If pre-Labor Day is serious summer and the season for cold noodles, then post-Labor Day is faux fall—and a perfect time for hot noodles.

Few noodle dishes are better than yakisoba, which literally means “fried noodles.” It’s a Japanese dish derived from China and made not from buckwheat (“soba”), but from ramen-like noodles made with wheat flour.

There are some variations of the recipe, but in my home, we fry the noodles with bite-sized pieces of pork, along with some thinly sliced carrots, cabbage, and onion. You can add dashi (fish stock) not just for flavoring, but to help keep the noodles from sticking together.

As with many of the “yaki” dishes (like okonomiyaki and takoyaki), top the fried noodles with aonori (dried seaweed flake) and katsuoboshi (dried tuna flakes), which dance when they hit a hot surface.  You can also add beni shoga (red pickled ginger) and some Japanese mayonnaise if you like.

But be sure to include usuta sosu. Sound it out, and you’ll know it refers to Worcestershire sauce. It’s not quite as thin as Worcestershire, but thinner than the more-readily available tonkotsu sauce, which you can also use if nothing else is available.

We usually eat yakisoba as an entrée, but you can also have it as a side dish. Or you make yakisoba-pan, piling your cooked noodles into a hot dog bun, then garnishing it with mayonnaise and pickled ginger. Any way you like it, this is Japanese street food done at home. Quick to make, quick to eat, and beloved by people of all ages.

Suddenly, it’s September, and though summer seems to be slipping away, here’s perhaps one last chance to salvage some sunny vibes.

Sunday, September 12, will be the fourth annual Seattle Chefs Collaborative Urban Picnic, from 1-4 p.m. at the Rainier Square Rooftop Courtyard in Downtown Seattle (between University and Union on Fourth Avenue).

Chefs Collaborative, founded in 1993, is a national network of more than 1,000 members of the food community who promote sustainable cuisine by celebrating the joys of cooking local, seasonal, and artisan foods. 

This mission is reflected in the food of the day, as you can expect stellar bites from:

• Maria Hines, Tilth
• Jason Franey, Canlis
• John Sundstrom, Lark
• Ethan Stowell, Anchovies & Olives
• Seth Caswell, emmer&rye
• Kären Jurgensen, Quillisascut Farm
• Rachel Yang, Joule
• Riley Starks, Willow’s Inn
• Dan Braun, Oliver’s Twist
• Autumn Martin, Hot Cakes
• Tara Ayers, Ocho

Country band Carrie Cunningham and the Six Shooters will provide live entertainment for this casual and high-spirited event.

Admission is $60 (purchase tickets at Brown Paper Tickets), with free entry for children under 10. Note that Urban Picnic is an annual fundraiser for scholarships to the Quillisascut Farm School, a fountain of knowledge for many of our local culinary stars.

Picnic-goers are asked bring their own picnic gear (plates, utensils, cups, picnic blankets, etc.), although plates, silverware and cups will be provided. Local wine, beer and other beverages are also included in the price of admission. With past Iron Chef participants and other acclaimed chefs serving up some specialties, Urban Picnic promises to be a tasty affair.

Pork chops ready for sous vide bath

We’ve come a long way since the boil-in-a-bag lunches of chicken à la king I enjoyed as a kid back in the Seventies.

But for this collector of kitchen gadgets, I feel like I’ve come full circle with a Sous Vide Supreme (and vacuum sealer for the bags) sitting on my kitchen counter.

Note the location. While my four waffle irons, three woks, and much more are stored away safely in the pantry, this monster of a machine must sit out, taking up valuable real estate in my favorite room in the house.

That said, I’ve been delighted to have an opportunity to demo a unit, and to learn more about the style of cooking (based on precise cooking temperatures) that’s the rage in restaurants–and now in some homes–of late.

Pork chop on the plate

I started with the simplest of recipes, a basic chicken breast preparation, and was pleased with the moistness of the meat, though I definitely appreciated the quick searing at the end of the cooking process. A few other meat preparations yielded similar results, including the pictured pork chops, though I can see how some people might initially question the texture of the finished product.

There are many pros to sous vide cooking, such as a fail-proof formula when following recipes (cooking times are forgiving, so it’s hard to dry out meats), fairly quick clean-up, the need to do advanced planning as called for by cooking times.

One of the cons: the need to do advanced planning as called for by cooking times. 72-hour ribs? How many of us can even think past the next 24 hours? (I haven’t gotten to a rib recipe, but I hear they’re amazing.)

For those with counter space or other storage options, The Sous Vide Supreme is a tool that might improve or enhance food preparation. (And while I’ve only discussed meat, you can sous vide fruits, vegetables, and more.) While I appreciate the machine’s capabilities, I don’t have the space, and I also enjoy the challenges of time, technique, and more that make cooking in the kitchen so intriguing and educational. There is one thing, though, for which sous vide technique reigns supreme. More on that next time….

Lorna Yee, local food lover

As I start posting reports about the local food scene as well as culinary escapes from Seattle, I thought it would be interesting to share a perspective on the sometimes hard-to-define Pacific Northwest cuisine.

I enlisted the help of Lorna Yee, a local food writer who just co-authored The Newlywed Kitchen: Delicious Meals for Couples Cooking Together. Yee has an adventurous appetite and is one of the people in Seattle I most trust for restaurant recommendations.

As someone who’s lived in both Vancouver and Seattle and has spent time exploring the food scene in Portland, how would you define Pacific Northwest cuisine?

Pacific Northwest cuisine seems to center around salmon, shellfish, and foraged ingredients like fiddlehead ferns and morels. There’s a bit of Asian influence, of course, though Vancouver chefs like Rob Feenie (ex-Lumiere), Seattle chefs like Tom Douglas, and Portland chefs like John Gorham seem to draw inspiration from around the world and apply it to the ingredients most readily found in their hometowns. There doesn’t seem to be a “right” or “wrong” way to do things here—we don’t have an almost religious (and admirable!) adherence to certain recipes and culinary traditions, like they do in the South. Chefs here are constantly innovating: there’s no lack of creativity here in the Pacific Northwest.

Having recently moved to Seattle, how would you refine your definition of Pacific Northwest cuisine to make it more Seattle-specific?

Seattle is an incredibly green city that’s focused on sustainability. Shopping at the farmers’ market is routine for many of us here, and the “local, seasonal” mantra is not just one we see in restaurant kitchens. Many home cooks have adopted this way of cooking and eating in their kitchens, too.

What are Seattle restaurateurs and chefs doing well?

They are doing a great job of working with the reality that many of us are looking for a more laidback, more affordable dining experience nowadays. Casual sister restaurants, like Luc, or less formal options (like the bar/main dining room of Mistral Kitchen) ensure that restaurateurs are attracting larger clientele.

On the flip side, what’s missing or done poorly here?

Asian food—with a few Eastside exceptions—is sorely lacking. Hopefully, with Bellevue’s Din Tai Fung opening, we’ll see more demand for higher quality Chinese food. I’m not an expert on Indian food, but Indian friends also tell me that they haven’t found much excellent Indian food in Seattle proper.

What do you miss most about dining out in Vancouver?

I miss the Chinese food, first and foremost. There is such a wealth of deliciousness in Vancouver. Three of my favorite restaurants are: Empire Seafood (for Cantonese dim sum), Shanghai River (for Shanghainese food), and Alvin Garden in Burnaby for Hunanese food.

How would you characterize Chinese food in the Seattle area? Any particular likes or dislikes?

Chinese food in Seattle mostly caters to a Western palate. There is little regard to the traditional ingredients used in classic dishes. A well-regarded Sichuan restaurant in the International District, for example, substitutes American bacon and celery for bacon and leeks in the classic Hunanese dish—clearly a time and cost-saving tactic.

On a more positive note, I do love some of the cold case appetizer items at Spiced in Bellevue. They have one dish with slices of beef shank and tendon done in a spicy Sichuan peppercorn sauce that’s incredible. It is a classic Sichuanese appetizer that’s loosely translated as “Husband and Wife ‘Lung’ Slices”—not the most appetizing name, though rest assured that actual beef lung is rarely used.

Yee’s recently published cookbook

There seems to be a fairly friendly rivalry between Seattle and Portland. You’ve had a chance to spend some time in Portland, sampling the food there. How is that scene different than the Seattle scene?

I adore the Portland food scene. I think the food is a little gutsier, and the scene a little grittier. One of my favorite izakayas, Tanuki, plays Japanese slasher porn videos in the dining room. You’re digging into a plate of delicious duck and shitake salad with gingko nuts and drinking a milky-sweet Wataribune Namazake, while on TV, there are random body parts flying off, followed by geysers of blood. It is surreal. I try to keep my head down and concentrate on the food, but I admire the chef for sticking to her guns and not buckling to the pressure of patrons who are turned off by the way she runs her bar.

You’ve got a well-read blog, as one of many, many food bloggers in Seattle. What’s the story with that? Why do you think there are so many food bloggers in this city?

Seattle is a very technologically savvy city—look at the number of us who use Twitter and Facebook! We have a thriving food community and want to share it all. It is natural to want to write about and photograph all the wonderful food we have here, from the plethora of vegetables at our farmers’ markets to the number of excellent dishes we find in local restaurants. And of course, many of us enjoy documenting our own kitchen escapades!

What do you see as the trends in home-cooking here, and if you had the power, what would you like to see people doing more of in their kitchens?

Canvolution started right here in Seattle, so I have to give some local friends, food writers, and cookbook authors credit for helping to kick off the canning craze that’s overtaken much of America. Personally, I’d like to learn more about fermenting my own foods—making kimchi, kombucha, and yogurts, for example.

Recently, I’ve been bit by the bread-baking bug. I’ve been pulling a lot of homemade loaves out of my oven—my current favorite is a pumpkin and raisin loaf that’s incredible in a grilled cheese. It’s hard for many of us to find the time to take on elaborate home-cooking projects with work, children, and social time with friends eating up valuable time. It would be a good thing if we all made small steps in eating less processed food and cooking more at home, though—even something as simple as roasting a chicken, and using the bones for stock will go a long way in teaching the next generation that cooking doesn’t have to be a difficult chore.

You have a night off from restaurant reviewing, recipe testing, and anything else professionally related to food, and can eat what you wish. Assuming you don’t have a tired stomach, what will you do for dinner?

I’d start the evening off with a pre-dinner cocktail at Zig Zag, then meander down to Spinasse for some ethereally light pasta. Then you’ll find me at the bar at Harvest Vine for their housemade softly spiced blood sausage. (If I could be at two places at once, I might have to get a side of Tilikum Place Café’s legendary porky baked beans too!) Next, Canlis has a remarkable dry-aged orange blossom honey roast duck for two. For dessert, there is no other place I’d rather be than at Mistral Kitchen, where pastry chef Neil Robertson churns out delicate, not-too-sweet treats like his seasonal rhubarb financier with fromage blanc and Szechuan peppercorn sorbet.

If I had to choose one restaurant, though, I’d pick Noodle Boat in Issaquah and put my fate in Toon’s hands. My friends and I never leave without sampling fewer than ten dishes, all ordered off-the-charts spicy. The flavors are fresh, bright, and it’s the only restaurant in town that makes me sweat. This is food I dream about.

Peaches. ‘Tis the season.

Earlier this week, I was thrilled to see that Metropolitan Market had brix (basically, a way to sneak inside the fruit to measure its sugar content and predict its sweetness) ratings for its Frog Hollow Farms and Pence Orchards peaches.

The Frog Hollow peaches, brought in from California, are beloved and generally fantastic, but the Pence peaches, from the Yakima Valley, were a little less expensive, and had higher brix ratings. (Staff at Metropolitan Market told me that the Frog Hollows had come in too early.) I went local!

My mission was sorbet-making, so I used a recipe from David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop, which has been reliable for me in the past. The finished product was good, but lacked the punch I expected from the ripe peaches. Speaking later with sweets superstar Autumn Martin, we lamented that sometimes peaches and other stone fruits are best eaten out of hand, as the flavor impact gets lost in many, if not most, cooking preparations.

I went back to Metropolitan Market yesterday and was surprised to see the brix signs gone. I then walked across the street to the Queen Anne Farmers Market, found some perfectly good “seconds” under a vendor’s table, and took them home to eat over my sink. They dripped with sweet goodness, just the way fresh, juicy peaches are meant to be.