But the feeling is generally fleeting, like the bitter, tannic impression of a tight, young wine on the tongue that fades as the wine opens and the fruit comes to the fore. I stopped writing here because my life was ridiculously out of balance, and it was taking a toll on my health in the most obvious way. Every meal I ate tied my intestines into knots until my insides felt like macrame. I had no energy. I got migraines. My whole body was tense. And I cried. A lot. Something had to give.

Actually, a lot had to give. So I pared my life down to the minimum. I focused on my 40-hour a week job as the writer and editor for K&L Wine Merchants, started getting regular exercise again, and I began seeing a hypnotist to learn how to manage the stress and the emotional weight of being a food and wine writer with a digestive disorder.

I told myself, when I felt better I would write again. And when I did finally feel better, around the turn of the year, I couldn’t do it. I told myself I would practice living a more balanced life, and if there was room for the extra work I would write. But there was never anything leftover. I was getting ready for my wedding, I was on my honeymoon, I was recovering from my honeymoon. I was gardening. I was traveling for work, for play. I was living and loving it, but there wasn’t anything left for my blog.

And there still isn’t, I’m sad to say. But I am writing. And I would love your support. So if you’ve enjoyed my writing over the past few years, please visit the K&L blog. I’ve been having a blast interviewing winemakers, teaching myself how to edit video (and getting paid for all of it) and I even plan to work in some recipes of my own and my friends, and I’m having fun. And who knows, maybe with a little more time, and a little more practice at this balance thing, there will be a place for me as SpicySaltySweet. Until then…

Raspberry sorbet using invert sugar

The last time I was at Pizzeria Mozza I sat at the bar, stuffed full of tricolore salad and pizza, unable to stop eating the mango and passion fruit sorbets in front of me. I’ve had Dahlia’s gelatos and sorbets hundreds of times, I even watched them being made when the machine first arrived, but this time I was mesmerized. As I lifted the spoon to my mouth time after time I just kept wondering, how in the world did she get them so creamy?

When I had the good fortune of running into Dahlia at a party just a couple weeks later I asked. The answer, apparently, is simple: invert sugar.

Now I admit to geeking out on the science of cooking now and then—I’ve got a soft spot for Alton Brown’s brand of nerdiness—but invert sugar sounds like molecular gastronomy to me. I just like making things from scratch. Nonetheless I was intrigued. Could this one thing really truly improve the texture of my sorbet that much? I had to find out.

Apparently invert sugar really isn’t that high up on the technical scale. It’s made by taking traditional sugar and using an acid—lemon juice, cream of tartar, citric acid—and heat to break the sucrose into equal parts fructose and glucose dissolved in water. The resulting syrup crystallizes more slowly than regular sugar, giving the product it is added to a softer, creamier texture.

While you can buy invert sugar (try Surfas or Gloria’s Cake & Candy Supply in Los Angeles), I decided I wanted to make it myself. (Did I mention I like to make things from scratch?) I had trouble finding a recipe, though, so I decided to experiment. I combined one cup of water, one cup of sugar and ¼ teaspoon of citric acid and simmered it for about 30 minutes and then let it cool.

With my experimental invert sugar on hand, I rinsed off the tart, sweet raspberries I picked with my family at Underwood Family Farms in Simi Valley and ran them through the food processor and then through a fine sieve to get out all the seeds. Some water, the invert sugar and chill time later I found myself scooping out the creamiest, most luscious-textured sorbet I’d made to date, like velvet across the tongue. Even after a few days in the freezer the sorbet, which usually hardens into a block of ice, stayed soft and scoopable. Next up, sugar plum sorbet…inverted of course.

Raspberry Sorbet

4 cups fresh raspberries
1 cup water
1 batch invert sugar*

*invert sugar – 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, ¼ teaspoon citric acid or cream of tartar, simmered for 30 minutes and then cooled.

Puree the raspberries in a blender or food processor. Push through a sieve with the back of a spoon to remove the seeds. Add one cup of water and the invert sugar to the raspberry puree. Stir and refrigerated until thoroughly chilled (about 8 hours). Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

What happened to the crab guy at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market? Read my new post on Squid Ink to find out…

Excuse my dusty cliché, but man does time fly. It’s been more than a month since I’ve written anything here, a month of living by the beach, trying to remember where I put things in my urgency to just get unpacked already, and now it seems that summer is waning with the moon. I’m sorry for my absence; not writing here feels like not talking to your best friend for too long.

But it’s not like I haven’t been writing at all, which is why it’s been a little hard to get back into the groove. In fact, I’ve been keeping up my column for the LA Weekly’s blog, Squid Ink, with stories about lobster trap escape hatches, food stamps at farmers markets, egg safety regulations, sugar shortages, Eat-Ins and farmers market celebrations. And I’ve been cooking, just a little bit, trying to figure out my oven on the not-so-hot days, but mostly making ice cream.

I find the clicking and whirring sounds of the Cuisinart ice cream maker that Matt and Adam lent me quite comforting, a musical interlude before a delightful frozen treat, and I use it every chance I get. The recipe I’ve been working on lately was inspired by the musty, piquant Yerba Buena mint Lily had at her herb stand a few weeks ago. Standing there with Foodwoolf, my face buried in the mint taking long deep breaths, I imagined the aroma interacting with something spicy, something sultry. Chocolate. Chile. Mint.

It took a couple of tries, but the chocolate-chile-mint ice cream I envisioned that day finally came together. Neal and I are still pecking away at the first batch, where I used to crushed chile flakes. The heat in that ice cream was all front-of-the-palate, and it built so that it was a little hard to eat when you got to the bottom of the bowl. I liked the mint element, which was cooling, but there seemed to be a big hole in the middle, like donut, followed by the rich, coating quality of 85 percent Scharffenberger chocolate.

For the second batch, I searched for Fresno chiles, thinking their sweet heat might give the ice cream a rounder flavor. But then I remembered the Ibarra in my cabinet and the smoky, cinnamon-spiced heat that makes Mexican hot chocolate so intriguing. So I opted for the full-flavored ancho chile powder in my cabinet instead, added some fresh-grated Vietnamese cinnamon and toned down the bitterness on the chocolate using 70% Scharffenberger. To quote my friend Bryan, whose wife was a recipient of the first successful batch: “OMG that ice cream you made and brought is absolutely FABULOUS.  Jia-Rui (his wife) woke up talking about it this morning and I just tasted it… OMG. So damn good.”

I think you’ll feel the same way. I loved it, and I don’t even like chocolate that much.

Chocolate Chile Mint Ice Cream

2 cups heavy creamy
¾ cup sugar
3 springs Yerba Buena mint (can substitute spearmint or peppermint), chopped
5 tbsp unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
3 oz chopped 70% cocoa Scharffenberger chocolate or other bittersweet, high-quality chocolate
pinch of salt
1 tsp fresh ground Vietnamese cinnamon
2 tsp ancho chile powder
1 ½ cups whole milk

Heat cream and sugar in a medium saucepan until the sugar dissolves. Add mint and let steep for 30 minutes. Re-warm and whisk in cocoa powder, trying to break up lumps. Bring mixture to a rolling boil and then remove from heat.

Slowly stir in chopped chocolate until fully melted. Add salt, cinnamon and chile powder. Stir until combined. Stir in whole milk. Pour into a storage container and chill overnight.

Strain out mint and freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

But sometimes life calls for change. And Neal’s new job has him sitting in East-West traffic for an hour every night. So I’m going to pack some boxes and paint some walls and take a deep breath. We’ll be closer to the beach and have a whole new neighborhood to explore. There will be new farmers’ markets to check out and a bigger kitchen to play in. I’m going to make the most of our new home, because for the first time ever, I’m not making the move alone.

That said, I’ll probably be offline for a couple of weeks. In the meantime, here’s what I’ve been up to:

A new Farmers’ Market report – my monthly column for Serious Eats.

The first piece for my new food & politics column on the LA Weekly’s blog Squid Ink.

A piece on food blog ethics featuring my writing partner Brooke (aka Foodwoolf) and I in the LA Times.

Red Rock Crab

Call me naïve, but I really didn’t expect the fish smell to last that long. But with this morning’s shower, I have finally managed to remove the last olfactory remnants of chum and seaweed and fish guts lingering in my hair and on my skin from Saturday’s crabbing trip in Santa Barbara. The story I was working on for EdibleLA won’t come out until the fall, but I was starting to worry that the salty, slightly fermented perfume might last that long too.

Paul Chopping Chum

Saturday’s trip was far from a pleasure cruise, not that I expected or wanted it to be. The Sea Fever, my subject John Wilson’s boat, is meant for one thing—catching crab and lobster. There is no bathroom, just a bucket in the small cabin down below, no running water to wash your face if you’re stomach is pitching with the sea, and no comfy chairs to sit and watch Roxy the Golden Retriever bark at the dolphins and seals playing around the boat as John and his deckhand Paul haul in another trap clammering with crab.

Neal came with me, grimacing across the bed through the last of the moonlight being cast through our bedroom window when the alarm went off at 4 a.m. Fueled by a pot of coffee, we flew up the coast to the Santa Barbara Harbor, stepping onto John’s 45-foot boat just after 6, the pale grey dawn pushing through the mists settled over the calm ocean. As we pulled out of the harbor, I asked if there was anything I could do to help. My offer was met by silence. As the boat rocked across the waves to the first crab trap I had to bury my urge to give into the building seasickness. I was on assignment. I couldn’t spend the day looking over the side. I braced myself, snapping pictures of our two-man crew preparing for the day’s work.

John Examining Crab

Unfortunately, Neal wasn’t so fortunate. He spent the entire morning running between the makeshift bed in the cabin where he splayed out, noise canceling headphones on his head, trying to keep the world steady, and the side of the boat, Roxy licking his hand sweetly. Around noon, up near the Gaviota pier, John offered to drop Neal off. All he had to do was jump about two and a half feet from the boat to a rope, avoid a couple of baby seals, and climb to land. He did it willingly, smiling for the first time all day as he waved goodbye from the steadiness of the old pier.

In the meantime, John and Paul hooked buoys along an invisible line, looping them around an industrial-sized reel that assisted in pulling 150 to 200 pounds of vinyl-coated steel and crab to the surface. The duo moved swiftly and efficiently, John sorting through the crab, tossing pregnant females and specimens whose shells were too soft (crab are molting this time of year) with a pitcher’s arm back into the drink. As the last crabs landed in a bucket, Paul placed a container stuffed with chopped mackerel and a halibut carcass back into the trap. When John found the spot he wanted to drop it back, they heaved it over the side, the orange buoys skimming the rolling waves as the rest drifted slowly back to the ocean floor—150, 160, 180 feet below the surface.

Paul Waiting to Cast a Trap

Between traps we talked. We talked about crabbing and lobster catching, fishing and the bureaucratic b.s. that makes a life at sea at combination of hard physical work, loneliness and politics. But to get all that you’ll have to read the EdibleLA piece this fall. Until then, here are a couple of photos of the day to whet your palate.

Roxy the Seafaring Dog Never Gets Seasick

Note: You can pick up gorgeous Red Rock crab like these, as well as Santa Barbara Yellow Rock crab, line-caught halibut and red snapper from John Wilson at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market on Sundays. John will also have Spiny Lobsters this fall.

Blueberry Lemon Verbena Ice Cream

“Nothin’ but blue skies for now on…”

Anyone who tells you Seasonal Affective Disorder is a load of crap should be subjected to a Pacific Northwest winter. Eugene, Oregon, where I went to graduate school, layered days upon days of glary, gossamer grey light. It’s not that it rained that much there. Don’t get me wrong, it rained. But the greyness was what was most oppressive, climate-coated  emotional shackles. I prefer the monotony of 300 days of sunshine. Blue skies, blue skies with puffy white clouds, blue skies and wind-whipped icicle cold air, as long as there’s sunshine, I’m happy.

Which is to say, that my least favorite month living in Southern California is June. The hazy, foggy mornings that fall under the umbrella of June Gloom are such a downer. I find it hard to wake up, hard to concentrate, hard to do anything but laze around and watch baseball. And since May Grey seems to precede June Gloom with more frequency than it used to, by half way through June I’m cranky as all get out. And by the behavior of my fellow Angelenos, I’d say it’s getting to them too.

Fortunately, I’ve learned that the shortest route to an attitude adjustment has to be ice cream. Take a crying kid and give her an ice cream cone and those tears quickly dissipate into a dirty-faced smile.  Take a curmudgeony grown-up on a hot, sticky day out for gelato and they’re bound to relax. So last week I decided to take my bad mood out for some ice cream.

Inspiration wasn’t too far off. As I was snapping pictures at the Hollywood Farmers’ market for my monthly contribution to Serious Eats’ Market Scene (which, incidentally, was about June Gloom too—there seems to be a theme here), I tried gorgeous tangy-sweet blueberries from Jimenez Family Farm, newcomers to the market. The navy blue orbs were like nature’s Pop Rocks, exploding with flavor that was surprising for this early in the season. Armed with blueberries, I wandered over to Lily’s herb stand and, sniffing around, discovered some lemon verbena. An herb native to South America, it has powerful lemony scent with just a hint of grassy undertones. It’s a nice complement to fruit salad, makes for a refreshing tisane and, I thought, would add a nice lemon quality to the ice cream without adding more acidity. When I told Lily what I was thinking she raised her dark eyebrows skeptically.

The combination of the fruit and the herb was the delightful, summery remedy I was looking for. And it’s cerulean color, tinged with purple, and its creamy richness would have to suffice for blue skies, at least until July.

Blueberry Lemon Verbena Ice Cream

2 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup sugar
1 oz lemon verbena
12 oz blueberries, rinsed
pinch of salt
5 egg yolks

Stir together the blueberries, a pinch of salt and sugar in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat until the berries start to give up their liquid. Add sprigs of lemon verbena and let steep for about 45 minutes. Remove the lemon verbena and puree in a blender until smooth. Pour the blueberry mixture through a sieve to remove seeds and skins, then add back to the pot and stir in the milk over medium-low heat.

Pour the heavy cream into a medium bowl and set a strainer over it. Set aside.

In another medium bowl whisk your egg yolks until they’re smooth. Slowly pour the warmed blueberry mixture into the eggs, mixing constantly, to temper the yolks. (Do this too fast and you’ll end up with blueberry scrambled eggs.) Transfer the blueberry custard base back into your pot and heat again over medium-low until the mixture thickens slightly. You’ll know it’s ready when you can drag your finger through the batter on the back of a spoon or spatula and it doesn’t run together.

Pour batter through the strainer into the cream. Stir to combine, cover with plastic and chill overnight. Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

Mise en place. In baking, have everything measured ahead of time.

Salt and heat kill yeast.

Kneading the dough. Do it by hand to get a feel for the texture.

Shaping the loaf. Press and roll.

The loaves, cooling from the oven.

What the final pumpernickel loaf looks like.

Fresh bread and butter

I got really excited when I heard food writer Michael Ruhlman had a new book, until I heard the title—Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking. I hate math. I mean I loathe it. Math makes me feel like I have poisonous spiders crawling all over my body, like I’m in a horror movie and I know what comes next but I’m helpless to stop it. Just writing about how math turns me into the same anxious little girl who scribbled in her journal about how mean her mommy was making her try to memorize multiplication tables.

Fortunately I’ve found my math anxiety doesn’t get in the way of much. Sure, I occasionally tip the pizza guy really well, but I just chock that up to good karma instead of my inability to do math on the fly. I can pay my bills. And with the calculator and the Little Chef converter app on my cell phone, I’m pretty much good to go, even in the kitchen. Except for one thing—baking.

I’ve wanted to make bread for a few years, and I even bought Peter Reinhart’s the Bread Baker’s Apprentice to start learning. But I haven’t been able to get past the second chapter, the one where he starts talking about…ratios. All of a sudden Reinhart starts sounding like the teacher from Charlie Brown in my head—all whoa whoa, whoa whoa whoa whoa. Then I have to put the book down or risk hyperventilating.

Not one to be ruled by fear, I decided to enlist in an intro to bread baking class at my local Sur La Table last Saturday, and I recruited my friend Suzy to come with me. The recipes sounded basic enough: brioche, pumpernickel raisin bread, French baguette, foccaccia and cranberry bread. They would even teach us how to make a biga, which I hoped would add the tangy complexity missing from my pizza dough. The instructor, Tina Rogers, was young and set us all immediately at ease, throwing dough on the work surface like it were a flat basketball. There was nothing delicate or precious about her presentation, which made the subject seem less intimidating. In class we moved around, mixing, kneading and shaping dough to proof and bake. She explained the biga, and how to feed it, and I felt confident, assured that I could go home and start making bread. (If you want a fun, carbohydrate-filled afternoon, simple explanations and some hands-on experience, I definitely recommend taking the class.)

And while I know I could reproduce most of the breads in class, I’m still at loss when it comes what to do next with my starter. I’ve made my biga; I even named it Lester, after the intrepid Red Sox starting pitcher Jon Lester, who came back from battling lymphoma to pitch a no-hitter last year. But the recipe Tina gave us was for a biga to be used in black olive bread, which I don’t want to make. And Reinhart’s books says that your starter’s ingredients have to be in direct proportion to the rest of the recipe’s ingredients, which to me means I can’t just go throwing my biga into my pizza dough willy-nilly, right? And the note on her recipe sheet says the biga will only last for a few days, but I wanted a “starter” something that I could tend to like a child, feeding and burping, feeding and burping. And every time I read another bread-baking blog post, or try to re-read Reinhart, I get further from knowing what to do.

All I can think of is the warm crumb of fresh-baked bread on my tongue, and the yeasty sweetness that will fill the air if I just make this hurdle. Maybe it’s time to call Nancy Silverton, the queen of bread and founder of La Brea Bakery, for some advice. Maybe it’s time to read Ruhlman.

What, no Alice? I wasn’t sure it was possible to make a movie about food politics, particularly about local and sustainable food, without the obligatory homage to the queen, Ms. Alice Waters. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not among the nouveau-Alice-bashers—I lover her food, her cookbooks and what she stands for—but I don’t think the she carries the weight of the sustainability movement on her back like a sherpa up Mount Everest. These days there are more climbers.

Fresh, a new documentary by Sofia Joanes, aims to shine the spotlight on the farmers, journalists, markets and academics that are working day and day out to re-invent our food system as something that is healthier, more sustainable and more accessible to our entire population. If you’ve read Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, or if you saw the documentary Food Fight last fall, then you’ll probably recognize Polyface Farms owner and pioneer Virginia farmer Joe Salatin and Will Allen, founder of, a education-oriented community farm and store in Milwaukie, Wisconsin, who both play a prominent roll in this well-made film. Joanes doesn’t just point out the “evils” of the industrial food system—food deserts, obesity, poor rural economies, more prevalent and antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria like salamonella and E. Coli—she mounts a counterattack to the arguments made for the status quo that say local or organic (or both) are too expensive and inefficient to feed our nation. She interviews independent market owners like David Ball, who’s Missouri market chain, Hen House, works directly with the Good Natured Family Farms coop to get food produced by small, local family farmers like meat, eggs, cheese and produce to people in the community for a fair price, creating jobs and keeping more money in the local economy.

My qualm with this film and those like it is this: who is the intended audience? I requested a press screener because I missed the movie when it came to the film festival in Orange County last month, but I’m already committed to change. Will the people who need to see this, the politicians, the traditional farmers, the poor people being exploited in our inner city food deserts see Fresh? It may have only taken 50 years to shift our food system to one reliant on the industrial food chain, to chain supermarkets touting shelves chock full of processed corn and soybeans, but it will take a revolutionary grassroots movement to turn it into something better.

Get your mom to a screening of Fresh in your area, or contact Sofia to set one up. It doesn’t look like the revolution will be televised—but at least it might be available on DVD.