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LA Times Food Section Roundup: Crepes, Ice Cubes and a Chef's Conference

Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 7, 2007 at 2:21 PM

Regina Schrambling on the third Identità Golose, The taste of things to come: At a most unusual chefs' conference, great ideas trumped pomp and pretention: "There were chefs quoting Kandinsky and Lars von Trier as comfortably as they evoked Escoffier. There were chefs filling balloons with spices to pop over dinner plates, and chefs demonstrating how to flavor the bread crumbs so ubiquitous in Italian cooking with lime zest and syrup. They were using all the new-wave toys — agar-agar and sous vide and digital thermometers and no end of Pakojets — but they were also sharing discoveries as basic as this: Baking butternut squash or sweet onions on a bed of rock salt will concentrate the flavor and texture."

Other highlights:

Amy Scattergood on the crepe: "There's an economy of movement and coordination of design — a swirl of batter, a tilt of the pan — that's beautiful, whether the crepes are coming off the pans of the street vendors in Paris, or the crêperies in Brittany or Santa Monica, or the one on the stove top of your own kitchen. The crepe's beauty is in its utter simplicity, both in composition and in consumption; and though it looks difficult, it's actually much easier to make than you think."

Cocktails enter the ice age by Charles Perry, on how bars are paying more and more attention to what goes into what they pour drinks over: "I am starting to make ice cubes with Fiji Water for my Cocktail Reservado list," says Adam Seger, owner of Nacional 27, a Latin restaurant in Chicago. "For my Richy Roy, I stir 28-year-old unfiltered, cask-proof Glenlivet with sweet vermouth and Fiji ice cubes, then finish with homemade bitters and a homemade maraschino."

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