Christine Chiao

Judges' panel at Science & Food

An apple pie bake-off with a twist opened the final installment of the UCLA Science & Food lecture series this past Sunday, in which students enrolled in the corresponding undergraduate class vied for the best in final group project. The range of theories, as it turned out, would expand further when Christina Tosi of Momofuku Milk Bar and Zoe Nathan of Huckleberry (not to mention, Rustic Canyon, Sweet Rose Creamery, and Milo & Olive) each shared insight into her personal process in baking.

Before their lecture, Tosi and Nathan were part of the panel of judges, including Los Angeles Times food critic Jonathan Gold and KCRW Good Food host Evan Kleiman, invited to select the winning project amidst a slew of experimental apple pie recipes, varying in focus from texture to taste. The audience participated in the sampling as well, asked to vote in the People's Choice category. Amy Rowat, a biophysicist who co-created the class and the series, chose pie as a platform to look into such scientific principles as the melting points of fat and how solids become liquids. Now in its second run, the series began at UCLA last year, with guest lecturers including Rene Redzepi of Noma and Momofuku's David Chang.

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Valley Performing Arts Center

Jacques Pepin

Recently Jacques Pépin, the acclaimed French chef, veteran of PBS cooking shows, friend of Julia, author of many brilliant cookbooks, Dean of of Special Programs at the French Culinary Institute in New York City and general culinary living legend, took the stage at Cal State Northridge's Valley Performing Arts Center to give what turned out to be a cooking demo.

Pépin's sous chef for the evening was his daughter Claudine, herself a veteran of cooking shows with her father, and for almost two hours the pair showed the surprisingly small audience how to properly cut up vegetables and fruit and truss a chicken. The demo was as much a comedy show, with knives, as it was a tutorial in classic cooking techniques. And to say it was a joy to watch is a vast understatement, rather like saying that Pépin once made snacks for Charles de Gaulle. Which of course he did.

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TEDx L.A.

Some of TEDx L.A.'s speakers

If you're looking for something to do this weekend beyond reading about the 232 tons of potatoes Olympic athletes are tossing back this year, there's a meaty symposium at the Fowler Museum at UCLA on Saturday: TEDx L.A. Miracle Mile: Food and Food Systems in the 21st Century.

According to the TED website, TEDx events are fully independent of TED in terms of organization and planning. But they are "designed to give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level." Judging by Saturday's lineup (after the jump), it's going to be quite a TED-like experience. If you're interested in attending, we recommend advance tickets, as the Fowler Museum auditorium is a tightly edited space.

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USDAgov

Bill Yosses is on the left (White House chef Sam Kass is on the right)

Obama is in big trouble. Last election, he slipped by, almost tanking in the wake of the 2007 arugula dust-up. It was also reported, with near-devastating fall-out, that the would-be leader preferred wine to beer. And now, over four years later, the incumbent faces yet another scandal. It's not the birth certificate. It's not his middle name. It's far, far worse. According to the great blog Obama Foodorama, Obama has been associating with unsavory types -- namely a pastry chef who runs around showing off his molecular gastronomy skills, eschewing nature's bounty for chemical compounds and claiming, if the ever-reliable conspiracy rags are to be believed, that all Americans will soon be assimilated.

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Nordic Food Lab

Update: The lovely folks at UCLA have just told us there are still spots available for the June 9 lectures. Maybe go reserve one now. General admission is $20; UCLA students get in free with a valid student ID.

This semester is a pretty good time to be a "non-science student" at UCLA: 50 lucky students signed up for a ridiculously fun (yes, we're biased) class called "Science & Food: The Physical and Molecular Origins of What We Eat." As part of the class, which was organized by Professor Amy Rowat, there will be four lectures presented to the public over the course of the coming months, all of which are now sold out. (Sorry about that.) But you never know: Maybe you have a "non-science student" college friend who can get you in. Or maybe your friend's kid. Maybe you can even put on some UCLA gear and crash the thing (not that we're recommending you do anything that stupid, of course). At the very least, it might be a good time to get a reservation at Ink. or Le Comptoir or Animal or The Bazaar, just on the off chance that you might be sitting next to Rene Redzepi, David Chang or Nathan Myhrvold.

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LA Times Festival of Books

Next weekend, April 30th through May 1st, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books celebrates the book. You know, those text-y files you download and read on your Kindle or iPad or, as they were once known, those pieces of papers inked on both sides with words, bound together between soft- or hardback covers.

In addition to celebrating Madeline illustrator John Bemelmans Marciano and cobbling various authors together on discussion panels, the free Festival will feature chefs and other food personalities on an outdoor Cooking Stage. Thomas Keller, scheduled to appear on Sunday, May 1st, possibly is to the Festival as Lauryn Hill was to this year's Coachella: highly anticipated, if not a little intimidating.

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From the Anne Taintor collection.

Bra burning, Rosie the Riveter, even the Pill: all these are symbols that come to mind when we think of women's lib. But cookbooks? We didn't realize they were on the list. However an upcoming event hosted by the Culinary Historians of Southern California will change all that.

Jan Longone, Curator of American Culinary History at the University of Michigan, will lead a lecture titled "The Old Girl Network: Charity Cookbooks and the Empowerment of Women" on April 9th at the Mark Taper Auditorium. She'll explain the legacy of "charity cookbooks," or cookbooks compiled and sold for the benefit of others, as well as how they fed into the women's movement, almost unbeknownst to men.

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Street food existed long before the myriad of Twittering food trucks took over Los Angeles. Evan Kleiman (chef/owner of Angeli Caffe, host of KCRW's Good Food) reminds us of that on May 1st, when she moderates the Global Street Food event featuring OC Weekly Managing Editor and food contributor Gustavo Arellano.

Joining them via Skype will be Lesley Téllez of Eat Mexico, a Mexico City-based company that offers tours of the city's street food, and Robyn Eckhardt, a former Food Editor at Time Out Kuala Lumpur and author of Food & Drink chapters for Southeast Asian Lonely Planet guides. Their discussion will focus on street food from around the world and how it affects a city's culinary culture. Naturally, this event wouldn't be complete without food trucks.

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Amy Scattergood

We have heard many times that you should never get high on your own supply, but what if that high comes from fresh jalapeños in your burrito, or a caprese salad with just-plucked tomatoes and basil? Jimmy Williams & Susan Heeger, authors of the home-gardening manual and cookbook From Seed to Skillet: A Guide to Growing, Tending, Harvesting, and Cooking Up Fresh Healthy Food to Share with People You Love, would certainly argue that in that case your own supply is the best kind.

On Saturday, February 26th at the LA County Arboretum in Arcadia, they'll talk about how you too can plant, tend to, then pick and prepare tasty vegetables in your own garden; unfortunately, you'll have to look someplace else for tips on writing a clean, succinct title for your book.

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markbittman.com

When cookbook author Mark Bittman shows up tonight, October 26th, for a
discussion and book signing at the Skirball Cultural Center, he's likely to be a walking, talking endorsement for his new book, The Food Matters Cookbook: 500 Revolutionary Recipes for Better Living.

Since embracing his less-meat manifesto, Bittman has shed 30 pounds.

"I lost a lot of weight eating this way," Bittman told us yesterday. "I thought people might like to hear that."

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