Rainbow Cookies in the L.A. Times

Plus: Fried Chicken Night, Dinner at Alimento, and Mayukh Sen on Lunch Therapy.

Hey everyone,

Well, it finally happened. I made my favorite cookie of all time, the rainbow cookie, the one that my mom always buys for me when I visit Florida and the one that I’ve been too afraid to make because I would eat the whole tray. What’s the occasion? I wrote an article for The L.A. Times food section about making rainbow cookies as a way to celebrate Pride. You can read the article here. Here’s what it looks like in print:

I went for a pink, orange, and yellow palate to capture the first three colors of the rainbow. Here’s some behind-the-scenes pictures:

The cookies were pretty extraordinary, if I do say so myself, not just because of the colors, but because Nicole Rucker (of Fat & Flour) encouraged me to use grapefruit marmalade (I used orange) and a good bittersweet chocolate. Heaven.

Since restaurants have been opening back up, we’ve been going to lots of them. On Friday night, we went to L&E Oyster Bar and ate oysters (as one does).

On Saturday, we went with our friends Ryan and Jonathan to Gigi’s and ate inside, which has the coolest mural on the walls.

But the best meal that I ate at a restaurant was at Alimento, last night, where we went because Craig left today for New York to direct an episode of Gossip Girl (!). So for our farewell dinner, we shared saffron risotto tater tots with ranch dressing:

A radicchio Caesar:

And two pastas: one, a Dungeness crab spaghetti, and the other a radiatori with pork sugo:

We also had a side of sprouting broccoli with white soy and hazelnuts:

And for dessert, a yuzu tart, that tasted like key lime pie.

What a meal! I wish Craig would leave more often. (JK!)

Earlier last week, I tested some recipes from the cookbook on our friends Mark and Diana, who’ve been home with three kids for the whole pandemic and thoroughly enjoyed a night with adults. (Even though Craig and I are so youthful, wahahaha….)

First up: pimento cheese with crackers (I can’t tell you the pun yet, but it’s a good one.)

Then some pretty incredible fried chicken, not to toot my own horn or anything:

The coleslaw’s not from the cookbook, it’s just an improvised thing that I do… I wrote an article about it here.

For dessert, I made Ina’s strawberry country cake which never fails to delight.

What else?

On Saturday during the day, Craig and I tried to take Winston to Salazar, but the wait was an hour and we were getting hangry, so we drove to Burgers Never Say Die and ate their crispy, scrumptious burgers in the car.

Would it surprise you to learn that I was on a diet all last week, intermittent fasting in the mornings and drinking smoothies for lunch every day? Still, I’m trying to find balance, hence all of the food that you see above.

Guess who’s on Lunch Therapy this week? James Beard Award winner, Mayukh Sen!

It’s such a lovely conversation with this 29 year-old wunderkind who’s written for The New Yorker and The New York Times, has a book coming out called Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America, and who teaches food writing at NYU. We learn about his mother, also his best friend (aww), who he moved back in with during the pandemic and who got him back into cooking and encouraged him to eat three meals a day. We also learn about his father, an aspiring writer, who passed away just before Mayukh won the James Beard Award. You can listen to our whole conversation here.

Also, if you’re enjoying the podcast, it would mean the world to me if you could leave a quick review of it on Apple Podcasts. That really helps the podcast move up the ranks.

Now for some links:

• Deb makes ice cream sandwiches from scratch. Mic drop. (Smitten Kitchen);

• Bill Esparza writes an epic guide to Barbacoa in California (Eater LA);

• Dying to go to this cookbook store/cafe in New York (Taste).

That’s all for this week, folks!

If you’re not a paid-subscriber, here’s what you missed last Thursday: “How The Pandemic Changed My Cooking.” If you’d like to read that, and other paid-subscriber only dispatches, here’s a discount code for getting the full Amateur Gourmet Newsletter experience:

Until next time!

Your friend,

Adam