A Refuge in Cooking: Los Angeles
Roger is an assistant director working in LA. I met him in high school, and he was one of the the first people I wanted to interview for the blog.
How did you learn to cook?
It was a gradual process. My step mom, Anne, got me started as a teenager. She told me you can make anything if you following the instructions. I remember her getting me to make liver and onions even though the liver felt really gross when it was raw. But I didn’t actually start following instructions for another 20 years! Now I insist on following recipes, unless an ingredient is impossible to find.
What’s your approach?
Freshness is first. I have recipes categorized by season so I know the raw vegetables are local and fresh. And I like dishes that excite your palette with simple flavor combinations. A perfect example is roast sweet potatoes with lime and butter - only three items, but sublime. I usually avoid rich dishes but I don’t mind a dollop of a rich sauce like Harissa hollandaise on a frittata.
How do you learn new recipes and techniques?
I’m an obstinate cook. Only a few years ago did I start prepping all the ingredients before I began. Only this year have I started forcing myself to read and re-read a recipe before beginning. I used to actually just start the first pan on the stove and race to get through all the other steps before they were needed! A lot of favorites come from Bon Appetit. They're pretty good about coaching you on how to execute uncommon preparations.
Who/what inspires you?
Alice Waters was my go-to for years, now Yotam Ottolenghi’s Mediterranean and middle-eastern flavors excite me. But what I really love is trying dishes from the Saturday edition of the Wall Street Journal (who knew?!) and Bon Appetit. Whatever theme they have going, I’ll see if I can pull it off. Some favorite surprises have been: grilled lettuces, grilled kale salad, a collection of bean/broth dishes during the winter (a non-labor intensive cassoulet), steak frites cheated for a home kitchen, pasta vongole (clams) that you can make in 30 minutes.
Do you prefer to cook alone or with others?
I so rarely get to cook with others I don’t know! Sounds like fun, though.
What challenges you the most?
Artichokes.
What are you cooking these days?
For breakfast today, I did a scramble with heirloom tomatoes and ricotta folded in at the last minute. Garnished with scallions and bacon. The ricotta and scallions were left over from a dish last week - grilled apricots, prosciutto and ricotta on grilled bread.
Dinner tonight is a pasta with shrimp and San Marzano tomatoes. The shrimp shells are sauteed to flavor the sauce. So good. Lately we’ve been having a salad that combines stone fruit, mint, mozzarella, and pistachios in a sort of middle-eastern caprese.
What are your staples?
Heirloom tomatoes during the summer. Sometimes a late, after-work meal is simply an entire heirloom sliced up and dressed with olive oil and pepper. Grains. I love how much people and chefs are experimenting with grains. I’m a sucker for a new grain recipe so I’ve got barley, wheat berries, rice, quinoa, all standing by.
What equipment do you use?
The mandolin revolutionized my prep. It lets you whip out paper-thin slices of red onion, radishes, etc. Matchstick slices of apple and celery root. But never, NEVER, use your bare hand to grip the vegetable. This thing sends careless people to the hospital. Cast iron pans. So many meat recipes call for a smoking hot pan. A little hand-held grater for zest, garlic and ginger. So much faster and more ergonomic than the old metal one that stands on the counter.
Have you ever had a disaster in the kitchen?
I’ve ruined countless hollandaises. But the worst was when I dumped a pot of boiling water in a sink with such force that the water splashed back out in one big globule and landed on my crotch. I will NEVER do that again. That was back in the days when I would race through a recipe that I hadn’t fully read.
What’s the most important thing to you when you’re cooking?
If you go beyond food safety - freshness, doneness, hygiene - I’d say have a mental picture of how you want the dish to look when it’s done. I put a lot of energy into the aesthetics of a dish. The appearance goes a long way to creating anticipation for the meal. If something looks boring or too haphazard, your tastebuds have already given up.
Where do you get your ingredients?
Always the Studio City farmers market for meat, vegetables, cheese, bread, even spices. Dried fruit, nuts, fresh olive oil. Next stop is the local supermarket for canned, manufactured items. And because of Ottolenghi, I love going to the local middle-eastern deli/grocery. Pickled lemons, dried limes, just amazing.
Do you find any limitations to your cooking here in the city?
Only that we live in a townhouse with a tiny garden. Grilling in the summer is problematic because of how insanely hot it can get in Los Angeles… And we have to shut all the windows to keep the smoke out.
Who are your favorite people to cook for?
My wife loves eating and appreciates great food. I also love bringing a dish to a party. I can pick out something I do well and just do that one thing perfectly, drop it on the table when I arrive, and then secretly watch people eat it.
What do you do when you don’t feel like cooking?
Sardines on toast with generous cracked pepper. Fresh chips and salsa from the farmers market. Popcorn. I eat a lot of popcorn. We always keep good cheese and crackers. So, when I’m not going to cook and we’re not going to eat out, we call it “foraging”. We just go to the fridge and start piling up all these items on a cutting board. I also freeze some the grain salads and chicken I make and thaw them on weeks that will be dominated by work.
What dishes please you the most/do you regard as your best or signature ones?
Large, composed salads are the most frequent - there’s those amazing raw flavor combinations (mandolin!) - and so healthy you can just eat them with abandon…and a baguette.I’ve been making a pasta dish with prunes, oranges, and bacon that is so easy and a huge crowd pleaser. And fennel. I make so many things with fennel that my wife has to ask me to take a break every now and then.
Can you tell us a great memory of home cooking, yours or someone else’s?
I moved to France in 1990. I had about $350. I was struggling to survive - took several weeks to find a job as a waiter - so to stretch my money and make the days go by, I’d pick up a few things at the open air market every day and cook for myself. I didn’t really know how to cook so I improvised dishes like egg noodles with thai curry paste. And I only had a pocket knife so it would take forever to just chop garlic. I would just mindlessly chop and feel like I was doing everything I could, which was a comfort. It relaxed me and made the stress recede - and I’ve found a refuge in cooking ever since.
If you could add or change something about the way you cook or what’s available to you, what would it be?
Someday I’d like to understand the fundamentals of cooking the way a professional does. The chemistry involved, how sauces are developed and composed. I wish I understood this on an intrinsic level rather than being dependent on recipes.
What’s one thing you’ve learned that you want other home cooks to know?
Buying organic from the farmers market is worth the extra money, if you can possibly afford it. Everything lasts much, much longer so you don’t have to throw stuff out and the flavors can be eye-poppingly rich. Greens should be torn by hand or a plastic serrated knife. Chopping with a sharp steel blade bruises and discolors the leaves.
Photos here courtesy of Roger and Lizzie.
