Ethiopian beef tartare

I may have mentioned my deep and abiding love for the book Flatbreads & Flavors by Toronto-based husband-and-wife team Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. It introduced us to cooking all sorts of ethnic cuisines that we might not have attempted, by making the recipes simple yet authentic. Each chapter has a limited number of recipes, but they fit together perfectly - there might be two different breads, a beef dish, a chicken dish, a vegetable and a condiment. So just from this one cookbook, you could make a feast from Georgia, the Middle East, India or Italy!

I had fallen in love with Ethiopian food from the first time I had it, at a restaurant in Minneapolis, of all places. It never occurred to me that you could make it at home - then I got this cookbook. When I made the chicken stew from it, with its simple combination of chicken, butter, cardamom, berbere paste and red wine, it was like an Ethiopian restaurant had opened in our kitchen. We’ve also made injera at home (with mixed success, frankly) and tibs wett. But our favorite go-to dish is definitely the partially-cooked beef tartare, kitfo lebleb. It’s fast, rich, and very very spicy.           

For this dish J defrosted a sirloin steak and chopped it very finely. You could certainly use ground meat but we’ve always preferred the texture of chopped. The original recipe calls for onions, but we usually leave them out. Adding mint is great if you have it, but I don’t think dried mint is a good substitute - leave it out if you don’t have fresh.

Stumbling Goat Bistro

We were in Seattle on an errand on Saturday (after our precinct caucus - 80 people showed up!), and decided to treat ourselves to dinner at an especially comforting place, the Stumbling Goat on Phinney Ridge. We’ve been here twice before and had a nice time, but it had been awhile.

The ambience of this place is fantastic at night, with deep red curtains draped artfully around the room, soft lighting and a happy buzz of conversation that manages to never become obtrusive. We came in on the early side but felt lucky to get a table; the other tables filled up quickly after we arrived. Service was attentive and friendly but not overly familiar. I was impressed at the enthusiasm shown by the hostess, our waitress and the sommelier - they gave the impression that it was really, really important to them that we have a wonderful dinner.

We began with cocktails: J got something called a Billy Goat, which was basically a gin and tonic with extra citrus - very refreshing. I had lillet on the rocks with an orange twist, something I’ve been meaning to try and had never gotten around to. I do believe I’m a convert! While we finished our drinks we shared a plate of roasted beets, lettuce, apples and stinky cheese. It was nice - very fresh tasting and light. We figured that was a good idea given what we had ordered for our entrees.

In the garden: freckles

All the hellebores are growing fast, but this is the first one to reach full open-ness. It’s also got the best freckles, by far. I was weeding last weekend and was very happy to see several hellebore seedlings putting up flower stalks - I can’t wait to see how they turn out.

The weather’s been extremely wet, but not too cold, so things are beginning to grow and bud. Spring is beginning to seem like a possibility!

a surprisingly good soup

I think I tend to like the idea of soup a lot more than the soup itself. I especially like making soup - it’s so fun to toss things into the pot and see how the flavors meld - but I’m not always inspired by the result. I wasn’t very excited about this soup - a “white chili” with salsa verde, chicken and white beans - but much to my surprise, it turned out fabulously tasty.

The whole reason I made it in the first place was a container I found in the freezer: chopped grilled poblanos and jalapeños mixed with grilled corn taken off the cob. I had no memory of putting it in the freezer (we did a LOT of grilling last summer), but it seemed perfect for a soup.

I cut up some boneless chicken thigh meat and browned it with cumin seed and slivered garlic. I added chicken stock and simmered it until the meat was cooked through, then dumped in the frozen grilled vegetables, a can of Herdez salsa verde and a can of Progresso white beans (normally I do cook my own beans, but I was feeling seriously lazy). I brought it all up to a simmer, then put it away in the fridge until evening.

What a shock! It was delicious - the corn gave it a rich sweetness that contrasted with the sharp pepper and tomatillos flavors, and the beans were plump and sweet. I finished the leftovers the next day at lunch with cheese and crackers, but a quesadilla would have been nice, too. Another soup that probably can’t be replicated, but it’s always nice when thrown together things work out this well.

sole with lentils and breadcrumb salad

Boy, this dinner was a smashing success if I do say so myself. We had been pondering what to do for food one night, and I was idly considering something involving fish, since we were about to go to the grocery store. I opened up a few cookbooks and flipped through their fish sections…many of them too complicated, too weird-sounding, wrong kind of fish…then, in Tom Douglas’ Seattle Kitchen, a book I hadn’t yet made a thing out of (but I sure do love the Palace Kitchen and Serious Pie, two of his restaurants), I saw a heading for pan-roasted halibut with herbed lentils and toasted breadcrumb salad.

For some reason, the thought of that just really did it for me, so I headed to the fish case with my eyes peeled for halibut. They had had halibut cheeks a few days previously, but of course they were out - so I ended up getting a few fillets of very fresh, beautiful looking Dover sole.

Because I had such a delicate fish, I ignored the recipe’s instructions for cooking halibut and instead just tossed the fillets in a pan with some butter and pan fried them very lightly. Other than that I followed the recipe pretty closely, with just a few small adjustments on the fly.

experiments with shrimp & potatoes

This was our first month as members of the local wine shop’s special wine club, and we had two bottles of beautiful-looking tempranillo calling out to be drunk as a result. I spent a couple of weeks unable to drink wine due to various medications I was on - not fun - but I am finally getting better. So this week, more or less drug-free, I was finally able to taste them. We had one dinner (roast pork and yams) where we opened both bottles and tasted them side-by-side, then planned meals to suit each for the following two nights. This first bottle, Mapema from Argentina, gave me a strong hankering for romesco sauce - which we happened to have some of in the freezer.

One of our favorite dishes from last summer was the grilled shrimp recipe from a 2006 issue of Cook’s Illustrated - we made it over and over again, and were very sad to see it go with the end of grilling season. J wanted to try it with the broiler to see if it could be had in the off season. In the original recipe, the shrimp are grilled until partially cooked, then finished in a warm sauce, so we figured it should adapt fine.

German apple pancake

The box of Jonagold apples in our basement finally gave up the ghost (i.e. was dumped unceremoniously into the compost bin) but I did manage to pull out two survivors to make a German apple pancake. This is one of those recipes my family’s been making forever, out of the original Vegetarian Epicure - the one with all the butter and cream and marijuana references. It’s the same thing as “Dutch babies” - basically a big  popover, cooked in butter and served with hot cinnamony apple slices.

The batter is very quick to prepare: just 3/4 cup of milk, 3/4 cup white flour, 3 eggs and a bit of salt all whisked together, then poured into a hot cast iron skillet in which you’ve melted a tablespoon of butter. Pop the pan into a 450° oven for 15 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350° and leave it for another 10 minutes or so. It always comes out a little different, but it usually poofs up high along the edges while the center stays thin and custardy with a crisp edge. This one poofed very nicely:

In the garden: cyclamen coum

The cyclamen under the big cedar tree have finally opened. They seem to be one of the only plants that can survive in the dry dust between the tree roots, and they give a fantastic splash of color in late winter. I bought this one from Heronswood years ago, and it’s been spreading very, very gradually.

We spent this morning doing some much-needed garden cleanup, since it’ll probably snow again tonight. But for a moment, it felt like spring!