Home Plate: Pea Shoots & Boiled Coke with Ginger and Lemon

Like the song says, you can't always get what you want. When I go out to a restaurant and find something really special, delicious, and unique, the rational part of my brain says, stop and enjoy this while you're eating it. Live in the moment and have a nice meal. Instinctually, however, I'm thinking something else, and it's always the same question: how soon can I have this again? Unfortunately, in some cases, the answer is "not for a long time," especially when a restaurant is nowhere near my home.

Fresh Herb, Chicken & Potato Flatbread Pizza: A Step-by-Step Pictorial

Growing up, I preferred a chewy, soft pizza crust. Buffalo's La Nova and Just Pizza were both greasy childhood favorites. I have fond memories of the former's just-crisp pepperoni and the honey barbecue crust of the latter. In my recent home of Northampton, Massachusetts, I had a soft spot for Luna Pizza's fresh mozzarella, imported romano, and painstakingly executed crust, a pillar among hand-tossed, semi-thick crusts.

Wednesday Brunch: Dutch Baby

Today begins what will be a weekly feature here at Beach City Cooking: Wednesday Brunch. You always hear about Sunday morning as the traditional day of brunch. But when was the last time you got up early on a weekday and treated yourself to a delicious breakfast? I use the term "brunch" loosely--personally, if I'm having brunch at a restaurant, I always choose one of the breakfast options. There's something very satisfying in making the first meal of your day breakfast-y.

Taco Talk

I'm not a burrito guy. I can understand the appeal of wrapping up a whole meal in a single tortilla shell, but apart from that, the taco is the burrito's better in every way. Tacos are simple and elegant. When you're halfway through a taco, you happily chow down on the remaining half. There's nothing aesthetically displeasing about it, nor does it feel overwhelming, or like too much food. Maybe you only have room for a couple of tacos, maybe you're hungry for a few.

Summer Rolls: A Step-by-Step Pictorial

My cooking process--and I use the word “process” very loosely--is usually 2/3 research and 1/3 trial and error. The topic of this post serves as a fitting example. When I first set out to make Vietnamese summer rolls, I spent more time on Wikipedia than any other site. I realize this is a pretty egregious confession, but hear me out. I've been eating Vietnamese food since I was a young tyke, eagerly tearing into quail and shrimp on sugar cane. You'd think I'd have picked up something on how to prepare certain Vietnamese dishes simply by osmosis by then, but no dice, unfortunately. I was probably a little too focused on getting that perfect bite of Vietnamese pancake--wrapped in lettuce and dipped in Nước chấm--to pick up much of anything.

Welcome to Beach City Cooking!

Hi, and welcome to Beach City Cooking. This is a blog with a simple premise: an amateur home cook attempting to develop some culinary skills, in a small kitchen a few minutes' walk from the Pacific Ocean, in Redondo Beach, California. I'm a recent transplant from Northampton, Massachusetts, and have been inspired by my new and very different surroundings to jump on the food blog bandwagon and begin posting pictures and recipes of my very own. I have no formal training or professional cooking experience, but spend as much of my free time as possible in the kitchen, or reading about food online, on sites like those in my blogroll to your immediate right. Without further ado, let's get cooking, and I can bore you all with a little more information about me, and my thoughts on food and cooking, in future posts. Thanks for checking out the site!

-Max