ohh, can't anybody see, we've got a war to fight
this & that 6/2/25
The solstice isn’t for a few more weeks, but the sudden heat in LA made this the perfect time to embark on The Summer of Salsa, inspired by Rick Martinez’s new book Salsa Daddy. I’m basically going to Julie & Julia this shit (sorry, I still have Thug Kitchen’s blasphemous voice in my head), so follow along if you want. Most of the salsas only take a few minutes to put together, and even though Martinez recommends getting out the molcajete you surely have collecting dust in the garage, a blender (on low — we’re not making smoothies here) will do the trick.
I’m starting at the beginning, and the first recipe in the book is for La Mañanera (morning sex), Martinez’s dedicated breakfast sauce. But this salsa can, obviously, go on anything. I’m not totally clear on the etiquette of when it’s ok to share other people’s recipes and when it’s not, but I figure anything behind a paywall (or in a brick and mortar book) is there for a reason, and I’m not going to spill the beans on a brand new cookbook that you should totally buy. Old cookbooks are (I hope?) fair game — what, is Crescent Dragonwagon going to take me to court?)
The salsa gods have shone upon us, because salsa granddaddy Rick Bayless has already shared La Mañanera on his website, so you can find the recipe here. La Mañanera is bright from the tomatillos and deceptively spicy (six chile de árbol are no joke), but it mellows when you, you know, put it on something rather than spooning it into your mouth.
To accompany the salsa, I made a big batch of Rancho Gordo (only two pounds left in my cupboard!) Ayocote Morado beans, which are larger and thicker skinned than pintos, so they took about three hours to cook unsoaked. Don’t believe Steve Sando when he says to cover with two paltry inches of water. You’re going to want at least double that if you don’t feel like constantly adding more water to the pot as they’re simmering. They’ll take about three hours to get tender, so put a load of laundry in the machine and chill. Ayocotes are sweet, almost chocolatey, so they don’t need a lot of seasoning. An onion, a few cloves of garlic, some salt, and a dash of Mexican oregano will do the trick.
It’s a bit sad to have plain beans and salsa for dinner three nights in a row, even those with Sres. Sando y Martinez’s imprimaturs, so I needed to bring in a ringer. My all-time favorite rice dish, one I’ve made on literal Thanksgiving instead of mashed potatoes, is OG food blog Lottie + Doof’s adaptation of indie sleaze-era Avenue B stalwart (you had to be there) Mercadito Cantina’s Arroz Verde Al Horno. Tim Mazurek, the writer behind Lottie + Doof, has impeccable taste, not only because he married one of my childhood best friends. He knew this rice was something special when he wrote about it back in 2009. As he says, it’s a heart stopper, so this time I made it without the cup of heavy cream. I used the recommended Oaxaca cheese, but I substituted gouda (cheaper) for the manchego. If you do make this, and you should, please don’t think you can skip the epazote. Its vegetal, almost citrusy zing prevents the richness of the cheese from becoming too much.
A jar of salsa, a pot of beans, a casserole dish of cheesy rice. It lasted from Sunday through Tuesday.
For lunch last week I did what I do when I don’t want to do very much: assemble my patented Dune Dupes. Dune is the artisanal falafel/Mediterranean bowl place in my neighborhood. The owners’ “vision is to pay homage to the food we love using the freshest, cleanest, and most local ingredients possible.” My vision is to make falafel bowls that are roughly half as good for less than a quarter of the price. You’ll have lunch all week for the cost of one Dune bowl.
A package of frozen Trader Joe’s falafel ($3.99)
A bag of TJ’s “cruciferous crunch collection” ($2.49)
An eggplant, chopped and roasted ($1.79) (or sub for your roasted veggie of choice)
A tub of Majestic Sprouted Hummus (here’s where I splurge. It’s $5.99, but it’s the best pre-packaged hummus on the market.) If you want to slum it, TJ’s plain hummus is $1.99.
Lemon and hot sauce, a few olives and/or pickles, and some “carb savvy” tortillas ($3.49)
That’s lunch for a week for less than $20.
Saturday, I had some time on my hands and a sleeve of saltines left over from my Atlantic Beach pie. So I made another saltine-y dessert, Mama Deb’s Saltine Cracker Candy Ice Cream Sandwiches from Smitten Kitchen. I made them as written, except I subbed the vanilla ice cream for Tillamook mint chocolate chip. They’re really good, and easy to make, though next time I’ll stuff them with even more ice cream.
After thugging out with some mango tofu curry, I actually went out to dinner on Friday, indulging in some jalapeno poppers from the Burbank Barney’s Beanery, post-Phoenician Scheme. I had been craving the classic bar snack for a couple of weeks, becoming obsessed enough to start a Reddit thread asking for local suggestions. My Proustian popper was from a shuttered bar on 10th Avenue in New York. They made them from scratch and they were amazing. I can’t for the life of me remember what this place was called. If anyone from my 2008 UCB 201 Improv class is reading this, do you remember? Anyway, Barney’s poppers were pre-frozen and slightly disappointing, but only slightly.
I watched some movies too, don’t worry. The already mentioned The Phoenician Scheme, Wes Anderson’s latest, is delightful if a bit slight following the emotional heights of Asteroid City. I’d never seen a Final Destination until a few days ago, when I braved my fear of random, Rube Goldbergian death and caught Final Destination Bloodlines. It’s less a horror movie than an R-rated Looney Tune, and I only covered my eyes twice. I went to the arthouse to catch Amalia Ullman’s latest, Magic Farm, starring Chloë Sevigny and Alex Wolff, as callow American Vice-ish reporters who bombard a small village in Argentina looking for a story about a goofy local musician they hope to exploit. They find a different story, despite themselves, about environmental pesticides making the village residents sick. I absolutely loved Ullman’s last film, El Planeta, but the targets of Magic Farm’s satire felt a bit dated. The idiosyncratic characters saved it, especially Sevigny (who’s doing an impression of Drew Droege’s impression of her), and Joe Apollonio as an IBS-stricken himbo.
My favorite film of the bunch was the Philippou Brothers’ Bring Her Back, the follow-up to 2022’s minor grief-horror hit Talk to Me. Bring Her Back is a major step up, and is probably my favorite horror movie since Hereditary. A pair of teenagers (one blind, one with some emotional problems) suddenly lose their father and get placed with a foster mother carrying a few secrets, played with conviction (and just the teeniest bit of necessary camp) by Sally Hawkins. The film is terrifying, some of its images shocking, but there’s real heart to the performances, especially Billy Barratt as a kid who, since he’s been let down by every adult in his life, needs to become one himself.
At home I watched (for the first time, I think) Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives. I can forgive a lot (not everything, don’t cancel me!) from Allen, but this was a straight-up slog. Two couples (Allen and Mia Farrow, and Judy Davis and Sydney Pollack) who hate each other from first frame til last, break up and get back together and break up again. Only Juliette Lewis, as an extremely problematic “wise beyond her years” teenager, has a bit of spark and life.
I can’t think of a segue that isn’t wildly inappropriate, so I’ll just say also watched the new two-part HBO documentary Pee-wee as Himself. It’s fantastic, skewering the expected hagiography of these types of projects by showing a series of interviews the director Matt Wolf conducted with Paul Reubens shortly before Reubens’s death. Reubens is defensive, condescending, combative — a total asshole. But we get the full picture of why he is such an asshole, how his insecurities and internalized homophobia coupled with society’s virulent externalized homophobia to ruin him, time and time again.
Two Hollywood satires of varying quality just ended their seasons. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s The Studio, where Rogen plays a hapless studio executive attempting to facilitate the creation of art during a time in Los Angeles when art is rarely facilitated, is super fun. Talented hams like Catherine O’Hara, Bryan Cranston, and Kathryn Hahn play exaggerated Hollywood types, while stars like Zoë Kravitz, Olivia Wilde, and Dave Franco skewer their own personas. The episodes unfold like more tightly written Curbs, and Rogen (who’s never gotten his proper due as an actor) holds everything together with his shaggy but formidable charm.
The fourth season of Hacks was uneven at best. How many more permutations of Deborah and Ava’s codependency must we endure? Jean Smart and Hannah Einbender do their best with the implausibility of these two women still working together after stabbing each other in the back over and over again. The guest stars—Robby Hoffman as a lapsed Hasid, scarily competent assistant, Michaela Watkins as the world’s worst HR rep—made the show worth watching. But the Emmy (should) go to Julianne Nicholson as “Dance Mom” — a Frankenstein cocktail of 2009 Susan Boyle and 2009 Lindsay Lohan. Nicholson (Mare of Easttown, Janet Planet) was primarily known for her heavy dramatic roles. The reinvention, mid-career, of a genius-level, red-headed (fine, auburn-headed) comedian? I can only think of one other example.
I didn’t listen to much music this week (it would cut into my Roland Garros time), but Portishead’s Roads popped up on my shuffle in the car. Good God, what a song. If boutique hotel lobby playlists ruined Dummy’s charms for two decades, listen again with fresh ears. Sublime.
Next week on the main blog, it’s 2009. A recently defunct food magazine, a dejected editor, and a chance encounter on a Jetblue flight from JFK to Oakland.