Amy Scattergood

All We Want For Christmas: A Wish List From The LA Weekly Food Team

It's that time of year, when material and consumer lust the joy of giving is upon us. There are a million food-related gift guides out there, many of them touting all that's new and exciting in the world of cooking gadgets and indulgent eating. But I thought, rather that scour the web for gift ideas ... More >>

Truffle Bitters: The Truffle Oil of Cocktails?

If you ask 10 food writers what their least favorite food is, about 8 of them will say "truffle oil." A few weeks ago, Amy Scattergood and I were discussing a theoretical top-10 list of ingredients chefs should never use again, and we decided 1-10 would all just say "truffle oil." Fake truffle flavo ... More >>

5 Picks for DineLA's Summer Restaurant Week

Next week kicks off DineLA's first ever summer-session Restaurant Week, which consists of discounted prix-fixe lunches and dinners at some of the city's most popular restaurants, available from July 16 to 27. For those who've never experienced Restaurant Week, over 300 restaurants from Santa Monica ... More >>

10 Best Foie Gras Dishes in Los Angeles

On July 1, the boom finally drops: The country's first statewide ban on foie gras goes into effect in California, making it illegal to serve or sell. For more on this, check out our critic Besha Rodell's consideration of the Last Days of Foie Gras. In honor of the work by chefs and kitchen staff do ... More >>

Cookbooks Panel at LitFest Pasadena

Cookbooks have long faced competition from magazines and newspapers. But now, it's the Internet Age. Print publications are putting their recipes online, and websites such as Epicurious and Food help you find instructions for virtually any dish with just a few clicks. Meanwhile, blogs are offering t ... More >>

Elina Shatkin's Exit Interview: Top 10 Questions for Food Writers

After 16 glorious, fatty months, I'm filing my last story for L.A. Weekly. Instead of a windy "fare thee well" post, I decided to conduct my own exit interview, answering the top 10 questions I am asked. This has been an amazing job, and I was lucky to have it. I was even more lucky to work for and ... More >>

Golden Road Brewing Introduces Craft Beer Cans to L.A. County

Local canned craft beer will hit L.A.'s supermarket shelves for the first time later this week, and we have Tony Yanow and Meg Gill to thank for it. Gill, the president and co-founder of Golden Road Brewing in Atwater Village, knows a thing or two about canned beer. In 2007, after graduating from ... More >>

Trees Of Antiquity: Where To Buy Your Heirloom Apple, Apricot, Peach Sure, "Flavor Grenade" Seedlings

flickr user thomitheosAn Apple-Filled Backyard​Most farmers market discoveries tend to involve a new way cook those black trumpet mushrooms or choose a Crenshaw melon. But some days, you just get lucky. Or perhaps it was our discussion with a few farmers about spaders (a device that tills the ... More >>

10 Best Bakeries in Los Angeles

A. ScattergoodBread At Milo & Olive​San Francisco sourdough? You may have noticed beneath that smoky (wood-burning oven?) haze, L.A. has a new whole grain baguette, flaky croissant (even at LAX) and yes, crusty sourdough advantage. Here are our picks for the 10 Best Bakeries in L.A.. It's the ... More >>

Cops Raid Rawesome Foods; Owner James Stewart Arrested

Amy ScattergoodAuthorities raid Rawesome Foods in Venice, Calif.​[Update, 2:36 p.m.: The official word from the DA's office is that Stewart, Palmer & Bloch were arrested on criminal conspiracy charges stemming from the alleged illegal production and sale of unpasteurized goat milk, goat cheese ... More >>

Squid Ink Food Writers' Most Reviled Childhood Dinners

southerbornandbredgirl/flickrFried chicken livers​ With food, one person's penance is another's pleasure. Many parents view dinner-time as an opportunity, not just to share food and company with their beloved offspring, but also to exert control. Sometimes kids are picky and sometimes parent ... More >>

Food Fight: Saucy Little Shrimp

Amy ScattergoodCamarones al Vapor​ The easiest way to gross out those friends of ours who are less inclined to adventurous eating is to serve them something that actually looks like what it is. Ground mystery meat in a Jack-in-the-Box taco goes unquestioned, but things like whole fish, crab l ... More >>

Loafin': Top 5 Bakery Breads

Amy ScattergoodChallah-in-process at Stoneground.​ "Don't fill up on bread," a few million parents have warned, seated around a trattoria table, a basket of steaming slices and a cup of olive oil at its center. Their children have never listened, and it's no wonder. Bread is a much better fo ... More >>

What's in Season at the Farmers Markets: First Cherries of the Season

Amy ScattergoodEarly cherries from Murray Family Farms​ The earliest hint that the seasons are starting to switch from spring to summer is the baskets, bowls, and piles of early sweet and sour cherries on local market tables. We started watching the calendar when the artichokes showed up. On ... More >>

Seed to Skillet: Learn Home Gardening Secrets at the Arboretum

Amy Scattergood​ We have heard many times that you should never get high on your own supply, but what if that high comes from fresh jalapeños in your burrito, or a caprese salad with just-plucked tomatoes and basil? Jimmy Williams & Susan Heeger, authors of the home-gardening manual and cookb ... More >>

José Andrés, Ferran Adriá & Juan Mari Arzak Coming to LA

Amy ScattergoodChef José Andrés.​[Update: We're told that the event is (unsurprisingly) full, but those who RSVP will be added to the waiting list.] Spanish chefs José Andrés, Ferran Adriá and Juan Mari Arzak will pop up in Los Angeles for what's being billed as "a discussion on innovati ... More >>

L.A. Luxury Chocolate Salon This Sunday in Pasadena

miss karen/Flickr​Car freaks have the Auto Show. Comic fans get their Con. Even Trekkies have their own gatherings. But this weekend friends of the cacao bean have their day in the sun at the Los Angeles Luxury Chocolate Salon.

Squid Ink Among the Best Food Blogs in the Nation

​And now a brief message from LA Weekly's Editor, Drex Heikes. Amy Scattergood, able keeper of this blog, is not one to tout her own fare, but others will. Via Poynter, the Association of Food Journalists has deemed Squid Ink the second best food blog in the land. Not bad for a blog that beg ... More >>

Chef Tattoos: The Utilitarian Version

Amy ScattergoodWendy Liu, former cook at Church & State​ Tattoos in the kitchen can articulate a lot of things: personal history, pictorial resumes, culinary idées fixes, embarrassing testaments to off-duty binges, a reminder that the chronically overworked chef in question has real family m ... More >>

The Importance of Butter: Some Chefs Make Their Own

Amy Scattergood​ Some might argue that the integrity of a restaurant can be measured by the quality of its bread and butter. At the best restaurants, bread and butter isn't just a hunger staver--it should present an enticing prelude to a meal, an important first impression. At Marché, Anisett ... More >>

Buns on the Run at Pasadena's PappaRich Coffeeshop

Amy Scattergoodbreakfast at PappaRich's​ Critics of McDonald's sometimes claim that its hamburgers are engineered for addictiveness, that somewhere in the chemical plants of New Jersey swarms of lab-coated scientists tabulate human response to carefully calibrated doses of umami. But when you ... More >>

Best of L.A.: Food and Drink

Got an Artful Picture of Last Night's Tasting Menu or Food Truck? Join LA Weekly's Flickr Pool

Judging by the amount of flashes you see going off at restaurants these days, taking pictures of your dinner is about as common as actually eating it. Maybe there are a lot more people arting out their living rooms with framed photographs of Korean barbecue and Kumamoto oysters, pommes frites and la ... More >>

Market Report: Pears at Penryn a Persimmon Update (Say That 5 X Fast)

At the Santa Monica farmers market yesterday morning, farmer Jeff Rieger of Penryn Orchard Specialties wanted to talk about persimmons. On the table were crates of Muscat de Hambourg grapes (the last day for them). Yali Chinese pears, with their "hint of star anise" (a couple more weeks). Mutsu, als ... More >>

Mark Peel's New Cookbook: New Classic Family Dinners A Recipe for Cold Cucumber Soup

Amazon.comNew Classic Family Dinners​Mark Peel has had a busy summer. In addition to working on the new bar up the street from his La Brea Avenue restaurant Campanile, opening a new take-out place (more on both projects coming), competing in Top Chef Masters and appearing as a judge in the new ... More >>

Figs: What To Pick from Your Neighborhood Tree

Figs are a late summer crop, ripening after months of heat and dryness, and right now the Black Mission figs, Brown Turkey figs and pale green Kadotas are starting to hit their stride. In Southern California, where fruit trees can be found on street corners, overhanging alleys and sidewalks and, if ... More >>

Play With Your Food: ID This Burger (#7, For Those Keeping Track)

After a short hiatus, spent eating impossibly fresh vegetarian meals (imagine a small universe of market greenery and vine-ripened vegetables, whole grains and tofu, fruit plucked from nearby trees... I'm kidding), it's time to once again play Name This Burger. My job is to eat and document. Your jo ... More >>

Market Report: What's in Season at the Farmers Market

Photo credit: Amy ScattergoodTenerelli's O'Henry peaches​The Wednesday Santa Monica farmers market is a very fun place, between the streets filled with farmers' stands and the enormous variety of fresh produce and the marine layer blowing in from the ocean only a block away. It's also a great ... More >>

Bastide Update (or Not): The Doors Remain Closed

Photo credit: Amy ScattergoodThe locked doors at Bastide​Anybody who's ever read Roald Dahl's classic children's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory remembers the defining moment when we learn that the factory is a cypher, the owner absent, the doors perhaps permanently closed. "Nobody eve ... More >>

Play With Your Food: Burger Games, Con't.

There is a mystique to the hamburger in this country, a reverence born of childhood and road-trip, of inchoate memory and embedded emotion. I get it. I read Proust. (Or at least all the interminable paragraphs that dealt with food.) But I'm sorry, I do not understand the myth of this one, I don't ca ... More >>

Play With Your Food: More Burger Games

Photo credit: Amy Scattergoodburger #4​Thanks for playing the most recent installment of our burger guessing game. After two that were fairly easy (Umami Burger; Rustic Canyon), the last burger was a bit more obscure. Still, though, somebody got it less than half an hour after the post went up ... More >>

Market Report: Shiso and Assorted Greens (& Shishitos) at Coleman Family Farm

Farmer Bill Coleman of Coleman Family Farm in Carpenteria has a market stall that partly resembles an arboretum, partly a secret garden on display. This morning at the Wednesday Santa Monica farmers market, where Coleman parks his truck and his greenery and his family almost every single week, the t ... More >>

Play With Your Food: Another Burger Quiz

Thanks for playing last week's installment of Name That Burger. For everyone who answered Rustic Canyon, you were correct. Perhaps this game should be more cryptic. But honestly, it's more fun to describe a hamburger if you're not being overly coy. Although this whole guessing game thing does beg th ... More >>

Il Grano's Tomato Wednesdays A Recipe for Heirloom Tomato Gazpacho

Every Wednesday during summertime's peak tomato season, Il Grano chef-owner Salvatore Marino puts on a show, constructing a menu built entirely around the tomato. These are not your average tomatoes, or even ones he brings back from the nearby farmers market, but tomatoes Marino grows himself and pi ... More >>

Food Games: ID Your Burger

Thanks for playing last week's first installment of Food Games, in which we asked you to ID a burger. For those who answered the Umami burger, you were right. Soon you'll have two more Umami locations to order one; lucky you. So here's another test: where's this burger from? It is a very tasty in ... More >>

The Simple Things: How to Make and Use Simple Syrup

Amy Scattergoodsimple syrups​That it is the simple things that can make a profound difference--in baking, in bartending, in life--is somewhat of a cliché. It's also true, of course, particularly (and literally) in the case of simple syrup. Simple syrup is, quite simply, a mixture of equal par ... More >>

Suspect Sought in String of Armed Robberies of Eastside Taco Trucks

Amy Scattergoodtaco truck at night​The LA Times reported yesterday that at least 22 Eastside taco truck vendors have been robbed, at gunpoint, over the last few months. 22 robberies have been reported, but police assume that there have likely been more that have gone unreported, due to fear wi ... More >>

Meyer Lemons: What to Buy Now At the Farmers Market

Amy ScattergoodMeyer lemons at Garcia Farm's stall​A Meyer lemon is something that you might take for granted living in Southern California, the way you can overlook the ocean's permanent composition of place and the (usually) stunning weather. You should not. Leticia Garcia, of Garcia Organic ... More >>

Food Games: ID Your Dinner, No Blindfold Required

When I was in high school, our science teacher would take us out into the woods, blindfold us (no Blair Witch Project jokes, please) and turn us loose amid the trees to see if we could identify each one by the feel of the bark, the shape of the leaves. Yeah, it sounds odd, even creepy, but boy was i ... More >>

What To Do With A Sudden Glut of Tomatoes: Make Panzanella & Head to Loteria Grill This Saturday

Amy ScattergoodThe still lives of tomatoes​If you are not a farmer or a regular backyard gardener--and thus unaccustomed to the seasonal operatics of vegetables--the glut of produce that can appear seemingly overnight in your casually-planted home garden can be astonishing, overwhelming, perha ... More >>

Rivera's Olive Oil Cake & Caramel Sauce: If You Haven't Tried It Yet, Make It At Home

John Sedlar, whose downtown restaurant Rivera opened in January, is known more for his flower-embedded nixtamal tortillas, his mole-sauced kurobuta pork chops, his buratta-stuffed chile relleno, his duck enfrijoladas, his chile-powder-as-art plate stencils, and his curating of Latin food history (th ... More >>

Eat A Peach: What to Buy Now At the Farmers Market

Even if you're not an Allman Brothers fan, this is the time to be eating peaches--out of hand, in cobblers and pies, over ice cream, while spinning 37 year-old records. At the Venice farmers market this morning (open at 7 a.m., the marine layer like a low heaven), Tenerelli Orchards' tables were fil ... More >>

Dr. Eliot's 5-Foot Shelf: Were The Harvard Prof a Cook, That Is

Photo credit: Amy ScattergoodThis is not a product endorsement In 1909 publisher P. F. Collier and Son published a 51-volume anthology of classic literature, compiled by then Harvard president Dr. Charles W. Eliot. It came to be known as the Harvard Classics, but when it was published, the anth ... More >>

Salad Days: The Mathematics of a Good Vinaigrette

Given the triple-digit temperatures wilting much of Los Angeles and vicinity at the moment, the best thing to make for dinner is a dish that requires little time and less cooking. Preferably none. A salad, perhaps: either a riot of greens tossed into a bowl or an artful composition of ingredients. W ... More >>

Things That Are Better Toasted: NOT Your Cook, but Your Spices, Nuts, Grains, Seeds & Chiles

Cooking is all about technique, and sometimes (more often than you think), it's the very simple things that can make the biggest difference. Consider toasting, in which basic ingredients are given a few minutes on a sheet pan in a hot oven, or on the stovetop in a hot skillet, to crisp them up and b ... More >>

Composting: What to do with Really Fallen Fruit, Bad Take-out, Old Old Media

If you cook at home a lot, if you have kids who can't feed everything they won't eat to their dog, if you have a garden or would like to, if you have an orange tree that catapults its fruit faster than you can make marmalade, if you've spent any time at all contemplating the landfill univer ... More >>

The Baseball Bat Peppermill: Who Needs Cork When You Have Tellicherry Peppercorns?

Here's the perfect summer grilling accessory: a baseball bat that's actually a peppermill. Imagine the langorous backyard, the coals glowing in the firepit, Vin Scully broadcasting on a radio propped against the sweating keg, a tray of burgers and steaks and links that would make any self-respecting ... More >>

Farm to Cell Phone to Table: Alex Weiser's i-Field

The path from farm to table is sometimes a convoluted one, with hours logged in the fields and on the highways to farmers markets. At Weiser Family Farms in Tehachapi, this path is also virtual. You can now follow your Ru ... More >>