L.A. Son
Page 6
The ocean was full of whales. Within three years, we were millionaires.
Everything was about to change.
LEBANESE BEE’S KNEES
* * *
The rush of toasted cumin and garlic runs through me like a needle. Heroin. I don’t care much for carousels with horses on them; no, it’s the one that has a cone of meat wrapped around it that sings my tune. I make my shawarma out of grilled meat, but by all means, if you have a rotating-spit oven or feel like making a fire and indirectly turning the meat Pampa-style a foot away from the flames, you would be my hero.
SERVES 5 OR 6
2 pounds lamb chops or rib-eye steaks or beef hearts or even pork belly, thinly sliced
MARINADE
12 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
½ onion, sliced
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
Juice of 2 lemons
3 tablespoons dried oregano
Three 3-inch cinnamon sticks, broken
1 teaspoon ground allspice
Pinch of cayenne
Kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper to taste
½ teaspoon ground cumin
8 sprigs fresh thyme
½ cup chopped fresh cilantro
½ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
YOGURT SAUCE
1 cup yogurt
2 tablespoons sour cream
1 tablespoon minced garlic
Juice of 1 lime
Juice of ½ lemon
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 teaspoon dried dill
1 teaspoon chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
SANDWICHES
Pita bread
1 red onion, thinly sliced
2 tomatoes, thinly sliced
FOR THE TABLE
3 lemons, halved
Kosher salt
In a bowl large enough to hold the meat, mix together all of the ingredients for the marinade. Add the meat to the marinade and let the meat marinate, covered, in the fridge for at least 4 hours, but preferably overnight, turning the meat periodically if you can.
When the meat is ready, prepare your grill for medium heat and start cooking your meat, making sure to get a nice charred crust on the outside. Then move it to a cooler part of your grill and cook it low and slow for about 10 minutes, or until the lamb is medium-rare.
While the meat cooks, mix together all of the ingredients for the yogurt sauce in a small bowl.
Grab a few pita breads and throw them over the coals to get them a bit charred and crusty.
When the meat is done, take it off the grill and let it rest for 5 minutes. Once the meat has rested, chop it roughly into bite-size pieces.
Slather the yogurt sauce on the pitas, then fill them with the chopped meat, red onion, and tomatoes. Make sure to have some cut lemons and salt lying around to splash on as you wish.
You might want to triple this recipe and eat more!
CHORIZO FOR BREAKFAST,
CHORIZO FOR LUNCH,
CHORIZO FOR DINNER,
CHORIZO TO MUNCH
* * *
On our way to work the gem game in the Jewelry District, or sometimes on our way back late at night, my parents and I would take a break from Clifton’s Cafeteria and hit IHOP or another coffee shop instead. My dad always ordered corned beef and hash. My mom had the lumberjack. And me?
Chorizo and eggs, my friend.
SERVES 4 TO 6
3 ancho chiles, seeded
2 pasilla chiles, seeded
2 jalapeño peppers, seeded
¼ teaspoon dried oregano
¼ teaspoon ground coriander
2 teaspoons Hungarian paprika
Pinch of ground cloves
Pinch of ground cumin
½ cup rice wine vinegar
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 pounds pork butt, ground
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Enough large eggs for everyone
1 lime, halved
FOR THE TABLE
Corn tortillas
A few avocados, peeled, pitted, and sliced
Bottle of Tapatío or other hot sauce
Place a small pan over medium heat and toast all the chiles together, then remove and cool.
In a food processor, combine the chiles with the herbs and spices and grind to a powder. Place the mixture in a small bowl, then add the vinegar and garlic.
In a large bowl, combine the chile mixture and the ground pork and mix it well with delicious intent. Let the meat mixture marinate in the refrigerator, covered, overnight or for up to 2 days; immediately freeze whatever you will not eat.
Pull the meat out of the refrigerator and place a large pan over medium heat. Add the olive oil to the pan and then the meat. Cook, seasoning the meat with salt and pepper to taste.
Into another pan, crack enough eggs for everyone and cook them any way you like ‘em.
While you’re at it, warm up some corn tortillas and scoop out some avocado.
Plate the chorizo and eggs for each person at the table, adding a squeeze of lime over the chorizo. Eat with hot sauce.
WELCOME TO CALI.
WINDOWPANE SMOOTHIES
* * *
My eyes would glaze, and my ears would sonar into the stories. Sucking down on a straw filled with fruit, I was transported to my own private Idaho in the hustle-bustle of Downtown L.A.’s Jewelry District. Feel free to get creative with the fruits.
MAKES 4 TO 5 SMOOTHIES
One 14-ounce can coconut milk, shaken
¼ cup agave nectar
Juice of ¼ lime
½ cup fresh or frozen strawberries, stemmed and hulled
½ cup cubed fresh or frozen mango
½ cup sliced fresh or frozen peach
½ cup cubed fresh or frozen pineapple
¼ cup sliced fresh or frozen banana
Half of a 46-ounce can pineapple juice, shaken
In a large bowl or pitcher, mix the coconut milk, agave nectar, and lime juice.
Place the fruit in a blender and add 1 cup of the pineapple juice and 1 cup of the coconut milk mixture. Blend until smooth, adding more pineapple juice or more coconut milk until it meets your desired consistency and taste. Add some crushed ice if you please.
Pour the smoothie into cups and enjoy with a big thick straw.
CHINATOWN ALMOND COOKIES
* * *
I’m not really a big-thick-chocolate-walnut-cookie kind of guy. Instead, I love shortbreads with a passion. Wafers filled with lemon cream make me think devious thoughts. I can also get down with the ghetto market stuff like Soft Batch and the old Flaky Flix. Christina Tosi of Momofuku Milk Bar fame bakes some pretty cool cookies, and who doesn’t love an Oreo with a glass of milk? But, really, there are two types of cookies that I can eat for days. Elephant ears—or more eloquently, palmiers—and Chinese almond cookies keep this monster fed. This is a simple recipe for Chinese almond cookies, inspired by my friend John. Cookie, cookie, cookie.
MAKES ABOUT 18 BIG COOKIES OR ABOUT 36 SMALL ONES
12 tablespoons (1½ sticks) unsalted butter, softened
½ cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1¾ cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon almond extract
Pinch of kosher salt
½ cup toasted slivered almonds for garnish
Preheat the oven to 325°F.
Cream the butter and sugar with an electric mixer or a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, then add the flour, almond extract, and salt. Mix until just incorporated and transfer the dough to a clean work surface. Lightly knead the dough, then wrap it in plastic and chill for at least 30 minutes.
When you’re ready to bake, remove the dough from the fridge, scoop out golf-ball-size rounds of dough with a spoon, place them on a greased sheet pan about 2 inches apart, and flatten them
slightly with the palm of your hand.
Bake the cookies for 18 to 22 minutes, until they’re nice and caramel colored.
Transfer the cookies to cooling racks. While they’re still warm, stick an almond sliver in the center of each cookie.
PUT IN PINK BOXES
AND COME WITH ME
BACK TO CHINATOWN.
PIE, GIVE THEM PIE!
PECAN PIE WILL DO.
* * *
I spent a lot of time in coffee shops and delis during this time of my life. Weaving through Downtown and dipping in and out of Clifton’s and Yorkshire Grill I found myself smitten with pie. L.A. had some great coffee shops; even the chains like Denny’s, Ship’s, and Norms had pie carousels. And there was always Marie Callender’s, the Jewish delis on the West Side and up in the Valley, plus the Pulp Fiction–esque coffee shops of the fifties and sixties all throughout the zones near LAX.
Pecan pie is my favorite thing to eat, period.
MAKES 1 PIE
3 eggs
1 cup dark corn syrup
½ cup sugar
4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, melted
1¼ teaspoons vanilla extract
Pinch of ground cinnamon
1 cup pecan halves
1 store-bought 9-inch regular single-crust piecrust, par-baked according to package instructions
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
In a medium bowl, beat the eggs until they’re frothy, about 4 minutes. Fold in the corn syrup, sugar, butter, and vanilla extract, and beat again for 2 minutes. Fold in the cinnamon.
Layer the pecans in the bottom of the piecrust and pour the egg mixture evenly over the nuts until it reaches just below the rim of the piecrust.
Bake for 1 hour, until the filling is set.
Rest the pie for an hour. Cut. Eat.
Powdered sugar or a scoop of vanilla ice cream goes well with a slice.
CHAPTER 4
NOLAN RYAN
The rims were wire spokes with a flick of gold. The body, a brand-new royal blue. And I don’t even know what you would call that interior. It was royal blue, too, and felt plush, like velvet. Everything was electric, and the trunk was big enough to fit a baby grand piano. My sister and I were in the backseat, smiling at each other as we tinkered with the window controls, fiddled with the hand rest, listened to a stereo fit for an audiophile. In the front, my parents looked like they were a million miles away, laughing and holding hands. It was so lucid and surreal, like a lens filtering a vision of the future through to us. Except the future was what was happening now.
We had just upgraded from our old brown station wagon to this four-door 1984 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham. Fully loaded, sun roof and everything. I can’t remember whether I was there at the dealership when my dad bought it, but I sure as hell remember when he brought it back to our apartment. That shit stood the fuck out! It was a pimpmobile, and my dad was its driver, Fillmore Slim reborn.
That Caddy was taking us from a little month-to-month apartment in Koreatown to our new home on moving day. Other than the fact that we were moving, my dad didn’t tell us much, and I had no idea where we were going. But that was fine; by now, stuff like this had become a normal happenstance, a blip in the everyday: we moved eight times before I was thirteen. We’d open a shop, move nearby, see it go out of business, put stuff in storage, find a cheaper rental somewhere else, start a new shop or help friends with theirs, and so on and so on. What was one more time?
But moving in the Caddy was different. In retrospect, it seemed to embody the very world it was transporting us to, but I didn’t notice that part of it then. I was too busy getting lost in the Leave It to Beaver family fun, in the fantasy of the American dream.
At some point I looked out the window, expecting to see nothing more than strip mall after strip mall crowded with dingy stores. Instead, what I saw made me stare: plaza after plaza of pretty markets covered in Spanish tile. Even the trees looked different. So did the street signs. Each house we passed was exponentially larger and more ornate than the last. There were beautiful lawns and carefully manicured landscapes. Benzes and Beemers parked in driveways, with luxurious, wide streets to accommodate them.
When I glanced up at the rearview mirror, I could see the smile in my dad’s eyes. Before I could say or ask anything, he pulled the car into the long driveway of our very own new home. There really was a white picket fence. I was Dorothy for a moment, clutching my sister like she was Toto.
The house was all white, a long, low-slung ranch house with a half-a-million-dollar price tag back in 1983. A brown shingle roof and a three-car garage. The sign on the greener-than-green lawn said SOLD.
I can only imagine what my dad was thinking as he pulled into that swoosh of a driveway. It had taken him fourteen years, but he had done it. Finally, he could provide the best for his family. Finally, there would be no more worries. It was all clear skies from here.
He tapped us all on the shoulders and skipped excitedly to the front door. I was still in shock, a little confused and, to be honest, a bit annoyed. We had literally packed up the night before, then my dad shows up in the morning with this fancy car, and he’s happy, and he takes us to this white house with a picket fence and big driveway. And still, no one had told us what was going on or prepared us for anything. Where the fuck have you taken me? Why are you so giddy all of a sudden? Where is my real dad?
The key had a shine to it and seemed to fit in the lock ever so perfectly. I could hear the bolt disengage; the key turned and, with it, my whole soul. He opened the door to a foyer lined with flocked yellow wallpaper patterned in daisies and tulips. To the left a high-ceilinged room, the future setting of nights of drinking, partying, and obscene amounts of food adventures. We swung to the right, still stepping gingerly on our new floors as if we were Goldilocks sneaking around the home of the Three Bears. It seemed like my dad knew his way around; he kept telling us to hurry. Look at this; check that out; that’s amazing. But I wasn’t in the mood for amazing. I was still wondering what the fuck had just happened to my life.
My dad led me and my sister past the family room and its big redbrick fireplace, past the kitchen, down a long hallway, past a few rooms, finally stopping at the end of the hall. The bathroom. We walked into this bathroom, and he flipped up the toilet seat, placed his foot on top of the rim, and did the most glorious of toilet flushes humankind has ever seen. As the water refilled the bowl, he looked straight at me and asked, “Do you know who took a dump in this toilet?”
“Um, not really, Dad . . .”
“Well, let me tell you! Nolan Ryan. One of the greatest pitchers of all time. A-hundred-three-miles-per-hour fastball. This was his home. He was traded from the California Angels, and now this is our home.”
“Wow, Dad. That’s pretty cool!”
It really was kind of cool. There was a moment there. A tender father-son moment right at the height of my grumpy thirteen- to fourteen-year-old puberty phase, right before my parents became deep alcoholics, right before I started getting deep into drugs, right before it was my childhood naïveté that would be flushed down the toilet.
But for now, it was my dad, his foot proudly on the toilet bowl as if he were George Washington crossing the Potomac, having a moment with his son. I’d be a real dickhead not to go along with the ride and rain on his parade. So I smiled and said, “This is great, Dad. Show me more.”
He showed us around each room and said, “You can have this one, and your sister, Julie, can have this one.” Our rooms picked out, we all ran to the kitchen to find my mom; she was opening every cupboard, and I could see the wheels turning as she imagined all the kimchi and stew that this kitchen could produce.
Outside, the backyard was huge and wrapped around the house; it was filled with trees, and there was a concrete patio under a wooden trellis. And there, on the side lawn, a long, narrow area lined with grass, set up an awful lot like a pitcher’s mound and home plate.
It really was Nola
n Ryan’s old house.
I held on to the dreams of the Ryan Express as I failed miserably throughout junior high school baseball, hoping against hope that by just living and breathing in his home, I, too, would become a major-league pitcher. I’d strike out, but it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying.
THE MOVERS WOULD BRING our furniture, but we brought the kimchi. Our priorities were in order. We carried in at least thirty-five Tupperware containers of triple-Saran-wrapped soy-dried beef, radish water kimchi, spicy fish intestine, preserved eggs, cucumber kimchi, oyster cabbage kimchi, scallion soybean paste, dried squid, skate panchan, and pickled garlic to bless our brand-new home, our brand-new neighborhood.
As my mom busily unpacked all the food and my dad twirled my sister in the air, I decided to take a walk. I had to catch my breath and get some fresh air. All that hunky-dory nuclear-family everything-is-perfect-in-the-world shit was making me woozy. I needed to roam.
Outside on the wide, nicely paved streets, everything was so quiet. No one seemed to be around, but sprinklers watered the perfectly trimmed lawns and cars were parked in almost every driveway on our street. I could almost feel the eyes peering out at me from behind the partially drawn curtains, wondering who the new neighbors were, where we were from.
As I made my turn toward the street, a boy came out of the house across the way. He gave me the warmest hello. His name, I’d later learn, was David, and he was a year younger than me. We’d hang out a little, play some basketball. But on this first day I was in no mood to meet the neighbors, so I just nodded back and headed toward the town square. The back of the town square, specifically. I figured I’d walk in through the plaza from the back to check out the alley. There I thought I’d see what really went down in this town.