Venice California has one restaurant that never disappoints, called "Gjelina" after the Slovak mother of the restaurant owner.
Chef Travis joined him as a partner and built the menu. The artistic and genius blonde surfer of his time turned Venice into the district of hipsters who brought real estate to the most expensive place in the city.
Today Venice did her thing, the partners separated, and when I came to eat with a friend this week, I saw Gjelina's son sitting alone and eating a meal at his restaurant.
Pesto mint sauce
1 cup finely chopped mint
1 finely chopped shallot
½ cup pomegranate seeds
¾ cup olive oil
1 tablespoon pomegranate molasses
½ cup grated parmesan
1 tablespoon lemon zest
Juice of half a lemon
In a medium bowl, mix the chopped onion and mint, pomegranate seeds, molasses, olive oil, lemon zest, grated parmesan, salt, pepper and lemon juice, mix well and set aside.
The kabocha
1 Japanese pumpkin kabocha
⅓ cup of water
2 tablespoons of olive oil
salt and pepper
- PreHeat the oven to 220C, 425F
- With a sharp knife, cut the kabocha in half, (a fresh pumpkin when you start cutting it splits open like a watermelon.)
- Take all the seeds out
- In an oven tray, put the two pieces of kabocha face down on parchment paper, pour the water and make a pool of the parchment paper like a closed pool for pumpkins
- Put in the oven for 35 minutes.
- During this time the pumpkin softens
- Remove the pumpkins from the oven
- put in the oven a heavy iron pan and let it heat up for 5 minutes,
- After they have cooled a bit, cut the pumpkins in the way you want them to sit on
- the plate,
- With an oven glove, take out the hot pan and put the cut pumpkins
- Sprinkle the olive oil on them Salt and pepper
- put on broil for 5 minutes. Take out of the oven, transfer to individual plates and put on top 2 tablespoon mint pomegranate pesto on each pumpkin
