apéro in echo park
& vinho verde garlic clams forever!
now that the dust has settled a little on last week’s event, i am ready to reflect and talk about how amazing it was! last friday i hosted a pop-up/euro-inspired bistro at one of my favorite and most frequented places in LA—canyon coffee.
i first worked with ally and casey a year or so ago when i collaborated with them on a recipe for their journal. i made a chocolate and coffee torte with their gorgeous coffee and it had rave reviews from both family, friends and strangers alike.
canyon isn’t actually my local coffee shop at all, but it might as well be with the amount of time i spend there. i am there most days!
canyon is such an integral part of the community for so many people, including myself and so it just felt like such a perfect place to host my first euro inspired apéro in LA—being that a lot of the reason why i cook and host pop up’s like this, is to bring like-minded community together too.
i reached out to ally a few months ago about potentially doing a pop-up at canyon and much to my delight, she replied in overwhelming agreement. we spent the next month or so planning out everything. we really wanted this event to feel very community-driven and wanted to bring in partners to reflect that.
i began working on the event curation and menu planning—and that started with thinking back to past travels. as you might already know, i tend to draw a lot of inspiration (when it comes to my food) from previous travels. as well as whatever is in season, of course. experiencing familiar flavors, but from different perspectives, specifically europe.
i like to describe my food as casual, european-centric with an emphasis on modern british food, regional italian peasant food, little accents of rustic french food as well as some spanish flavors in there too. and my menus definitely reflect that! this one more so than ever before.
plate 1. tortilla española is one of my most favorite things to eat in the entire world. i grew up eating it—long hot summers spent in spain (we as a family, have had a home in spain my entire life). traditionally served at room temperature, it is usually eaten for breakfast or lunch—as a tapas snack with a few pickley things (perhaps a gilda), some salty potato chips, and a crisp, cold beer.
fundamentally, it is only three ingredients (four if you count the olive oil), and these three perfect ingredients produce the most amazing yet simple dish there ever was. creamy, unctuous, salty, and soft. the perfect little bite to begin apéro.
potatoes, onions & eggs (and a shit ton of olive oil). <3
i chose to serve it with a sherry vinegar aioli, dusted with some smoked paprika. a little skewer of cubed manchego, and a itty bitty cornichon.
a picked cocktail onion would have been great too, as would a pickled pepper.
plate 2. indeed, as the title of this substack might suggest—i love anchovies. i’m tempted to say that i love anchovies more than most people, perhaps.
my beautiful friends lucia and carlos from siesta provided the most incredible anchovies for my next dish.
siesta anchovies are large, succulent, and meaty—and completely stand up in a dish on their own. when i say that these anchovies are the best anchovies i have ever had in my life—i am not kidding. they source everything from spain (lucia and carlos both hailing from spain originally, now based in LA), but wherever and whoever they are sourcing them from is doing such a great job at truly finding the best anchovies in the sea.
i simply served them with some freshly grated orange zest, a little orange juice, olive oil and an incredible shower of black pepper. the bright, sweetness from the orange zest works so well with the saltiness of the anchovy. the black pepper brings it all together into this perfect, slightly warming, harmonious bite. all mopped up with a hunk of bub & grandma’s sourdough. i personally couldn’t have imagined anything better!
this was a top contender for my favorite dish of the night!
plate 3. this next dish was a no-brainer for me.
i knew i wanted to have some garlicky, white wine clams on this menu right from the get-go. i had a plate of unpretentious clams (just with garlic and white wine, served straight up), the last time i was in NYC at cervos. they blew my mind—mainly in the simplicity, but of course in flavor too (more on NYC soon). i knew i wanted to bring in some spring produce and some kind of carb, so asparagus and beans it was! this dish was me on a plate.
my friends at simpli provided some of their glorious gigante beans as the base and i ended up finding some lovely asparagus too. i cooked the beans the day before, but everything else was cooked there and then. served over an olive oil-fried piece of sourdough, and then a good glug of brightland garlic olive oil. this was another contender for best dish of the night.
vinho verde garlic clams with gigante beans and asparagus on toast—is an insatiable combination. take it from this british girl over here (a beans on toast connoisseur, some might say). this dish was goooood.
plate 4. chocolate and coffee torte with honey-poached strawberries and whipped sour cream.
i knew i wanted to make this from the outset too, being that i developed it for canyon a while back already. it just made sense! but i also knew i wanted to give this delightful dessert a spring update.
i found some absolutely stunning strawberries at the santa monica farmers market, thanks to my friend matt’s recommendation (matt is also a very talented chef based in LA, and actually came to the dinner with his beautiful fiance, and one of my best gals andrea). little did he know, his brilliant strawb recommendation was about to benefit him, too!
i processed the strawberries once i got home and then slowly cooked them down in quite a bit of orange blossom honey and a little water. this created a poaching liquid. i cooked this over medium heat until the liquid had thickened a little and was more like syrup. this was then served over some whipped sour cream and alongside the chocolate torte.
a very good ending to the night, if i do say so myself!
we had wine by good boy wine, which complimented all of the food sooooooo well, i can’t even begin to explain. and then served with dessert was a gorgeous digestif from festif. i will be buying this digestif over and over again, it was delicious, and took me back to summers in sicily.
thank you so much to @canyoncoffee and my friends @allylwalsh and @casewoj for opening up the shop late and allowing me to host apéro into the evening! we had so much fun planning this. you guys are just the best.
to sarah, paolo and the entire @canyoncoffee team for being more than amazing to work with—we all had so much fun working together!
to all of our AMAZING partners! @wearebrightland @eatsimpli @siesta_co @yearandday @suaysewshop @pacificfreshfishco @amarofestif - we simply could not have made this night possible without you all. i could not be more grateful to get to work with all of your amazing products, but also to call you all friends too.
to my husband for being the best sous, it’s such a fun way for us to have fun together outside our day-to-day. to my friend kate for always being there for me in more ways than i can explain, i am so lucky. to my brilliant friend annie for literally being my right-hand woman and always doing the most amazing job. i could not do any of this without all of them.
and to the most incredibly talented @emferretti, having em being apart of everything i do means the absolute world.
risi e bisi with clams
i developed this recipe whilst i was thinking about what to put on the menu for my pop-up. this didn’t make the cut because of issues with being able to cook the rice on site at canyon, (a small, but perfectly formed kitchen with one induction) but WOW was i happy to have made this.
risi e bisi is a classic venetian dish of, you guessed it—rice and peas. more soup, than risotto for sure, but indeed—somewhere in between the two.
i saw my friend trevor make the classic dish on his substack, and it reminded me how amazing this simple dish can be. i thought clams would go really well with the rice and fresh spring peas, and so this dish was born!
serves 4-6 people
3lbs of manilla clams, soaked and purged
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
8 cloves of garlic, finely sliced
1/2 bottle of vino verde
4 cups of vegetable stock
1.5 cups of fresh peas, or thawed frozen peas
1.5 cups of white rice, cooked and kept warm
start by heating up the olive oil in a heavy-bottomed, deep saute pan with a lid, over medium heat. add in the garlic and stir into the olive oil. watch closely as you do not want the garlic to burn.
after about 2 minutes, add in the vino verde and vegetable stock, and pop the lid on. we need the alcohol to cook off a little before adding in the clams.
after approximately 5 minutes, carefully add in all of the clams. turn the heat up to high and pop the lid back on.
once 5 minutes have passed, lift the lid to check on the clams. some will have opened and some will most likely still be closed. add in fresh/thawed peas and continue cook for a few minutes longer, until all the clams have opened. discard any that have still not opened after 10 minutes of cooking.
served over your freshly cooked rice and enjoy!
talk soon
xo
Looks incredi as always! I was feeling a soul connection to those gigante beans
The best the best the best!!!!