back from the void…

You’ve probably been wondering where I’ve been…actually, I haven’t gone anywhere, but this website sort of drifted off into the void thanks to a Dreamhost web server swap gone pear-shaped. Thankfully I was able to keep in touch with some of you over on the Facebook page and Twitter (thank goodness for social media) and let folks know what was going on. Now we seem to be back! Things are still working a bit slow but I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to pick up where we left off.

Speaking of which, what’s everyone been eating lately?

my Griffin

There’s an empty space in our household where Griffin used to be.

When we got him his eyes were still blue, and squinty and watery with conjunctivitis. His fur was a mess and he still had tar stuck between his toes despite multiple baths – he had been found stuck in fresh tar on a hot day, presumably abandoned by his family. He grew up to be a beautiful orange lion of a cat, with coppery ears and huge fuzzy white feet.

He answered to Griffin, Griffley-Whiffley-Woopsie-Poo, Bunny, Puppy-Cat, and frequently Doofus. When I spoke to him he always spoke back, usually just a soft quack to acknowledge me. He gave long, surprisingly musical nighttime arias at the base of the stairs ten minutes after we had gone to bed. He carried his toys around the house, squawking loudly at the same time (we could always tell from his tone of voice whether he had a stuffed animal in his mouth). He assigned himself jobs: every morning he led the way to the closet and supervised our showers, and every evening he sat on the kitchen stool and watched us make dinner. Usually watching was all he did, but if the butter dish was left anywhere on the kitchen island he would always go for it (prompting my husband to dub him the Butter Cat). When I came home from work he always came running to the door to greet me. He was a happy cat and held his tail high, like a fuzzy banner.

He never seemed to quite realize how big his butt was. We kept an Ikea silverware box on a shelf just for him to sleep in, even though he always stuck out around the edges. He also had to be retrieved from guitar and bouzouki cases on several occasions.

He was not a particularly well-behaved cat. He often got on the table when he thought we weren’t looking, and he liked to scratch our most expensive rug. He loved to eat flowers, and frequently knocked over vases of lilies in the middle of the night. But he was always sweet-tempered and never held a grudge, even when we had to scrub his chin daily with acne medication or were stuffing pills down his throat.

He didn’t like to be held, but he always wanted to be near. We set up perches for him near the dining table so he could keep an eye on us. He slept on the bed, but always at the far corner, right by the fan. He preferred to be cold, and often acted as a draft stopper in doorways, or sought out cool tile to lay on instead of pillows. But he adored nesting in blankets, or a pile of my scarves, and would spend a great deal of time kneading them into a proper Griffin-shaped configuration. Wherever I went in the house, he was nearby, watching.

Even with two cats still here, the house is very quiet. Nothing will be the same without my Griffin.

more butter

So we recently caved and bought another cookbook. We’ve really been very good recently, but the cover of this one had been making us drool during our last few bookstore visits and we finally just had to. The book is Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi of the London restaurant Ottolenghi, apparently a collection of recipes from his vegetarian column in the Guardian. One of the first things we tried out of it was a dish of noodles dressed with vast quantities of Moroccan spiced butter, fresh herbs, and pine nuts. I didn’t make the noodles from scratch with saffron mixed into the dough, although I’m sure that would have been lovely, but it just wasn’t happening.

Nearly every recipe in the book contains a ton of shallots. I hardly ever cook with shallots, so it seems novel to me. They got really sweet and melting after simmering in a stick’s worth of butter for ten or fifteen minutes (but who wouldn’t?)

Once the shallots were soft I added the mix of paprika, cinnamon, coriander, ginger, turmeric and red pepper flakes. After smelling the mixture Jon pointed out I could have just used the Moroccan seven-spice we have in our spice drawer, which smells exactly the same.

Then I mixed in a big pile of fresh mint and parsley. Our mint plant is producing particularly vast and fragrant leaves right now; when I was chopping these up Jon smelled them from two rooms away.

Then all that remained was to toast a handful of pine nuts and toss them in. We ate the noodles alongside small lamb chops and a pile of sauteed Swiss chard, and it was good. Buttery as all get out, but good. It was too rich for us to eat the whole batch, but I saved the leftovers and mixed albacore tuna into them for lunch the next day, which balanced it out nicely.

farm picnic

I had meant to post these pictures two weeks ago, but life sort of got in the way. Better late than never…

This was a farm-to-table brunch potluck out at Gothberg Farms on the Skagit flats. The weather was less than perfect (cold and windy with occasional gusts of rain), but we got by with great coffee, amazing food, good conversation, wine and beer and lots and lots of oysters.

Rhonda put together a cheese board with all of her fabulous handmade goat cheeses. I’m particularly fond of her “Woman of La Mancha” spiced aged cheese, but they really are all wonderful.

There was roasted asparagus wrapped with buttery phyllo…

…and lamb sliders.

Also several beautiful salads and what I believe were sweet potato cupcakes.

And I made a rhubarb custard pie with fresh-pulled rhubarb from my garden. The custard didn’t set up quite perfectly (it never does when I’m trying to impress people), but it was tasty.

There was Hammerhead coffee from Bellingham, beer from Boundary Bay and North Sound breweries, and a selection of wine and bubbly, including runners-up from the Pacific Coast Oyster Wine competition.

And kumamoto oysters. The best.

Rachawadee

I wrote a review for this week’s Cascadia Weekly about our local Thai place, Rachawadee Cafe, so I thought I’d post a few extra pictures I took that didn’t run with the article.

Pretty much my favorite thing about coming here is watching the wok station in action. It’s a clever setup, with a hose that’s used to rinse out the woks after each stirfry, and drainage down the back, so the woks never need to be moved from their burners. Food frequently gets airborne, plus there are shooting flames all around. I love it.

What we ordered on our most recent visit:

Fried tofu. I love this stuff, I order it everywhere. I appreciated that this version wasn’t cooked to the point of having very sharp edges – you can hurt yourself on fried tofu, believe me.

Larb gai made with ground chicken. This was very tasty and an incredible vehicle for chile heat. I needed to alternate bites of it with the fried tofu.

Our favorite noodle dish, Phad ba mee. I love how smoky and savory this is. Our usual takeout order is one of these and one super-spicy eggplant with beef. And plenty of rice.

And, as always, it’s fun to watch your food getting cooked.

kibbles and wat

Supper club was at our house this time, and we just had to do Ethiopian cuisine. We’ve been working on our injera recipe for a while, and wanted to show off. Of course, this meant that when we had guests over the previous week for a trial run, the injera failed miserably, sticking to the pan and coming out in half-raw, half-burnt shreds, but I guess you need a bad dress rehearsal for everything. On the day, it worked perfectly. I made a quadruple batch and all but two breads came out just right: sour, stretchy and full of bubbles.

The rest of the supper club membership came through with their usual magnificence. Here’s what our dinner plates looked like: injera piled with doro wat (chicken and egg stew), shiro (chickpea flour dip), lentil wat, cabbage-carrot curry, spicy mango cucumber salad, tomato-plum stew, ayib (spiced curds) and azifa (lentil salad). For afters there was a banana-mango-coriander frozen yogurt with chocolate chips, and date sambusas.

Before all that, we had cocktails and appetizers. Jenise made a gorgeous tower of kitfo (raw beef with spices) layered with goat cheese and served with sliced jalapeños – it was spicy and delicious. Jon invented a drink for the occasion, a lemon-honey-bourbon concoction with a splash of his homemade cardamom tincture. And I tried something new, a traditional Ethiopian snack food called dabo kolo. Something like a pretzel or small, spicy cracker, it unfortunately looks exactly like a particular brand of tartar-control cat kibble that we get from our vet. Fortunately it doesn’t taste like it. It has butter, sugar, salt and berbere powder, but just enough of each to make you want another bite. They are rather addictive.

Dabo Kolo

Adapted from A Bread a Day and The World of Street Food by Troth Wells

•  2 cups flour (white, wheat, teff or chickpea flour are all acceptable – I’ve only tried it with white so far)
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 2 Tbsp berbere powder (the recipe we use is here)
• 4 Tbsp melted butter or oil
• 1/2 cup water

Preheat the oven to 350°.

Mix the dry ingredients together, then add the butter and water. Knead until smooth; the dough will be very stiff. Cover it with plastic and let it rest ten minutes or so.

Cut the dough into golf-ball-sized pieces, and roll each one out into a long rope, about 1/4″ thick. Using a knife or dough cutter, cut the rope into even 1/4″ pieces. Scatter these onto a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake about 25-30 minutes, until crunchy but not dark. Let cool completely.

Wells suggests serving with melted butter, like popcorn. I like them dry, but maybe with a bit more salt than this recipe calls for. These will keep in an airtight jar for at least a week, maybe longer (but they seem to disappear pretty fast).

A'Town

I recently wrote a review for Grow Northwest about a new place in Anacortes called A’Town Bistro (you can read my article here). With the help of various friends and relatives, I’ve been able to try about ten different dishes here, and there has not been a loser among the bunch. They’re trying to focus on local, seasonal produce as much as possible, which should pick up now that the farmer’s markets are opening. I’m really excited about this place and I can’t wait to see what they do as the season progresses!

First, let me tell you about their Sunday brunch. Good mimosas, great beer selection, and a lovely assortment of egg dishes and more lunchy things.

Such as the wild boar burger. This is already A’Town’s biggest hit, from what I’ve seen, and rightfully so. It’s thick and juicy, good condiments, good bread. And, apparently, made from wild boar knife-hunted in Texas. In case you were wondering how your wild boar was brought down.

They offer several types of eggs benedict – this one had ham shank. There was a nice pile of properly cooked vegetables on the side and the English muffins were exceptional.

Jon had to try their biscuits and gravy, and after eating for a while he declared it to be the best biscuits and gravy ever. This is really saying something. It was partly that the biscuit was fresh, tasted homemade and was full of cheese and herbs. The gravy also was excellent, with plenty of sausage. But the presentation took the cake, with one large biscuit with a hole punched out of it and filled with gravy, then a sausage sandwich made out of the removed circle of biscuit. This is a lot of food, and so good you might be inclined to do yourself a mischief. Be warned.

They also have pho on the brunch menu, which I thought was such a good idea I needed to try it. The broth was aromatic with star anise and the paper-thin slices of beef poaching in the bowl with the noodles, and there were all the right toppings: sprouts, cilantro, basil, jalapeños. A bottle of Sriracha and some hoisin sauce did very well for condiments. I love noodles for brunch, and this was perfect.

We’ve also visited for dinner. The wine list is nicely thought out with a mix of northwest, California and European bottles and, I thought, very reasonably priced. This muscadet was on special and we really liked it.

They have a lot of classic bistro dishes on the menu. I tried the moules frites, which were well cooked and brightly flavored with Spanish chorizo. The fries are small-cut, crispy and seasoned with truffled parmesan, which makes them smell fantastic. French onion soup was also a winner – I find that many places try to make up for a dull broth with too much salt, but this had lots of flavor and wasn’t too salty. We also tried the beet salad, which was a nice variation on the usual: golden beets, greens, and quenelles of soft pungent cheese, very prettily arranged (we had them hold the hazelnuts).

Halibut and chips were good, too. My father compared them favorably to the best fish and chips place we’ve been to. The tartar sauce was good, plus you get curry ketchup for your fries.

Jon got the steak. This was where we really became impressed, because it was perfect. Medium rare, absolutely delicious, tender and juicy. A nice amount of sauce, and a pile of Brussels sprouts and just a few smashed purple potatoes to go alongside. A really well-conceived entree – not many places do steak this well.

There were only three desserts on the menu: a cheese plate, crème brûlée, and gâteau au chocolat. We haven’t tried the cheese plate yet but we covered the rest. The crème brûlée was simple and perfect,  nice and cold inside, with the sugar hot and crispy on top.

The gâteau was rather like the best fudge in the world, with whipped cream and a salted caramel sauce. Oh, and the coffee was good, too.

I look forward to many, many more meals here.

weekend eats

Last weekend involved two different trips down to Seattle to have dinner with friends. I only took a few pictures, but both dinners were notable.

The first night we started out with drinks at Canon (which was inexplicably empty despite the Cinco de Mayo madness going on in every other bar in town). I tried one of the aged cocktails, and was surprised to have it served in its own little flask. I felt rather foolish drinking from a bottle, but it was a great cocktail. Two of our party ordered the “shrouded roulette,” where you request your base spirit and the bartender makes up something for you. I hadn’t realized they wouldn’t tell you what was in it even after you were finished. Sneaky.

After drinks we walked down to Quinn’s for dinner, and the four of us shared a bunch of small plates. I’ve never gotten to try this many things at once at Quinn’s, and as usual it did not disappoint. We started with stewed oxtail with a bone marrow custard and a dish of excellent olives (not pictured), then had a green salad with scallion aioli, pig face nuggets, and a really delicious plate of sockeye salmon lox with steelhead roe and grilled bread. I would have been delighted to have a whole plate of the salmon to myself – the roe in particular was addictively good. The pig face nuggets sounded more exciting than they actually were, but they were unctuously porky and the sauce was delicious.

We had to get the wild boar sloppy joe, which was as wonderful as we remembered, and we also tried the cotechino sausage with cassoulet. It was very good, but maybe better suited for a cooler evening. I took a bite of the grilled fresno chile that came with the sloppy joe and nearly had the top of my head come off.

Some of our party had room for dessert. One of us got butterscotch custard, served in its own tiny jar, another ordered orange cake with Sichuan pepper ice cream, and the third got a chocolate peanut butter torte. I finished my beer and called it good.

The next night we found ourselves at Via Tribunali pizza in Fremont with a large party. I’d never been here before and it was excellent.

The pizza is nicely charred and very, very thin. It comes uncut, so you can make the slices any size or shape you want. I got the salsiccia rapini – tomato sauce, Italian sausage and rapini (broccoli rabe) – one of my favorite Italian flavor combos.

Jon got the Via Tribunali house special, which is sort of an Everything pizza with the edges folded in on itself. Just a hint of smoked cheese gave it a distinctive character.

Great place! We’ll definitely be back to try more pizza, some salads and perhaps some tiramisu. Soon.

Thai chicken

I’ve made this Thai chicken stirfry three times so far, and I still can’t believe how easy and wonderful it is. The base recipe is from Alford and Duguid’s Hot Sour Salty Sweet: chop a pound of chicken (I like boneless thigh meat) into small pieces, and mince five cloves of garlic and a couple of serrano or bird chiles. Heat peanut oil in a wok and toss in the garlic and chile, then add the chicken. Stirfry until not quite cooked through, then add a tablespoon of fish sauce, a bit of soy, a bit of sugar, and cook it all together until the chicken is done. Add a big handful of Thai basil leaves and turn off the heat so they wilt but don’t overcook. Add a lot of freshly ground black pepper. The flavors are much bigger and more exciting than you’d think from the small amount of seasoning, but definitely don’t skimp on the garlic!

I’ve adapted the recipe by throwing in green beans or other veg, which was good but diluted the seasoning on the chicken – I think I prefer cooking a vegetable separately with its own flavors. I’ve also tried substituting a mix of cilantro and fresh mint for the Thai basil, which is a suggestion we got from Cook’s Illustrated. The original recipe actually calls for holy basil, but I can’t get that around here – someday I’ll try it. I imagine regular European basil would work, too, in a pinch. The stirfry should be served with plenty of rice to soak up the fish sauce-y juices.

When I made the chicken again earlier this week I threw together this cucumber salad to go alongside. I glanced at two recipes but didn’t quite follow either; I put a spoonful of sugar in a bowl along with a splash of rice vinegar, a splash of Chinese black vinegar, and a drizzle of homemade chili oil, then stirred it all up and added diced, seeded cucumber and a handful of fresh chopped cilantro. We had to restrain ourselves from eating the whole bowlful so there would be leftovers.

green apple risotto

A month or two ago, at dinner at a friend’s house, we tasted an apple risotto for the first time. I had never heard or thought of such a thing before, but I can’t think why not. The risotto was served as a first course, with a small piece of seared foie gras on top, and it was astonishing. I don’t generally have foie gras on hand, but I thought that there must be other flavors that would go well with the risotto. I tried it out last night, making up the risotto recipe as I went, and serving it with seared kielbasa slices and some sauteed escarole with garlic.

All I did for the risotto was chop some shallot and saute it in butter…

…then I added diced Granny Smith apple…

…then tossed in a cup or so of Arborio, sauteed it briefly, then ladled in chicken stock until everything was done. A bit of grated Parmesan finished it off. It was nice, although I couldn’t help feeling I might have preferred having the apple in large slices, simply seared in butter and served on the side. Also, the escarole (which I love) was perhaps too strong a flavor here, overwhelming the delicate apple (although it went splendidly with the smoky kielbasa). Live and learn; maybe next time I’ll try serving this with scallops. And maybe a pinch of fresh thyme in the risotto? We shall see.