Coconut Rice Cakes, Herbs, Smashed Avocado and Chile

Elena Stonaker + Kenny Osehan’s Crispy Rice Salad Wrap

  • Elena Stonaker + Kenny Osehan’s Crispy Rice Salad Wrap
    Crispy Coconut Rice Salad Wraps with Cucumber, Herbs and Chile
  • Elena Stonaker + Kenny Osehan’s Crispy Rice Salad Wrap
    Kenny, picking greens and herbs at the Getty Salad Garden, January 2016
  • Elena Stonaker + Kenny Osehan’s Crispy Rice Salad Wrap
    Elena picking greens at the Getty Salad Garden in Los Angeles, CA
  • Elena Stonaker + Kenny Osehan’s Crispy Rice Salad Wrap
  • Elena Stonaker + Kenny Osehan’s Crispy Rice Salad Wrap
    Elena Stonaker's sculpture, destined for her current show at Mars Gallery in Los Angeles
  • Elena Stonaker + Kenny Osehan’s Crispy Rice Salad Wrap
    Elena Stonaker's wearable sculpture
  • Elena Stonaker + Kenny Osehan’s Crispy Rice Salad Wrap
    Elena Stonaker's beaded and stuffed sculpture
  • Elena Stonaker + Kenny Osehan’s Crispy Rice Salad Wrap
    Elena Stonaker's sculpture, destined for her current show at Mars Gallery in Los Angeles
  • Elena Stonaker + Kenny Osehan’s Crispy Rice Salad Wrap
  • Elena Stonaker + Kenny Osehan’s Crispy Rice Salad Wrap
    Exterior of Kenny's The Alamo Motel in Los Alamos, California. ©Audrey Ma
  • Elena Stonaker + Kenny Osehan’s Crispy Rice Salad Wrap
    Interior of Kenny's The Ojia Ranch Inn in Ojai, California. ©nancy neil photography
  • Elena Stonaker + Kenny Osehan’s Crispy Rice Salad Wrap
    Interior of Kenny's The Ojia Ranch Inn in Ojai, California. ©nancy neil photography
  • Elena Stonaker + Kenny Osehan’s Crispy Rice Salad Wrap
    Interior of Kenny's The Alamo Motel in Los Alamos, California

NOTES

This recipe is a great way to use leftover cooked rice or a random smattering of herbs. It’s a fun do-it-yourself presentation lets your guests assemble their own combo of herbs. We used coconut oil to fry the rice and give it some flavor, but you could use sesame or flavorless grapeseed oil if you aren’t down with the coconut flavor.

INSTRUCTIONS

Do ahead:

1. Prepare the rice cakes: Cook rice according to package instructions, season with rice wine vinegar and spread rice out in a 3/4″ layer on a baking sheet line with plastic wrap to cool. Using a spatula, spread it out evenly, and use your fingertips to compress the rice into a large, dense cake.* Once the rice reaches room temperature, pop the tray in the refrigerator uncovered to set overnight or for at least 3 hours.

2. Make the dressing: In a mortar and pestle, combine the chile, garlic, and palm sugar and grind to a paste. Add the fish sauce and lime juice and stir until well combined. Transfer to a small serving bowl (guests will drizzle the dressing to their liking).

3. Arrange picked herbs on a platter with butter lettuce leaves, a pile of sliced green onion and sliced cucumber.

4. Pit avocados and scoop the flesh into a small bowl with a soup spoon. Squeeze the juice of one lime over the avocado, season with salt and smash with the back of a fork until you have a chunky guacamole consistency. Set aside.

2. Just before serving, remove rice from the fridge and cut 8 equal-size tri­angles of rice cake. Arrange a layer of newspaper or a flattened brown paper bag on the kitchen counter. Heat the 3 tablespoons coconut oil in a large nonstick sauté pan over medium-high heat. Carefully add the rice cakes to the hot oil. Cook until golden brown on one side, 3 to 4 minutes. Flip the rice cakes and continue cooking until golden brown on the other side, another 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer the rice cakes to the newspaper to absorb excess oil. Sprinkle lightly with salt. Repeat with remaining rice cakes, adding 3 tbs coconut oil to the pan each time.

3. Serve rice cakes next herbs, avocado, dressing and sambal sauce on the side. Encourage guests to crumble a rice cake into a single leaf smeared with avocado, and wrap it up with the herbs and dressing as they please.

*Note: Kenny and Elena cooked their rice a little differently, so head the recipe, not the photos 😉

RECIPE

DIFFICULTY

EASY

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SERVES

4

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PREP TIME

60 MINS

Crispy Rice

  • cups  
    cooked sushi rice
  • 1/3 
    cup 
    coconut oil
  •  
     
    salt

Dressing

  •  
    Thai bird chile, minced, with most seeds removed
  • clove 
    garlic, roughly chopped
  • tbs 
    palm or date sugar
  • 1 1/2 
    tsp 
    fish sauce
  • tbs 
    fresh lime juice

For Serving

  • ripe 
    avocados
  •  
    lime
  • tsp 
    sea salt
  • medium 
    Persian cucumbers, thinly sliced
  • small 
    green onions, tops and bottoms removed, thinly sliced
  • head 
    butter lettuce, leaves washed, dried and separated
  • cups 
    mixed torn herbs (Thai basil, mint, shiso +cilantro)
  •  
     
    sambal chili sauce

INSTRUCTIONS

Do ahead:

1. Prepare the rice cakes: Cook rice according to package instructions, season with rice wine vinegar and spread rice out in a 3/4″ layer on a baking sheet line with plastic wrap to cool. Using a spatula, spread it out evenly, and use your fingertips to compress the rice into a large, dense cake.* Once the rice reaches room temperature, pop the tray in the refrigerator uncovered to set overnight or for at least 3 hours.

2. Make the dressing: In a mortar and pestle, combine the chile, garlic, and palm sugar and grind to a paste. Add the fish sauce and lime juice and stir until well combined. Transfer to a small serving bowl (guests will drizzle the dressing to their liking).

3. Arrange picked herbs on a platter with butter lettuce leaves, a pile of sliced green onion and sliced cucumber.

4. Pit avocados and scoop the flesh into a small bowl with a soup spoon. Squeeze the juice of one lime over the avocado, season with salt and smash with the back of a fork until you have a chunky guacamole consistency. Set aside.

2. Just before serving, remove rice from the fridge and cut 8 equal-size tri­angles of rice cake. Arrange a layer of newspaper or a flattened brown paper bag on the kitchen counter. Heat the 3 tablespoons coconut oil in a large nonstick sauté pan over medium-high heat. Carefully add the rice cakes to the hot oil. Cook until golden brown on one side, 3 to 4 minutes. Flip the rice cakes and continue cooking until golden brown on the other side, another 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer the rice cakes to the newspaper to absorb excess oil. Sprinkle lightly with salt. Repeat with remaining rice cakes, adding 3 tbs coconut oil to the pan each time.

3. Serve rice cakes next herbs, avocado, dressing and sambal sauce on the side. Encourage guests to crumble a rice cake into a single leaf smeared with avocado, and wrap it up with the herbs and dressing as they please.

*Note: Kenny and Elena cooked their rice a little differently, so head the recipe, not the photos 😉

On Jul 25, 2016, at 7:28 PMkennyosehan@gmail.com wrote:

Elena was thinking we should do a salad that signifies our friendship and the time we lived together. We had this joke that she was my little Asian housewife, and to make me happy she had to have fresh rice waiting for me when I came home. I think she did that twice but she is still the best Asian housewife ever! 

On Jul 25, 2016, at 8:58 PM, Elena Stonaker <elenastonaker@gmail.com> wrote:

I can attempt to be in charge of rice so I uphold my reputation as best (fake) Asian house wife. Contrary to Kenny’s memory, there was ALWAYS fresh rice waiting for her at home "</p"</p"</p"</p.

————————————-

And so, the beautiful friendship between hotelier/designer Kenny Osehan and painter/sculptor Elena Stonaker was honored in this recipe. I met these two ladies in my Getty Salad Garden last winter. They had responded to an urgent call to for help: I needed people to come and help me harvest, to share the burden of an obscene volume of vegetables that I could not alone consume. These two came to my aid like the world’s best-dressed Red Cross, tote bags in-hand and a vast appreciation for the garden. I knew of Kenny’s Shelter Social Club, a string of artfully designed hotels, bars and restaurants, and I would soon discover Elena’s hermetic world of intricate beading, fantastical paintings and hand-sewn stuffed sculptures. What I really loved was how much these two ladies clearly appreciate and admire one another, proposing a salad that would celebrate their long-standing friendship. So we gathered to make a salad at Kenny’s home in Silver Lake, where Elena’s work adorns the walls and sits in every corner.

Elena and Kenny in Their Own Words

Julia Sherman: Elena, your work is wild. What are some of your visual influences? Where do you look for inspiration?

Elena Stonaker: I’m very rooted in ancient mysticism, origin stories, myths and Neolithic monuments. I’m very interested in pre-history, in tribal rituals and their accompanying relics and costume. I’m obsessed with plants and geological formations and carry them as inspirations for my use of form and process.

JS: How do you work with these themes and make them new?

ES: It’s about balance. I counter the old and the timeless with my fascination with contemporary throw-away culture: Plastic, trash, everything at our fingertips is disposable. I make precious objects out of cheap materials to prove that you can make magic out of anything. Reclaim and reframe the things that you disagree with and turn them into something you believe in.

JS: In general, are you a meticulous person? How does your ability to make things with your hands translate to everyday life?

ES: I’m meticulous in my work, but at the same time it is all very loose, imperfect, organic, and seriously playful. I follow the principles of wabi sabi in my life and work: From up-close it looks like a mess, but from far away it all makes sense.

JS: Is all that intricate beadwork escapism?

ES: Beads are funny, they look like seeds. Sometimes I pretend I’m a farmer and the work is my crops. Making involved hand-work is incredibly meditative.

JS: Tell me about the show you just put up at Mars Gallery and how it has been working with Galia Lin? How does your work interact?

ES: The show is a huge culmination of my work to date and an incredible collaboration with my new friend/mentor, Galia Linn. On the surface our work is extremely different: Her giant ceramic pieces are indestructible, heavy and fixed. They are monumental, earthy, and Neolithic. My sculptures are bright and shiny, made of lightweight materials that are flexible and constantly changing. But the overarching theme of our work is one and the same. We are creating space for non-dogmatic spirituality and rituals, a place where the sacred can exist in a world where very little of it left.

JS: And you two worked side-by-side in anticipation of the exhibition?

ES: Yes! Galia is earth and fire, and I am air and water. I made new work for the show in Galia’s studio. I expected her to give me space out of the way in a corner somewhere but she put me right in the middle of the room (which was initially terrifying). She proclaims she loves disruption, so I was just that, and she grew to love me. Building my own island in the sea of her work felt organic and symbiotic. She has shown to me what it means to harness the power of obsession, to live with radical integrity and own the wild, primal experience of being a woman in every aspect of life. The opportunity to create this show has burned me down to the ground, and now I am rising from the ashes as a new person.

JS: Tell me about the wedding dress you made for Carly Jo Morgan.

ES: I moved to LA from New York on a whim in 2013 and I didn’t know anyone. Carly Jo Morgan had this amazing gallery in Venice at the time called The Sacred Door, and I met her via Instagram. A virtual stranger, I walked into the gallery with a suitcase full of my beaded costumes and sculptures, and I proceeded to dress her up in all of them. Within an hour she asked me if I could make her a dress for her wedding the following month. I had never done anything like that and was tickled pink.

JS: That’s crazy! What direction did she give?

ES: Her stipulations were that the dress incorporate snakes, a yin yang, hands and the bronze nipple casting that she used in her own jewelry. I made her a sculptural psychedelic train with all these elements. It was a hit. We used a tapestry I had made for The Source Family as an alter piece. The wedding is where Kenny and I met for the first time.

JS: Wait, you made a tapestry for the Source Family?! Tell me more!

ES: Yes, it was the first project I got when I moved here. I was commissioned by Cinefamily to create a backdrop for the premiere of the source family documentary. I worked with several of the members and the director, Jodie Wille, to use their iconography…Pretty wild.

JS: Lastly, what is your favorite thing about Kenny?

ES: What is not my favorite thing about Kenny?! Kenny creates unpretentious places for all of these people to enjoy themselves and one other. What I love the most about her is that she’s pretty much always up to no good, but you could never tell because her beautiful white linen dress is still spotless after a bottle of mezcal. Casa de Lo Que sea forever.

Julia Sherman: Kenny, tell me about how you started working in hospitality? I know the motel business is in your blood.

Kenny Osehan: I grew up in a motel…the Agave Inn (formerly the Travelers Motel). When I was 9, we moved from LA to Santa Barbara so my parents could work as the live-in managers of the motel. I have one sister and we all lived in the one bedroom manager’s unit until I started college. Checking in guests and taking reservations in the middle of dinner was standard. We folded towels and ironed pillowcases while watching TV as a daily family activity. I always said I would never be in the motel business, but you can’t escape what’s in your blood!

JS: One of your properties is haunted. How does the ghost appear and is this a good thing or a bad thing?

KO: That’s not something we like to advertise but maybe we can just say there’s a “spiritual presence” at the Rancho? Ojai is in the midst of Chumash burial grounds, so there’s strong energy there. Our guests think we have Palo Santo sticks as a fun complimentary treat, but in actuality, we have them there for energetic maintenance. A mother and daughter once told me that they heard a party in the pool yard in the middle of the night. When they went to check it out, there was no one there. Whatever it is, people find the vibrations to be positive, so maybe the ghosts are just partying at the rancho?

JS: How do you approach the design of each of your properties?

KO: We like to take over these old roadside motor court inns, working with their existing architectural significance while reflecting the local environment and community. The Rancho Inn was designed with Ojai’s identity as a spiritual vortex and a thriving artist community in mind. The Alamo was designed to fit into the western theme of Los Alamos, with a nod to the surrounding agricultural land. We love involving artist friends in any shape or form, whether we have Shaun Wallace with Gopher Wood build bed frames, or hang one of Elena’s beaded wall pieces above the mantel at the bar in Chief’s Peak. It feels more special to have someone we know and love contribute to our properties. I think our guests feel that too.

JS: How did you and Elena meet?

KO: We met at Carly and Matthew’s wedding (from All for the Mountain). Elena was the wizard who made Carly’s insane wedding outfit. I fell in love with her right away. We moved in with each other a couple years after we met, and that’s when she became my Asian housewife. Her one responsibility was to have rice ready for me when I came home. She accomplished that maybe 4 times. (She will tell you she did it more but don’t believe her).

JS: What do you love the most about Elena?

KO: So many things… Elena is a genius. The things she makes shock me: The way she understands forms, shapes, colors, and textures, it’s all just a part of her being. Her diligence in making art is not out of discipline, it’s pure necessity. I really admire and envy that. Elena is small but mighty.

As a friend, she will take a train to help you pack and load the U-Haul, then unpack the U-Haul and make you tea and snacks or fried rice with an egg on top…She did this for me, but I know she would do this for anyone who has the honor of being her friend.