Stir Crazy

On a warm weekday morning on the patio of a funky indoor-outdoor cafe in Silver Lake, Suzanne Goin and I are waiting for a waitress to notice us. Goin is the chef and co-owner of Lucques, a Los Angeles restaurant that opened in 1998. She’s perfectly at home at this relaxed neighborhood haunt and takes the slow service in stride. Our waitress, a tall, pretty, young woman, eventually saunters up to take our order. * “Do you have any bran muffins?” Goin asks. * “No, we just have those really disgusting, super sweet, really-bad-for-you kinds, like chocolate chip.” * Goin orders granola. When the waitress leaves, she laughs lightly: “Imagine her at Lucques.”

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The waitress’ health-conscious outspokenness would never play to Lucques’ sophisticated clientele--although, to be fair, she’d probably endorse Goin’s seasonal, mostly organic Cal-Med-French bistro-style cooking. (“I do wish somebody’d find a nice, short name for what I do,” Goin says.)

Lucques’ menus are based on whatever Goin finds fresh and appealing at the farmers markets. In mid-May, for example, that would be favas, young broccoli, spring onions, white asparagus. Her recipes combine a direct, unfussy approach--lots of grilling, fresh herbs and an exuberant use of olive oil--with an affinity for bold flavors from the sunniest Mediterranean countries: Moroccan chicken with preserved lemon and green olives; a Portuguese pork with clams; or her favorite dish on the new spring menu, rabbit a la moutarde with cavolo nero and buttered noodles.

At 33, Goin seems too young to have one of the most important and successful new restaurants in town, but her resume reveals a varied and rigorous 12-year apprenticeship in some of the Western World’s great kitchens.

Her lifelong interest in food began here, in L.A., where she was born and raised. Her father, John, was a plastic surgeon; her mother, Marcia, a psychiatrist--”the scariest L.A. combo,” Goin jokes. The couple shared a passion for fine dining and brought their two daughters along to restaurants: Suzanne grew up eating at Ma Maison, Perino’s, L’Ermitage.

She caught the culinary bug. For her high school senior project, Goin spent three weeks in the pastry kitchen at Ma Maison. The next year, as a history major at Brown University in Providence, R.I., Goin thought she’d sell desserts to restaurants. “I was incredibly naive,” she laughs. “It would be like some young woman walking into Lucques and saying, ‘I make really good desserts. Want to buy some?’ ” But George Germon and Johanne Killeen at Providence’s innovative Al Forno saw Goin’s potential and put her to work. Al Forno proved revelatory. “I learned that great food was not just French food,” Goin says. “American food, fresh, and made to order, could be just as amazing.”

After earning a history degree (her senior thesis was on Russian American diplomacy after World War I), Goin turned to cooking. She opened a small restaurant with a former Al Forno chef but soon wanted a bigger challenge. Seeking advice, she impulsively wrote a letter to Alice Waters, owner of Chez Panisse in Berkeley and doyenne of the ‘80s fresh-food revolution. Waters invited Goin to apply for a position, which meant cooking lunch for a committee of culinary giants, including Waters herself and Chez Panisse chef Paul Bertolli.

Goin spent three weeks perfecting a fall menu only to arrive at the restaurant during a 95-degree Indian summer. She reworked her menu on the spot, serving summer squash and tomatoes in a fresh ricotta tart with a cornmeal crust and grilled lamb loin with roasted peppers agrodolce. Afterward, committee members had questions: Where did she get her inspiration, they asked. “Cookbooks,” she said. “Which cookbooks?” Not one title came to mind. Nevertheless, the meal was a resounding success, and she got the job. Goin’s new employers praised, in particular, her admirable cool. “In fact,” says Goin, “the tenser I am, the more calm I appear.”

After two years cooking in the upstairs cafe at Chez Panisse, Goin left for France, only to be disappointed. At one celebrated restaurant, she says, she watched the chef use powdered stock and put fish portions in bags with sauce and then refrigerate them. “It was boil-a-bag!” At her next stop, Paris’ three-star Arpege, quality control couldn’t have been higher. Fish was delivered twice a day. After lunch, what remained of the first delivery was fed to the staff.

Returning to the States, Goin landed first at the huge 200-seat Olives in Boston, then at the tiny 28-seat Alloro, finally moving back to L.A. in 1995 as sous-chef at Campanile. When Mark Peel, Campanile’s executive chef-owner, went on sabbatical, Goin replaced him in the kitchen.

That experience, she says, was the prelude to her opening her own restaurant. She met the purveyors and local farmers and grew familiar with the L.A. dining scene. She also got a crash course in high-end kitchen management: She hired and fired, wrote schedules, ordered inventory, conceived the daily menu. “In short, I did everything I do today, except now I also do the owner bit: worrying.”

Grace under pressure, an ability to focus and a dogged tolerance for repetitive work have stood her in good stead for the rigors of a restaurant kitchen. As Lucques’ executive chef, Goin oversees other cooks, monitoring consistency. “In two days, a dish can slip in all different directions. I keep showing people what to do,” she says. “Cooking is very repetitive; you stand in the same spot for five to six hours a night, you prepare the same stuff over and over again.”

Goin met her business partner, Caroline Styne, through mutual friends. The former manager of Jones Hollywood, Styne had the business savvy to complement Goin’s talents in the kitchen. “We started ‘dating,’ ” Goin says, laughing. “We’d go to restaurants and say, ‘Do you like this glass? What do you think of this color napkin?’ ” They found a space on Melrose Avenue. Once Harold Lloyd’s snug little carriage house, it had become a sprawling hodgepodge of add-ons, including a very large catering kitchen.

“We knew the feel we wanted the place to have,” says Goin. “Homey and comfortable and magical--a place to live for a few hours.” With its wooden beams, brick walls, fireplace and light-filled patio, Lucques has all these virtues plus simple elegance, thanks to designer Barbara Barry, whom Goin met at a dinner party. Barry, whose usual design clients are homeowners and large corporations, took on Lucques “as a kind of a side project.”

At first, the designer came up with wonderful ideas the partners couldn’t afford to execute: chairs that cost $400 each, a wall paneled in mahogany. “We had no money,” Goin recalls. “Eventually Barbara accepted this and even enjoyed working within the constraints.” Barry helped them with fixtures, fabrics and finding just the right shade of green for the restaurant (lucques, pronounced luke, is a type of green olive). She also designed the patio. The partners and staff did a lot of work themselves: Sous-chef Corina Weibel, for example, painted the restaurant’s exterior numerous times.

“The day Lucques opened, I was so nervous, my taste glands must have secreted some kind of acid because nothing tasted right no matter how many times I made it,” says Goin. “I knew I was making things correctly, but everything tasted just awful.” She needn’t have worried. Not since the “Too Hot Tamales” (Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger of the Border Grill and Ciudad) had a pair of smart, talented, articulate women made such a splash on the L.A. restaurant scene. Before long, reservations had to be booked a month in advance.

To this day, Goin still hasn’t eaten a dinner there. She’s too busy working the grill. “I’d just like Lucques to go on and on and stop being new,” she says, “and become like Campanile and Spago--one of the city’s long-lived restaurants.”

Suzanne Goin’s Summer Dinner Menu

Serves 6

Flatbread With Topenade and Romesco. Grilled Whole Bass on Herb Salad With Aioli and Preserved Lemon and Green Olive Relish. Tomato and Shell Bean Salad. Roasted Potatoes With Fennel and Garlic.

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For this summertime dinner party, chef Suzanne Goin will have us prowling farmers markets for shell beans and heirloom tomatoes, fresh herbs and Meyer lemons. None of the following recipes is difficult, and each incorporates at least one surprising, flavor-enhancing technique: the frying of chiles before grinding them into a sauce, the sprinkle of good French salt, the generous use of fresh herbs and a way of keeping fennel wedges intact. For dessert, serve fresh summer berries or a palate-cleansing fruit sorbet.

Flatbread

1 tablespoon kosher salt

4 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon yeast

1 tablespoon sugar

1 cup lukewarm water

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus additional for brushing

1/2 cup sliced scallions

1/4 cup parsley, coarsely chopped

Combine salt and flour. Set aside.

In kitchen mixer, combine yeast, sugar and water and let proof in warm place until foamy, about 5 minutes.

Add olive oil to yeast mixture and, using bread paddles, turn mixer on lowest speed. Gradually add the flour and mix until dough comes together into a ball. Do not overmix.

Place dough in bowl and brush on a little oil. Cover and let dough rise until doubled in size (about 1 hour). Punch down and let rise again (about 1 hour).

Divide dough into eight pieces (about 2 1/2 ounces each). On a clean work surface, shape dough with palm of hand, using olive oil to prevent stickiness. Form pieces into 1/4-inch-thick flatbreads about 4 inches in diameter.

Lightly oil flatbreads, scatter scallions and parsley evenly over them, pressing them lightly into surfaces. Grill breads over medium fire on both sides until they are cooked through, about 2 minutes per side. Serve immediately.

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Tapenade

2 cups black olives, pitted (we use Nicoise and Nyons)

2 tablespoons capers, soaked, dried and roughly chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1 anchovy filet, minced

Zest of 1/2 lemon, minced

Juice of 1/2 lemon

1/3 cup good-quality extra virgin olive oil

Roughly chop 2/3 of the olives. Finely chop the remaining olives. Mix the olives with the remaining ingredients and taste for seasoning. You may want to add a little fresh ground black pepper. Sometimes we add a splash of cognac.

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Romesco

This is a complex Spanish sauce with a lot of flavors. Don’t puree it too smoothly; you’ll want some texture. Also, don’t be alarmed if some of the oil separates out. This is a good thing.

10 ancho chiles, soaked in warm water for an hour, then dried and seeded Salt

1/4 cup almonds, toasted

1/4 cup hazelnuts, toasted

1 clove garlic, peeled and quartered

1 inch-thick slice of bread fried in olive oil until golden brown, then cut into 1/2-inch cubes

1 whole tomato, halved, roasted at 375 degrees for 30 minutes

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

1 1/3 cups extra virgin olive oil Juice of one lemon

In heavy saute pan, heat 2 tablespoons of oil and saute the chiles for 5 minutes. Season with salt and set aside. In food processor, blend nuts, garlic and bread cubes by pulsing until ground together. Add chiles and pulse for another minute. Add roasted tomatoes and parsley. With the food processor running on low, slowly pour in olive oil until you have a puree. Season to taste with salt and lemon.

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Grilled whole bass on herb salad

This showpiece entree is finished with fleur de sel, salt evaporated from seawater in salt farms in France. It’s crunchy, mellower in flavor than table salt, and available in specialty markets. For more greens, make a bed of lettuce for the fish, toss it with herb salad and dispense final lemon juice and olive oil accordingly.

1 5-pound bass, gutted and scaled with head and tail on

1/2 bunch thyme (approximately 10 sprigs)

1/2 bunch parsley

Handful of fennel tops

1/2 lemon, sliced thin

2 teaspoons freshly picked thyme leaves

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

2 tablespoons high-quality extra virgin olive oil

1 cup, packed, herb salad (made from a variety of fresh-picked herbs such as basil, parsley, chives, chervil, a bit of tarragon, arugula, watercress)

1 Lemon for seasoning

Olive oil for grilling

Fleur de sel

Prepare fish by scoring flesh on both sides. Season inside and outside of fish with salt and pepper. Place the thyme and parsley bunches, fennel and sliced lemon inside fish cavity. Sprinkle thyme leaves and chopped parsley on both sides of fish.

When ready to cook fish, brush with olive oil and place on a medium-hot part of the grill. Don’t disturb fish for first 5 minutes (or it will stick). After 5 minutes, turn fish 45 degrees and let it cook another 6 minutes.

Turn fish another 45 degrees and cook it 5 more minutes, then turn it 45 more degrees and cook for another 5 minutes (21 minutes total by this point). Check for doneness: Fish should be just cooked through; flesh should be white at the bone. Move to a rack (on a plate or cookie sheet to catch juices) and let rest for 5 to 7 minutes.

Scatter herb salad on large platter. Place warm fish atop salad and drizzle with olive oil and generous squeezes of lemon. Pour any juices left on resting rack around fish. Finish with a sprinkling of fleur de sel. Serve immediately with aioli and preserved lemon and green olive relish.

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Aioli

Aioli is best made in the largest batch possible. The following recipe is for 2 cups, but you could easily double it.

1 1/2 cups extra virgin olive oil

3 egg yolks

Juice of 1 to 2 lemons (to taste)

2 or 3 cloves garlic pounded with 1/2 teaspoon of salt

Salt

Cayenne

Make mayonnaise by slowly and carefully whisking oil into the egg yolks, drop-by-drop until mixture begins to thicken, then pour in slow, steady stream. Season to taste with remaining ingredients. Thin with a little room-temperature water if needed.

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Preserved lemon and green olive relish

Preserved lemons are packed with salt and cured in a jar for a month. They are difficult to find commercially but you can make your own or use this shortcut: Partially quarter a lemon (so that it stays together at one end), pack it with salt, put in a plastic bag and freeze overnight. Thaw and proceed with recipe.

1 preserved lemon, seeds removed, finely diced (1/8” dice)

1 cup good green olives (lucques, casse des baux, picholine), pitted and roughly chopped

1 dry chili d’arbol, sliced fine on bias

1/4 cup good-quality extra virgin olive oil

10 flat parsley leaves, sliced very thin

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl and let sit at least an hour before serving.

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Tomato and shell bean salad

You can find shell beans at some supermarkets and at farmers markets all summer long.

1 1/2 pounds fresh cranberry beans in pods

1/2 teaspoon thyme leaves

4 shallots, diced fine

3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

Water

Salt

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

3 pounds ripe heirloom tomatoes, some sliced and some cut in wedges

1/2 basket yellow and red cherry tomatoes, cut in half through the stems

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

1 tablespoon green and purple basil

leaves, thinly sliced

Lemon for seasoning

Cracked black pepper

Shell cranberry beans.

Gently saute the thyme and half the shallots in 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil until shallots are translucent. Add shell beans and stir until beans are coated with oil, about one minute. Add water to cover by 1 inch. Bring to boil, then lower heat and cook until tender but not mushy, about 30 minutes, adding salt after the first 15 minutes. Cool in cooking liquid.

Make a vinaigrette with remaining shallots, extra virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar. Salt to taste.

Combine tomatoes and dress with some of the vinaigrette. Season with salt and cracked black pepper. Arrange 3/4 of the tomatoes on a platter or in a shallow bowl.

Drain shell beans of their juice. Toss with chopped parsley and some of the vinaigrette. Spoon beans over tomatoes, tucking some under so that tomatoes are still visible. Garnish with rest of tomatoes and sprinkle basil over all. Squeeze lemon over beans and tomatoes to taste.

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Roasted potatoes with fennel and garlic

18 small (golf ball-sized) Yukon Gold potatoes

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

8 sprigs thyme

1 fresh bay leaf

Sea salt

1 head fresh garlic (young), separated

into unpeeled cloves

4 small fennel bulbs

1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

1 tablespoon parsley, finely chopped (optional)

1 tablespoon basil leaves, thinly sliced (optional)

Toss the potatoes with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, the thyme sprigs, bay leaf and salt. Add garlic cloves. Put potatoes and garlic in roasting pan, cover with foil and cook at 400 degrees until done, 30 to 40 minutes. Cool.

Meanwhile, cut each fennel bulb into 8 to 10 wedges, leaving core intact. (This will keep wedges together.) Gently saute the fennel in remaining tablespoon extra virgin olive oil over medium heat until there is some caramelization and fennel is tender but not mushy, about 8 minutes. Season with salt and thyme leaves as you cook. Set aside.

When potatoes are cool, cut them in half. You can slip garlic out of skin or leave the skin on. Toss with the fennel. Sprinkle optional parsley and basil leaves. Season to taste.