Bacalhau à Portuguesa

I went to the only Portuguese restaurant in LA. It's name is Natas. Natas is also the only restaurant to serve Bacalhau (salted cod) in Los Angeles. Bacalhau is Portugal's national dish. Fusing a regular bakery (pastelaria) with a restaurant, Natas belongs to Fatima, a brave immigrant who came all the way from the land of navigators to Sherman Oaks.
The environment inside Natas is OK, the pasteis the nata (portuguese egg tart pastry), that named the restaurant, are reasonable, but the chourico assado (chourizo) that my friends ordered had a horrible presentation and the Bacalhau à Brás I ate had solid pieces of egg in it when the egg yoke should be liquid. The Bacalhau didn't taste good and when a friend said about her  Bacalhau à Brás "It's like a fish omelet" I knew my friends had just missed a great opportunity to taste real Portuguese food. I'm sorry Fatima, keep up the good work, but this is a thumbs down. 

Kaki Ideas

Water Pouring Down

Today I went out to see water pouring down, to see if you were around. I ate something, I breathed the California air, felt the warm sun, I looked back and found water pouring up and up into the sky. I knew it had to stop, but the firemen couldn't do it, free and unbound, up and then down, water flooding the streets. And the tourists next to me all looked an event for all to see. The school kids came out to witness something that free. Today water poured down, and you were not around.

Hearty Cream of Chicken Soup

Today I helped prepare a magnificent soup. I didn't cook it, but I was there during its preparation. It was called Hearty Cream of Chicken Soup, a long royal name since this is a queen soup.
 To make it you need cream, chicken broth, carrots, potatoes, and of course, my favorite - leek. I haven't had soup in almost a year, and this one was amazing. So much so, that I had to go with my friend pick up ingredients at three supermarkets, Ralph's, Trader Joe's, and my favorite LA supermarket Gelsen's over in Century City. Gelsen's is a bit overpriced (a kind of supermarket for the rich) but its meat, pastry, and bread selection is the best you can find in a Los Angeles supermarket.
Looking for ingredients and slow cooking the chicken was what my Sunday afternoon was pretty much all about. Then we also cooked the bread in the oven and opened a bottle of Tuella. I don't want to be nationalistic, but the Douro valley Tuella, they are selling at Trader Joe's for twelve bucks, is the best red you can find in LA right now in the quality/performance ratio. It's a solid buy that gives you the taste of Portuguese grapes and not the dictatorship of the Pinot Noir, Merlot and Cabernet that passes by variety around here. The meal was amazing, and if everyone could eat this chicken soup I am sure there would be World Peace. Amen.

Tuella is your best wine guess in LA if you are not rich.

Chicken breasts next to the recipe book before they get added to the soup.

Hearty Cream of Chicken Soup Recipe open to make magic. A royal name for a royal soup.

The finished the product, glorious.

Good soup, good wine and good bread. May the games begin.

Lesson

The other day I was going home, and when I was changing lanes on La Brea a guy hit my car in the rear left bumper destroying it. I got nervous. I didn't know exactly what to do, but I tried to keep it civilized. We always tend to see the car as an extension of ourselves and seeing the tire of a jeep Silverado destroy my Honda's bumper was like being hit in the face. I told the guy to pull over and I asked politely for his name and insurance. He was a tall black guy, between 18 and 20 probably younger, and acceded to my requests. He said his name was Timothy Thompson, and I photographed his insurance with my phone and also gave him my name and phone number.
As I drove away the guy texted me saying he could fix the damage on his body shop, and I told him it would be better to leave it with the insurance companies. I reached out to "Timothy's" insurance company, and I was told his policy was not active, meaning the guy had no insurance. I called him, but he didn't answer. So I went to the police to warn them there is someone driving a black Silverado with no insurance. The police answered that driving with no insurance is not a crime.  Surprised, dear reader? I will repeat it. In the United States unlike Europe there are no friendly declarations, meaning if a driver has no valid insurance that is not a crime. However driving without a license is a crime. Well, it must also be said I didn't ask for his driver's license which was particularly careless of me.  But after Timothy's stunt, all I could charge him with was giving me false information, and that might take weeks to get solved.
In the meanwhile, Carmen, my former landlady stepped up to the plate and introduced me to Luis, an amazing mechanic who fixed my damaged car in one day. I paid Luis for the damage caused by Timothy Thompson and so much for compensation.
In the United States kind people, amazing kind people like Carmen (and all of us), have to step up to solve the short comings of an ever smaller state and a system that gives out 300 dollar tickets for jay walking but considers an uninsured driver something normal. This seems to be a country for the Timothy Thompson's of the world and not for the Carmen's. Sic transit gloria mundi.

The damage, that a guy who called himself "Timothy Thompson" made to my car and that I had to pay. Learned my lesson.

The Hearing Excelence

A friend of mine went to Sundance some weeks ago and received a pair of Altec headphones. The friend was very kind and gave the headphones she received to the writer of these words. I was looking for a pair of headphones but nothing prepared me for the quality of this product. I can hear the celo in Beethoven's fifth, Nicky Wire's bass in "If You Tolerate This your Children Will be Next" and Paul Mccartney's genius in pretty much any track in played bass on. The sound is crisp and the box where the headphones came smells like an old classical music shop. I've always been a Senheiser fan but these headphones are glorious. It comes with two chords one longer for music and one shorter with a mic for chatting.

Now even my skype conversations will be with heaphones :-P

Great Box

Innovative design Altec gets 5 stars from me.

The Table

I went to Ikea to get a table, but the cheapest thing around was 250 dollars. The 250 dollar table was made for dwarfs because it was really small. To those 250 dollars I would have to add 99 dollars which Ikea charges for the transport and also the time I would need to take to figure how to put the damn thing together because I was not born a pragmatic instruction reading Swede.
I didn't say "Fuck off!" because of my good manners but I did say a heart felt "Fan ta dig, Ikea!" and went to the church thrift shop near my old place around USC. My expectations, were low but when I got there I saw a gorgeous table for 20 dollars. It seemed to good to be true, but they had no space for it at the shop so they lowered the price from 100 (which would still be a bargain) to 20. They gave me the number of a guy called Adolfo (no anti-Semitic reasons for the name hopefully) a Mexican ex-marine dude to help me carry the table home. I called Adolfo he got to the shop in 20 minutes and for 50 bucks this huge man who looked like he could kill me with a punch helped me carry the table to the first floor where I live.  The table is solid wood and it was really hard to carry it but now in the wise words of Jeffrey Lebowski "it really ties the room together."

Great 20 dollar table!