WEEK THREE READING

Jonathan Gold | L.A. restaurant review: At Willie Jane, a local phenom refined

Govind Armstrong has hit a peak at Willie Jane by blending Low Country cuisine with a garden-fresh California presentation.

By Jonathan Gold
September 28, 2013

If you follow the restaurant scene in Los Angeles, you have known about Govind Armstrong for years, possibly since he was a teenage cooking prodigy whose mom drove him to stints on the line at the original Spago the way that other moms drive their kids to Little League practice. Or perhaps you know him from his long collaboration with locavore Ben Ford, or from his solo gigs at Table 8 and 8 Oz. Burger Bar. You may have followed Armstrong's short-lived adventure in New York, which wasn't well-received, and his appearances on "Top Chef" and on the list of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People.
It is more likely that you noticed his restaurant Post & Beam, which he started a couple of years ago with business partner Brad Johnson and is the most ambitious restaurant ever to open in the Crenshaw District. If you want to understand the power structure of South Los Angeles, you could do worse than to eavesdrop over grits and a Bloody Mary at Post & Beam after church on a Sunday afternoon.
But while Armstrong has been widely discussed as a phenomenon, and his cascading hair still makes teenage foodies swoon, his development as a chef may have been less examined — his style's evolution from California Mediterranean, his work with organic farmers, his burger-bar perfectionism, his streamlined African American menu at Post & Beam. Much of his early cooking was tasty but undisciplined, overgarnished and underthought. At Post & Beam, with a clientele that expected something close to perfection in dishes that reminded them of home (which is quite different from that of uptown customers demanding novelty), Armstrong finally settled into a groove.

At Willie Jane, the new restaurant he runs with Johnson on Abbot Kinney's restaurant row, Armstrong's style has become more refined yet — it's kind of a fantasy mash-up of Low Country cuisine with farm-driven California presentation, heavily reliant on the sharply tart notes that have become his trademark, and heavily reliant on Geri Miller's urban farm Cook's Garden, which happens to be right next door. When the collards and lettuces are grown less than 50 feet from your kitchen, and the farmer is apt to glare if you have treated her peppers with less than total respect, you have to maintain a certain watchfulness. Many of the dishes may have their origins in the coastal Carolinas, but they are grounded in Venice soil.
So in addition to the buttermilk biscuits with soft honey butter, the deviled eggs and the mussels steamed with ham and lemon, there are sliced peak-season peaches with burrata, smoked pecans and a handful of next-door arugula; a heap of milky ricotta with crunchy bits of fried bread and sliced next-door cucumbers; and a spicy watermelon salad with somewhat overcooked shrimp and a scattering of next-door lettuce. You can get a stack of spareribs brushed with a tart hibiscus-flower glaze — Mexicans call the herb jamaica — but it will be sprinkled with peppery yellow arugula blossoms, which is not what they put on the ribs at Bludso's. You may know shrimp and grits as the saucy, hammy breakfast dish you find everywhere in Charleston. Armstrong's version involves chile-marinated grilled shrimp, more Caribbean than South Carolina, with a small lake of organic Anson Mills grits and a kind of roasted pepper ragout. It is as close to Low Country shrimp and grits as New Orleans barbecued shrimp is to barbecue, and when you eat it, semantics don't come into play.
Most of the seating for the restaurant is outside, on patios that back up against the nursery on the other side of the building. The waiters have the ease (and the cheekbones) of models. The bartender rings herb-flavored seasonal variations on classic Southern cocktails like Old-Fashioneds, Vieux Carres and shrubs.

Is the fried chicken crisp, the pan-roasted salmon properly medium rare and the charred carrot as compelling as the hanger steak with which it is served? Indeed. The braised oxtail is compelling in its plainness, little more than fat chunks of tail soft enough to eat with a spoon, served with a lightly curried sauce you may never get around to using (it would be the main attraction at a soul food restaurant in Compton or Willowbrook). The pork chop brined in sweet tea is uncommonly juicy. The cast-iron chicken is sort of a marriage between Tuscan chicken under a brick and Edna Lewis-style pan-roasted chicken, bone out and cooked between two hot cast-iron pans until the juices run clear and the skin becomes about 90% crunch. The greens cooked down with pickled peppers, the black-eyed peas with tasso and kale, and the late-summer creamed corn are at least as interesting as the meat.
You may be tempted by the giant slabs of red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, the berry shortcake or the pudding, but the one dessert you must try is the raisin-oatmeal cookie sandwich, as chewy, crisp and buttery as your fondest dreams, and stuffed with cool mascarpone cream.

WEEK THREE...

This week, you are to work on your restaurant review. You have a reading, but that is really just to give you one more idea of what good food writing looks like.
So just do the reading and work on your restaurant review. I look forward to reading about your eating!

ESSAY #1...THE RESTAURANT REVIEW

This is our first larger assignment. The process for writing and turning the paper in is below. The essay must be turned in by next Saturday, October 5th, by midnight. You will only turn this in online, to turnitin.com.

Please, if you have any questions at all, let me know and I will try to help as soon as possible. Happy eating and writing about eating!

RESTAURANT REVIEW: (20%) Go to any restaurant in town. As you eat, take notes on the ambiance, the food, and the service. You may choose any restaurant (from Taco Bell to Café Med), but you should use this writing assignment to explore your descriptive capabilities. Use sound, touch, taste, smell, and the look of the food and surroundings. This is a descriptive essay, so I will be judging your essay on how well you describe the scene and the experience.

You may use the first-person in this review.
The length is somewhat up to you, but it is probably best to think about a couple of pages.
I am looking most here at your ability to describe both the food and the experience!
Basically, you should go to a restaurant and capture the eating event on paper. You may use first person and may write in a fairly informal tone. This is due on Saturday, 10/5, by midnight.

HERE'S HOW YOU TURN THIS PAPER IN:
Once your essay is finished, you will upload the final draft to turnitin.com

If you have not used this site before, you will go to turnitin.com and sign in using your own information. To enroll in the class, you will need the CLASS ID and password. They are below:
CLASS ID: 6914741
PASSWORD: english

Once you are signed in, you will click on Restaurant Review, which is the only available assignment right now. You will submit your paper there. That is it. If you have trouble with this, let me know.
Again, that assignment is due on Saturday and will be turned in only at turnitin.com.

Best,
dr. s

WEEK TWO BLOG ENTRY

Is food culture? Is culture food? What is the relationship between people and what people eat?
Think broadly...think globally. Think with your stomach.
(okay, I know this question may, at first glance, seem odd. So remember this: these blog entries are intended to get you to write. If you think the height of U.S. culture can be found at Chuck E. Cheese, then write about that. What you write here is not intended to produce the correct answer but a certain volume of interesting writing. Through this writing, I promise you will become more fluent with the pen...well, keyboard. Happy writing this week!)

WEEK TWO READING

 

The Find: Taco María truck survives the downturn

 

Chef Carlos Salgado's mobile restaurant specializes in food that re-imagines tantalizing Mexican traditions.
By Miles Clements Special to The Los Angeles Times
January 19, 2012
When food truck fatigue finally set in among the Twitter-equipped some time last year, the mobile movement all but stalled. Gone were the throngs that waited for hours, their attentions shifted instead to newly minted food artisans and itinerant pop-up restaurants. But in a Darwinian twist, only the strongest trucks have survived. And though the thrill of the chase may be gone for some, what remains are by and large the best meals on wheels.

Taco María is a product of that natural selection. The truck is helmed by Carlos Salgado, whose culinary pedigree instantly drove Taco María onto the radar screen of every serious Orange County eater. His has indeed an impressive résumé: Salgado served as pastry chef in some of the Bay Area's top restaurants, including Daniel Patterson's Coi and Oakland's Commis. He returned home to Orange County to help his parents transform the family's taquería. Taco María is what emerged from that reinvention, a truck that's constantly re-imagining lonchera traditions with the techniques and style of Mexican alta cocina.

"My parents' restaurant, La Siesta [in Orange], has been in business for over 25 years," Salgado says. "It was when they started talking about selling a few years ago that I began pointing myself back toward my hometown. Taco María was to be an extension of the restaurant and a flagship for our catering operations.

"Coming to work for a different audience, at a different price point, I've had to simplify my approach and distill the cooking ethics that are most important to me into a method that works within the food truck model. And while I may not have a kitchen full of highly trained, Michelin-quality cooks, a Pacojet, Cryovac machine or a dozen immersion circulators, I do have my family to support me and keep me grounded. My dad is the best sous-chef I could imagine having."

Those at the truck inevitably start with the aracherra taco, made with grilled hanger steak, a blistered shisito pepper, caramelized onion and bacon's smoky quintessence. The taco has both the humble charm of a backyard barbecue and the finesse of a fine steakhouse.

Yet even the most hard-core carnivores ultimately end up ordering the jardineros taco as well: knobs of roasted pumpkin, black beans, cotija cheese and a pumpkin seed salsa de semillas. There's no need for meat — this is a vegetarian taco built not on the artifice of mock meat or incongruous fusion but on the simple rhythms of the market.

If the aracherra doesn't sway you, there's always the carnitas. The slow-cooked pork shoulder is lashed with a bit of citrus and enlivened by the noticeable warmth of cinnamon. The mole de pollo is even more richly spiced — the mahogany mole is as complex as an Indian curry.

But Taco María's ever-changing specials are its signature. The truck's quesadilla de tuétano triggers Pavlovian devotion. It's a dish already cemented in food truck lore: crisp nuggets of bone marrow, stringy queso Oaxaca and a garlic-and-herb paste pulverized in a molcajete. It's predictably rich but powerfully addictive.

Salgado's rendition of esquites is similarly good, chile- and lime-laced corn sautéed with garlic, thyme and epazote in a butter flavored with blackened corncobs and toasty husks.

"I was telling [my] mom about some of my favorite foods and struggling to find a translation for bone marrow," Salgado explains. "She said something like, 'I think we used to make quesadillas [with that].' I was floored and immediately wrote it into our opening menu. What I assumed would be a fringe dish for the adventurous actually turned out to be incredibly popular. My whole staff has cuts and scrapes on their hands from pushing marrow every day just to meet demand."

It isn't brunch without the truck's excellent chilaquiles: freshly fried tortilla chips enrobed in a cascabel chile sauce and topped with pickled onions, queso fresco and a fried egg. Taco María isn't all about masa, either — any taco can be turned into a burrito. And you've really got to try the beet salad dressed with avocado, orange, almonds and charred scallion vinaigrette.

There may be a melon-lemon grass agua fresca to drink, or perhaps one flush with hibiscus and Concord grape. Salgado's almond horchata, however, is what you'll want a jug of, almond milk perfumed with coriander seeds. It's a brilliant addition: fragrant and floral, the coriander is at once unmistakable and ingeniously subtle.

Whether it's by an obsessive need for completion or sheer force of will, you will find room for dessert. Salgado's sweets are every bit as good as his pastry training portends, like the steamed chocolate bread pudding strewn with fried peanuts and glazed with milky caramel. When there isn't dense rice pudding scented with star anise and cinnamon, there's a glorious ricotta flan of homemade ricotta, caramel and a few sangria-soaked raspberries.

Witness the truck's crowds at Orange County's farmers markets and business parks and you begin to understand Taco María's growing cult, a purveyor of precisely the kind of modern Mexican cooking that's destined not for disposable cardboard containers but fine porcelain.

Salgado hints at that future. "It's still too early for us to share details, but we're excited about creating a unique type of Mexican restaurant here in Orange County, where Mexican food is such a large part of our shared experience. Exactly where and when depend on how far our truck, Frida, can take us. What I can say is that the restaurant will remain local, honest and accessible, with a menu that is recognizably Mexican in soul, in a space that is central, warm and inviting and will hopefully become a fixture in our own community."

source: http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-find-20120119,0,3934262.story

WEEK TWO WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ

If you were going to open a food truck, what type of food would you serve and where would it be?
By the way, price is not an issue: you can open up an oyster bar served from a limo in the south of France if you want.

WEEK ONE BLOG ENTRY

Introduce yourself to the class. You might consider some of the following questions: where are you from? What is your major?
Why are you taking an online course?
What is your favorite book?
What is your favorite food?
What is the farthest you have traveled from home? 
What did you do over Summer Break?

Respond to any of these questions or anything else to tell us about yourself.

WEEK ONE READING

READING 1

THE FOLLOWING IS FROM Orwell's essay, “Politics and the English Language”

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:

1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

One can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

READING 2

 

Twain's Rules of Writing

(from Mark Twain's scathing essay on the Literary Offenses of James Fenimore Cooper)

    1. A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere.
2. The episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help develop it.
3. The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.
4. The personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there.
5. When the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say.
6. When the author describes the character of a personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description.
7. When a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a Negro minstrel at the end of it.
8. Crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader by either the author or the people in the tale.
9. The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausably set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable.
10. The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones.
11. The characters in tale be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency.
An author should
12. _Say_ what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.
13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.
14. Eschew surplusage.
15. Not omit necessary details.
16. Avoid slovenliness of form.
17. Use good grammar.
18. Employ a simple, straightforward style.

 

ELMORE LEONARD'S RULES FOR WRITING:

Never open a book with weather.

 Avoid prologues.

Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.

 Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.

 Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. 

Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."

Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

 Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

Don't go into great detail describing places and things.

Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

 

 

 

 

 

 

WEEK ONE WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ

WEEK ONE WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ

What do you think of these writing rules? Does one stand out to you? Why? What are your most important rules of writing?

Some helpful COURSE AND UNIVERSITY INFORMATION

Academic calendar http://www.csub.edu/facultyAffairs/files/calendar/AcademicCalendar2012.pdf

Academic advising http://www.csub.edu/aarc/

Access http://www.csub.edu/els/WEB/accessibility/standards.shtml

Bookstore http://www.bkstr.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/StoreCatalogDisplay?catalogId=10001&langId=-1&demoKey=d&storeId=217407

Campus testing center http://www.csub.edu/testing/

Counseling http://www.csub.edu/counselingcenter/

Financial aid http://www.csub.edu/FinAid/

Grievance policy http://www.csub.edu/academicprograms/complaints.shtml

Tutoring centers/Writing
Resource Center http://www.csub.edu/wrc/

My Writing Labs Plus http://www.csub.edu/mwl/

Tuition and fees http://www.csub.edu/admissions/registration/

Gwar rubric http://www.csub.edu/wasc/documents/EER/WASC%20IR%202011/GE.GWAR/GWAR%20Rubric.pdf

Health Center http://www.csub.edu/HealthCenter/

Course Policies

Greetings,
This is the syllabus and statement of course policies for this course.

BLOG: (10%) Each week there will be a question on the blog. You will write at least 250 words(a long and brilliant paragraph) in response to that question. You must also respond to your classmates’ writing at least twice(with at least a one sentence response) each week. The best thing to do is to write your response to the blog prompt, respond to someone else’s blog entry, and then wait a few hours or a day before coming back to see what others have said about your blog entry. Then, respond to that. The more you write, the better. Each week, I will chime in at least once(and usually more) with my own response.
WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ: (10%) After you read each week’s selection, you will respond to a question about the reading. These should also be about 250 words. You do not need to respond to other’s work in this area. However, you may find someone else’s work so interesting that you want to respond.
PEER REVISION: (10%) ---refer to the email regarding this topic. It will be later in the quarter.
TIPPING POINT FINAL DRAFT: (30%) For this assignment, you will email me the final draft copy of your essay.
The essay should be attached as a Microsoft Word document and should be 4-5 pages in length, double spaced.
There are two essay topics to choose from.
Write a 4-6 page double spaced essay on one of the following topics:
1. How might one or more of the ideas in the book The Tipping Point apply to your chosen profession?
2. Locate a trend [social, political, cultural, other] that seems to exhibit a "tipping point" phenomenon. Provide a brief explanation of why you think this phenomenon meets Gladwell's three criteria for tipping point phenomenon: a) contagiousness b) little causes having big effects c) not gradual but dramatic change.

ROUGH DRAFT OF TIPPING POINT ESSAY MUST BE EMAILED TO YOUR REVISERS AND TO ME BY
REVISERS, YOU MUST EMAIL YOUR COMMENTS ON THE PAPER BACK TO THE AUTHOR AND TO ME BY

TORTILLA CURTAIN RESPONSE: (10%)

Follow the guidelines I sent in the email!

RESTAURANT REVIEW: (20%) Go to any restaurant in town. As you eat, take notes on the ambiance, the food, and the service. You may choose any restaurant (from Taco Bell to Café Med), but you should use this writing assignment to explore your descriptive capabilities. Use sound, touch, taste, smell, and the look of the food and surroundings. The review should be approximately two pages in length. You may use the first-person in this review.
IN CLASS ESSAY: (10%)
We will take this in class essay on the 12th of October at CSUB. This is our one mandatory meeting.Since this course satisfies the GWAR, you must pass one in class essay to be eligible to pass the course. That essay will be given during our face to face meeting. If you do not pass this assignment, you can come to my office to take a “demand” essay.  

OTHER COURSE POLICIES:

Passing Grade RequirementStudents must earn a grade of C or higher in this course to satisfy the Graduation Writing Assessment Requirement (GWAR). In addition, this course can fulfill the GWAR only if a student has completed 90 or more quarter units of college work before taking it.

To be eligible for a C in English 305, students must earn a C or higher on at least one in-class writing assignment and a C average on all other course assignments. Since this is an online class, in-class writing assignments may be given at the first meeting or the last.
English 305 Waiting List/Drop Policy Statement
Students enrolled in English 305 must attend the first Saturday orientation session. Students who miss this session will be dropped so that other students may add the course. There is no make-up orientation session.

Students who wish to add the course once the class is full can contact the instructor before the quarter begins and ask to be put on a waiting list. These students must attend the first Saturday session to remain eligible for a seat, and these students can only be added if a spot in the class becomes available.

Course Description:

An online/hybrid course in effective expository writing. Emphasis on writing as a process. This course counts toward the Teacher Preparation programs in English, Liberal Studies, and Child Development but does not count toward the major or minor. Fulfills the GWAR.

Course Learning Outcomes

Students in GWAR courses should advance their mastery of the following learning outcomes:

Goal 1:  Reading Skills

Objective 1:   Analyze a rhetorical situation (purpose, audience, tone) and how a writer’s rhetorical choices (e.g. bias, rhetorical modes, syntax, diction) inform a text.

Objective 2:   Analyze a text’s structure and conventional parts (introduction, thesis, main ideas, body paragraphs, conclusion), and how the parts work together.

Objective 3:   Analyze a text’s logic and reasoning.

Objective 4:   Effectively critique the effectiveness of a writer’s rhetorical choices, organization, and logic.

Goal 2:  Writing Skills

   Objective 1:   Effectively adapt the writing process to various rhetorical situations, anticipating the needs of purpose and audience.

   Objective 2:   Analyze more complex and/or abstract writing prompts, and stay on task.

   Objective 3:   Create effective thesis statements, and use a variety of appropriate and compelling rhetorical strategies to support the thesis.

   Objective 4:   Effectively structure essays, evaluating how the parts work together to create meaning.

   Objective 5:   Avoid logical fallacies, and use precise logical reasoning to develop essays.

   Objective 6:   Use correct and college-level, discourse-appropriate syntax, diction, grammar, and mechanics.

Goal 3:  Research Skills

   Objective 1:   Effectively use summary, paraphrase, and direct quotes to smoothly synthesize sources into own writing.

   Objective 2:   Master a documentation style, and avoid plagiarism.    

   Objective 3:   Use research methods to find reputable sources.

Writing Requirements
Assignments will gradually increase in difficulty, and each assignment will include both a rough draft and a final essay. Writing assignments may be distributed as follows:

● at least one in-class assignment, during the first or last meeting

● writing to inform

● writing to amuse or move the reader emotionally

● writing to persuade

● writing to analyze literature and/or art

Participation
Students will be required to participate in peer revision and discussion on a blog set up exclusively for this class.

WEEKLY GOALS

WEEK ONE

This week I hope you will be able to effectively adapt the writing process to various rhetorical situations, anticipating the needs of purpose and audience. (Goal 2, Objective 1)

WEEK TWO

This week I hope you will be able to analyze a rhetorical situation (purpose, audience, tone) and how a writer’s rhetorical choices (e.g. bias, rhetorical modes, syntax, diction) inform a text. (Goal 1, Objective 1)

WEEK THREE

This week I hope you will be able to effectively structure essays, evaluating how the parts work together to create meaning. (Goal 2, Objective 4)

WEEK FOUR

This week I hope you will be able to avoid logical fallacies, and use precise logical reasoning to develop essays. (Goal 2, Objective 5)

WEEK FIVE

This week I hope you will be able to use correct and college-level, discourse-appropriate syntax, diction, grammar, and mechanics. (Goal 2, Objective 6)

WEEK SIX

This week I hope you will be able to analyze a text’s structure and conventional parts (introduction, thesis, main ideas, body paragraphs, conclusion), and how the parts work together. (Goal 1, Objective 2)

WEEK SEVEN

This week I hope you will be able to analyze a text’s logic and reasoning. (Goal 1, Objective 3)

WEEK EIGHT

This week I hope you will be able to effectively use summary, paraphrase, and direct quotes to smoothly synthesize sources into own writing. (Goal 3, Objective 1)

WEEK NINE

This week I hope you will be able to master a documentation style, and avoid plagiarism. (Goal 3, Objective 2) and Use research methods to find reputable sources. (Goal 3, Objective 3)

WEEK TEN

This week I hope you will be able to create effective thesis statements, and use a variety of appropriate and compelling rhetorical strategies to support the thesis. (Goal 2, Objective 3)