Too Darned Hot

Los Angeles, California

Someone has pointed out that I haven't left a recipe here for well over a fortnight, or more. You see, I do have followers. They just don't actually . . . follow. Nor do they leave comments. They just tell me when they see me! Which is fine. Anyway, let's get back to the recipe conundrum. The truth is, that I haven't been cooking in a way which is really worth sharing. I mean, for Fourth of July, we had cold cracked crab. And I didn't cook it, nor crack it. What did we have with that? What you should have with it: Chardonnay and good sourdough bread with butter. And I'm not going to share the trauma of having fed this to a dinner guest who discovered that, lo and behold, he isn't only allergic to lobster, but crab as well. Quel awful.

Anyway, as I racked my brain for some summer standard that we cook often and is worthy of sharing, what flew through my brain, in no particular order was: beer-can chicken; grilled corn (asparagus, yellow squash, on and on ad infinitum). Again, nothing stellar enough to share. Then I realized why I'm approaching this so limply. It's too darned hot.

We were tooling along, here in the Los Angeles basin, with a delayed June Gloom forecast. For those of you not in the know, June Gloom is paradoxically this very cool meteorological phenomenon which prepares you for the furnace blast of later summer. It is comprised of mild, overcast mornings (technically caused by what is called an on-shore flow), giving way (as the weathermen say) to mildly sunny afternoons. Aside from the mildewed roses, everyone is happy. Sometimes, we even get this in May. Then it is called May Gray. Well, this year we got it through the first twelve days of July. This is called: July Schmoo-lie. OK, it probably doesn't have a name when it occurs in July, as this rarely happens. But, blessedly, it happened this year. So, we could do gardening in the morning, work in the afternoon, and sleep soundly at night. And, we were probably cooking up a storm. I can't remember, because as of July 13th, it came to a screeching halt and the temperatures climbed from about 75 to 105 in ONE DAY. My body just couldn't handle it. I basically wanted to lie around on the floor all day, though that isn't what I actually did. I went dancing that first day. And it was HOT at that club, The Borderline, but as I've written before, we salseros dance in the face of it all.


But, back to cooking. Not doing much of it. However, I did finally come up with the idea to share a recipe which is a variable standard at Casa Healy. It is perfect for hot days, and can be prepared last minute, when necessary. The only heat involved is cooking the pasta, and if you want ciabatta bread with this (which I recommend) you can heat that briefly in the oven, or on the grill. I am even, generous spirit that I am, going to offer an alternative recipe which involves roasting the tomatoes. You have to turn on the oven for this, but I will offer it anyway, just in case June Gloom creeps into your life on one lucky summer's day.

Summer Pasta


6 medium or plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded,
      cut into 1/2 inch cubes *1
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 garlic cloves, minced
2/3 to 3/4 cup olive oil*2
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (or 1/2 teaspoon whole
      pink peppercorns)
3/4 cup cleaned, fresh basil leaves, cut into strips
1 pound smoked mozzarella, cut into 1/2 inch strips*3
1 pound penne rigate
A handful of fresh parsley, chopped
Freshly grated parmigiana
A grind (or two or four) of pepper


Place tomatoes in a large, heat-proof ceramic pasta bowl which will fit over the pot in which you will cook your pasta. Sprinkle the tomatoes with the teaspoon of salt and let sit for ten minutes, stirring lazily, if and when you think of it. Add garlic, olive oil, and the red pepper (if you're using it). Walk away.


You can let this sit up to, oh, let's say two hours or so in advance. I find that the longer it sits, the better, but the freshness of the tomatoes will ultimately tell the tale. That is why this is so good in the summer.


When you're ready to eat, fill your pasta pot with water and place the ceramic bowl with the tomatoes on top of it, as if for a lid. Bring water to boil. Remove pasta bowl, add salt and pasta to water. Cook.


When the pasta is ready, dump the basil on top of the tomatoes, then the pasta on top of the basil. Toss. Add anywhere from 2 tablespoons to 1/4 cup of the magic pasta water (it contains the starch from your pasta which will help meld the ingredients). Again with the tossing. Add the mozzarella immediately, toss one last time. Serve with the freshly grated parmigiana (and I would say a good loaf of ciabatta bread and a bottle of Bernardus sauvignon blanc, but now I'm just being bossy).


This will make about four servings. Leftovers are appealing at room temp, and can be served as a side dish to chicken or sausage or what have you.


Here's where it gets interesting:



*1 You have a lot of latitude with the tomatoes here. Heirlooms are wonderful, both in flavor and their rainbow appearance. You can also mix red and yellow cherry or small pear tomatoes. If you can find cherry tomatoes still on the stem, wash them intact and place them in a small ovenproof dish. Drizzle with a tablespoon of olive oil and two teaspoons of balsamic vinegar, and dust with salt and pepper. Roast in a 475 degree oven for ten minutes. Let cool until you can handle them without blistering your fingers. Remove from the stems and chop (this is messy). Use as all or a portion of the tomatoes. And, last but not least, you may add some (about two tablespoons) of sun-dried tomatoes which have been packed in oil. If you do this, chop them finely and add 1/4 cup of the tomato oil (using the smaller 2/3 cup of olive oil, in this case*2).


*3 You may substitute regular fresh mozzarella, or brie cheese -- even feta or pepper jack. If using feta, use fresh, chopped oregano in place of basil, and add pitted, halved kalamata olives. This is good topped with mizithra cheese or ricotta salata. If using pepper jack, skip the red pepper/pink peppercorns, replace basil with chopped cilantro and top with aged, dry jack cheese. A handful of chopped tomatillos added to the tomatoes is another option with the pepper jack.



Too many choices? Do what I do. Make the recipe faithfully the first time around. Get a feel for it. Decide whether you even like it enough to revisit it. Then, begin to experiment. We've gotten a lot wilder than I mentioned above. Leftover roasted asparagus, sliced into little-finger long lengths is a lovely added option. Don't even get me started on artichoke hearts and grilled eggplant. As you can now see, we're talking about drawing way outside the lines with this recipe -- and even being encouraged to do so.

So, if it's hot, you're hot, or even if it's not/your not, this is a perfectly feasible summer way to eat pasta. Since I grow basil, and Billy grows tomatoes, we have often commented that if we could grow mozzarella we could be set for a good portion of the summer. Except for the corn . . . but that's a whole other post. Hope you enjoy your summer and this pasta, and thanks for reading my blog.

The One-Year Anniversary of Neighborhood Chaos

Los Angeles, California



Are you old enough to remember the opening scene of the television series M.A.S.H.? If so, close your eyes and imagine you can hear that whirling sound of a helicopter. Now, multiply that by, say, four or five-fold. You now have approximated the noise that woke us at 6:00 AM last Friday. Are we in a militarized state? Thankfully not. Was there are brush fire? Well, we do live in the foothills of Los Angeles, so that was not out of the realm of possibility. A little early in the season, perhaps, but possible. Still, no, it wasn't a brush fire. Prison escapees or bank robbers on the loose? Uh-uh. So what catastrophe, disaster, or news event of real import was creating this cacophony of whirly-birds over our sleeping heads at such an ungodly hour? Have you guessed it? It was the one-year anniversary of Michael Jackson's death.

Now I do get this. I clearly remember the anguish of John Lennon's untimely death. And I recall my elders saying, at the time, what is the big deal about this? He was just a musician. They just didn't get it. They were not part of the generation that precedes me, who were devastated by the death of Buddy Holly. The day the music died, they called it. And, evidently, Glenn Miller's disappearance over the channel was just one more loss chalked up to the war effort. But for me, and for many of my generation, after Lennon's death, we understood the impact of the loss of our cultural icons. But this isn't about that. It's about the war zone -- in other words, our neighborhood.

You see, we share a neighborhood with the Jacksons. We live a hop, skip, and a jump away from the Jackson family compound. And everyone who lives here uses that street, where the Jacksons live, for both ingress and egress. It's the road to the market, the bank, the freeway. We had a peaceful coexistence, despite groups of fans and media who occasionally gathered at the time of breaking news-- at least until last year, when Michael Jackson died. Then, our neighborhood became gridlocked by gawkers, news trucks, & police. It was rough. Then, they closed the street altogether. House guests who were arriving for the Fourth of July weekend were not allowed to pass. They had to use their navigation device to find an alternative, convoluted route through the winding back lanes. The closure went on for two weeks. Our streets here are narrow. A parked news truck will reduce a road down to one lane. It was chaos. The only bright spot in all this was the day I saw a car full of young gawkers rear-end a news van. This introduced a bit of glee into our landlocked lives as word spread to friends and neighbors.

Now, back to the helicopters. During that time, they hovered above us from early morning until night every single day. Finally, the memorial was scheduled, and there was talk of a private funeral; a decision was made about custody of the children; a rumored arrest of the attending physician; etc., etc. You get the picture . . . and the frame. People eventually went away; the street was reopened; the helicopters moved off. But every time there was anything about Michael in the news, everyone came back. It was frustrating, but more or less, temporary. And, now we have arrived at the one-year anniversary. It's not the zoo that it was last year, but, once again, there are gatherings in front of the gate to the compound. And, of course, the helicopters arrived, en masse, at 6:00 AM.

Now saying I get it, doesn't speak to how I feel about living in the juiced-up environment of a celebrity-driven culture propagated by the entertainment industry. I am a second-generation Angelino; a third-generation Southern Californian. The movie industry didn't exist when my grandmother was born in Santa Barbara, back at the end of the 1800s. But it existed when I was growing up just a stone's throw from both Warner Brothers and the Disney studios. It just fit better into the perspective of life in Southern California. After all, the "industry" back then was aerospace. My father was an engineer and part of the aerospace/aeronautical industry, as were a lot of my friends' fathers. Other fathers were accountants, doctors, other executives. I don't remember a lot of small business owners, and, I don't remember a lot of lawyers, though I'm sure both were out there. And, it being the era on the beginning thrust of feminism, most of the mothers were of the stay-at-home variety. But, I did go to school with people whose families worked in television, or for "the movies." At the time, there seemed to be something unstable about that. Like they hadn't grown up to have a real job. In some small way, that judgement still pervades my thinking. Of course both the judgement and the nostalgia are meaningless now. The "industry," here and now, is entertainment, 24/7. I could prepare a long list of people I know who either work in this conglomeration or are connected to someone who does. But frankly, few of them are from here. So, I suspect that most do not know the Los Angeles that existed before this explosion. The Los Angeles without gridlock, and transplanted Easterners who learned to drive by watching the aggression of their cabdrivers. Before road rage, the biggest complaint I ever heard about traffic was about "Sunday drivers." Yep. People drove too slowly.

Of course, complaining about all of this is about as useful as gesturing to the helicopter pilots to move on. That's not going to happen. And I suppose all my rumination and nostalgia is a sign of age. The I-remember-when syndrome. I really don't want to be that person. But, on the other hand, I do remember when. It was a golden place to live and grow up. It was a hot-summered, Beach Boys- and Eagles-soundtracked, slow-paced world of California natives. We had a population that worked to design and manufacture instruments which helped us to fly further and faster, and which, ultimately, had put a man on the moon. Somehow that still seems more important than today's obsession with weekend grosses, or worse, with what's up with the celebrity du jour, or the celebrity of yesterjour. And, in the current whirl of a multitude of helicopter blades chopping the air above me, I miss that world that came before. And, had you known it, I am certain that you would too. Thanks for reading my blog (even if you weren't born here. Seriously.).