Dixieland Jazz Redux

Lately, I have noticed everywhere in the world I have been, Dixieland Jazz is back en vogue. From the Hollywood Farmer's Market to a basement speakeasy in Berlin, it is not just for New Orleans anymore. (Three sentence Wikipedia def: Dixieland, an early style of Jazz that developed in New Orleans in the 1910s, is the earliest recorded style of Jazz music. The style combined earlier brass band marches, French Quadrilles, ragtime and blues and with collective, polyphonic improvisation. It was most popular during prohibition era of the 20s, until the swing era of the 30s took over.)

Yesterday, I went to the farmer's market in Hollywood, where many terrible, terrible folkies perform. However, aside from the crazy asian man, rastafarian and girl that looked like she was having a poop in her pants, there was one special gem in the sea of crap, Petrojvic Blasting Co. Two adorable brothers from Tennessee playing Balkan street music in Los Angeles. Luckily I was walking by as they announced they were playing a free show at Bar 107 in downtown Los Angeles. So I went. Although the Balkan stuff was good, the real deal was the second set of Dixieland Jazz. Hard to get a crowd going in this town, but everyone in the place was having some ol' fashioned fun. http://www.blastingcompany.com
http://www.laweekly.com/2009-04-23/la-vida/la-people-2009-the-petrojvic-blasting-co-street-sonic/





A couple of weeks ago, I found myself running around with a local to various bars in the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin. We walked into a cute, nondescript bar at the end of the night and he kept walking to the back. I followed him down a dodgy set of wooden stairs to a hot crowed basement swathed in red light and velvet curtains, where another young Dixieland band was performing to a very enamored hipster German crowd. It was amazing and random and reminded me of the cantina scene in Star Wars. I am pretty sure we were at Das Ä on Weserstraße 40 in Neukölln, near Sonnenallee. That was an all-nighter... http://www.ae-neukoelln.de/

In Paris at the Casino de Paris Andrew Bird show, I met Ben Jaffe, tuba player and current director of Preservation Hall Jazz Band in New Orleans. About them: The Preservation Hall Jazz Band derives its name from Preservation Hall, the venerable music venue in the French Quarter, founded in 1961 by Allan and Sandra Jaffe, Ben's parents. The band has traveled worldwide spreading their mission to nurture and perpetuate New Orleans Traditional Jazz. So lucky that he happened to be in town and stopped by to play a couple of songs with Andrew. He was so friendly and so passionate about music and his native New Orleans, it was wonderful to be around! Plus I always like anyone who is a fan of Polariods... If you are in Los Angeles on December 23rd, Preservation Hall Jazz Band is playing a Creole Christmas at Walt Disney Concert Hall.
http://www.preservationhall.com

Intro to Paris: Le Marais 3eme

I got into Paris at 6AM and had 9 hours to wander the streets until the boys arrived from London and checked into the hotel. Luckily I met a nice New Yorker on the plane over, who has been living in Paris for the past year. I met up with him for lunch and he showed me around le Marais. A good shopping street in this neighborhood is rue des Francs-Bourgeois and a wonderful food market, Marché des Enfants Rouges is on 39 rue de Bretagne. It is the oldest food market in Paris, built in 1615 under the rule of King Louis XIII. The name means “ Market of the Red Children” and comes from a nearby 17th century orphanage where the children wore red uniforms. I loved that you could drink champagne and eat oysters right on the street, if one were so inclined. I wanted to buy an old viewfinder with these beautiful old slides of France, but I didn't.


There are quite a few interesting and free museums in Paris. We stopped into Musee Carnavalet near Place des Vosges, a museum dedicated to the history of the city of Paris. It is literally hundreds of rooms, bursting at the seams with a random collection of the most amazing paintings and objects, old signage and miniatures and even the bedroom of Proust. Thank you to kind strangers!


Also in the 3rd arrondissement was a dining experience unlike any I have ever had. Upon a friend's recommendation, I went to Derriere on 69 rue des Gravilliers. Being a Thursday night without a reservation, they were only able to seat us in one of the intimate upstairs rooms, which was fine with me. This restaurant is in an apartment so there are tables in the courtyard, on the main floor and then upstairs in the bedrooms, where I sat on the bed. One thing they don't tell you is that if you walk to the end of the hallway, open the wardrobe and press on the back, it opens into a secret smoking lounge filled with old books and taxidermy birds. What better reason to smoke is there?

Thanksgiving Clafoutis

Being the Francophile that I am since returning from Paris a couple of days ago, I opted to make a cherry clafoutis over pumpkin pie. I think this is a lovely fluffy and light dessert option that still goes with Thanksgiving dinner and is super easy to make (aside from the tedium of pitting cherries). You could even substitute cranberries for cherries, but I kept with the traditional French version (although I pitted the cherries, whereas the rustic French recipe keeps the pits, which supposedly lend an almond flavor to the dish). This dish can also be served for breakfast.

Julia Child's Clafouti
serves 6-8

1 1/4 cups milk
1/3 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 Tablespoon real vanilla or half of a vanilla bean
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup flour
2-3 cups cherries, pitted
1/4-1/3 cup sugar
powdered sugar for dusting

*Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
*In a blender, blend the milk, 1/3 c. sugar, eggs, vanilla, salt and flour.
*Pour a 1/4 inch layer of the batter in a buttered 7 or 8 cup lightly buttered fireproof baking dish.
*Place in the oven until a film of batter sets in the pan (less than 10 min).
*Remove from oven and spread the cherries over the batter. Note: It is important to use cherries that are not bruised.
*Sprinkle on the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar. (The recipe calls for another 1/3 c. here, but I use a little less.)
*Pour on the rest of the batter. Bake at 350 degrees for about for about 45 minutes to an hour.
*The clafouti is done when puffed and brown and and a knife plunged in the center comes out clean.
*Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve warm. Bon appetit!

Of Course I Love NY

Looks like my intention of blogging everyday about my trip has not gone according to plan. So I am still going to post about it in retrospect... I started in NYC and stayed with my friend Perrie in Brooklyn. Turns out that was a good idea since we stayed out each night until 4AM and thus, I had no jet lag when I arrived in Paris. Brilliant! We stuck to Brooklyn, which was good since I only had a couple of days there. Perrie has 3 roommates, one is a chemist, one is a mathematician and the other is a douchebag. I stayed in the mathematician's room since she was gone, and for this comfort I only had to make her bed and write her a love letter (which I still owe her). Her room was fantastical, filled with unicorns and care bears and hearts and rainbows. Jim, the chemist, came out with us one night on our Williamsburg bar crawl. I liked him because he showed me a picture on his phone of a bucket of tiny sheep's brains. I also liked Union Pool because there was an outdoor fire pit and a taco truck that was air conditioned by Satan. The next night I helped Perrie with a photo shoot of a band she knows from Philly. They played at the Bell House so we ran around the streets in Gowanus shooting away before they went on. The last day I got my Gorilla coffee (one of my favorites besides Intelligentsia) and a little vintage shopping in Williamsburg, where we found ourselves surrounded by French bulldogs and French tourists. A little foreshadowing... Too short of a trip but as Perrie says, at least I did not wear out my welcome!

C'était un rendezvous

Claude Lelouch's Rendezvous... from Dat on Vimeo.

C'était un rendezvous: A 1978 short film by New Wave director Claude Lelouch may be the most thrilling single piece of driving ever filmed. The director, who had no permits to film or to stop traffic, hooked a camera to the front bumper of a Mercedes-Benz (in the only bit of film trickery, the sound of the motor was played by a five-speed Ferrari) and filmed the entire movie in a single cinema-verité take: He drove through the streets of Paris at five in the morning, through red lights, around the Arc de Triomphe, down the Champs-Élysées, against one-way traffic, over sidewalks, at speeds up to 140 miles per hour. The film ends after nine terrifying minutes when the driver parks the car in Montmartre at the stairs of Sacre Coeur. After the first showing, the director was arrested for endangering public safety. Me in a few days...

Spanish Tortilla de Papas

The last few days I have been home, I have been madly trying to finish my perishable food items before heading out of town again. I had a bunch of small, multi-colored potatoes and mini onions to use up so I tried this dish for the first time and, although there was a mishap with the flipping, it tasted delicious. This recipe is great if you don't have many ingredients lying around. Really all you need are eggs, potatoes and onions. My sister is going to Spain for the first time next week so this one is for you! xo

Prep Time: 15 min
Cook Time: 45 min

Ingredients:
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 pound potatoes, thinly sliced
1 large onion, thinly sliced
4 eggs
salt and pepper to taste

1. In a skillet, heat olive oil over medium high heat. Lightly salt and pepper the potatoes. Cook until golden.
2. Stir in the onions. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onions soften and begin to brown.
3. Beat eggs together with salt and pepper and pour into pan. Stir gently to combine. Reduce heat to low and cook until eggs begin to brown on the bottom.
4. Loosen bottom of omelet with a spatula, invert a large plate over the pan, and carefully turn the omelet out onto it. Slide the omelet back into the pan with the uncooked side down. Cook until eggs are set.

Garnish omelet with tomato and avocado and serve warm. Traditionally, this dish is quite rustic and plain so I added a bit of soyrizo to the pan to give it a little kick. I think that some spicy aioli would also be a nice complement.

Hello, World.

Some of my friends suggested that I start a travel blog to keep them current on my upcoming trip to Europe, so here is my attempt at blogging... This will be a place to share my love of music, art, fashion, film, design, crafting and cooking with anyone who cares to read about it. Think of it as online postcards to everyone all at once, or like the red balloons with notes attached you launched into the sky as a kid, hoping to get a new pen pal. (I'm definitely gonna try that again.)

There is also something to be said for writing and sending true postcards. It is a romantic and old fashioned notion to take ink to paper and send a message across oceans and valleys. I like sending and receiving postcards; it never ceases to amaze me how a little piece of paper actually makes it to its destination. I was astonished when my friends in Honduras received a postcard I sent them from L.A. over a month ago, since they live on a tiny island, don't have a real address and just recently experienced a government coup. So I am inspired to send more from my trip to NYC, Paris, Amsterdam, Turnhout, Brussels and Berlin. Get ready!