By Laura Medina
There is a reason to the season. There is a reason why fitness and food go hand-in-hand.
It's Summer, folks!
Other than it's bikini season, it's when all the organic, healthy food-fruits and vegetables-are their ripest and most plentiful. The best of both worlds, right?
These are the food that should fuel your fitness.
Since Summer is drowning in fresh, ripe produce, chefs are doing their best in enjoying and serving and preserving the best of produce.
Studio City's Firefly's Chef Perry Pollaci is salvaging the best of Summer produce by doing them in creative, yummy ways...
As for you fitness bikini folks, don't worry about losing your hard-won bikini figure.
These are low-calorie, portion-controlled servings. If there's protein, it's gonna be good for your collagen. If there's antioxidant, again, good for your skin.
The first course is a salad that ought to be a dessert. The simple burrata and peaches is a bikini salad. Why? The bland but adaptable burrata cheese pairs very well with fruit, such as sweet, juicy peach with very little heat or cooking. The sprinkling of crushed pistachios, only makes it more yummy. Burrata cheese only adds to your calcium.
Fried green tomatoes with yuzu buttermilk on toast is one of multitudes to best take advantage of Summer's fresh bounties.
Lamb meatballs in ripe tomato sauce will always be a reliable classic.
phyllo-wrapped shrimp
The last and first time this scrumptious scribe first munched on this delectable phyllo-wrapped shrimp, was at a Lucky Rice Food Festival in Culver City, five years ago. That was the first, last, and only time this scribe enjoyed this.
Until last night, thank god Chef Perry Pollaci brought back this rare treat, prawn or shrimp on a stick, wrapped in either phyllo or noodles then fried. This was an huge hit, huge enough for two to three rounds of it. Party-pleaser.
The protein keeps on coming, skirt steak with okinawa potato and kimchee is a refined, contemporary take on Korean-American, that's uniquely LA.
Final protein is beauty-friendly. Every plastic surgeon's favorite protein, steelhead salmon resting on a bed of cornbread and white corn stew. Firefly's nod to Southern cooking.
This scribe's diet tip, okay, once dessert happens, there isn't no going back.
What this scribe likes about cheesecake and doughnut hole lollipops is that they're versatile. A taste of sweet should signal the end of a meal, lunch or dinner. The cheesecake lollipops are small enough to save your figure and easy to serve at your pool party.
The doughnut hole lollipops are also party-pleasers.
The fields are bursting with humongous watermelons that nobody knows what to do with...except for chefs and bartenders and juicers...
Firefly squeeze collagen-rich watermelon juice and lime juice then mix in tequila with a dash of agave. It's called Drunk in Love, their take on a daiquiri. They replaced the rum with Californian/Mexican heritage tequila.
Summer is also strawberry season. What to do with all these strawberries? Shake up Strawberry Fields: champagne, vodka, lemon, housemade strawberry simple syrup.
Hurry up and get thee to Firefly, in 11720 Ventura Blvd. Studio City, CA, to enjoy Summer's bounties. Relax in their dark, chill library lounge, they'll do the chopping and cooking for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment