Recent Stories in Food

Remember back in 2006 the city of Seattle banned the sale of fortified drinks in "impact areas"? The Seattle Times said, "Supporters of the ban say those products are favored by homeless alcoholics who cause problems in city neighborhoods." The ban went into effect on November 1.

Now the State Liquor Control Board, a Foucaultian entity if ever there was one, is launching a pilot program that will put Liquor & Wine Holiday Gift Stores in a new kind of impact area: malls. Seattle's entry is Pacific Place, downtown on Pine Street. For symmetry, the program also starts on November 1, and underscores a persistent truth: If you're going to be an alcoholic, it's better to be well-off.

Harried holiday shoppers will find "spirit gift packages," booze-based chocolates and eggnogs, and a not-so-large choice of liquor and wine. As a mall-shopper bonus, the stores will be open seven days a week (hours varying by location) through December 31.

The four stores are supposed to help bring in an extra $3.8 million dollars! That'... (more)

Seattle PostGlobe tipped us off to this Three Sheets Northwest story on the razor clam season opening tomorrow, October 16. The department of fish and wildlife has given the okay for digging on five Washington coast beaches. You need a license if you're over 15, and you're allowed to dig up 15 clams.

That's in contrast to northern Puget Sound, which the Seattle Times reports has a terrific case of "red tide" toxins. You don't want to chance it: "The department said Thursday that tests found so-called 'red tide' toxin levels up to 100 times the closure level." There's a table of open/closed shellfish beaches here.

Croque Madame

Now that we’ve already discussed the way to make a proper Béchamel, it’s time to move on to actual dishes. We’ll start with the Croque Monsieur and Madame, open-faced hot ham and cheese sandwiches helped along with a nice layer of béchamel and, in the case of the Madame, a sunny side egg; masterpieces of simple French fare and the kind of dish that, when made with good ingredients, rival any number of far more complicated preparations.

Seattle is not without Croque-serving restaurants--Café Presse has a nice one for $6 ($7.25 for the Madame), as does Bastille in Ballard, albeit for an alarming $9 ($11 for the Madame). If you are new to the Croque, these versions are worth trying. However, if you are truly interested in a superb Croque, you must be prepared to make it at home. Besides, except for the béchamel, making a Croque is not so much cooking as assembling.

Most important are your ingredients. First, make a well-seasoned Béchamel. For the bread, the traditional choice is thick-cut square white sandwich bread (in France, Pain de Mie), but I like a something a little more substantial, something like Grand Central’s Como bread or Essential’s Columbia loaf. Cut one 3/4” slice for each sandwich.

The Ham in a Croque is traditionally an unsmoked Parisian Ham, but really you should use whatever ham you happen to like. My favorite is Zoe’s Meats Applewood Smoked Ham--you can buy it at Delaurenti for a small fortune. Budget a few slices of ham per sandwich.

Now! I’ve been flexible up to this point, but as for the Cheese, there is absolutely no room for interpretation. It needs to be Gruyère, Swiss Gruyère or Gruyère de Comté (essentially the same cheese, but made in France). Do not buy domestic Swiss cheese. Do not buy Jarlesburg. Only buy real Gruyère. (That being said, a hot ham and cheese sandwich with sharp Cheddar is a glorious thing, it’s just not a Croque.)... (more)

Right now I’m on a rare vacation in rural Vermont: taking walks, looking at leaves and hosting house guests; and while house guests are really just friends, when then are staying with you they become something else. They become people whose needs are your problem. They become people who require coffee and sustenance. Hopefully they can make coffee. All you need to do is make some Oatmeal Bread.

This bread is an old-school American sandwich loaf--the kind we have all but forgotten about in our current mania for crusty, European-style breads. There exists a powerful collective nostalgia for this type of bread, and yet it is the type of all-purpose loaf that is almost impossible to find. It’s soft and homey, perfect with butter or as peanut butter toast, equally delicious when made into grilled cheese or as the foundation for glorious leftover-roast-chicken sandwiches. In other words, it will feed your guests for several meals a day and leave you time to do the crossword.

Made with rolled oats, a bit of honey and... (more)

Skillet's poutine, courtesy of The SunBreak Flickr Pool member 7502winona

Seattle magazine, as a side order of their October issue street food coverage, have cooked up a cool idea, a Mobile Chowdown featuring some of Seattle's favorite food trucks: Marination Mobile, Skillet, Maximus Minimus, Kaosamai Thai, Gert's BBQ, El Camion, Parfait Ice Cream, and Dante's Inferno Dogs.

It's this Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., at 1616 W. Bertona in Interbay. There's also an ongoing Twitter contest for followers of @mobilechowdown. They're asking one question each day from October 1 until October 10, (total of 10 questions) all having to do with the food trucks or the prize providers. The prize is dinner for two at Tilth Restaurant, a night at the Sorrento Hotel, and a year's worth of Seattle magazine.

This is all very good. For a start. But the obvious question is why can't I have my street food in one convenient location all the time? (Convenient, by the way, rules out Interbay.) This kind of forward-thinking is one more area in which Portland has Seattle beat. First of all, Food Carts Portland shames us with its very existence and abundance of wagon-prepared fare.

But secondly, Portland has a street food corral downtown, where a wagon train of street food vendors have set up shop on the perimeter of what I vaguely remember to be a parking lot. This is a stroke of genius. Downtown workers are always in a rush to get a cheap lunch.

We still have the chance to one-up PDX on this, though.

We could line Occidental Square with carts (or run them down the center). That would give people (besides our wishfully labeled "transient" population) a reason to sit down and enjoy the tables and chairs set out there. If we wanted to progressive about it, we could even use the rent the city charged the carts to fund homeless services in the area. Who do we talk to about getting this going?

The most delightful experience when cooking is to finally master something you’ve repeatedly messed up before. It gives one a sense of possibility--in cooking and in life. For me, this happened when first I made Ruth Reichl’s recipe for Spaghetti Carbonara.

Spaghetti Carbonara is meant to be eaten on cold nights in large bites and gulps. Made with eggs and bacon, it’s more sophisticated than the universally-beloved spaghetti with butter and parmesan, yet only slightly more complicated, and perfect when made for one or two.

Spaghetti Carbonara is a simple dish, but badly done, it’s really dreadful. I know, I’ve botched it before. First there was the time I made it for staff meal at the fancy restaurant where I worked. I dumped several pounds of hot cooked pasta into the eggs and lo and behold, the heat held by five pounds of pasta completely scrambled them--making a dish of dry pasta and coagulated egg. At least there was still bacon. Then there was the time that I ignored Ruth's recipe and tried to get away... (more)

Béchamel, the classic white sauce used to make all manner of wonderful things--Macaroni and Cheese, the Croques (Monsieur and Madame) and Savory Soufflés to name a few--should unquestionably be part of your cooking repertoire. It’s not at all difficult and yet, it’s the culinary obstacle you never knew was there. Learn how to make it and doors will open for you.

Béchamel sauce (or more snooty-like: Sauce Béchamel) is a sauce that comes from the French culinary tradition and thus any discussion that ignores Mrs. Julia Child would be both callous and unwise, especially because ever since that Julie and Julia movie came out, everyone and their mothers (including both my mother and stepmother) went out and bought a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

If you have your copy in front of you, you’ll see that on page 57 Julia leads off the sauce chapter with this all-important sauce. Along with many many Americans, I learned how to make béchamel from this... (more)

Cranberry beans, sometimes called Tuscan Shell beans, are the most popular of the fresh shell beans available at Seattle-area farmers' markets--and now's the time to get them. An Italian variety that is rarely available here in its dry form, Cranberry beans are so-named for their white and cranberry-flecked coloring, both on the pod and on the bean itself. Sadly, they turn an icky grey-brown color the moment heat is applied. But no matter, they still taste great.

You may be wondering why anyone would bother to buy fresh shell beans when dry beans are perfectly good and dirt cheap; and you would sort of have a point. But fresh beans have a sweetness and a particular texture--firm and toothsome and almost fluffy--that regular old dry beans lack. They’re worth trying. They also cook in half the time with no pesky overnight soaking.

My cranberry beans vary from batch to batch as I tend to cook them with whatever happens to be in the fridge. My last batch was quite simple: start by browning half of an onion... (more)

Korova Sablés

In 2002, cookbook author Dorie Greenspan published a recipe for some chocolate cookies that sent cooks and newly minted food bloggers into a baking frenzy. Everyone was making these cookies, even more people were eating them. I however, had no idea. Not yet a pastry chef, I was still in college underlining long meaningful passages in Jane Eyre and baking boring banana bread for a boyfriend who “didn’t really like food.” A mere seven years later, installed in my joyful profession and making better dating choices, I finally caught up and made these sublime cookies. They are called Korova Sablés and they are perfect.

These cookies are the delicious love child of Pierre Hermé and Dorie Greenspan. Hermé is a giant of French Pastry and the owner of Pierre Hermé Paris, perhaps the most tantalizing place in all of Paris, at least for the pastry-inclined. Dorie Greenspan is a master recipe writer and baker, known for her collaborations with not only Pierre Hermé, but also Julia Child and Daniel Boulud.

I had to beg permission for this photo of Pierre Hermé's bakery.

The recipe for Korova Sables is perhaps the only recipe that I’ve never been tempted to change. It is a rare perfect recipe, the product of Hermé’s genius and Greenspan’s diligence. Their collaboration is essential: it’s one thing for a professional chef to make a delicious cookie, but it’s quite another to accurately quantify the recipe and describe the technique such that anyone can reproduce it. For putting these cookies within our reach, we have Greenspan to thank.

As for the cookies themselves, Korova Sablés are simple chocolate cookies. They are crisp and crumbly with just the right amount of chew in the very center. Made with fancy cocoa powder, small chunks of chocolate and an extra bit of salt, they are intense, but delicate. I make them at every opportunity and they are loved by men, women, children and my date for tonight. Make them exactly as the recipe below states and please, please don’t change a thing.

Korova Sablés

Adapted from Dorie Greenspan and Pierre Hermé, makes about 30 cookies.

This cookie relies heavily on choice ingredients, specifically the cocoa powder and the chocolate. The cocoa powders I would recommend, in order of preference, are: Valrhona (available at DeLauretis and Whole Foods), Guittard Cocoa Rouge (Sur La Table) and Scharffen Berger (most yuppie grocery stores). As for the chocolate, just use something you like, preferably 55% cocoa solids or higher, and not chocolate chips.

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/3 cup high-quality cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

5 1/2 ounces unsalted butter, at room temperature

2/3 cup packed light brown sugar

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

5 ounces high-quality bittersweet chocolate, chopped into small pieces

large crystal or sanding sugar for edges (optional)

Sift the flour, cocoa powder, and baking soda together and set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or by hand, cream the butter with both of the sugars, the salt and vanilla until light, about 30 seconds on the mixer or about a minute by hand. Add dry ingredients and chopped chocolate and mix on low until just combined. You will probably have to stop the mixer halfway through to scrape down the sides of the bowl and the paddle. If the dough looks a little dry and crumbly at this point, that’s okay, you want to mix the dough as little as possible to keep the cookies tender. Press the dough into two logs about 1 1/2” in diameter. Chill for at least 30 minutes, or alternatively, freeze for up to two weeks.

Before baking, roll the logs in large crystal sugar (if using) and slice into rounds between 1/4 and 1/2" thick. On an ungreased sheet pan, bake cookies in a preheated 325 F oven for 16 minutes, rotating once at the midpoint, or until the edges of the cookies are set, but the centers are still slightly soft.

By "try," I mean, try it out and report back. All I have to go on is a seductively priced list of wines by the glass from a press release. Here are the relevant details: Twisted Cork's happy hour is daily from 3 to 6 p.m. Draft beers are just $4 a pint, but of course you came for the half-off glasses of wine. Well, and perhaps a $1.95 oyster shooter. The Angus white-cheddar cheeseburger ($5.95) might quell a more substantial appetite. (They're doing something right over there at Twisted Cork because they won a 2008 Award of Ultimate Distinction from Wine Enthusiast.)

Featured White ($4.5)
Gloria Ferrer ‘Va de Vi’ Extra Dry Sonoma, Calif. ($3.75)
2007 Cooper Mountain Pinot Gris Reserve Willamette, Ore. ($4.25)
2006 Cedergreen Sauvignon Blanc Columbia Valley, Wash. ($4.5)
2006 Chateau St. Michelle Cold Creek Chardonnay Columbia Valley, Wash. ($8)
2006 Jordan Chardonnay Russian River, Calif. ($9)

Featured Red ($4.5)
2006 Louis Latour ‘Valmoissine’ Pinot Noir Provence, France ($4.75)
2006 Mark... (more)

Though I didn't see it at Sub Pop's (much-deserved) self-congratulatory SP20 music fest last summer, Elysian's Loser Pale Ale was brewed specifically for the occasion.

"Loser" pays tribute to Sub Pop's classic, faux-emasculating slogan, of course. What's cooler yet is the label, featuring a B&W Charles Peterson original: Mark Arm's guitar neck splitting the crotch of fellow Mudhoney guitarist Steve Turner, circa 1988-ish. (Or is it Turner's guitar violating Arm? It's all axes, legs, and hair.)

You can't ride a fuggin' six-pack of this bright, tasty, 7% abv ale, unfortunately. It's only available in 22oz bombers. You can pick it up at the Elysian or, if you're lucky, find it at a city bottle shop or upscale grocery. I scored the pictured bottle a few weeks back at West Seattle's Metropolitan Market.

With the college football season upon us, one of the most important times of the year, I would like to turn my attention to a wonderful and much-maligned snack you can serve to your guests that will literally drive them crazy with adoration for your cooking skills.  But first things first.  When I say college football, what I really mean is Michigan Wolverine Football.  Before reading any further, submit yourself to the notion that the Wolverines are the finest college football program in the history of the sport.  If you’ve previously rooted for some other school as a result of your college education or geography, now is the time to make the switch.  Start by waking up tomorrow morning and dressing yourself head-to-toe in maize and blue.  You’d be surprised how good it can make you feel.

But let’s get on to talking about Buffalo wings, my purpose today.  We’ve all had them, we all love them, but the vast majority of the time they are not as good as... (more)

The September issue of Seattle Metropolitan magazine featured "Wine Lover Weekends," which spurred me to plan the east of the mountains wine-tasting adventure my friends and I had been dreaming of for two years. Disclaimer: There is nothing to qualify me as a wine connoisseur, other than being a Gen Y who likes to drink and possessing several Certified Wino friends (ahemm, sommeliers). Granted, this at least means I know a tasty wine from a yucky one.

So after hours of internet searches the weekend before Labor Day, and finally securing a campsite in Entiat City Park, my two blonde friends and I set forth in the direction of Wenatchee. The region has loads of wineries that have sprung out of the ground in recent years. Washington is now the second largest wine producing state in the country (trailing behind that behemoth of everything, California). The Columbia Valley and Southeastern region of our state, with a latitude and climate close to that of France, put forth some really fabulous wines.

First stop along... (more)

The brand-spankin' new forums at CHS are hosting a conversation about where the best free wifi on Capitol Hill is hiding. It's sparked by Seattle's GoTime (they of the happy-hour-near-you tracker) branching out into mapping free wifi around Seattle.

GoTime says Capitol Hill, the U-District, and Belltown are the most generous with wifi connections. Eastlake and Westlake are veritable wifi deserts.

Since getting introduced to it a couple weeks ago when a friend from out-of-town with a taste for elaborate cocktails dragged me to the Knee High Stocking Co. , Seattle's speakeasy-themed bar at Bellevue Ave. and Olive on Capitol Hill, it seems like Cynar (pronounced, apparently, with a ch sound at the beginning) is popping up everywhere. Either it's the hot new liqueur in town, or I've been operating with blinders on. It's on the  shelf at Cafe Presse and just got picked up at Solo Bar & Gallery in Lower Queen Anne, to name only two I can verify.

So the question is, what exactly is it and what do you do with it? The answer to the first is: it's an Italian liqueur in the same vein as Campari (which for many drinks it can be used as a substitute to different but functional effect) or St. Germain or any of a variety of other herbal liqueurs that have picked up a bit of cache of late. Cynar is made from 13 separate ingredients, but the one everyone always mentions is the artichoke. Fortunately, it does... (more)

The BottleNeck Lounge has expanded, but it still remains cozy as ever. The always-friendly Central District bar has moved into the former barbershop space next door, and Thursday's their post-construction party from 8pm-midnight. (Don't worry; they kept the barbershop chairs for your sitting pleasure.) 

Check out the photos of the new digs and join the fun tomorrow night.

Come join us for The BottleNeck Expansion Bash!

Thursday, Sept. 3 from 8 PM–Midnight

No Cover (of course)

The dust has cleared, the paint has dried (well, almost) and The BottleNeck is celebrating its expansion into the Red Carpet Room, the barber shop right next door.  Kick back in the vintage Koken barber chairs and enjoy flutes of champagne for just $4 all night.  We’re the same great bar–excellent tunes, killer cocktails, local beers on tap–but now everyone can find a place to sit!