Newsletter: Panda dumplings, grilled cheese and Easter brunch
Happy Easter weekend. Depending on your family traditions, you may be spending the weekend furiously coloring eggs or tempering chocolate, or cooking a brunch spread. However you observe the holiday, it’s a splendid time to visit your local farmers market. Artichokes are in season, and we have recipes for kuku sabzi, which is a lovely thing to serve for breakfast or brunch.
Then there’s dinner, which could be in the form of a Sichuan tasting menu. It was for Jonathan Gold, whose new review is of Chengdu Impression in Arcadia, where he found not only a pretty good house-special pork belly, but panda dumplings. In other news, we have stories on the wines from Georgia, a $60,000 bottle of whiskey, a gorgeous citrus salad recipe from Lucques and how they celebrate Grilled Cheese Month at Clementine.
Panda dumplings
This week, Jonathan heads to Arcadia and a new Sichuan restaurant called Chengdu Impression, where he finds an elaborate tasting menu, crunchy Chengdu beef jerky, oddly delicate mapo tofu — and dumplings that look like pandas. If ever there was an Instagram-worthy dish, it is this.
16 years of grilled cheese sandwiches
Annie Miler loves grilled cheese. So much so that every year in April — which is National Grilled Cheese Month — she celebrates the sandwich at Clementine, her bakery and cafe, for the entire month. What does this mean? Test Kitchen director Noelle Carter finds out.
What to cook for Easter brunch
This Sunday is Easter, a time for church services and chocolate eggs — and brunch. If you’re a bit tired of the customary ham and eggs Benedict, how about making kuku sabzi? The Persian frittata is a great way to use eggs and herbs from the farmers market, and thus we’ve got recipes. Or if you’d rather have someone else make it for you, food writer Margy Rochlin also has a roundup of places that make excellent versions.
Georgia on the mind, in the glass
Wine writer Patrick Comiskey talks to Taylor Parsons about the wines of Georgia — the country, not the state — and why Parsons is so excited about them. These are unusual wines, owing to the winemakers’ use of large clay vessels called qvevri in their production. And Parsons also recommends where to find them locally.
The Los Angeles Times Food Bowl: Want to spend 31 days exploring the food of this city through a Night Market, forums, dinners, films, pop-ups and more dining and drinking? A month-long food festival is coming to L.A. in May. The full program guide is online at lafoodbowl.com.
The Daily Meal, the food and drink website under the editorial direction of Colman Andrews, is now one of our partners. Check out their 101 best pizzas in America and other stories, recipes and videos.
Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants, the authoritative annual guide to local dining, is online for subscribers and now features his 2016 Best Restaurants. If you didn’t get a copy of the booklet, you can order one online here.
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