Roux & old favorites

After probably a year of being out of commission, our beloved favorite, chicken marsala, was resurrected last night and it was as good as ever. After we moved out of our old ‘patment in Palms, life seemed to turn on its head and all the cozy cute comforts we once enjoyed were soon swapped for making due with phone calls and going days on end without seeing each other. In short: things were busted and we desperately missed our domestic bliss.

When the floor fell out from under us yet again on hearing that grad school wasn’t going to happen for me this year, we shuffled our priorities and Nick opted to move in to a dog-friendly apartment in order to maximize our time together with baby puppy.

He soon found a nice, newly-renovated condo about a block and a half from his old place. There were pros and cons right from the get go. For one, it was smaller than his old place, but all the appliances were new and the building itself was newer also. The old place had nicer landscaping and a large balcony that looked out onto a nice vista (although Nick only became aware of just how nice his view was when he pulled back his blinds to start cleaning for his move out). The new place had a decent sized balcony but it looked over the parking lot and is subject to the unfortunate poopy smells that waft up from the people who live below home, both of whom have dogs and neither of whom are properly cleaned up after. Next door, there are the world’s loudest children and their equally loud mother, whose parenting techniques are dubious at best (i.e. swearing at her kids when she hears them swearing, threatening to charge them rent if they continue looking at her funny, etc.). But his sole objective in moving was to find a place that would allow puppies because having at least the semblance of an adorable, integrated family was high on Nick’s list of priorities.

Within about a week and a half, we had him moved in. And that brings me to our first whole day there together and our first home-cooked meal in who knows how long. Without really thinking, Nick decided that the meal he wanted to christen his new kitchen (diligently scrubbed and disinfected by yours truly after the previous tenants decided to leave it as dirty as possible) would be our old classic, chicken marsala. Only instead o using corn starch as a thickener like we used to, he was going to aim a little higher and try to make a roux…for the first time ever.

Thanks to our habitual viewings of various show on Food Network, we came to believe that making a roux was a tricky feat on account of the fact that if you burn it, your sauce will be ruined. We decided to take a shot at it and abide by the simple roux rule we found online: for as much butter as you melt, stir in the equal amount of flour. Since our marsala sauce comes out a little on the brown side, we opted to make our roux in between blond and brown. However, making our chicken marsala requires several burners to be going at once, and Nick finished his roux a little early. “What do I do now? Do I just leave it here?” he asked, somehow assuming I know anything about using a roux. “Sure, we won’t need it for a while. Just let it sit there.”

Who knew that actually turned out to be right? Apparently, if you incorporate your roux into your sauce while it’s still hot, you risk the chance of having your butter separate. When the time came for us to actually mix the roux into our delicious sauce (in case you missed it: garlic, mushrooms, 1 cup chicken stock, 1 cup white wine) it was a lovely, warm temperature. We whisked it in little by little until our sauce became a beautiful, opaque brown. A little more time for reducing and it was lovingly poured over a hefty helping of chicken and shells and sprinkled with chopped up turkey bacon for love and good measure.

The end result? A sauce just as delicious but considerably richer than any of its predecessors. Nick said it was fitting that this was the meal we chose to make for the first time there. It’s one of our best recipes and has also symbolized our cozy home. And even baby Moana, who was anxiously staring at everything we were doing while cooking, got her fair share of turkey bacon as a reward for her unparalleled levels of cute.

Food is Love: A Guide to My Affair with L.A.

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I always have been -and likely will always be- and out and proud Angeleno. I was born in Hollywood and raised in the San Gabriel Valley, but life was not complete if I was not making routine treks into the city with my family (mostly for food, but always for love).

Over the years, I gradually began expanding and adding to that first culinary infatuation. Now, I can’t visit any of my favorite spots without calling to mind the things that first made me…a Massiel.

So browse through, and take my word for it: I wouldn’t recommend them if they weren’t good!

For the Love of Art and Pizza

Note: If you're my Facebook friend, you can view the full album of our Valentine's Day adventure

According to Nick, several of his work buddies sassed him over the fact that he planned to take his girlfriend out for pizza on Valentine’s Day.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go to Geisha House or something?” he asked after they convinced him that going through with his original plan would make him the worst boyfriend in the world.

“Geisha House? Are you kidding me?” I retorted, reassuring him that his co-workers didn’t know me like he did, reassuring him to trust his first instincts, making it abundantly clear that, to me, pizza at Folliero’s in Highland Park is the peak of romance.

So we set off for our day of mutual adoration, stopping first at one of our favorite spots in the whole city, the Getty Center. Although, judging by the ridunkulous traffic waiting for us on Sepulveda Blvd., a lot of other people in L.A. were thinking along the same lines. After being diverted away from a full parking structure toward a remote lot, and then proceeding to wait for full shuttles to take us back the way we already came, we made it up to the beautiful Getty where, thanks to sprawling grounds and people’s general disregard for art, it wasn’t all that hard to find peace amid the crowds.

It was a beautiful, sunny day. Not too hot, not too cold. The clear skies allowed for an uninterrupted view of the city below, and Nick and I reveled in the cuteness that so often irritates many of our friends.

But after having made our way through most of the galleries, and having enjoyed a security guard telling off some ragamuffin kid for climbing one of the Getty trees, we decided to move along to phase two of our Valentine’s Day: Folliero’s.

Before moving back to Palms in November, I was a happy Highland Park resident for nearly four months. Although the bus/train commute to school, my unpredictable hours in the wretched Digital Lab in Annenberg, and the emotionally trying times I was going through facilitated my eventual relocation, the months I did spend in Highland Park were some of the most gastronomically glorious of my entire life. The crowning jewel of this experience, of course, being Folliero’s.

When my sister first gave me her driving tour of Highland Park in the weeks before I initially moved in, I spotted Folliero’s and its cute brick front as she zipped up Figueroa, pointing out the original Forever 21, the happy ethnic families, and the encroaching hipsters. Of course, I was oblivious to all of them. I was busy making a mental note to go back to that adorable restaurant and sample their wares. Sample I did, and it was love at first bite.

We came, we saw, we conquered

Now, several Yelp reviews will tell you that Folliero’s has “slippery” pizza. I don’t deny this. The cheese almost refuses to stay on the bread, and through some trick of pizza engineering, the cooks at Folliero’s decided it would be a much better idea to bury your toppings under the cheese than leaving them on top. Trust me, though. None of this matters! Their sauce is light, fresh, not too salty, not too thick. Sure, it has a touch of soupiness that might be unappealing to those who prefer a chunkier sauce, but with Folliero’s pizza, the soupier the sauce, the more you’ll just end up wanting to drink it all up after all your pizza is gone.

After reassuring Nick a few more times that this is really what I wanted on Valentine’s Day, we rolled up and saw, much to his pleasure, that we were not the only couple celebrating Valentine’s Day there. On came the salad, on came the garlic bread, on came the beautiful, large, pepperoni, mushroom, and bell pepper pizza with love in every bite.

Needless to say, that poor pizza didn’t stand a chance. Barely born from the oven a few minutes earlier, it was unceremoniously devoured a few minutes later. I didn’t need to be overcharged for drinks and micro sushi at Geisha House. I didn’t want to be wined and dined over roses and candlelight. I didn’t need impressive displays of money-wasting in any sense. I wanted my Nick. I wanted a day with my city. I wanted Folliero’s. It was the best Valentine’s Day I could have ever asked for.