For some reason, J likes to save the corks from bottles of sparkling wine - champagne, prosecco, whatever. If he shoots the cork up the stairs then it gets put over my dressing room door; if he pops it out quietly it stays at the bottom of the stairs. We’ve been in this house for more than a few years now - it’s a pretty good collection.
We’ll be adding a cava cork to the lineup tonight. Happy New Year’s Eve to everyone out there!
After our long and rather nasty pass crossing last week, we were starving as we came down the valley. We usually stop at the Sultan Bakery for egg salad sandwiches and soup, but this time we were determined to try a new place that had been recommended to us by Pitmaster Gil of the Depot Smokehouse in Everett. It’s a barbecue joint run out of an old school bus, just off of Hwy 2 by the Reptile Museum. Not very likely looking, but definitely intriguing.
As we were looking over the very short and to-the-point menu, the person in the order window explained that they didn’t have any heat to their second bus, which normally served as their dining area. She offered to bring our order out to us in our warm car, which was nice. We ended up with two sandwiches, one brisket and one pork, plus a side of beans and a side of coleslaw. I’m sure hunger had something to do with this, but the sandwiches were some of the best I’ve had - squishy, tender, smoky and nicely sauced, without being so gooey we had to be hosed down afterwards. The coleslaw was crisp, but not strongly flavored - I might have liked a sharper dressing. The beans were flavorful and tender - they sat in a cup of meaty broth instead of having barbecue sauce dumped over them.
We inhaled everything in very short order and went happily on our way. We’ll certainly be stopping by here again.
Yellow is so cheery in the garden at this time of year. This primrose is in a pot under the back deck, pretty much ignored by me, but it keeps plugging away. Having it in a pot seems to keep the worst of the snails away - the primroses I have in the ground are all pretty tattered right now.
We’re back from our Christmas trip! We spent it mostly holed up at my parents’ house, with a short expedition to Leavenworth when it stopped snowing for a few minutes. We cooked a lot. Here’s an abbreviated photo essay of the holiday:
First, for my mother’s birthday, there was chicken biryani (with a tofu option) and chocolate cake.
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I’m not necessarily a big one for making Christmas cookies, but I do like to do some baking over the holidays. In past years I’ve made a lot of biscotti, since it ships well, and occasionally chocolate crinkles. But last winter I went back to making a recipe that was a favorite of my grandmother’s - she picked it up while she and my grandfather were living in Corpus Christi, Texas, during World War II. They’re very simple cookies, but they remind me of her - plus they’re fabulously delicious. If I make no other cookies for the holidays, I will make these.
In my wanderings around the food blogosphere, I found a couple of discussions (at Smitten Kitchen and Orangette) of a particular approach to cooking Brussels sprouts. I love sprouts cooked my usual way, but I’m always interested to try something new. I had intended to copy out the recipe, but then I stumbled across a copy of the Union Square Cafe Cookbook in a used bookstore and figured it was kismet. We tried it a couple nights ago alongside a roast chicken.
I got this Himalayan clematis at a plant sale a couple of years ago - the flowers are small and not too showy, but the leaves are a beautiful blue-green color and the seedheads are spectacular. It grows up the north side of our deck, so it’s protected from the worst winds - otherwise I’m sure these fuzzy little guys would have blown off by now.
I do lots of the cooking in our house, and I like it that way, but still - I love it when J cooks. Not only does it mean I can sit around with a drink and watch someone else work - always enjoyable - but he often tackles recipes that are a lot more complex than I usually feel like dealing with. He loves measuring spices for Indian curries, is a great baker, and doesn’t mind following long detailed directions. I tend to look at this sort of recipe, think “what’s all this nitpicking detail for?” and ignore half of it. He doesn’t, with the obvious result that a lot of his cooking tastes more complex and authentic than mine. Not that he complains much about my cooking 
So on Sunday when I was at work, he undertook to make a couple recipes out of James Oseland’s Cradle of Flavor. I loved this book when I bought it so much that I actually sat on the couch and read it cover to cover, it was so evocative of the sights, smells and tastes of Indonesia. We made a special trip to Uwajimaya (a 100-mile round trip) to stock up on every single weird-sounding ingredient: pandan leaf, sweet soybean paste, fermented shrimp paste, galangal, water spinach, fresh turmeric, et al. It was great. But lately we haven’t been cooking out of it, and when we were in Uwajimaya again on Saturday the water spinach looked good, so …
Stir-Fried Nyonya-style Water Spinach
from Cradle of Flavor by James Oseland
After a late-afternoon trip to Uwajimaya (one of the best places in the world to shop for stocking stuffers), we decided to head up towards Capitol Hill and see what we could find for a drink or an early supper. After a little searching, we landed at Licorous, the lounge next door to Lark. I wasn’t sure I was hungry enough to tackle Lark for the first time, so the bar and small-plates menu at Licorous sounded perfect. We came in dripping from the rain and settled ourselves at the bar.
I’ve been working on my appreciation for bitter flavors lately, so I ordered the house negroni, along with the matched “tasting” - a small plate of serrano ham with sliced pears. I liked the pairing well enough, but wasn’t stunned. Love the concept, though. J got a bourbon cocktail called a Barbaro that came with two adorable “whiskey popovers” whose flavor really did go great with the bourbon. (more…)
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