass. The book is long gone, and I still know...next to nothing.

So a book like Educating Peter: How I Taught a Famous Movie Critic the Difference Between Cabernet and Merlot or How Anybody Can Become an (Almost) Instant Wine Expert (Scribner) should be an accessible, interesting book I might pick up and learn from, yes? Almost. Probably. I began reading the book in earnest, interested in how the narrative (the writer in me lurking here, apologies) was going to shape up. The premise is that an esteemed wine editor of Food & Wine magazine, Lettie Teague, will attempt something that the book keeps hammering at me is difficult, very difficult, but not impossible: teaching an "idiot" (yes, this word is used in the reviews and bookflap) some rudimentary fundamentals about wine.

Bibimbap Thursdays

We've been making it a weekly event, our sojourn to Yu Chun Restaurant at 6th and Catalina Alexandria in Koreatown. It helps that the place is a short walk away, and on the days when we have errands, we can slide into a spot at a nearby meter, regardless of the construction going up nearby, and easily take our leave post-meal.

I'd originally tried this restaurant when my friend Kathy asked me to accompany her to a prospective student orientation at the local acupuncture university (when I say local, I should say, the one within walking distance of my apartment). The very kind and funny administrator took us all out for lunch to this particular restaurant, and it was there that I learned to savor the tastes of a good portion of my neighborhood's culture. As soon as I could, I returned, husband in tow, so I could partake of the meal without the requisite conversations and table manners I would assume with people I don't know, thereby making me forget the tastes I'd absorbed. Now I could stop, inspect, sniff, and taste the Banchan (side dishes) and sip at the clear soup; I could pour all of my attention into the bibimbap in a hot stone pot, admiring the gelatinous egg yolk before stabbing it lightly and spreading its goodness around the rice, mushrooms, carrot, zucchini (and what might be bellflower root, though I'm not positive yet). Oh, and the beef. I adore how preciously thin it is, and how it doesn't overpower any of the other ingredients. I could use this lesson in our own kitchen, where sometimes meat overwhelms the meal. My husband, too, learns this, as he eats his weekly "cold" bibimbap--lettuce leaves adorning the sides of his bowl before he mixes it in with the food and spoons it over his rice in its silver bowl.

And so it has been, for the last month or longer, that we've made Yu Chun Restaurant our regular stop on Thursdays for lunch. As we likely will next week, and the week after, and the week after...

Yu Chun Restaurant
3470 W. 6th St. #11
Los Angeles 90020
213-389-1200