Galley Girl – She's in Your Kitchen

Chef Celeb cook books are useful as step stools, for pressing flowers, or, for the ones with especially compelling photos, cocktail table status symbols. For cooking? Meh.  Just because so and so can wield a behemoth immersion blender with the proportions and decibel output of a  jackhammer doesn’t mean it’ll work in my humble galley. Then there’s the issue of practicality. Storing not to mention brandishing a butane torch the size of an airport runway fire extinguisher seems downright risky.

No special equipment required.

There is also the issue of patronage. I don’t frequent many of the legions of chef celeb-driven restaurants, and in many cases, neither do the chefs themselves. Hence, there’s no feeling of loyalty, of confidence borne from knowing the chef is there overseeing the mundane with the  kind of quotidian regularity that breeds staff rapport, community and, in the right hands, near flawless food.

Zov Karamardian could be off gallivanting on Bravo’s reality show, Top Chef Masters, but she turned them down. She can actually be found in her eponymous restaurant day in and day out.  Better still, she cooks in it, and I really like what she cooks. Hence, I thought I might like to use her new cook book, Simply Zov for more than a doorstop.

I picked up three copies of the book while eating dinner at Zov’s last month. It had just come out, and our server had them all inscribed and autographed by Zov while we had a beautifully executed  prix fixe and sipped Vouvray Chenin Blanc. It’s a lovely volume, with a full page picture for every recipe. It’s budget minded with no outlandish special equipment required, and very user friendly.

How so? I found out at 5:00 a.m. yesterday. Neglecting to prep my bake sale items the night before, I decided to whip something up at the last minute in The Test Galley, which  is about as organized as your local soup kitchen. I chose Apricot Shortbread Bars substituting strawberry preserves.   A simple dough grating technique (after freezing it) resulted in bars that had all the shortbread richness, but with a flaky, light, buttery crumb, softer where the dough met the sweet tang of the preserves. The bars sold out in minutes. The bedlam they created at the bake sale table is better left out of this piece. Let’s just say it wasn’t  what you would expect of church ladies.

Zov’s Bistro, Cafe and Bakery 17440 E. Seventeenth Street Tustin, CA 92780 (714) 838 8855. http://zovs.com

Besides a name with all the buoyancy of a Mother’s Day paperweight made of Fimo, eggplant has other attributes that probably disqualified it early on from being considered as a subject for one of Pablo Neruda’s Odes. 

The fact that its prone to bitterness and the tendency to sweat make it sound more like a painfully transparent match.com profile than an entree. Still, in capable hands, it becomes smoky and silken: a miraculous transformation. When I was invited to an eggplant recipe contest at Zov’s Bistro, whose  menu is riddled with lovely incarnations of the mediterranean specialty,  I was curious about what would turn up. 

Eggplant Parmesan by Priscilla Willis at shescookin.com, photo by Diane Cu of whiteonricecouple.com.

Aubergine concoctions were out in full force:  a healthy, sleek eggplant Parmesan redux, herbal eggplant salad with pita chips, and roasted baby eggplants stuffed with a savory beef and tomato mixture served with rice pilaf.  Jihan Assi of Tustin crafted the latter dish that won over judges (and this guest) with its velvety, yielding texture.

The contest was announced on Zov’s new blog where the winning recipe is now posted. I might have entered the contest myself if I could manage to keep the mutinous nightshade from soaking up it’s weight in olive oil  like a Chore Boy.

Later, though, I made a mental note not to enter any subsequent recipe contests when Assi was presented with what looked like a consolation plaque from AYSO!

Wait, I think my kid's soccer plaque is missing.

But that was before I knew  her recipe would be featured on the menu at Zovs’ Bistro for a day, and she received a 100 dollar Zov’s gift card. That will buy a lot of baba ghanoush.

Zov’s Bistro 17440 E. 17th Street, Tustin 92780. 714.838.8855.

A small faux-painted sign on the wall above an antique buffet in Zov Karamardian’s Bakery reads: Zov’s Queendom. It goes largely unnoticed by the throngs panting on the bakery cases, politely purchasing and then mauling pumpkin-chocolate chip cookies with velvety chocolate cream cheese frosting and ogling the key lime tartlets with meringue peaks toasted the impossible golden brown of a perfect campfire marshmallow. One thing is clear to Zov’s royal subjects: she’s in the details. If you get the sense it wouldn’t be the same without her physically there, you’re right.  

Chef chat.

That’s why when the Bravo reality show Top Chef Masters asked Zov to be a contestant on the show this year,  she demurred.The show offers the winner $100,000.00 cash for their favorite charity. Still, to earn it, chefs have to be sequestered from family and friends, contend with sleep deprivation and such insane elimination competitions  as creating an amuse bouche from items out of a vending machine. What’s next, dumpster diving for power garnishes?  

Chef struck!

In a moment of serendipity, Top Chef Season One veteran Dave Martin ate at Zov’s recently and hit it off with Karamardian. Last Sunday,  Martin led a cooking class at the bistro. I like to cook, but all that tedious standing around and manual labor can make me cranky and hungry. Especially when the only consolation is a meager sample of my own cooking. In this class, I watched a demo while the steps were fully explained and questions were answered, ate a full-sized meal and went home with the recipes-hooray!  

He's not your bitch.

Teddybearish and disarming, Martin fumbled with the gas burners and introduced his mom during the demo. A pleasant surprise considering his signature line on the show was, “I’m not your bitch, Bitch!”  

Black truffle mac and cheese has become as ubiquitous in OC as chef-celebs with meat-cutting diagram tats and flesh plugs. Still, when done well, who can resist? Bill Bracken serves an elegant version at Palm Terrace and there’s a decent homespun-if-too-creamy take at  Old Town Orange’s Haven Gastropub. Brandy and sherry fortification lended a fondue-like quality to Martin’s version for a result both comforting and upscale. Substituting the usual pasty roux with a liaison to thicken the sauce garnered a lighter result. Though based in NYC, he’s welcome in our kitchen anytime.  

Mac daddy.

 Zov’s Bistro, Café and Bakery 17440 East Seventeenth St. Tustin, CA 92780 714.838.8855. www.zovs.com Dinner for two, $80.00, food only.  

www.chefdavemartin.com