Urban Honking

Though the term “escabeche” formally refers to pickly-preserved fried fish in Spanish cooking, to us it’s the stuff of plastic bags. Here in L.A., a taco truck is generally considered remiss if they don’t hand out free sides of escabeche — big glowing orbs of spicy carrot, pickled jalapeños, and sweetly spiced white onion mingling […]

Ages ago, the Romans celebrated the first sight of Asparagus spears with a chariot race. The finest legionnaires loaded their carts with the first crop of wee phalli and raced hell bent to the Alps. While the reward for the victor of said produce-run evades our foggy brains, the end result never will: This was […]

We rarely puke anymore. Borrrrring. Yeah, perhaps. We blame it on the slow, silent exit of whiskey from our diet and it’s jolly replacement: fancy beer. It makes for earlier bed times, a regular body clock and generally happy guts. But we are not without our moments of reverting: usually loud records and a late […]

The Rules 1. Cut the cheese strategically! (shred semi-hard, slice soft, and grate hard cheeses) 2. Lube it up! (Butter the pan AND both slices of bread) 3. Push it real good! (Use a pot or pan to press your sandwich) 4. No Peeking! (Don’t flip too soon, and don’t peak before its ready, use […]

Saturday morning is when Hot Knives gets down and dirty with our version of ‘Spring Cleaning.’ It mostly involves dusting, spritzing and sprucing our dank Beer Cave collection. Believe us when we say we have some treats in store (a 2007 St. Bernardus Abt. 12, Stone’s Vertical Epic 7.7.7., a couple rounds of Doggie Claws […]

After the longest hibernation ever (count ’em, three pointless weeks of no Hot Knives posts) we are back in full swing. And somehow, while we were gone, it became full-blown springtime. So this week we celebrated the season with a panoply of parties. First there was a friend’s “Super Seder,” complete with horseradish relish, her […]

Trumpets please! One of us at Hot Knives is getting (ahem… errm) married. Stare at our bouteneirs and suit-pant boners. Cue the cherubs! No presents please, this is just a roundabout way of saying don’t expect much posting over the next week. We are gone fishing. Partly to celebrate the coming nups, our friend Molly […]

Big life happenings deserve the “bottle service” treatment. Anniversaries. Graduations. Restaurant openings… Fridays? This week, the official Hot Knives toastmasters contingent was invited to take part in just such a ‘cheers’ ritual: fancy, tableside bottle popping to celebrate the opening of a restaurant, for which one of our associates had developed the bar’s beer list […]

“Ewwww, look at these baaaee-beeez heeeere.” That’s an exclamation the two of us heard in the kitchen for years. Whenever Chef Whalid, our bombastic, Mercedes-driving Afghani chef would parade around the prep kitchen examining produce or partially prepared hors d’oeuvres he would inevitably utter something about “these baaee-beeze.” It translates roughly to ” beautiful little […]

Ever since Alex got a bread book, we’ve used the following foccacia recipe for many occasions: Tom and Andy’s Wedding, Thanksgiving Day ’08, and even lots of events that we’ve never blogged about. We’ve been waiting to unleash this one for a while, and though it’s an interpretation of a recipe that doesn’t necessarily belong […]