So you followed our orders last week, threw a summer kegger, and left a few cups of wicked brew sludge to use for a barbecue sauce-now what? Well, there are any number of things you could do with it, but here are two of the best ideas we had. Slow roast some sticky tempeh ribs and simmer some sweet black lentils to serve them on. The taste may seem redundant, but if presented alongside some vinegar-laden onion rings, you’re golden. Continue reading →

(Thai Green Curry Samosa
w/Ginger Wasabi Curry Sauce and Sweet Basil Edamame Chutney)

In most American markets, the Chinese restaurant has been issued a swift kick to the egg rolls in the last decade by three worthy competitors from elsewhere in the Orient: Japanese, Indian and Thai cuisines. Americans got a taste of curried paneer and nearly forgave India for developing nuclear weapons. Then we got addicted to sashimi and all its tart, vinegary accoutrements. And nowadays, you can’t walk a block in any American city without literally stepping in a plate of pad thai.
So, when the L.A. Alternative’s readers’ choice votes piled in for the best Indian, Japanese and Thai restaurants in L.A., we felt it too obvious to review the now well-known features of a good plate of sushi, so the neck-and-neck results seemed almost inconsequential. Instead, we at Hot Knives were recruited to tame the tastes of these increasingly popular cuisines by combining them all in a sick experiment of Asian fusion. The result-quite surprisingly-was the best fucking samosa this side of Nagasaki. Continue reading →