Valentine's Day cupcakes, a little late

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Just found these pictures - the best of the Valentine's Day cupcakes my younger son and I made together:

Yes, I realize they're derivative.

In case you were wondering whether the whole Kelly Ripa / Cake Boss thing gave my cake decorating skills a big boost: uh, no. I had to make three batches of frosting to get one that came out right, and I never did get it stiff enough to pipe into elaborate swirls and stars, which was my original plan. The writing above is in white chocolate. Let's just say that these two were the best of the several dozen I tried writing on.

Ah well.

Pictures of homemade pizza

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[Scroll down for luscious pizza photos]

We go through phases with pizza. I made it a lot when the kids were much younger - such a novelty for them, playing with the dough, spreading the sauce, sprinkling the cheese. And then, I don't know, we kind of forgot about it.

But it's reappeared in the past few months, maybe because our kids' tastes in pizza toppings is finally catching up with ours. Michael and the boys always want bacon on their pizzas. I can take or leave the bacon, but I love bitter greens. We've all been enjoying the green garlic pizza I wrote about in my LA Cooking Examiner column last week. And when I found chanterelles for $10 a pound at the farmers market last week, I knew mushroom pizza was on the menu for lunch.

I would give you a recipe for my pizza dough, but I do it by feel now. It's more or less two teaspoons of yeast, three cups of flour, a healthy teaspoon of sea salt, and a slosh (maybe a quarter cup) of olive oil. Water until it's the right consistency. Let the mixer go, with the dough hook, a good 10 minutes, or even 15 if you've got the patience. Rise, divide, roll or stretch, done.

The pizzas below have no sauce; I spread a thin, thin layer of anchovy paste on the dough before adding the toppings and cheese. And another recently discovered technique seems to be working for me: I preheat my baking sheets in a blazing hot oven. I don't own a pizza peel, so I roll and top the dough on parchment. When I'm ready to bake, I carry the parchment to the oven (carefully), slide out the rack, and place it on the baking sheet. Or I bring the hot baking sheet to the counter and slide the parchment from there.

So, without further ado, pizza pictures, as promised.

Pizza with bacon and green garlic - my somewhat picky younger son preferred this one

  

I roasted the chanterelles in a hot oven before putting them on the pizza to intensify their flavor

 

Pizza with bacon and chanterelles - Michael's favorite

 

Sauteed chopped purple Russian kale

 

Pizza with green garlic and kale - this one was all mine

Spring scrambled eggs with avocado by Emery

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It all started with the avocado tree in our backyard.

This is an old, temperamental tree. We've lived here 13 years, and I still can't figure out what makes it tick and what ticks it off. Most years it flowers, then drops most of its blossoms before setting fruit. In those years we get maybe seven or eight avocados total, and more often than not the squirrels knock them down and pock-mark the outsides before we can bring them inside to ripen. Avocados, I have discovered, will not ripen on the tree - this may not be true in the world at large, but it's true in our yard.

But there have been a few magical years like this one. In a magical year, the tree is happy and generous, and in those years we get three or four dozen round, plump avocados. They hang on the tree until I borrow the long-handled picker from our neighbors. Or, this year, until eight-year-old Weston has a playdate with a new friend who casually scales the sides of buildings (I'm not kidding; my husband witnessed it). The avocado tree posed no challenge for him, though Weston had never found the route. Up the tree went the friend, up behind him went Weston, and down came two dozen avocados in one afternoon. Harvest time.

Here's the problem with picking two dozen avocados at the same time. Five days later, you're stuck with one big bowl of guacamole. So we've been eating avocados, and avocados, and avocados. Weston prefers to mash them himself on his plate with lemon and salt, then dip everything from chips to daikon radish slices to steamed snap peas. But Emery, the other morning, was thinking about the "California omelette" he sometimes orders at Norm's (the closest thing we have to an East coast diner). Thus was born the Spring Scramble.

Emery's Spring Scramble in the morning light of our kitchen

It's simple, really: Eggs scrambled with green onions, chopped bacon and cheese, topped generously with slices of fresh avocado. Emery put salsa on his, although not until after the picture above was taken. The avocado cools the heat of the eggs and the salsa and gives every bite a creamy background. And veggies for breakfast, too. There's nothing better.

Emery's spring scrambled eggs with green onion, bacon, cheese and avocado

• 3 eggs, beaten
• 1 tsp butter
• 2 green onions, chopped
• 2 Tbsp cooked bacon, chopped (we cheat and use the crumbled bacon in a bag from Costco - it finds its way into many a dish around here, and it's perfect for eggs)
• 2 Tbsp shredded Mexican blend cheese (or whatever cheese you prefer)
• 1 avocado, peeled and sliced
• salsa (optional)

Heat a nonstick pan over medium heat. Melt the butter, then add the green onions. Pour over the beaten eggs, then sprinkle on the bacon and cheese. Scramble gently until the eggs are cooked to your liking. Remember that the cheese will be runny after the eggs are done, so it may look wet for longer than you expect.

Put the eggs on a plate, top with the avocado and salsa if you're using it, and dig in. Makes breakfast for one hungry 11-year-old boy.

Jamie Oliver at TED: Food and our future

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Take 20 minutes to watch  Jamie Oliver's talk from this year's TED conference, on the need to teach America's children about food. Some of the statistics at the beginning seem hyperbolic, and it floors me that children in a West Virginia classroom can't correctly identify a tomato, but maybe I've been living in California too long. In any case, it's well worth the time.

And now, if this has put you in the mood for some fresh, non-processed recipes you can make for your friends and loved ones, try these:

Chicken paillards with Greek cucumber salad
"Dinner party" salmon with mustard, wheat germ and tarragon
Tilapia cakes

Creamy cauliflower soup

Broiled chicken with smoked paprika
Kale with tahini sauce
Chili bianco with chicken, white beans and tomatillos

Trinidad in my kitchen, via Virgin America

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My trip home from Kelly Ripa's Cake Off for a Cause last Thursday didn't start well.

First there was the snowstorm. Technically, that was on Wednesday. But there was lots of anxiety into Thursday about how backed up the flight schedules would be. Thankfully, Virgin America was humming efficiently as usual, and my plane left more or less on time.

But when I got on the plane I realized that I was in the last row, aisle seat - right in front of the bathrooms. The plane was packed, so no opportunity to move. When you're in the aisle in the last row, people waiting for the bathroom end up standing with their asses in your face; there's no way around it, really. But it's not much fun for the person sitting down.

And then, to top it off, my seat-back entertainment system was broken. I could see the TV picture, but the only sound available was loud, unrelated music, which didn't respond to any channel-changing or volume adjustment. What's more, because it wasn't working properly, it wouldn't let me order any food. Sigh. The flight attendants tried to fix it, but no luck. Fortunately I had my laptop, and the in-flight wifi worked fine. But the wifi was also working for the two high-school-age sisters sitting to my right, and they spent the first four hours of the flight trying to engage (admittedly cute) young men in dorm rooms around the country via Skype. Loudly. With much giggling.

I was not in a good mood.

But food blogging came to my rescue. I overheard Bill, one of the flight attendants, say to his colleague Johann, "That chicken you made was terrific!" I butted right into their conversation. "What kind of chicken did you make?" I asked. They looked at me strangely - I guess it might have come across as rude - so I explained about my blog, how I write about other people's recipes, how I'm part of this subculture that loves hearing about what other people are cooking.

 Virgin America flight attendants Johann and Julia

We bonded, the flight crew and I. Johann let me taste his chicken - Trinidad stew chicken, a recipe he learned from his mother growing up on his native Caribbean island. It was delicious: dark, sweet and spicy, tender and the tiniest bit smoky. I loved it. I told them about the Cake Off, meeting the Cake Boss, decorating cakes with my fellow food bloggers. And then, after we'd talked about how much fun it would be to make his native Trinidadian foods together, just when I thought I'd convinced Johann to write down the recipe for me, he threw me a curve ball:

"You know," he said, "we're in town this Saturday on layover. The whole day."

And my instincts kicked in. "You should all come over for lunch!" I heard myself saying.

And, in one of those no-way-you're-kidding-are-you-serious happy endings, they did.

 Johann, Jose and Bill in my backyard

Well, two of them came over, anyway - Julia was feeling ill and stayed back at the hotel. I picked up Johann and Bill and Bill's partner Jose at a hotel near LAX in the late morning. We stopped at the grocery store on the way home for chicken breasts and thighs, okra, spinach, herbs, and "smoked bones" (we used pork necks, but ham hocks or smoked turkey necks work too). And then Johann and I made a delicious lunch of Trinidad stew chicken, callaloo, and rice. This was a particular treat because Los Angeles, unlike New York or Washington or much of the Eastern seaboard, has relatively few people with Caribbean backgrounds, and Caribbean food is hard to find here.

 Johann at my stove

Johann had planned ahead. From his home in D.C., he'd brought a few essential and hard-to-find Caribbean ingredients:

 Browning, a caramel syrup; jerk seasoning; salted, smoky butter

First Johann made a "fresh marinade" for the chicken, filling the food processor with bunches of parsley, cilantro, thyme, green onions, and chives, plus a big knob of ginger, and blending it all up with vinegar. He washed the chicken in lemon water, then added some marinade and let it sit for about half an hour.

Chicken in the fresh marinade

Then Johann did something I'd never seen before: He caramelized sugar in hot oil. If you think sugar syrup on its own gets hot, you should see it bubbling in hot oil. He cooked about 1/3 cup of sugar in 1/4 cup of canola oil until it was brown and foamy:

Caramelizing sugar in hot oil

Then in went the chicken and its marinade, some jerk seasoning, lemon juice, a bit of mustard, and salt and pepper. He brought it to a boil, turned it down, covered the pot, and let it stew about 45 minutes, until the chicken was tender.

Trinidad stew chicken, ready to serve

Meantime, Johann put up the callaloo. Into the pot went frozen okra, frozen spinach, some butternut squash, the smoked meat, coconut milk, salt and pepper, and a hunk of that salted butter, which turns out to be some kind of margarine but is somehow treated so that it smells like a cross between bacon and cheese. This cooked for about 45 minutes, too; Johann removed the meat and blended it smooth with an immersion blender. It had the texture of creamed spinach, but a completely different flavor.

 

Top, callaloo ingredients go into the pot; above, the finished callaloo

We made some plain rice and served it all up to a hungry crowd of five grownups and five kids. Only one kid (my younger) thought the chicken was too spicy. Everyone else devoured it. One of the eight-year-olds ate three pieces of chicken, or possibly four.

Lunch is served!

It was one of the most fun afternoons I've spent with virtual strangers in a long time. We talked about everything from travel to politics to the state of the American economy. Of course, they're strangers no more; we were planning their next Los Angeles layover around the table as we lingered over the strawberry rhubarb cobbler I made for dessert. Not Caribbean, alas, but certainly emblematic of Los Angeles in the spring. Yes, sorry to rub it in for all you non-Californians: February is spring here in southern California.

So what's on the menu next time? Johann's itching to make us some Trinidad curry. And roti came up in conversation as well. We'll have to see. Meantime, you can bet that next time I'm flying across the country, I'll check with Johann and Bill to see which days they're on duty. I love making new friends - and this time I have food blogging to thank!