Ceremonies: June 2007 Archives

With all the fun clichés of the early '80s porn scene, and none of the cocaine ambulance escapades, the Summer Camp parties held by Little Radio at their downtown warehouse have been, hands down, the next best thing after space camp.

Free bands, ping pong, water slides, kiddie pools, astro turf, badminton courts — the only thing missing was vegan potato salad, which is where Hot Knives came in. We swindled a half-price grill and basically taught ourselves the most efficient way to feed 200 scenesters and scrape out a profit.

Now, sadly, we both have travel plans, a birthday, a bike tour and other stuff to attend to, so we’re done cooking for now. But stay tuned to see whether we’re able to pull off an August stint back at the Summer Camp BBQ. In the meantime, here’s another recipe addition from the Summer Camp menu and a "music video" of the whole sweaty month…

Frito Pie

Chile con Soyrizo
3 Tbs, extra virgin olive oil
2 small purple onions, chopped
1 celery stalk, chopped
1 head garlic, minced
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
3 red bell peppers, chopped
3 jalapeños, chopped
1 12 oz. tube soyrizo
1 cup black beans
1 cup pinto beans
3 cups tomato sauce
1/2 cup vegetable stock
8 oz. tomato paste
1 small bunch celery leaves
1 small bunch cilantro
2 bay leaves'

“Pie”
Fritos
Aged cheddar (optional)
Parsley-cilantro garnish

1. In a large soup pot, add oil and sauté the onions, celery and garlic for 10 minutes. Once sweated, add balsamic and let cook off another 10 minutes.

2. Then add your bell peppers and jalapeños follwed by soyrizo and beans. Stir before adding tomato sauce, stock and tomato paste. Let cook on high until bubbling. Toss in whole celery leaves, cilantro and bay leaves and simmer for 30 minutes or until chunky. Salt and pepper to taste.

3. Pour a bowl of fritos, top with cheese if desired, pour 2 scoops of chile and garnish. Let sit for 3 minutes to gel before eating.

Beverage: Green Flash Imperial IPA
Soundtrack: Darker My Love’s “Summer is Here”

Let’s cut to the chase, get the niceties outta the way shall we? The Library Bar in L.A.’s Downtown Financial District is one of the few beacons of proper beer culture in our city. If you haven’t been, we highly recommend it.

The 7-tap, European draft system they pour from is expert; the beer choices are striking without being too showy; the bartenders are all painfully attractive and they serve their bevvies in proper glassware. If you like your Belgian ale in a pint glass, don’t bother coming here. Ruin your beer on someone else’s time. And (if it isn’t too full of suits) the swanky bookish vibe is more than pleasant to lounge around in. Which is exactly what we did earlier this week for their “Bloggers N’ Beer” event.

Now, not to paint ourselves as drunks or illiterates or anything, but we actually showed up a little confused having read it as (no joke) “Beer Bloggers.” So here we are thinking, “Shit, we better have our game faces on right?” Neither of us are used to discussing brews with anyone except each other and our friends and the occasional beer clerk we’ve interviewed for the beer store series. We’re not kosher. We even went out of the way to ask Christina “the Beer Chick” Perozzi, who organized the event, which of the illuminati were showing up. In case we found time to cram.

You can understand our surprise when half of citysearch.com is sidled up to the bar at 8 pm, asking poor Christina why the Inversion IPA tastes like dirty socks. Turns out, the admittedly tech-brilliant PR firm that handles the Library Bar was behind the party, even sending out the evites and compiling all the blogger’s sites and everything. Hey, more power to them. But a beer symposium it was not.

That said, it was a great idea for an event, some killer viral marketing and it actually brought us full circle in a couple ways. Back in November when the bar opened, Evan wrote about it for his newspaper. Because Christina created the bar’s beer menu, he interviewed her. Since then we’ve had her on our radar. Last time Alex spoke with her, the event came up and voila: small world. Besides managing the infamous Father’s Office, Christina has a consulting business that seems to often involve the mad genius of Pasadena: Mark of Craftsman. In our minds, one of her biggest accomplishments as L.A.’s beer sommelier is single-handedly convincing L.A. pubs to carry multiple kegs of Craftsman. That’s her legacy right there.

In any case, it was rad to finally meet the “Beer Chick” and totally amusing to peruse the random blog personalities dutifully trying to learn about beers, taking notes and snapping pictures.

Beer Tasting Line-up

1. Craftsman 1903
2. Unibroue Blanche de Chambly
3. Saison DuPont
4. Unibroue Maudite
5. Deschutes Inversion IPA
6. Deschutes Black Butte Porter
7. Flying Dog Road Dog Porter Scottish Ale
8. Westmalle Triple

Every beer on the list, except the Flying Dog porter, is a fine choice if a bit standard. Truth be told we got psyched about a preliminary list Christina sent us that had 2 beers we’d never had — both were replaced with ones we had. Still, we totally dug swilling our way around these beers for free and toasting Christina on a job well done.

The highlight of the night, however, had to be running into the only other serious fucking L.A. beer blogger in the room (in the city, as far as we know) Dave of hairofthedogdave.com. A sweet guy with great taste, we shared a bottle of Westmalle triple and made him promise he’d participate in the upcoming Great Beer Ride we’re going to get around to organizing one of these days. If you haven’t checked his blog out, do so. To be honest, he covers SoCal beer better than we do.

As for the more, shall we say, pedestrian coverage, it’s good PR. But we wouldn’t link to it.

Calling all L.A. mouths,

Hot Knives will be grilling this Sunday, and every other Sunday in June, at an outdoor party series called Summer Camp, hosted by local web-radio station/venue Little Radio. Their warehouse hangar in Downtown’s industrial district gets transformed into an oasis of slip n’ slides, cocktail lounge kiddie pools, astro turf and badminton courts. The event is free, the beer is “donation only” and most importantly it’s a unique chance to taste the food that we talk up and glorify in pictures all over this blog — so you can tell we’re cooking real food here. (Bring cash to eat.) Best of all, you can keep us company grill-side while everyone else is watching bands play. We may even offer an impromptu beer tasting to offset the free piss beer. Shhhhhh… preliminary menu hints: Made-from-scratch seitan burgers, veggie chili cheese dogs, vegan potato salad and tabouleh salad.

If you come and you read the blog, please say hi!
HK