No Crocs, Just Cupcakes

On newsstands now is Food and Wine Magazine and in it, our little Lasagna Cupcakes are featured as a "must try trend".  They say that savory cupcakes are all the rage right now but anyone who has actually tried our Lasagna Cupcakes knows that they are all lasagna and no cupcake. We just thought it was a funny name. Food and Wine suggests calling them "mini lasagnas" but adapts our Pumpkin, Brown Butter, and Sage Lasagna Cupcake recipe and calls it a........ Lasagna Cupcake. It's hard to resist the name. It's also hard to resist eating three of them in one sitting and this lack of control doesn't have anything to do with a trend, they're just that good! Here's the flavors we always have in stock during this winter season, but Matt made a Duck Confit with Sweet and Sour Onions Lasagna Cupcake this week, oh, and also a Sausage and Spicy Roasted Tomato Lasagna Cupcake with delicious links that Tad had made. Unlike Crocs and hair scrunchies, I need this "trend" to stick around.

Migs Makes Our Holiday Party Delicious

Last week we put on our own Holiday Party. Migs took great care in cooking up Cochinitas Pibil and his entire family came to enjoy it along with the rest of us. It was confusing at first, my eyes did double takes, to see the kitchen dressed in street clothes because they are always working wearing their kitchen whites. Not on this night. This night was for sitting down and appreciating all the work that we have received and all of the pride that everyone put into it.

Happy Holidays to our Heirloom Crew and their families and to all the awesome people we met and cooked for this year. May you all have the time and the health to reflect and enjoy and eat and be merry, and please know that we can not even wait to cook for you again in 2011.

Photos by George Simian

Killing It

I do not bowl. I do not like haunted houses, but I do like Matt so when he said "I want to go into October giving our crew some fun before they get killed over the holidays", I rented some bowling shoes and grabbed a scarf (I had heard that the Haunted Hayride at Griffith Park was as cold as it was scary). There were lots of rules broken (two hands to chuck the bowling ball) and lots of surprising strikes made (Little Miguel is actually a very good bowler, who knew?), but it was Tal and Matt who were the most gamely and experienced which explains why they were the ones keeping score, at least with each other. The rest of us had lots of laughs and sympathetic back slapping while watching our balls slip into the gutter. Indeed, we all earned those animal style burgers we inhaled after wards.

Thanks to our Heirloom Crew. You actually didn't get killed this holiday season, you killed it. We did six times as much business as we did last year and we wouldn't have done it without each and every one of you. Thank you to one and all. Here's to next year, killing it again.

One More Plug

This is one of my favorite people on the planet, LaDonna Roundy. I paid her a long overdue visit last week, delivering her some- yes- Lasagna Cupcakes and a copy of the Real Simple Gift Guide because, ahem, our Lasagna Cupcakes are in it. Always when I visit LaDonna I take her picture, and in the spirit of the holidays I just had to post this one because it is LaDonna who brings the Merry and the Happy into this season.

Happy and Merry to all of you and may you all have a LaDonna in your life to fill you up with joy!

Tasting Menu with Coffee Pairing

In November, Kyle, the Director of Innovation at Intelligentsia Pasadena, hosted a Coffee Tasting and asked Matt to pair the featured coffees with food. The best part of this extravaganza was that Matt was invited to attend a "cupping" beforehand where all the coffees were tasted. Now the point of cupping is that you spit out the coffee after swishing it in your mouth to experience it's flavor components otherwise you risk sending your body into a e-ticket jolt of what can feel like a heart attack or a seizure even. Lover of coffee that he is and not one to waste it, Matt swallowed it all and couldn't eat or sleep for about 36 hours afterwards, but in that time created a thrilling menu that complimented all of the coffees so that guests hardly touched their wine as they eagerly awaited their next course's offering. Here was the Menu:

Course 1

 Mokha: Sweet, floral, lemon, lavender, honey, berry, anise

Served with wild boar tartar on grilled bread with house cured guanciale hollandaise

Course 2

Typica: Well composed, citric, fig, dry fruit, nectarine, hard candy

Served with savory bread pudding with persimmon chutney and crisp virginia ham

Course 3

Sudan Rume:  Enzymatic, floral, jasmine, tarragon, lavender, green apple, ranier cherry

Served with crispy duck confit, apple slaw, walnut and tarragon aioli

Course 4

Mibrizi: Mango, sweet clemetine, raspberry, fresh basil

Served with a salad of butterleaf lettuce, radish, turnip, house-made cream cheese, beet reduction and spicy peptitas

Course 5

Icatu: Pineapple, crumb cake, cherry, dried strawberry, toffee, apple, sage

Served with brown butter, marjoram, chestnut, kuri pumpkin agnolotti

Course 6

Erecta: Caramel, orange, tomato, almond

Served with almond romesco, eggplant terrine, fried basil

Course 7

Maragogipe: Herbal, lemon, tangy, hibiscus, tangerine

Served with charred cap steak, pickled fennel, sweet and sour baby carrots, fried cavalo nero

Course 8

Bourbon: Dried strawberry, floral, cherry, grapefruit, sparkling, grape

Served with chocolate ganache cake with white chocolate mousse and pistacchio tuille

Blow Out 2010

Every year, we get to do the final tasting at Silverlake Wine before their holiday craziness. It is their tradition to serve bubbles in all price ranges for guests to sample and decide which one they want to crack open to start off the New Year. Our four courses to accompany these offerings were as follows:

Black & Blue Wild Boar Tenderloin over Fried Garbanzo Bean and Swiss Chard Cavalo Nero

Risotto with House Cured Pancetta (Tad made it) served with Braised Persimmons and Crispy Kale

Seared Chicken Roulade with Spicy Purple Potato Salad

Smoked Lamb Sloppy Joes on Brioche with Coleslaw and Mozzarella

Serious People Doing Serious Work

They smile sometimes I assure you.

PS That brilliantly colored stuff that Matt's holding not only would be a gorgeous lip gloss (right, ladies??!) but also it is a sensational finishing sauce made from beet juice and some other magic ingredients that he uses for this and that.

What Pumpkin Does For Us

Pumpkin Lasagna with Brown Butter and Sage.