Phat Duck in The Pastry Department

Transition

2007-02-08T09:21:00.000-08:00

I come here to you, my small but faithful readership to bid adieu.

I am leaving Phat Duck, my humble little blog behind. Just nearing it's second birthday, this blog has been a documentation of my growth. Started to share with friends and family a journey I took to England, the first few months opened my window into The Fat Duck kitchen for you. While filling a 2 month stage, I wrote, photographed, and shared the amazing education I was receiving at a kitchen that is leading the culinary world right now. Many of you joined me after bits of the blog were published in the London Guardian. I'll never forget that day, when Heston walked up to me with a look of mischief and said, "I read your diary."

Upon my return to the states, the blog began to follow me through the ins and outs of becoming a pastry chef. I took my first "chef" job running the pastry department (of 1, that's I was the department) at Eva, a small neighborhood restaurant in Seattle. Using their strong beliefs in organics, seasonality, and local producers, I developed the skills needed to manage a dessert menu. You'll see in my posts from beginning to the end a progression in not only the desserts, but the format in which I wrote about them. Finding my niche in thoughtful essays with recipes and photographs, it seems I have just settled into a format the readers could count on, and here I go running out the door.

But don't fret just yet. You can come with me!

I will now be co-writing Tasting Menu with Hillel Cooperman. We met years ago when I worked at Lampreia. I spent my time in the kitchen, him at the table. But his passion for food brought him to the back of the house time and time again. When Hillel and his friends applied their talents to a menu Scott Carsberg had created to celebrate apples, an amazing digital cookbook was produced. And I got to know Hillel and the people of Tasting Menu.

Since then a mutual respect has grown, and it's become clear that our complimentary voices will be best suited writing together. Tasting Menu will now give it's readers perspective from behind the plate, and behind the stove.

I am also taking yet another career step into the kitchen at The Rainer Club. Looking to fill some holes in my education, I will be working with banquet production/catering, butchery and charcuterie, then finally cooking on the hot line in one of the most developmentally supportive, highly professional high end kitchens I have encountered.

Expect to see some of the dessert writing Phat Duck is famous for, insight into the industry, and a bit about the work I do at The Ranier Club.

So to Tasting Menu we go, just a click away........

Rugelach

2007-01-29T14:35:00.000-08:00

As a young school girl, growing up in a quiet town north of Seattle, I was mostly surrounded by other children like me. That is to say, white. Always having been a blue collar town driven by paper mills and an airplane factory, Everett was not a hot bed of racial diversity. But those children of other cultures that did mix into our classrooms were celebrated. They shared with us foods, traditions, art, song and dance from their culture, and I sat with glittering wide eyes, awed by the differences their lives held from mine. My eight year old heart wished with all I had to have a heritage like they did.

Sure, my mom's family holds dear the Irish in them, come via Newfoundland about 7 generations ago. My strongest tie being weak, the faint Irish in my past mixed with other northern European blood lines to make me something of a mutt. While as an adult I have learned that the mutt in me is a pure bred American, the child in me still glitters at bits of heritage from cultures and histories that will never be mine.

When I was challenged by my Jewish pantry cook, Cara, to make a dessert celebrating her own heritage, the child in me took it to heart. In choosing Rugelach, an cookie of Ashkenazi Jewish tradition I made it with respect to the generational ties it holds. A simple flaky pastry of cream cheese, butter, and flour creates a rolled shell holding a filling traditionally made with currants, cinnamon, and sugar. (Or so I am told by my pantry cook)

Sounding much too like a cookie version of cinnamon rolls to resist, I was quick to deviate a bit from a tradition I had only just adopted. Dressing them much the way I dress my buns, the rugelach's filling was gussied up, first adding the zest of an orange to the cinnamon sugar. The raisin hater I once was long ago banished the seedy pellets from my cinnamon rolls, opting instead for chopped bittersweet chocolate and pecans. I since may have learned to enjoy a nice plump raisin here and there, but because my motivation to perfect these cookies came from an earlier version of myself, I thought I could certainly hold fast to my raisin swap, and fill my rugelach with chocolate and pecans too.

The dough is rolled out in a 12 inch disk, egg washed, and covered in a thin layer of the filling ingredients, cinnamon sugar first. Looking much like a pizza, the "pie" is cut in 16 equally sized wedges, and rolled up fat end first to make little crescent rolls. The tops are egg washed and sprinkled with what I call disco sugar. The addition of the large granule sugar on top adds not only an impressive sparkle, but very nice crunch to the texture of the flaky cookie. If you don't opt for the disco sugar, regular sugar, or even just egg wash will do just fine.

Rugelach

for the dough

1 cup cream cheese, cold
1 cup butter, cold
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar

1. Cut the butter and cream cheese into inch pieces. Paddle them in the bowl of a kitchen aid on medium speed until they are well combined.

2. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the sugar and salt. Mix until combined and scrape down the sides of the bowl again.

3. Add the flour and mix on low until the flour is no longer visible and the dough comes together into a large curd, lumpy mass.

Alternately...(and I often alternate to this) Combine the flour, salt, and sugar in the work bowl of a food processor. Add the butter and cream cheese and pulse 15 to 20 times, or until the dough comes together into a large curd, lumpy mass.

3. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and separate the dough into 4 equally sized balls. Press the balls into disks, wrap with plastic, and chill in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour. The dough can be stored in the fridge for up to 3 days, or a month in the freezer.

for the filling

1 cup sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
zest of 1 orange
4 oz chopped bittersweet chocolate (roughly half a cup)
1/2 cup chopped pecans

1. In a bowl combine the sugar and cinnamon evenly. Zest the orange directly over the bowl of cinnamon sugar to capture all of the oils being released by zesting. When the entire orange is zested, mix it into the sugar with your fingers, breaking it up as much as possible.

2. Chop the pecans and chocolate fairly small. Large chunks will either fall from the cookie when it is rolled, or break through the dough.

Assembly

Preheat the oven to 350
Have ready sheet pans lined with parchment or sillpats. Sugar leaks from the cookies during the baking process, making it very hard to remove from unlined pans.

Have ready Egg wash (one egg beaten well with 1 tbsp water) and a pastry brush to apply it
Disco sugar (large granule decorators sugar)

1. Roll the dough into a 12 inch circle. Apply a light coat of egg wash to the entire face of the dough.

2. Sprinkle 1/4 of the cinnamon sugar to the dough and spread evenly with your hand.

3. Sprinkle 1/4 of the chopped pecans and chocolate over the cinnamon sugar leaving a 2 inch circle in the center void of large chunks.

4. Cut the circle in 16 even wedges and pull them apart. Starting with the fat end of 1 wedge, roll the cookie up. Dip it in egg wash, place it on the lined cookie sheet, and sprinkle it with a bit of disco sugar. Repeat with the remaining wedges.

5. Bake the cookies at 350 for 25 to 30 minutes, until the tops are a deep golden brown and the bottoms are clearly done. If under baked, the dough will not be flaky and the center will be uncooked.

An interlude

2007-01-03T21:53:00.000-08:00

If you have noticed a change in the frequency of posting lately, then to you I apologize. It's not my lack of passion that has changed, nor my desire to tell you all about it. The amount of desserts I have produced this month is extreme, some refinements of recipes in my book, some new additions that are worth keeping around. Many classes taught, cookies made, and menu items developed.

But along side my own exciting developements, I have been struggling every day along side my mother. Just a month past her 55th birthday, she is coming to the end of a 4 year battle with a very agressive and debilitating form of Parkinsons desiese called striato-nigral degeneration. She suffered through the kind of degeneration that took something from her every month. From fine motor skills, to balance, walking, talking, swallowing, and finally breathing, she held her head up high as all these human qualities slipped away from her.

I have been by her side managing her care for the last 2 years, day in, day out. It's been nothing but a blessing to have spent so much time with her and been able to give back as much of me as she needed. As her lungs weaken and struggle to take in oxygen and expel carbon dioxide, my sisters and I are spending as much time with her as we can, and the rest with eachother.

Forgive the lapse in posting, bear the month or more it takes to for my fingers to grow nimble and my mind to warm up to writing. And if you can, send your prayers for my mother, Denise, who has been so brave in the face of such a terrible desiese.

Chocolate Pudding

2006-12-18T13:12:00.000-08:00

Pudding is a word you are no doubt familiar with, and if you are like most of us out there, love the thought of. But pudding can that mean many different things, often defined by a preceding description (bread pudding, yorkshire pudding) and can vary depending on what continent (or island) you are standing on. Encompassing the entirety of the dessert course in the UK, the broad term pudding has a much more specific meaning here. When an American cook is looking for a pudding recipe, they want to make something smooth, creamy, cooked with milk, eggs, and starch and most often tasting of a singular flavor. Something so delicate in it's richness that must be spooned from a cup.

When Jell-o introduced it's boxed pudding mixes at modest prices, some so convenient they needed no cooking, pudding became a staple in day to day American cuisine. Whether it was made in your home of not, you saw it was served in the school cafeteria, sitting next to you in your best friends sack lunch, or served as an after school snack at your neighbors.

I'll admit, I am part of a generation that knew only that pudding started in a box. My mom liked foods that offered convenience, as do many parents who spend most of the day chasing around 3 very active children. It's no crime to take advantage of shortcuts in the kitchen when your energy is focused elsewhere. Life is one big balancing act, and pudding from a box helped my mom keep hers level.

This offered no preparation for me, however, leading my life as a pastry chef. I love having a bit of pudding on my menu. Just a few bites served in a cute little dish aside a dessert, a nice alternative to plating everything with an ice cream. Not only a luxurious way to present a flavor, pudding is received by more than the palate. Pudding triggers nostalgia, adding a tiny emotional response of childlike joy to the dish.

While putting a dessert that is so well received on a plate seems easy, it's challenge is in it's simplicity. While our nostalgic memories of pudding prepare us to enjoy the dessert on many levels, our adult palates will be disappointed by the bland and unexciting flavors of the puddings we ate as children. In presenting a pudding, it has to taste better than the child in us remembers.

Working with a method from an decidedly unamerican pastry chef, I have a pudding on my menu that I am confident accomplishes all it has set out to do. Rather than make a simple ganache by pouring hot cream over chocolate, Pierre Herme pours a hot custard over chocolate for a filling in his cakes. By using the same concept my pudding was created. A hot custard flavored with brandy is poured over bittersweet chocolate and poured in individual dishes. When left to set up, a thin skin is formed. While this skin was eschewed by many, I see it as a defining quality of pudding. Removing the skin is like taking the crust off a bread, or the rind off Brie.

At the restaurant the pudding is made in large batches and used bit by bit to fill dishes, so no skin is served. But when making this pudding at home I delight in eating the tender skin first.

Chocolate Pudding

1 lb bittersweet chocolate
2 cups cream
2 1/2 cups whole milk
2 tbsp brandy
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 cup sugar
10 egg yolks

1. Chop the chocolate finely and place in a bowl large enough to hold all the ingredients.

2. In a medium sized, heavy bottom saucepan, combine the cream, milk, brandy, vanilla, and salt and scald. Whisk the yolks and sugar together until they lighten a bit in color, about 1 minute. Temper the hot cream into the yolks and return to the stove top.

3. Cook the custard over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens and coats the back of a spoon.

4. Strain the hot custard into a pitcher or bowl. Ladle 1/4 of the hot custard over the chopped chocolate. Slowly stir the chocolate until the custard has been stirred in completely and the chocolate looks glossy. Repeat adding the custard to the chocolate in 2 more batches, stirring slowly between additions until all the custard has mixed in and the chocolate looks glossy.

5. Pour the pudding into individual dishes, or one large dish and chill until set, about 2 hours for the small cups, or 4 to 6 for the large. I have also used this as a chocolate cream pie filling.

Sweet Honey, Sour Cherries

2006-11-26T12:25:00.000-08:00

A frozen dessert hardly seems the way to finish a warm, cozy winter meal. Never the less, a wildflower honey semifreddo sits on my menu. Perhaps it's the "semi" that secures this cold dessert, a perpetual state this city suffers through all winter; Never frozen solid, but always cold.

What this dessert lacks in temperate warmth, it makes up for in richness. Honey, cooked with the smoky Madagascar vanilla bean and rich egg yolks, is folded into softly whipped cream before being moved to the freezer. Because of the invert sugars in honey, the dessert never freezes completely. Always cold, but never frozen solid.

The recipe for the honey semifreddo was introduced to this blog on a sunnier day. Earlier this year, when the summer sun had yet to grow hot, the recipe was given as a perfect foil to summers abundant fruits. Named "frozen wildflower honey mousse" this dessert was covered with a scattering of fresh berries or compote.

This month the dessert is dressed for colder days, with a thick coat made from sour cherry compote, warmly layered with a balsamic drizzle. Appropriately big flavors to hold our rich honey dessert to the season.

This compote was developed first for a goat cheese-cheesecake, but has found many homes since it's introduction into my recipe book. It's tart intensity lets it sit aside rich creamy desserts, perfect for a scoop of vanilla ice cream. If you are interested in recreating the entire dessert, you can purchase a nice, thick aged balsamic to drip around the edges, or take a cup of balsamic vinegar and simmer it with 1/4 cup of sugar until it begins to thicken a bit and streak the pan when swirled. When it cools you will have a nice balsamic syrup.

Sour Cherry Compote

3 cups dried sour cherries
2 cups water
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup amaretto
2 tbsp cornstarch

1. Place the dried cherries in a sauce pan and cover with the water, balsamic vinegar, and sugar. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. When the mixture boils, reduce to a simmer and cook for half an hour. The cherries should plump up, absorbing much of the liquid. Remove from heat temporarily.

2. Whisk the amaretto and cornstarch together until all lumps of starch are dissolved and the slurry is even. Slowly add the slurry to the hot cherries, stirring constantly to avoid the starch from clumping.

3. When all the starch has been added, return the compote to a medium heat. Cook, stirring constantly until the mixture begins to bubble and the starches thicken and become translucent. When your compote has thickened, remove from heat and transfer to a bowl to cool.

4. Let the mixture cool at room temperature. Store the compote at room temperature for up to 3 days.

Lemon Shortbread

2006-11-13T10:31:00.000-08:00

As we trudge through grey of the Seattle days, growing ever shorter, the nip in the misty air drives us inside towards comfort. Rushing for the warmth of our homes, damp layers are peeled off and traded for thick rich fabrics, layered generously with less concern for outward appearances than inner satisfaction. A favorite sweater pilled beyond repair, a much loved pair of sweat pants that should have been replaced last year, thick wool socks asymmetrical and lumpy but made by a friend with love; we are not only reaching for comfort, but for the familiar.

Wrapped thick and nested inside, preparing for a long winters hibernation from the wet, cold, daunting grey that is Seattle's winter, mother nature sends us a surprise. The clouds break, the rain stops, and through our squinted eyes, we see the sun. For a moment, the skies gleam with azure joy and the sunlight spills on the lush foliage kept evergreen by our 8 months of drip. Eyes quickly accustomed to the extra light excite at the world brightened by a rare sunny day.

The flavors of the season, a reflection of our desire to comfort ourselves, are rich, subtle, warm, and familiar. Meals created this season satisfy our mood by nature as much as by design, the seasons offerings as much a reflection of these qualities as our own desires. From the muddy soil, we are pulling hearty greens, subtle potatoes, and rich squashes. But beside these cold weather gems, slowly filling the produce section in shops is another of mother natures surprises. A bright ray of light from places sunnier than Seattle, citrus is now coming into season.

Bright orbs of color, this tart flavor brightens the comfortable cuisine we are layering ourselves with, refreshing our palates and enlivening our moods. Grapefruits, mandarins, Meyer lemons, limes, blood oranges, and kumquats, the first 4 colors of the rainbow paint winter's cuisine with exciting flavor. Like a sunbeam breaking through the clouds, I delight in welcoming citrus's return.

To begin my celebration of citrus, I am filling a cup with a rich lemon cream mousse. Blanketed in a huckleberry coulis, this intense mousse is served with a crumbly lemon shortbread. The shortbread is baked twice, much like a biscotti, to achieve a truly crumble-and-melt in your mouth quality, and packs a nice clean citrus flavor. It stores well in an airtight container and makes a welcome gift for the holidays.

Note, the butters texture and temperature are vital the outcome of the dough. It should be room temperature, soft, and pliable, but not shiny, runny, greasy, or squishy. Your finger should feel some resistance when pressing into it.

Lemon Shortbread

1 cup butter, room temp
2/3 cup powdered sugar
zest of 1 lemon
2 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
2 cups flour
1/8 tsp baking soda

Prepare a 8 by 8 inch square pan lined with parchment
Preheat the oven to 350

1. With the paddle attachment, cream the butter on a medium speed until it is of an even consistency. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and sift the powdered sugar over the butter. Mix the sugar and butter together until they are even and smooth, no more than minute.

2. Scrape the bowl well, and add the lemon zest, lemon, and vanilla. Mix until the wet ingredients are a smooth even mass.

3. Sift together the salt, flour, and baking soda. Add half this mixture to the dough and mix on low until mostly incorporated but still dry. Add the remaining half and mix on low until the flour has dissolved and the dough looks like large, very moist curds.

4. Turn the dough out onto a floured counter and finish the mixing process by gently kneading the dough. When the dough is even, press it into the prepared 8 by 8 inch pan and bake at 350 for 25 minutes.

5. After 25 minutes, remove the shortbread from the oven and let it cool for 15 minutes. Turn the oven down to 325 degrees. When the shortbread has cooled to a handling temperature, but not too much, invert the cookie onto a cutting board. Trim the edges from the shortbread, and cut the shortbread into even sized squares. Transfer the squares to a cookie sheet and bake in the 325 degree oven for another 20 to 30 minutes. The cookies should begin to turn golden, but remain fairly blond, and feel set and dry. If you are unsure, break a cookie open and check to see if the center is baked. To achieve a truly crumbly texture, the cookie must be baked through completely.

Pumpkin Cream Chiffon

2006-11-03T23:15:00.000-08:00

Nary a soul can pass the autumn season without one taste of pumpkin. A fixture at the thanksgiving table, pumpkin pie assumes the holiday ideal. Baked into cakes and muffins, mixed into ice cream, filling ravioli, thick in soups, this orange gourd can be tasted anywhere and everywhere.

The quintessential autumn flavor, my November menu would not be complete without one dish centered around pumpkin. At Eva, a pumpkin cream chiffon is served on a chocolate crust along side cinnamon whipped cream and hazelnut praline. I call it a "cream chiffon" because I removed the airy, light egg-white meringue that is traditionally used to lighten a chiffon and replaced it with whipped cream. The richness of the cream tempered the slight bitterness of the pumpkin better than the egg whites, creating a more indulgent version of this light dessert.

In a recent post I boasted that Bay makes a fantastic companion for Pumpkin. This said, I have spiced my pumpkin dessert with a classic combination of cinnamon and ginger. Not only is this more aproachable for the massive hordes of diners coming in for 25 for 25, but it has allowed me to pair the pumpkin chiffon with a chocolate crust. Pumpkin and chocolate is a delicious flavor combination that I don't often see or get an excuse to use.

Now I have a confession to make. My pumpkin dessert has a secret ingredient. No it's not cool-whip, or a package of vanilla pudding mix, or anything that is better left a secret. The secret is the pumpkin. It's not pumpkin that I use in my pumpkin dessert. I use a squash called the Long Island Cheese Wheel. The pale dusty skin of this Cinderella shaped squash surrounds a denser, creamier mild flesh. I haven't seen it available at a grocery store, but have seen it lurking under piles of brighter colored squashes at the farmers market.

Whether I choose this squash, or a sugar pie pumpkin, I will follow a few extra steps to ensure a thick, dense puree. I might roast the pumpkin before pureeing, which allows for evaporation of much of the excess water. This also deepens the flavor by caramelizing some of the sugars on the surface of the squash. If I am in the mood for a simpler flavor, I will poach the squash in boiling water until tender, puree the pumpkin, and freeze it. Upon defrosting I will strain the puree, and let the water that has separated from the solids drain away.

Pumpkin Cream Chiffon

1 9-inch chocolate crumb pie crust

2 cups pumpkin puree
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp salt
9 egg yolks
3/4 cup milk
3 1/2 tsp gelatin
1/2 cup water

2 cups whipping cream

1. In a medium sized, heavy bottom sauce pan, combine the pumpkin, brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger and salt. Cook over medium-high heat for 3 to 5 minutes, until the mixture looses some liquid and becomes glossy.

2. While this is cooking, place the water in a small sauce pan and sprinkle the gelatin evenly over it. Let this bloom while you cook the pumpkin.

3. When the pumpkin has cooked enough, transfer it to the bowl of a food processor. Turn the food processor on and let it spin for 2 minutes.

4. With the food processor running, add the milk. When this is blended evenly, scrape the sides of the bowl down and add the eggs. Pulse the food processor just enough to incorporate the eggs, but no more.

5. Return the pumpkin mixture to the stove and cook over a medium heat until the mixture thickens like a custard. When the mixture has thickened, remove from heat and set aside.

6. Place the small pot with the bloomed gelatin over low heat and cook until the gelatin has liquefied. Pour the liquid gelatin into the pumpkin mixture and stir well. Return the pumpkin mixture to the stove and cook over medium heat just enough to thicken the mixture again.

7. Transfer the pumpkin custard to a bowl and place over an icebath. Stir occasionally to ensure it cools evenly and the gelatin doesn't clump. If the gelatin begins to set up too stiffly around the edges, whisk it until it disolves and is redistributed. If it still won't unclump, return the custard to a saucepan and cook over medium low heat until the gelatin melts and start the chilling process again.

8. While the pumpkin custard is chilling, whip the cream to soft peaks.

9. When the pumpkin custard is cool and starting to thicken, whisk 1/3 of the soft peaked cream in. When this is even, fold in half the remaining cream carefully with a spatula until nearly all the white streaks are gone. Add the remaining whipped cream and fold gently until the pumpkin is smooth and even.

10. Transfer the custard to the prepared pie shell and smooth the top. Place plastic directly on the surface and chill the pie for 4 hours, or over night.

Garnish with cinnamon spiced whipped cream and crushed toasted hazelnuts.

Cake Americana

2006-11-02T23:08:00.000-08:00

I don't wave the stars and stripes, or know all the words to the national anthem. My American history is so-so, I can name about 10 presidents, and I stay as far from American politics as I can. I have seen the nations capitol, but don't scowl when I admit I was more interested in the gift shops than D.C herself. Worst of all, I have never been to Disney Land.

But don't write me off as un-American yet. I am as American as apple pie! A daughter of the pioneers, I come from a strong line of women who praised this country and their part of it through food. My deeper sense of Americana best translates through flavor.

Once a country criticized for a lack of cuisine, America is discovering it has more of a legacy of flavor than previously thought. And I, the proud daughter of this land of liberal cuisine, cling to flavors I was raised with. Peanut butter, brownies, milk chocolate, rice crispies, and chocolate pudding all deserve a star on my spangled banner, or better yet, a plate.

My chocolate dessert for the month of November is a tribute to my American childhood. A cake, layered tall, is called the Peanut Butter Chocolate Brownie Crunch Cake. Between two dense layers of fudgy brownie lies another two layers of milk chocolate ganache that sandwich a layer called peanut butter crunch. The peanut butter crunch is a rich combination of peanut butter, chocolate, and rice crispies. A sleek coat of dark chocolate glaze brings this childlike cake into the adult world, dressing it for the table.

As I have known since childhood, the cake does not stand alone (that's the cheese's job). To accompany this cake Americana is another treat from my American childhood, chocolate pudding. A step up from the pudding whose life began granulated, in a small box marked Jell-0, this pudding is made by pouring a warm custard over chocolate. A billow of whipped cream crowns the top and a scattering of caramelized rice crispies creates the final tie.

Edit: the posts just felt naked without a recipe

Peanut Butter Chocolate Brownie Crunch Cake

1 recipe Brownies, baked in a half sheet pan. This must be lined with parchment, and kept chilled until assembly

1 cup chopped salted peanuts for garnish

Milk Chocolate Ganache

1 pound milk chocolate, chopped finely
1 1/2 cups cream

1. Scald the cream and pour it over the chocolate. Stir slowly until the mixture is even. Chill the ganache until it is thick and spreadable.

Peanut Butter Crunch

3 oz milk chocolate
1 cup peanut butter
2 tbsp butter
1 1/2 cups rice crispies

1. Melt the milk chocolate, peanut butter, and butter together. Stir in the rice crispies last minute, just before assembling the cake.

Chocolate Glaze

8 oz chocolate, 64 percent
6 oz butter, cut in cubes
1/4 cup water
2 tbsp corn syrup
1/8 teaspoon salt

1. Place all the ingredients in a large stainless steel bowl and place over simmering double boiler. Heat the ingredients without stirring until 80 percent of the chocolate and butter has melted. Remove from heat and stir until all the ingredients have melted and emulsified.

2. Let the glaze cool on the counter, stirring occasionally until it is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.

Assembeling the cake

Have ready the milk chocolate ganache, the peanut butter crunch, and the cooled brownie layer. You will need a piece of thick sturdy cardboard big enough to build your cake on, or a cutting board.

1.Unmold the brownie from the pan and cut in half vertically, leaving you 2 pieces of equal size, a top and a bottom for your cake. Place one layer of brownie on the cake board, papery side up.

2. Spread the bottom layer of your cake with half the milk chocolate ganache and chill in the refrigerator for 10 minutes.

3. Spread the all the peanut butter crunch on top of the ganache, and chill in the fridge for 10 minutes.

4. Spread the remaining ganache over the peanut butter crunch. Place the top half of your brownie over the ganache, papery side down. Chill the whole cake for half an hour. When the cake is stable, trim the edges evenly to make sharp corners.

5. While the cake is chilling prepare the chocolate glaze.

6. To glaze the cake place it on a wire rack set over a sheet pan. With the bowl of glaze held about 8 inches above the cake, carefully glaze the four corners first, making sure each corner is covered. Pour the rest of the glaze over the center of the cake in a steady stream. Either spread the glaze towards the sides of the cake with a long cake spatula in 2 or 3 quick motions, or tilt the cake to move the glaze over the edges evenly.

7. Transfer the cake to the cake board and press chopped peanuts along the bottom edge of the cake while the glaze is soft. When you are ready to present the cake, transfer it to a flat cake plate.

November Desserts

2006-11-02T00:14:00.000-08:00

Durring the month of november 25 seattle restaurants participate in a promotion called 25 for 25. Each restaurant prepares a selection of dishes for a multi choice 3 course menu. The price, you guessed it, 25 dollars.

This promotion has caught me off guard, knocked the wind out of me, and caused insomnia in the past. But as I looked at the clock at 3 this afternoon, preparing for the first day of this hectic promotion, I realized I was kind of excited. I had thought, planned, prepped, tweaked, and perfected 4 desserts over the last month in preparation for this day. And when it came time to pull it all together, I was down right giddy.

The following 4 posts will highlight these desserts. I often include recipes so you too can make what is delighting me, but these posts will be void of instruction. My chores this month are comitted to massive reproduction fo these desserts rather than recipe composition.

Enjoy!

Sweet Bay Ice Cream

2006-10-23T21:21:00.000-07:00

As our eyes adjust to the subdued skies, greyed with autumn clouds, and the air nips at the tips of our ears and noses, our appetites begin to crave comforting flavors. Just as we cover our heads and wrap our bodies with warm and cozy, textile layers, we begin to wrap our desserts with comfortable layers of warm spices. Inhaling the aroma of spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove may not offer a radiant heat source, but none the less, it warms us.

My own desire for cinnamon scented warmth tempts me to add varying combinations of these spices to everything I make. Cinnamon dusted pears fill my Basque cake, a vanilla cream filled delight from the French Basque region. A caramelized cinnamon ice cream, made with a Herme technique of toasting sticks of cinnamon under slowly caramelizing sugar sits on the cakes side. An apple strudle carries the traditional "apple pie" flavors of cinnamon, allspice, and ginger. But enough will soon be enough, and I can't spend the entire autumn come winter cloaking my entire menu in these warm spices.

With the temptation to over use these common spices, I have been left to find an alternative, quickly. The question is posed, how can I add warmth to my autumn menu without reaching for these spices? I found an answer in a small, pale leaf called Bay.

This humble leaf, almost forgotten to stews and soups, has ancient roots in glory and prestige. The leaf of the common laurel tree, bay once crowned Greek and roman victors, Olympic athletes, and was given to scholars and poets ceremoniously upon receipt of earned honors. Modern victors now receive recognition through gold medals and oversized checks, and the bay leaf is left to crown small glory in our kitchens.

Too long held captive on the savory side of the kitchen, these green woody leaves have a pleasant, autumnal quality reminesent of tea, magnificent in desserts. Their distinct flavor is familiar to every palate, yet offers an unexpected surprise when featured in dessert. Deep and earthy, the flavor is best presented as a companion to rich, creamy desserts.

Infused into the cream for pumpkin pie, bay offers a elegant alternative to the combination of nutmeg, cinnamon, and clove so familiar that it has it's own container in the spice isle. It is also a beautiful flavoring for a custard like creme brulee or pot-de-creme, creme anglaise, and ice cream.

Sweet Bay Ice Cream

8 to 10 bay leaves
1 cup milk
2 cups cream
1/2 cup sugar
4 large egg yolks

1. Break the bay leaves and place them in a small, heavy bottomed sauce pan. Add the cream and milk, and bring this to a boil. Turn the heat to it's lowest setting, and leave this mixture to infuse for half an hour.

2. After the mixture is appropriately infused, remove from the heat and set aside.

3. Whisk the egg yolks and sugar to a thick ribbon. Slowly temper the cream with the eggs, adding a little bit at a time, whisking well between additions.

4. Return the custard to the sauce pan. Cook this over medium low heat, stirring constantly with a heat proof rubber spatula, until the mixture thickens.

5. Strain the custard into a bowl and chill. This can be done quickly in an ice bath, or overnight in the refrigerator, covered well.

6. Churn in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturers instructions.

Baking blogs on the rise

2006-10-21T10:48:00.000-07:00

It's officially news, although I suspect we have been in on the secret for some time now. Baking blogs are on the rise, following a rise in the popularity of home baking! But as the following article was run in London's newspaper, The Guardian, perhaps this trend has yet to move across the atlantic. Which means you can start the trend right here at home! Be a trend setter, get your cake pans, mixers, and flour covered aprons ready for the new wave of home baking.

There is one fact I must correct, however. It's mentioned that this blog is written by a former pastry chef at The Fat Duck, when in fact, I was a stagiere, or an intern.

By Guardian Unlimited / Blogs 02:07pm

Baking is a popular subject for food
bloggers. Photograph: GettyReports out today reveal home baking is enjoying something of a revival, with sales of flour, dried fruit and cake decorations up 25% and the market expected to grow to £550 million by 2011, writes Bonnie Malkin.

Baking is also proving popular online with a growing community of bloggers posting recipes, advice and proud photos of their creations (as well as the odd flop).

There are beginners, like Ben Bakes a Cake, those that can only be described as experimental bakers, such as Cookie Madness (Guinness Stout Brownies anyone?) and, of course, the more highly refined.

The Pastry Department, a blog by a former Fat Duck pastry chef, fits firmly into the latter category with heavyweight recipes such as caramel macadamia tarts and late summer coffee cake.

Bakingsheet falls somewhere in the middle, and is worth a mention for its super-cute cake names (One Bowl Buttermilk Chocolate Cupcakes, Lime Chiffon Cake, Doubletree Chocolate Chip Cookies, to name but a few) that could not fail to impress even the most cynical visiting mother-in-law.

Then there are the more savoury bloggers, such as the Foppish Baker and his endearingly-named Ugly Breakfast Rolls.

One word of warning, most of these posts are likely to induce strong urges to eat cake - homemade or otherwise.

Autumn Cake

2006-10-01T10:06:00.000-07:00

My bible contains the gospel of Herme, Baluger, Mason, Flemming, and I faithfully worship through the recipes in their books. I sing my hymns with a choir of whirring kitchenaids, the high rhythmic soprano of beeping timers, the constant alto of zipping blenders, and the baritone chugging of churning ice cream machines. My prayers are physical acts beginning with the holy bodies of butter, sugar, flour, and eggs. Sharing recipes is a cornerstone in my church of cuisine. I take so much inspiration from those who spoke the good word before me, no to give back would be a sin.

That said, occasionally a dessert is born in my own kitchen, begat by my own two hands, that tempts me to sin. I delight in it's existence so highly that I think to myself, just this once, I'll keep it. I'll say "Doesn't every hard working pastry chef deserve one cake that no one else can make? One little cake to call my very own?"

This week, a cake that sings praises of Autumn has been my temptress. She has a dark body, bittersweet with chocolate, sweetened only with golden honey. Pears, the fat bodied angels of the season, crown this elusive lady. A dusting of sweet cinnamon finishes the cake before baking, bearing the soul of the chilling season to come.

The first time out of the oven, the kitchen staff crowded around, drawing long nasal breaths in silent prayer, humming quiet songs of praise for Her. Jen, our youngest, said finally with eyes turned upward, "it just soothes my soul".

My love for this child of mine can not be selfish, tempting though it may be. A sinner she will not make of me, and the recipe I leave to you. May it find praise on your own autumn table.

My cake is being served aside a hazelnut ice cream whose richness was tamed by a hint of cocoa powder, and a golden honey sabayon. However, a simple scattering of toasted hazelnuts is highly complimentary to the flavors of the cake.

Autumn Cake

9 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped small (66%)
2/3 cup cream
3 eggs, separated
1 tbsp cornstarch
60 grams honey (just under 1/4 cup)
3 pears (I am using Bartlett)
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
toasted and chopped hazelnuts for garnish

1. Preheat the oven to 350 and prepare an 8 inch springform pan by greasing the sides and lining the bottom with parchment. Sift the powdered sugar and cinnamon together and set aside.

2. Peel the pears, halve them and core them. Slice the pears in 1/4 inch slices, keeping only the taller pieces from the center. Alternately, for a more rustic looking cake, cut the cored pear into large chunks. Set aside.

3. Place the chocolate in a large bowl. Scald the cream and pour it over the chocolate. Let this sit for one minute, then stir until even. If the chocolate has not melted completely, continue to melt it over a double boiler or in the microwave on 5 second intervals.

4. With a whisk, mix the cornstarch into the chocolate, avoiding any lumps. When this is mixed in well, whisk in the egg yolks until even.

5. In the bowl of a kitchen aid, place the honey and egg whites, and whip to stiff peaks.

6. With a whisk, fold in 1/3 of the whites to the chocolate mixture until even. Fold the remaining whites into the chocolate with a spatula in 2 additions until even. Transfer the batter to the springform pan and spread evenly.

7. Arrange the pear slices, fat side towards the edge, overlapping in a circular pattern around the outside of the cake. Dust the cake with the cinnamon sugar evenly.

8. Bake the cake for 40 to 50 minutes. Test for doneness by inserting a knife into the center of the cake where the chocolate is left exposed. The knife should come out clean.

9. Let the cake cool to room temperature for at least 3 hours. At this point the cake can be eaten, but I prefer to let it set in the fridge overnight.

A late summer coffee cake

2006-09-26T23:48:00.000-07:00

As I returned from my honeymoon, I started stripping my menu. It had been set the month before with items that could fill my absence from the kitchen. Needless to say, I was ready to move on, quickly, and all at once. The first morning back in the kitchen found me pensive, spinning ideas round and round, trying to find new and exciting ways to present the late summer flavors I was working with.

A delivery of wine broke me from deep thought, and I began discussing the Erik's own baking adventures of the week. As he was leaving, he made the offhanded comment, "It's funny, I always pick the most challenging recipe in the book, just to see if I can do it, and people like it. But when I make the simplest thing, like a coffee cake, everyone raves about it all night."

Back to my own menu, it became clear. I could over think, over work, and over do the new menu items, but a simple coffee cake was the answer.

Simply called a late summer coffee cake, this rich, dense cake takes its seasonal name from a medley of fruits baked on top. Huckleberries, plums, and nectarines crowd the top bursting with the seasons last bright colors and flavors. A streusell of brown sugar and cinnamon baked on the fruit hints at the autumn just weeks away. I am serving it warm, with caramelized cinnamon icecream, but a simple vanilla would be heaven.

While you stroll the late season farmers markets, tempted by summers lingering jewels, remember this coffee cake. Don't feel limited by my own choices in fruits, rather let your own tastes or availability dictate. And feel free to include as many or as few fruits as you like. Have the fruits and the streusell ready before you begin mixing the cake. The batter shouldn't wait while you prepare the two.

For the fruits

1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 nectarines
4 plums
1 cup huckleberries

1. Slice the fruits into desired sized pieces. I quarter the plums and cut the nectarines in 8 pieces.

2. Mix the cinnamon and sugar and toss the fruit to coat.

For the streusell

1/3 cup flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp butter

1. In a medium sized bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon well.

2. Add the butter and break it up with your fingers or a pastry blender, making sure it gets tossed with the flour mixture constantly. Continue breaking up the butter, cutting it in, until it becomes very small and the mixture looks like a coarse meal.

For the Cake
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs separated
1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup sour cream
1/2 cup milk

A 9 inch round or 8 inch square baking pan greased and lined with parchment.

1. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together, and set aside.

2. Place the whites in a large, very clean bowl and set aside with a very clean whisk.

3. Cream the butter and sugar for 3 minutes until it becomes light and fluffy. Add the 2 yolks and continue creaming for 1 minute. Add the sour cream and mix until incorporated.

4. Add the flour in 3 additions, alternating with the milk. Mix on low speed careful not to over mix. This will make a thick batter.

5. Whip the whites to stiff peaks. Transfer the tight batter to the bowl with the whites and carefully fold the two together.

6. Spread the batter in the prepared pan. Cover with sliced fruit and berries, then sprinkle with streusell. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 40 to 50 minutes. The juices from the fruits should begin to bubble, and the cake should spring back when touched.

4.

An Inspired Caramel Macadamia Tart

2006-09-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

Great inspiration can be drawn from outstanding dining experiences. An unforgettable dessert creates an indelible mark on the senses and their memory. Beyond just memories, a spark is created, which later ignites the creative fires. A burning desire to pay tribute and recreate a special dish rages within, which nothing can extinguish but success. Much amazing cuisine has been born of this muse, the perfect dish.

However, Claudia Flemming points out in her book The Last Course that it is not only in gratifying experiences that inspiration is born. A disappointing experience too can send a cook to the fire, not to recreate, but to make it right. For Flemming, an outstanding sweet corn icecream was born of a disappointing experience in the Southwest. For me, an unfortunate caramel Macadamia tart in Durango, CO has been fueling my creative fire.

The offending tart had spent an evening or two on the dessert cart that arrived at the end of the meal. The Macadamia nuts for which the tart was named were coated in plenty of caramel, but being undertoasted their flavor was completely lost. Wrapped top and bottom, tart was encased in a thick layer of underbaked pastry. Not even a coat of chocolate could hide the bitter taste of raw flour.

With Macadamia and caramel being such a natural pair, my only problem was finding a place to begin.

I started by eliminating the top crust altogether, and removing the caramel coated Macadamia nuts from the inside of the tart shell. In their place sits a lightly whipped white chocolate coconut ganache. The caramel covered Macadamia nuts are returned to the tart, crowning the top. The two are kept separate until ready to serve, when the nuts are placed on top giving the caramel has just enough time to lazily drip down the sides before being placed on the table. Bittersweet balance is found in a spoonful of dark chocolate whipped cream served along side.

Use a tart shell of your choice, even a crumb crust would pair well with these flavors (just make sure to freeze it before adding the thick filling.) Take note that the ganache gains much of it's flavor from sitting in the fridge overnight, and the caramel coated nuts must cool on the counter for a few hours. This tart takes a little planning, but is well worth the time.

White chocolate coconut tart
with caramel coated Macadamia nuts

1 prebaked 9 inch tart shell

For the white chocolate filling
1 1/2 cup cream
1 1/2 cup dried shredded coconut
1 pound white chocolate, finely chopped

1. In a small saucepan combine the cream and the coconut and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and let this mixture steep for half an hour.

2. Place the white chocolate in a large bowl. Rewarm the coconut cream and pour over the white chocolate, allowing this to sit for 1 minute.

3. Stir the ganache until the mixture is even and all the chocolate is melted.

4. Pour the warm ganache into a container, pressing plastic wrap directly on the surface, and let this set in the refrigerator overnight.

5. Bring the ganache out of the fridge for an hour to come up near room temperature. The ganache should not be very cold and feel softer. Place the ganache in the bowl of your kitchen aid, and with the paddle attachment, beat the ganache on speed 4 for about a minute. It should lighten in color.

6. Working quickly spread the ganache in the tart shell. Cover with plastic wrap and let set in the refrigerator for an hour before cutting.

For the caramel Macadamia nuts
3 cups Macadamia nuts
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1/2 tsp kosher salt
2 cups cream

1. Toast the Macadamia nuts in a preheated 350 degree oven for 12 to 15 minutes, until they begin to take on a golden hue. Set aside to cool.

2. Place the cream and salt in a small saucepan, bring to a simmer, and keep warm while the caramel is cooking.

3. In a small bowl stir the sugar and water until the sugar is moist. Transfer this to a small saucepan and cook over medium high heat, washing down the sides of the pan with a moist pastry brush to remove any crystallized sugar. When the sugar has turned caramel colored, add the cream, a bit at a time, carefully stirring to incorporate after each addition. Be aware this will splatter a bit.

4. In a large heat proof bowl combine the Macadamia nuts and the hot caramel. Stir the two, and set aside on the counter to cool slowly. Continue stirring the mixture every 20 minutes until the caramel has come down to room temperature.

For the chocolate whipped cream

6 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped fine
3 cups cream
1/4 cup sugar

1. Bring the cream and sugar to a boil.

2. Stir in the finely chopped chocolate, and cook over medium heat until the chocolate has been combined completely.

3. Strain into a container and chill in the refrigerator for 6 hours, or overnight.

4. Whip the cold chocolate cream to desired stiffness.

You can present the tart with the Macadamia nuts on top, or in a pretty bowl set aside a bowl of the chocolate cream

Coming back.....

2006-09-16T09:50:00.000-07:00

For those that check this blog regularly, even randomly, you will surely have noticed a lack of new entries this past 6 weeks. Being confronted by the same pictures of hot fudge, you may have thought I'd given up, my blog left to collect cyberdust. Quite the contrary, this blog is a constant thought, just tucked quietly away behind the excitement of my wedding and honeymoon.

But I'm back, basking in the glow of my new marriage, and stripping my menu clean. While I finish fine tuning the menu's transition from summer to autumn, I will be keeping this blog in the front of my mind. Stay tuned.....

Hot Weather, Hot Fudge

2006-08-09T10:05:00.000-07:00

Hot sunlight spills in across the kitchen, shining bright on baskets of peaches, nectarines, and plums it helped nurture. Hiding in the shadows cast across the counters are dark blackberries and blueberries, eagerly waiting with a tasty secret they are bursting to tell. All will take starring roles in my desserts, shining as bright as the summer sun they grew in. But surprisingly not one of these fruits will take the lead in my cast of summer flavors.

While it may be the height of fruit season, it's my chocolate dessert that diners are choosing most often. They scan the menu, passing by the Noyaux bavarian, a light, white island in a sea of vibrant apricot coulis. They scroll down, passing the profiteroles filled with bright lemon ice cream that peak from a cascade of strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries. They glance at the Buttermilk panna cotta served aside tree-ripe peaches and nectarines, bathed in syrah, move to the moist sour cream pound cake that towers over a thick blackberry compote and a scoop of brown sugar ice cream, and think, "I'm in the mood for chocolate!"

The chocolate dish does have it's place on a summer menu. Dripping with childlike fun, the chocolate is presented 3 ways in an ice cream cake. 3 layers of devils food cake sandwiches milk chocolate malted ice cream and caramel. To throw this over the top, the cake is smothered in a dose of hot fudge. A sprinkling of caramelized rice crispies crowns the top, an adult rice crispy "treat."

"These people are crazy!" I declare, stirring the large batch of hot fudge I make daily to keep up with demand. "It's the height of fruit season and all they want is chocolate!" I say as I pour the warm cocoa syrup into a container. "I have no idea what's wrong with them!" I mutter as I begin to lick the spatula I used to stir the hot fudge. "People!" You can barely hear me say as I spend the next 2 minutes using the spatula to transfer the last bits of hot fudge from the pot into my mouth. As I stare at the empty pot, my lips stained brown with chocolate, I think, "Maybe they are on to something."

Hot Fudge

1 cup cocoa powder
1 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
4 tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 tsp kosher salt

1. Sift the cocoa powder into a medium mixing bowl. Add the sugar and stir with a whisk to combine.

2. Place the cream in a medium sauce pan and bring to a boil.

3. Pour 1/2 of the hot cream into the cocoa mixture and whisk until mostly combined. Add half the remaining cream and whisk until combined, and repeat with the remainder of the cream.

4. Return the cocoa mixture to the medium sauce pan and add the butter and salt. Stir this over medium heat until the butter melts and the mixture is thick and even. Never let this mixture boil, as the cocoa powder will burn very easily.

This can be stored in the fridge and rewarmed when needed.

Serve warm, over ice cream, or pound cake, or chocolate cake!

Chikalicious

2006-08-03T17:03:00.000-07:00

I first heard the name Chikalicious in passing a few years ago. It was just opening, and I was in the vicinity of a conversation discussing a restaurant who's counter seating would wrap around the chef's work space, much like a sushi bar. Interesting, but it was what this restaurant would serve that had my ears straining for more information. Chikalicious is a restaurant serving only desserts, the first that I had heard of.

I was, am, fascinated with the idea of high end, creative plated desserts taking center stage. A place meant to provide an unforgettable dessert experience without the trappings of a 2 hour multi course meal in a high end restaurant.

Since then the name has picked up momentum, and Chika the chef has been gaining a strong reputation. While I have yet to visit New York City and Chikalicious itself, I was thrilled to find this video, a window into an experience I can't wait to have myself! Enjoy.

Perfecting Puree's

2006-07-28T17:24:00.000-07:00

Like myself, you fellow dessert makers have no doubt found yourselves, at one time or another, pureeing berries such as a strawberry, or perhaps a raspberry. A simple task, requiring you to throw the berries in a blender, perhaps with some sugar, spin and strain. Often finding myself pureeing some berry or another, but not settled with random results, or just what ever comes out of the blender cup, I have worked on a few additional steps to ensure certain results. Could I let a puree be simple? Of course not.

The little alterations to the aforementioned process, simple in and of themselves, result in a puree that is thicker, brighter, and more luxurious.

First, because I have flats of berries passing through my hands, I choose only those that are ripe ripe ripe. Often these berries are so ripe that they don't look pretty enough to serve. The ripest berries have the sweetest flavor and are perfect for puree's. Don't feel that you need to let your berries get over-ripe, however. If they are ripe enough to eat, then they are ripe enough to puree.

Second, after washing, I freeze them. Spread in a single layer on a sheet pan, the berries are left to freeze solid, then gathered and stored overnight in a container with a tight, protective seal.

Third, when defrosting them, I transfer them strait from the freezer into a bowl, and toss them with a little sugar. When they are defrosted most of the way, but the temperature is still near freezing, I puree them. The puree is strained through a fine mesh strainer to remove all the seeds.

After the straining, the puree is super thick and luscious, and the color is as bright as can be. The puree stands up tall on a plate, working perfectly as a sauce. The thicker puree folds into recipes better, covers desserts better as it both sticks to them without running off, and is easier to pick up with your spoon making for a very happy mouth.

It is often enough to simply know a process works. I have followed these steps many times, observing successful results, and can enter this endeavor with confidence that I will achieve these results every time. But could I let it be that simple? Of course not.

I have to ask "why?"

When I ask why, I go to two places. First, Harold McGee. Well, not him, per se, but his book.

Then, when I find what I can from Harold, I ask my friend Chris Young. Chris is the research assistant to Heston Blumenthal, and runs his "Atomic Kitchen" or laboratory and the intense study of gastronomy that goes on inside. I often post him questions like, "Why does Elderflower taste so familiar to everyone, yet like nothing they have ever tasted?"

Or "Why does freezing my berries make such a huge impact on the resulting thickness, color, and flavor?" The answer is simpler than I thought. Ice.

The information I found in On Food and Cooking discussed the damages ice crystals cause on vegetable matter when frozen, and how to avoid this. Because I am not avoiding this process, rather using it to my advantage, I went to Chris.

Anyone who has placed liquid in the freezer is aware that it expands. Thus, when we freeze our berries, the water molecules inside the cells expand. The sharp crystals of ice damage the cell walls of the fruit, causing for a better extraction of liquid, carrying both pigment and aroma molecules (Remember that flavor is made of 5 tastes on our tongue, and about a billion aromas in our nasal receptors).

So freezing makes for more release of liquid. Logically, more liquid would seem to make a runnier, thinner puree. But not so. What this process also does is break down the cell walls themselves. When the blade of the blender tears apart the cells, breaking them open to extract the liquid, it also breaks some of the cell wall down into particles small enough to remain in the puree. The damage from the ice allows for more of the cell wall to break down and become part of the puree. Made from carbohydrates, the particles of cell wall will act to thicken the puree.

Finally, the freezing temperatures slow the enzymes that naturally deteriorate the bright hues of berries. Pureeing the fruit while still icy cold slows these enzymes from discoloring your fruit while the pigments are released.

Come out and play

2006-07-21T08:31:00.000-07:00

Rather than write about what I have done this summer after the fact, I thought I'd open up my schedule with my few but faithful readers and give them a chance to participate in some of the fun things I am doing this summer!

July 23rd- At noon I can be found on the street in front of the Pike Place Market. In a stall at the farmers market held outside, I will be demonstrating some delicious ways to use Raspberries. I will be giving tips on making puree's thicker and brighter, demonstrating the recipe for an easy Raspberry mousse, and talking about all the delicious ways to incorporate raspberries into desserts.

July 23rd- At 5 pm I am teaching a class at Cooks World about summer fruit desserts. Filled with professional tips, I will share with you all the all the nitty gritty details of what I do, however tedious they may seem. By nature, fruit makes for quick to prepare desserts, particularly in the summer when they are so ripe and delicious you want to eat them out of hand. We will make a frozen wild flower honey mousse which can be paired with many summer fruits, the easy raspberry mousse, and a few more recipes to be decided. There is still room in the class if you are interested, you can reserve a spot on the cooks world web site.

July 31st- At Eva Restaurant, we have been very honored to host an event celebrating Emily Luchetti and her newest book, A Passion For Ice Creams. The event is organized through Books and Cooks, a wonderful program that pairs authors with chefs for these events. I will be preparing a selection of treats from her book for you to enjoy while you get a chance to meet Emily Luchetti. This event is billed, "an ice cream social for adults" and will include a selection of 5 frozen treats, some ice cream, and a little champagne. The cost is 36 dollars per person, and the books will be for sale ready to be signed and cherished.

Those pastry hounds should be familiar with Emily Luchetti's books, and if you are lucky enough to live in San Francisco, her desserts themselves. She is an amazing pastry chef with a down to earth yet elegant style. I have worked with her books for some time now, and getting the chance to meet her and prepare her desserts for her is truly an honor.

Again, there are still spaces open. To make a reservation, call Eva Restaurant at 206-633-3538 and ask to make a reservation for the Emily Luchetti Ice Cream Social. The seating is at 7:30 pm, but come early and mingle, the bar will be open and some little bites will be passed to nibble on.

August 12th- At the Columbia City farmers Market Amy McCray, the chef at Eva along with me (her trusty pastry side kick) will be competing in a Ready, Set, Cook competition. We will have a little time to scour the market for ingredients, then will set to work. We go head to head with the Julie Anders, the chef of La Medusa in Columbia City. The competition begins at 11:00 am, so while you are out supporting our local farmers and indulging in some of the most beautiful produce, honey, fruits, and such, stop by and watch!

August 20th- An Incredible Feast- This super fun event held to benefit the local Farmers Market foundation, run by local Seattle legend Tamara Murphy, is a celebration of local farmers and chefs. Each participating farmer is paired with a chef, who creates a small bite centered around the farmers specialty. Over 20 of Seattle's favorite chef's participate, showing off their talents. This year Amy is making barbecue, which will be served with a little slaw, on top of a buttermilk biscuit made by yours truly. For the 50 dollar admission you get the chance to nibble on tons of great food, the knowledge that you are supporting and celebrating your local farmers, and a book including all the great recipes you'll taste. Information on purchasing tickets can be found here.

August 26th- I will be participating in a wedding. I am pleased to say I am the Bride, marrying the sweetest, most handsome man alive, Russell Cree. We are holding the event on his parents property in Oregon. The ceremony will be held on the banks of Rock Creek, with a reception to follow in the Cree's back yard. The biggest question I hear is, "who is going to make YOUR wedding cake?!" Well, me of course! I plan on one single white cake, old fashioned coconut layer cake with fluffy white icing, and a big table filled with all sorts of other cakes, pies, tarts, brownies, cobblers, buckles, and other down home desserts. Following this big day is a honeymoon road trip through the Grand Ganyon, through Sedona, to Flagstaff Arizona, and back up the coast.

An Ice cream social for grown-ups

2006-07-19T13:59:00.000-07:00

A blurb in the Seattle PI today announced an ice cream social we are hosting at Eva.

Ice cream stars

One name you probably know, one name we bet you're going to know better in years to come. Emily Luchetti, former pastry chef for Stars restaurant and a James Beard award winner, will team up for an "ice cream social" at 7:30 p.m. July 31 with Dana Bickford, talented pastry chef at Eva Restaurant & Wine Bar (2227 N. 56th St.). Bickford, an alumna of Lampreia and England's Fat Duck, will be preparing recipes from Luchetti's book, "A Passion for Ice Cream," in this Cooks and Books event. Luchetti, currently pastry chef at San Francisco's Farallon restaurant, will sign books and talk food. Cost is $36, not including tax and tip. Reservations required; call 206-633-3538.

I am very excited as Emily Luchetti is one who's 4 books I pour over hoping to absorb a bit of her down to earth, elegant, and nostalgic dessert style.

While the entire menu isn't set quite yet, I am planning on an Amuse Sucre of petite lemon ice cream and gingersnap sandwiches, and miniature chocolate cupcakes stuffed with pistachio ice cream. Plated courses will include, but are not limited to a frozen creme caramel, a peach "stuffed" with blackberry granita, and a dessert called Cho Cho Cho, (short for chocolate) that should send you home in a chocolate induced haze.

The book, which is a summer dessert must, will be for sale with the chance to chat with Emily Luchetti and have the booked signed.

Tall Poppy

2006-07-15T20:17:00.000-07:00

A friend with a true passion for life has finally taken the time to set up a blog. Traca, the gal who writes the blog tells a little about herself, and how she spends her days. I have been amazed with the richness she fills her life with and her truly beautiful outlook on life. Her magnetic personality and generosity with friendship draws almost everybody she meets in.

Her blog will reflect much of her culinary musings, reviews of cooking classes she frequents around the city, exciting restaurant events she helps organize and attends, a bit about Union, the restaurant she works with, and reflections on her outlook on life and travels in general.

Her writing, like all she shares with the people she meets, is personal and inviting. On occasion, she'll share a recipe or two from the amazing collection she is amassing.

Her blog is titled "Seattle Tall Poppy". A tall poppy is the way the Australians liken an eager achiever to a bright flower, reaching towards the sun. And a Tall Poppy Traca is.

Frozen Honey Mousse

2006-07-05T09:47:00.000-07:00

Mixed in amongst the stalls at the farmers markets, spilling with summers bounty you're bound to see someone selling honey. This sweet syrup can be found the day the market opens when fruits are still clinging to their trees and vegetables are hiding underground. When the market finally closes in December, honey will be there amongst the squashes, hazelnuts, and kale. This constant staple is my rock. I may never know if the strawberries are quite ripe, but I know honey will be there. When I tire of squashes and pumpkins, I know I can fall back on honey.

It is not only during times of fruit famine that I reach for jars of honey. The byproduct of a bees busy work of pollenating our fruit bearing plants, honey is the perfect foil for the fruits themselves.

With the days growing hotter and the fruit getting riper, I am using honey to make a frozen dessert. Easier than ice cream, this frozen wild flower honey mousse is a delicious cold treat for a hot day, and a great companion for summers fruits. I have covered it with raspberries, strawberries, sometimes tossed in black pepper, cherries confited with their pits, roasted apricots, the list goes on.

This dessert has a stunning purity of flavor, who's secret lies in the inclusion of just 4 ingredients. Because it must set in the freezer for a minimum of 8 hours, preferably over night, it becomes the perfect do-ahead dessert for entertaining. Thanks to honeys versatility and humble sophistication, you will find this an appropriate dessert year round, served on the patio or in a formal dining room.

This mousse can be prepared in a loaf pan or terrine mold to slice servings off of, or in individual molds. I am using a wild flower honey gathered from the Tahuya river apiaries on the Olympic peninsula right now. Seeking out an excellent honey makes all the difference as this recipe highlights every aspect, or flaw, of the honey you choose. The use of vanilla bean rather than extract also makes a huge difference in this recipe, so seek them out. However, if you are to go without, be a miser with the vanilla extract, adding only a few drops.

Frozen Honey Mousse

4 oz honey (just over 1/3 cup)
2 egg yolks
1/2 a vanilla bean, seeded
1 1/2 cups cream, kept cold to whip

1. Prepare a loaf pan or individual molds. A loaf pan can be wetted with a damp rag and lined with plastic wrap or foil for ease in later removal, but individual molds will need to be dipped in hot water and the edges run with a paring knife to remove the smaller servings.

2. Place the honey, yolks, and vanilla seeds in a metal bowl large enough to fit over a pot of simmering water. Whisking constantly, cook this mixture over the simmering double boiler until the mixture is thick and pale, and has at least doubled in volume. This takes about 5 minutes. You will know the mixture is done when a stream drizzled back into the bowl holds a little mound rather than disappearing into the mass.

3. Set this mixture aside on the counter to come down to room temperature.

4. In the meantime, whip the cream to soft, thick peaks. Keep cold until the honey mixture has come down to room temperature. If the cream is added when the honey mixture is still warm, it will melt into the mixture rather than fold in.

5. When the honey mixture is room temperature, fold a third of the whipped cream in. When this is incorporated fold in the remaining cream.

6. Pour the mousse into the prepared pan or molds, cover with plastic wrap, and store in the freezer for at least 8 hours or overnight.

Strawberry shortcake

2006-06-26T11:12:00.000-07:00

There are dessert that every American palate is familiar with. Desserts like apple and pumpkin pie, s'mores, chocolate chip cookies, and my favorite, strawberry shortcake. Through holiday tradition, public schools, shared cultural history, community potlucks, backyard picnic's, boy/girl scouts, etc... a familiarity with these treats has been ingrained in every Americans memories. Have you never tasted these desserts, invariably you will still recognize them, understand them, and be able to describe them. This gives them an incredible power over the American diner. The power of Nostalgia.

I have, along with others, written enough on the emotional trigger nostalgia has on a diner, and the joy and depth it brings to a dish, that I will spare you the philosophical rant. Rather, this post was meant to describe the joys of my favorite dish of nostalgia, Strawberry Shortcake.

At it's worst, this dish is a store-bought cake of some sort, a indented disk of sticky sponge, a rough scone bordering on hard tack, or perhaps a biscuit that originated in a cardboard tube in the cold isle, smothered with whipping cream squirted from a can, or scooped from a tub of cool-whip, and topped with frozen berries in syrup. No doubt we have all tasted version, and still found it palatable. Which means that when this dessert is made at it's best, it can be immensely delightful.

At it's best, this dessert is made from berries just hours out of the field. The cake or biscuits, the shortcake so to speak, should be tender and soft, and flavorfull enough to be eaten unadorned. The cream should be fresh, real cream, sweetened as you like it, perhaps with a hint of vanilla. When I make variations on the shortcake, sometimes I use different fruit, as I did recently with a warm rhubarb compote, and I often replace the cream with ice cream, or as I am currently doing, a seductive lemon cream.

The shortcake on my menu currently reads, "Local Strawberries with warm buttermilk biscuits and lemon cream".

Armed with a buttermilk biscuit recipe from Thomas Keller, I begin the shortcake. The biscuits are served just warm, and are very tender and flaky. They are broken in half, and filled with Pierre Herme's lemon cream, rather than whipping cream. Here my labor ends. I choose fragrant ripe strawberries who's flavor is unparalleled by anything I could humanly produce. They are sliced in half and dusted with granulated sugar for a glossy coat. Scattered across the top of the biscuits, the bright red berries sit in beautiful contrast to the buttery yellow of the lemon cream and the pale biscuit.

While this dish has enough flavor to be memorable on it's own, it's the nostalgic power that makes me smile when I eat this. I am transported back to summer days picking berries with my grandma Eva. A child with a stained face, my grandma teased that they should weigh me before and after I entered the U-Pick field and charge us for the pounds I consumed on the job. Once home, we processed massive amounts of berries into a years supply of jam, and rewarded our hard work with bowls of strawberry shortcake.

Buttermilk Biscuits
Adapted from Thomas Keller

Preheat the oven to 500

3 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 stick cold butter, cut in 1/2 inch cubes
1 1/4 cup buttermilk

1. Combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Use a whisk to mix or "sift" the ingredients evenly.

2. Toss the cubes of cold butter into the flour, and begin breaking them up by pinching the butter between your thumb and fingers. I use a motion that creates petals of butter. With my palms up, the butter is pressed into the tips of my fingers with my thumb, pressing in a forward motion from my ring finger towards my index finger. Continue to do this until the butter is broken up well, and the mixture becomes coarse. Much like cutting butter into flour for a pie crust.

3. Create a well in the center of the flour mixture, and add the buttermilk. With one hand, working swiftly, stir the flour and buttermilk together. The mixture should become a moist shaggy mess, not a solid clump of sticky dough. If the dough is too wet, toss in a bit of flour. Like wise, if the dough is dry, add a tsp of buttermilk.

4. Turn the shaggy mess out onto a lightly floured surface. Gather up the mass, and press it together. Kneed this mass 5 times, folding the dough over itself like a book each time.

5. Let the dough rest for 15 minutes. I use the same bowl I mixed it in, flouring the bottom, and flattening the dough about 3 inches thick. The surface is lightly floured and covered with plastic wrap to discourage the dough from drying.

6. Roll or press the dough to a thickness of 1 and a half inches, and cut with a 2 inch round biscuit cutter. Arrange them on a parchment lined sheet pan and bake for 8 minutes. They should be barely colored on the top, and just baked in the middle. If you are unsure, break one open. Bake for another 2 minutes if they seem undercooked, but not much longer.

If you cut the biscuits any larger than the suggested 2 inches, try lowering the heat to 450. They will need a longer baking time to cook the centers, and I have found the bottoms will burn from prolonged exposure to the 500 degree sheetpan. You can also bake them on two sheetpans stacked on top of eachother (double-panning) if you have an extra one lying around.

Lemon Cream
Pierre Herme

1 cup sugar
Zest of 3 lemons
4 eggs
¾ cup lemon juice (about 6 large lemons)
10 oz butter

1. Prepare a large stainless steel bowl to fit over a pot of simmering water as a doubleboiler. Cutt the butter up into cubes, and set aside to soften to room temperature.

2. Break up the lemon zest by mixing it with the sugar until even.

3. In the large bowl, whisk the lemon sugar into eggs and add lemon juice. Whisk this mixture aggressively over the simmering double boiler until frothy, thick, and the temperature reaches 180, as you would a sabayon. The mixture will begin to leave tracks, and the texture will become tighter. This takes up to 5 minutes. If this stage isn't cooked long enough, your end product will be runny. (yet delicious). You will know it's cooked if a ribbon of the mixture dripped back into the bowl holds a tiny mound for a second rather than dissapearing.

4. Strain the lemon sabayon into a blender cup and let cool to about 140, stirring occasionally. This takes about 5 minutes if the room is cold, 10 of the room is hot.

5. Turn on the blender and begin adding the butter 1 piece at a time, allowing 3 seconds between additions.Blend for 5 minutes, and transfer to a storage container. Cover the surface with plastic wrap and chill for 4 hours, until cold and set.

Tis the Season

2006-06-25T07:34:00.000-07:00

A year ago today, I was sitting on a airplane delivering my home from England. Returning from the greatest adventure of my life, I was preparing to take my first job as a pastry chef. I started work on a Tuesday, jet lagged and disoriented. Upon arrival to the restaurant the next day, I was introduced to a cornucopia of fruits, waiting for me to begin. Blame it on this disorientation, but I made the mistake of thinking the abundance of fruit I stumbled into at Eva was normal. Far from the truth, I was being spoiled.

This year, as April rolled around, I was getting desperate. I longed for something fresh, ANYTHING fresh. Memories of last years boxes, bursting at the seams with ripe, fragrant fruit was tormenting me. Finally, local Rhubarb came around. It held me over until the first little strawberries blushed red this month.

As I began my work day yesterday, I smiled ear to ear when I saw a huge crate spilling over with Yakima cherries. After all that waiting, all that anticipation, it was finally here. The short 3 months when we have so much fruit it's hard to keep up.

Racheal and Peter, a local couple that picks strawberries on a friends property in Carnation made their first visit last week. The berries she picks are always perfect, sweet with musky ripeness, and strikingly petite. These little darling berries are participating in 3 desserts this week.

First they rest atop tender flaky buttermilk biscuits, that have been filled with lemon cream. Next they are seen dressed in black pepper scattered across a frozen wildflower honey mousse with streaks of balsamic drizzled over. Finally, they are pureed and folded with whipped cream and creme fraiche, my take on a Strawberry Fool. This mousse like pud' is served in a tiny bowl next to both a warm chocolate mousse and a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream, thus adapting the delightful flavor combination of Neapolitan ice cream.

The Cherries made their first appearance this weekend as a clafoutie, baked under a light batter and served with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream. Rhubarb is lingering, a soup made from rhubarb and fresh orange surrounds a light vanilla bean bavarian crowned with crisp tart half moons of the stalk, candied in syrup.

The true challenge comes when cases of apricots, peaches, nectarines, and plums begin to arrive, stacking up aside flats of strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries all begging to be used promptly. Just the situation I stumbled into last year, blind to my good fortune. Nothing is to be taken for granted this year, fruit will be preserved for scarcer days, and I will relish these few months when I am spoiled rotten with fruit.

My Strawberry Fool

1 1/4 cup strawberry puree, sweetened to taste- kept cold
1/4 tsp kirsch or raspberry liquor
1 cup creme fraiche
1 cup cream
1/4 cup granulated sugar

1. Combine the creme fraiche and cream in a large bowl. Sprinkle the granulated sugar over the top and whisk slowly until semi-stiff, glossy peaks form. I accomplish this by whisking the creams by hand. The slower introduction of air into the cream makes a denser, tighter whipped product. If you are using a kitchen aid, chill the bowl and whisk, and do not turn the mixer up past speed 6.

2. Using a whisk, fold half of the chilled puree into the cream. When the puree is just incorporated, add the second half and the kirsch or raspberry liquor. Fold until the mixture is of even color.

3. Spoon into individual serving dishes and chill for 4 hours before serving. Garnish with more strawberry puree, or sliced berries.

Notes: It is very important that all your ingredients are properly chilled.

If you sprinkle sugar over your whole berries and let them sit for an hour before you puree them, you will achieve a brighter red puree

Butterscotch Pudding

2006-05-26T17:08:00.000-07:00

We all have our weaknesses. Those singular foods that break our will, reducing us to acts of unsightly behavior; licking bowls, scraping restaurant plates with fingers for every last drop of flavor, or out right gluttony. Being a pastry chef, you might think I am often brought to my knees by all that surrounds me. On the contrary, rarely does a dessert break me.

Rarely, remember, is not never, and once in a while I too am reduced to eyebrow-raising behavior by a dessert. Currently, a butterscotch pudding has me on my knees. It's not surprising to find me with a pot, coated with the remains of pudding cooked minutes before in one hand, a spatula in the other working every bit of the warm heaven into my mouth.

Because the pudding is on my menu, I find myself in this compromising position at least 3 times a week. Due to it's ease in preparation, I find myself preparing and falling prey to this pudding nearly every weekend. I have carried it to friends houses, picnic's, and dinners parties. Sometimes I bring banana's to caramelize and nest on top, sometimes just clouds of billowy whipping cream. Adorned or not, I find this pudding manages to break a few others who are caught searching for the serving bowl in hopes licking it clean.

Note that the use of dark brown sugar is important for achieving a truly rich flavor. Light brown sugar will make a butterscotch pudding, and if you are in a pinch, use it. But do seek out the dark brown sugar, the flavor will reward you.

Butterscotch Pudding

4 tbsp butter
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 cup cream
2 cups milk
2 tbsp scotch, brandy, or whisky
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
3 tbsp corn starch

1. In a large saucepan, melt the butter over the lowest heat. Do not let the butter sizzle and separate. If this happens, discard it and get new butter.

2. Add the brown sugar and salt, and stir into the butter. Turn the heat up to medium and cook the sugar until it begins to bubble, 3 to 5 minutes, stirring occasionally to avoid scorching. When the bubbling begins, stir and let it bubble for about 30 seconds.

3. Add the cream in small additions, stirring between each. When all the cream is incorporated, add the milk, scotch, and vanilla all at once. Stir to combine and set aside.

4. Whisk the eggs and cornstarch until even. I find that the cornstarch will be lumpy at first, but if you whisk it a first time while the brown sugar is caramelizing, then come back and re-whisk it after the milk is incorporated, the liquid in the eggs will soften the lumps and they distribute evenly.

5. Whisk 1 cup of the warm butterscotch cream into the starchy eggs until evenly combined. Return this to the sauce pan of butterscotch cream, whisking to combine.

6. Begin cooking the pudding over medium to medium high heat, stirring all the while with a whisk. The mixture will begin to thicken after 3 to 5 minutes. Continue whisking constantly, watching for the first signs of bubbling. When the mixture just begins to bubble, reduce the heat to low and set a timer for 2 minutes. (if you are using an electric range, have a second burner preheated to a low setting) Stir the pudding over the low heat for 2 minutes.

7. Remove from heat, and immediately pour into a bowl to stop the hot pan from further cooking the pudding. Place plastic wrap directly on the surface to avoid a skin forming and let cool at room temp for an hour, then place in the fridge. Alternately, divide the hot pudding up between individual cups and let a skin form. I have to admit, I like a little skin, as it is a defining characteristic of home cooked pudding to me!

The Softer Side of Rhubarb

2006-05-22T10:54:00.000-07:00

When cooking with fruit and vegetables, I work with kid gloves so to speak. It's a great task, to take these gifts of the earth, alive with their own spirit, and create desserts with them. One must take into consideration who these fruits are, what their inherent qualities are, and how to best manipulate them into a dessert while preserving their personalities. I like to let things be what they are, manipulating them very little, and pairing them with complimentary items rather than changing them into something else.

My last recipe for rhubarb did just that. By steeping thin shavings of the crisp, tart vegetable in a simple syrup, every quality of the fibrous stalk was preserved. Rhubarb in the buff you could say. The recipe results in a sweet-tart dessert component with a crisp texture, exemplifying what Rhubarb is at it's core.

This said, I am sharing with you today a recipe that contradicts this statement. I am taking rhubarb, exposing it to heat, and breaking the fibrous bonds that hold this bright stalk together. It's not that I am changing who rhubarb is. I am releasing a hidden part of it's personality. Within those thin fibrous strands, strong enough to hold the stalk high and support umbrella like leaves, is a luscious, thick compote waiting to be liberated. With the coaxing of a mild heat, we are introduced to the softer side of rhubarb.

While the original stalk may no longer be recognizable, this compote is rhubarb, through and through. This recipe sets the amazing flavor of rhubarb on a pedestal, elevating it with a complimentary dose of orange liquor, heightening it with the sweetness of the sugar. Because heat is used to break the structure down, there is no need to peel the fibrous skin away. Thus, the red skin imparts a beautiful rosy hue to the compote.

I am serving the compote simply, aside a stack of very rich Breton Shortbread and a billowy cloud of caramelized cinnamon cream. The possibilities are truly endless with this beautiful compote. I day dream about serving it with buttermilk biscuits and vanilla ice cream for an early season twist on strawberry shortcake. I see it chilled inside tart shells, served warm over a simple bowl of ice cream, or layered between crepes. Sometimes, I might even just eat it with a spoon.

Orange Rhubarb Compote

2 tbsp butter
1 lb rhubarb
3/4 cup sugar
2 tbsp orange liquor

1. Trim the Rhubarb of the ends, and split it lengthwise down the center. Cut across in 1 cm. intervals, leaving you with rough cubes of rhubarb.

2. In a large bowl, toss the rhubarb with the sugar and set aside.

3. Melt the butter in a medium heavy bottomed saucepan over medium heat. When the butter has melted add the sugar coated rhubarb and the orange liquor. Let this cook over a medium heat, undisturbed, for about 2 minutes. When the rhubarb has started to release juices, gently stir.

3. Continue cooking the compote over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the juices are all released, then begin to thicken. Cooking time is about 10 to 15 minutes total, until the compote looks thick and the rhubarb is tender.

Notes:

* I set a timer last time I made it, just for you, and it took 13 minutes and 17 seconds until the desired texture and thickness was reached. This time will depend on the size of your rhubarb pieces, the particular heat of "medium" on your stove, etc, etc, etc. So use your intuition.

* Many of the cubes will break down from cooking, but some of the larger ones will remain as little tender lumps, offering bursts of tart rhubarb flavor in the mouth, and a pleasant texture on the tongue. If you like, you can break all the rhubarb apart with aggressive stirring, using the spoon to break the rhubarb up. You might even puree it and pass it through a sieve if you are looking for a smooth compote. But the less you stir, the more chunks you will leave intact.

Trendy Candy

2006-05-13T09:32:00.000-07:00

I claim to be no fashionista. One look at my daily uniform of jeans, a hoodie covering a t-shirt, and skeakers would tell you that. But deep inside me is a girl that adores trends. There lies a girl that scours In Style in the doctors waiting rooms, spent half an hour picking out "Laguna Beach" oversized sunglasses, and watches hem lines like a hawk.

Save my '80's revival sparkly ponytail holders, clothing trends don't follow me into the kitchen. (A belted extra long chef's jacket? Corseted in the back?) This doesn't mean, however, that I leave the trend loving girl behind. Trends in cuisine run as deep through our community of cooks as Ugg boots through the crowd at the Bellevue Mall. For every girl carrying a Fendi Baguette bag there is a cook squirting a foam out of thier brand new ISI canister. For every woman who utters "Manolo Blanik" with the hushed whisper of the faithful, there is a cook with "Ferran Adria" resting on their prayerful lips.

Among the faithful who's praise follows sweeter deities like Pierre Herme, this utterance is now "sea salt caramel". To make things even trendier, you can use the french, caramel-beurre-sale,
or as they might say in the O.C., just C.B.S.

The hottest of Haute Caramels belong to Chocolatier-Camarelier Le Roux in France, who's sweets are said to be, "a panopoly of pleasure," and to who we owe thanks for the ultra hip "C.B.S". Here in seattle, those in the know buy, give, and sing praise of Fran's smoked sea salt caramels. DavidLebovitz even has directions on the proper way to eat these trendy treats! (Salt side down). While at The Fat Duck, a salted caramel was prepared as a component on a dessert, which left a tub for Micheal and I to scrape clean with spoons. A weekly fix that soon became a deep, wanton desire for the sticky, salty, sweet sugar.

Being the good little trend lover that I am, I too have a salted caramel on my menu. The recipe is adapted from The Fat Duck, the most significant change being the addition of creme fraiche rather than cream. The addition of creme fraiche adds an acidity that ballances well with the salty, sweet complexity of the caramel. This caramel has earned praise from the staff, guests, and my toughest critic Russell, and received the best compliment a dessert can get; customers requesting seconds!

The recipe follows, but is not for the faint of heart. Have ALL your utensils at the ready, resting next to you. Have your pan lined with foil and lightly greased very near you. Have your creme fraiche warm, within a short reach. And if all else fails, be ready to try again. This recipe is given in grams, the most accurate way to measure anything, except for the salt, which I have adjusted to my liking with 2 level tablespoons. The salt I use inside the caramel is Kosher salt. If you are using another salt, sea salt perhaps, you will find the saltiness varies. Sea salt tends not to be as salty at Kosher salt, while table salt is much saltier. I finish my caramels by sprinkling with the rough crystals of a grey sea salt, although any nice sea salt will do.

As a saftey precaution, have a bowl of icewater near you also. Burns from caramel can be some of the worst injuries the kitchen can inflict on us.

Salted Creme Fraiche Caramels

250 grams granulated sugar
250 grams light corn syrup
250 grams whole milk
200 grams unsatled butter
2 tbsp (aproxamitely 15 grams) kosher salt
200 grams creme fraiche

Utensils to be ready
A wooden spoon
A candy thermometer
An 8 inch square cake pan, lined with foil and lightly buttered
A oven glove, or a towel to wrap around your hand
A heat proof rubber spatula
A bowl of icewater

1. Put the creme fraiche in a small sauce pan over medium heat, bringing it up to a low simmer, then keeping very warm until needed. Do not boil, simmer, or let any of the creme fraiche reduce in any way, or your caramels will not be soft enough to chew. If this happens, re-weigh the creme fraiche, replacing any of the volume that may have evaporated.

2. Combine the sugar, corn syrup, milk, and salt in a bowl. Mix until all the sugar ismoistenedd and the mixture is even.

3. Place the butter in a heavy bottomed sauce pan, and pour the sugar mixture over. Cook this over high heat. Stir occasionally, with the wooden spoon, until the mixture reaches 230 degreesFahrenheitt. At this point it will begin to take on color and need constant attention and stirring to ensure the caramel doesn't scorch.

4. Continue stirring, making sure the wooden spoon is scraping the pans surface everywhere, especially behind the candy thermometer, if your attaches to the side. I move the thermometer to a new side of the pan every 30 seconds or so, as needed to avoid any scorching. If you feel the caramel is scorching despite yourdiligentt stirring efforts, turn the heat down a little.

5. When the caramel is at 300 degrees Fahrenheitt exactly, remove the caramel from the heat, pull the candy thermometer from the pan and pour in the very warm creme fraiche. Quickly dress your hand with the oven glove or a towel wrapped around all your fingers and your hand up to the wrist, and secured in your palm. With the wooden spoon, begin to stir the creme fraiche into the molten caramel. Stir slowly at first, making sure none of the creme fraiche bubbling on the surface splashes out. Continue to stir more aggressively as the creme fraiche mixes in, returning to the heat if needed, until the mixture is perfectly emulsified, and not a lump remains.

6. Pour the caramel into the prepared pan, using the heat proof spatula to scrape the contents from the pan. Let rest on the counter for 3 to 4 hours, until the caramel sets firm. Unmold and cut into desired pieces.

7. For ease in cutting the caramels, refrigerate for about half an hour. It will become firm and cut into nice sharp edges.

Stranded on a dessert island...

2006-05-11T23:49:00.000-07:00

With only 2 days until her maiden voyage, Hard Tack At Sea is hard at work. A thorough lass, she is leaving no seat unfilled with stores, putting the finishing touches on her land-lubbers protective helmet, and creating her last culinary will and testament. By this, I mean her list of 10 food items you'd have if you find yourself stranded on a desert island.

An interesting question that has been posed to chefs and foodies alike, it takes on an entirely different meaning when you are taking your first ocean voyage.

Hard Tack has challenged the rest of us to create our own list.

The rules: You are stranded on a boat beached on a island. You can get whatever fish you want and hand-harvest your own damn sea salt (think of the money you'll save). There is a natural fresh water stream on the island (snow-melt from the very, very, tall mountain-of course, due to global warming, this is a limited resource, so enjoy it!) There is nothing left on the boat and as far as you know nothing on the island save your own unfortunate soul. You get 10 items to select. Huge categories don't count. You can't say "Herbs and spices" or "Meat". Try to be specific, it's more interesting. These food items will be delivered to you in your sorry state by UPS, because it is simply endless what brown can do for you. No, you cannot ask for more items from the UPS person. I know they're cute in their little brown shorts, but you can't have them either.

My list includes....
Coffee with Coffeemate hazelnut coffee creamer
Kettle Chips
Petit Pois
Seared Foie Gras
A nice sweet hot mustard
Cucumbers
Humbolt Fog Goat cheese
Red onions
Hard Salami
Gummi Bears from Barentreff- the shop in my sisters town in Germany

No doubt every reader of this blog has at one time or another created such a list. Post your lists here, or on Hard Tack At Sea, or perhaps on your own blog!

This is why I am a pastry chef

2006-05-10T17:36:00.000-07:00

In a moment befitting Bridget Jones, I decided that no, no I shouldn't truss my chicken with peppermint dental floss just because I can't find anything else.

The fact that the decision wasn't instantaneous reminds me why I am a pastry chef.

Poached Rhubarb

2006-05-06T09:43:00.000-07:00

With the opening day of the farmers market comes the first Market Menu at Eva. A 3 course meal created each weekend, this menu highlights the best the market has to offer. The best part.... it comes with dessert!

This week I set my sights on Rhubarb. This long slender stalk looks a bit like celery, but for the iridescence red sheen to it's skin. While the raw texture has a wonderful crunch to it, the tart flavor dissuades us from eating it that way. A lot of sugar and a little heat turn this sour, fibrous stalk into a tender, fragrant addition to dessert.

For the Market Menu, I shaved pieces of rhubarb and poached them with a vanilla bean syrup. Rather than submerging the vegetable in a simmering liquid, I brought the syrup to a boil, and poured it over the rhubarb. By letting it steep in the sweet liquid, releasing it's own juices while the temperature slowly dropped, the Rhubarb retains some of it's crisp texture which is so often diminished to mush by heat.

These sheets of tender rhubarb sat aside a vanilla crepe cake with a healthy dollop of cinnamon whipped cream. By simply layering crepes with vanilla whipped cream, a stunning 20 layer cake can be made. The vanilla crepe cake is accented with a cinnamon cream on top to compliment the fragrant sweet-tart rhubarb and add richness to the crepes.

Vanilla Poached Rhubarb

4 thick stalks of Rhubarb
1 vanilla bean
3 cups sugar
3 cups water

1. Trim the ends off the rhubarb and cut into 2 inch segments. With a very sharp knife, or a mandolin, carefully slice the pieces into thin sheets. Place the rhubarb pieces in a bowl and set aside.

2. Slice the vanilla bean in half lengthwise, and carefully scrape the seeds into the sugar. With your fingertips, rub the vanilla seeds into the sugar, using the grains of sugar to break the seeds apart.

3. Combine the vanilla sugar, the vanilla pod, and the water in a medium saucepan, and bring to a boil. When the syrup comes to a rolling boil, pour it over the rhubarb.

4. Cover the surface with a layer of paper towels to ensure the syrup completely envelopes the rhubarb. Let sit for 3 hours. Transfer to the refrigerator and chill. Store overnight, or up to 2 weeks. The flavor improves with time.

Cup Cake Upset

2006-05-04T09:56:00.000-07:00

My sister Libby is visiting from Freiburg,Germany, where she has lived for nearly 4 years. While she grew up with me just north of the city, and spend her college years at the University of Washington here in Seattle, she has been gone long enough that Seattle has new and exciting experiences waiting for her on each return.

My talk of a new cup-cakerie in Ballard promised to be exciting. I mean, a shop dedicated to cupcakes, how could you go wrong?

When we approached the case full of cupcakes, Libby experienced the same series of thoughts I did on my first visit. Upon seeing the bleak selection, 3 flavors of cup cake, all identically frosted with 5 different color coordinated flavored frostings, she experienced the first let down.

"That's it?" she thought. "Well, they must taste REALLY good then"

So we ordered our 2 dollar treats, she a yellow cake with chocolate frosting, I a chocolate cake with lavender frosting, and 2 lemon cakes with lemon frosting to go for a friend at home with a new baby.

It was a pleasant day, so we sat outside to watch the foot traffic on Market Street and nibble our cupcakes. Upon first taste she experienced the second let down.

"That's it?" she said, with disappointment in her eyes. The same disappointment I experienced on my first visit. "It no better than the cup cakes mom makes at home. From a box!"

It's not that the cupcakes are bad, per se. They are ok. Nothing brilliant. The big let down comes after loosing the hope that a shop dedicated to cup cake fills you with. We both had visions of a vast array of cupcakes in interesting flavors, colors, filled, dunked, or perhaps covered in tasty bits. Much like the cupcakes on the blog Cup Cake Bake Shop. Unfortunately the variety this shop offers is bleak, somewhat bland cake with sugary sweet frosting that only tastes mildly of the flavor each pastel color promises.

Her dissapointment led to anger, and as we left our cupcakes, she made the same promise I did on my first visit, "I would never go back there." And she probably wouldn't. But I have found myself back a few times now, with a place in my heart where I can enjoy this plain cup cake. As I enter the door and take my place in the long line, I am a little wiser, and I know what to expect. I no longer hope for more when I think of this little shop. Instead, I enjoy my cup cake deemed "good enough" and fill my head with lofty dreams of the cupcakes I would put in my own shop.

Baking with lavender

2006-05-02T19:36:00.000-07:00

I love lavender in deserts. I love it deeply in a way that makes me place my hands over my heart, pressing my chest as if to aid the sigh emitting from my smiling face. I love the warm fragrant cloud that wafts from the oven as the door opens to reveal lavender shortbread. I love the perfumed flavor that as a child I could only describe as tasting like purple. I love the deep color of the buds, even if it all but disappears during baking.

Lavender possesses a warm musky quality that stands well inside baked goods. This is especially true with simple pastries, like shortbread, scones, and pound cake, all of which carry the rustic heart of the countryside where they have been faithfully made for generations. These plain desserts, often prepared for the familiar companionship of a friend over for tea, or a family dinner, are best paired with a single, familiar companion. An old friend like Lavender.

I have become particularly fond of the lavender-lemon pound cake recipe Claudia Flemming included in her cookbook. So much, in fact, that it has found it's way on to my menu, which is budding with the first flavors of spring. It is served warm, aside a buttermilk pannacotta, fringed with puckery slices of sugar poached lemon.

This cake had a rich buttery flavor and a dense tight crumb, as all good pound cakes must. This weighty quality, not only justifies a name like "pound" cake, but it lends itself so well to soaking. As a child pound cake was "soaked" with chocolate syrup (hersheys, if you must know), which never failed to delight me. This cake, however, is soaked in a more adult syrup, a lemon syrup steeped with lavender.

To encourage a thorough soaking, the cake is poked with a series of small deep holes, and brushed with half a cup of lemon lavender syrup. The bright flavor of the syrup penetrates the buttery cake , adding both moisture and a burst of lemon-lavender flavor.

Humble the pound cake may be, but it will always have a home on my menu's for just that reason. I suspect those of you who share my love for lavender will also make a home for this cake in your own kitchen. For the others, those that think lavender is a scent for soap, not a flavor for food, omit the lavender and you have an incredible lemon pound cake on your hands!

Lavender-Lemon Pound Cake
Claudia Flemming

for the cake
1 cup butter
1 tbsp lavender
1 cup sugar
5 eggs
1 1/2 cups cake flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp lemon zest
1/2 tsp vanilla

for the syrup
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup lemon juice
3 tbsp lavender

Preheat the oven to 350

1. Melt the butter over a medium flame with the lavender. When this is melted completely, remove from heat and steep for 10 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, sift the flour and salt together. Prepare the loaf pan. Grease the pan on all the inside surfaces. Cut a piece of parchment to fit the bottom of the pan, and press it into the bottom. Now dust the sides of the pan with flour and tap out any excess. Set it aside in a cool place until you are ready for it.

3. After the butter has steeped 10 minutes, strain it into a large bowl and set aside.

4. Whip the eggs and sugar to full volume. I do this in a kitchen aid with the whip attachment, it takes about 4-5 minutes.

5. When the eggs are at full volume, add the lemon zest, the vanilla, and 1/3 of the flour. Rather than dumping the flour right into the bowl, sift it in to reduce the risk of little clumps of flour in the final product. Fold with a spatula until the flour has been distributed evenly.

6. Fold the remaining flour in the same fashion, in 2 batches.

7. When the flour is evenly incorporated, fold 1 cup of the batter into the strained lavender butter. Use a whisk to incorporate. Add the rest of the batter to the buttery batter and fold with a rubber spatula until the batter is even.

8. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and bake for 40 to 50 minutes. The cake is done when the top is golden brown, and feels firm to the touch. A knife, skewer, or fork inserted into the center will come out clean, or with a few fully developed crumbs attached, but no goo.

9. Let the cake cool to room temperature, about 1 hour.

10. While the cake is baking, prepare the lavender syrup. Bring the sugar, lemon, and water to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. When the syrup reaches a boil, remove from heat and stir in lavender. Let this steep for at least an hour, until you are ready to soak your cake. Strain the syrup to remove the fiberous lavender buds.

11. When the cake has rested and cooled for an hour, gently run a knife around the sides of the pan to release the cake. Tip the pan and carefully unpan the cake. Remove the parchment from the bottom of the cake.

12. With a skewer, poke a series of holes into the bottom of the cake. Too many holes and your cake will fall apart, too few and the cake will not soak properly. Brush the perforated bottom of the cake with half the syrup.

13. Turn the cake over and repeat the poking and soaking with the top side, using the remainder of the syrup. Wrap the cake and chill in the refrigerator for 4 hours, or overnight. If you must, you can serve the cake right away, but the flavor and texture of the cake will benefit greatly from resting overnight.

The Hinds Head

2006-04-30T17:21:00.000-07:00

Heston Blumenthal and his atomic kitchen have sent shock waves through the culinary community, most of which knows nothing more of his work than the highly marketable "molecular gastronomy." And it's not to blame. The bacon and egg icecream and snail porrige has been writen up frequently, extending from culinary trade magazines to the mens journal GQ.

But across the street from The Fat Duck is another of Heston's children, The Hinds Head. Not satisfied with just blazing trails in pursuit of cuisine not yet discovered, ever reaching into the future, Heston dove into the past recreating recipes rooted deeply in British tradition. Imagine the intense focus of a Michelain 3 star chef put into traditional british pub food.

Often overshaddowed by the giant across the alley, The Hinds Head sometimes seems a little left out. The red headed step child so to speak. But much to my delight, the NY Times Magazine published a bit about The Hinds Head today. It's well worth the read, so please, do follow the link! And take a peek at what The Hinds Head offers the culinary community.

for a limited time only

2006-04-28T10:49:00.000-07:00

A great cook I know with a great sense of humor has finally started a blog. But this blog has a short life span. It was set up to document a culinary adventure cooking on a yacht traveling in a floatilla from Seattle to Alaska. The departure is in 16 days, and the trip lasts a mere 21 days.

A post about the head contraption built to sustain the land lubbin' chef is roll on the floor laughable.

So all aboard, quickly! This is a trip you will surely want to take part in.

Hard Tack at Sea

For a limited time only? Reminds me of another blog set up for a limited time to document a culinary adventure.....

What's poetry got to do with Pastry

2006-04-15T09:16:00.000-07:00

What's poetry got to do with pastry, you might ask. Well, nothing really. But it's got to do with Dana. A poet, I do not claim to be, but I enjoy twisting words on occasion for no purpose other than to enjoy their aesthetic. And I am a big fan of those that have mastered the art, my favorite being Frank O'Hara.

So while reading the New York times this morning, I found an article about Fibonacci, a form of poetry whose syllabic rhythm is dictated, much like the well known Haiku. In this form, the syllables are dictated by the mathematical Fibonacci sequence resulting in a 20 syllable poem with a count by line of 1/1/2/3/5/8.

Writers and poets use poems with strict syllabic structures as exercises. It forces you to select your words very carefully, considering how much you can convey with so few words. In my highschool writing classes, my favorite exercise was to take all our writings, and reduce each to a haiku. This taught us to reduce pages and pages of thought into just a few words, carving out the soul of the writing.

Ok, ok, so to the point already. The NY times article wasn't just about the poetic form, but about a blogger. This blogger, Gregory K by name, Gottabook by blog, had made a call to all others in cyberspace to add their own poems, to play with the form. The post spread like wildfire, collecting enough participants for the New York Times to take notice and spread the work further.

And I too, am joining the cause. I have composed 3 fibs, as they are called, inspired by my last 2 posts. And I call to you, dear readers, food bloggers, word smiths, to enjoy the movement and compose your own food fib. We create with food, and then manipulate words descriptively on our own blogs, the poem is there in all of us.

Don't fear, these aren't meant to be timeless works of words, rather snapshots so to speak. Post here, on Gregory K's blog, on your own blog, or on a napkin no one but yourself will ever see.

In Bloom

Come,
small
blossom.
Seasons birth,
coaxed from a bare branch.
Springs first light spilling from the sky.

Burnt Sugar

Run!
Run!
Hurry!
Come here quick!
You're Caramel's burning!
"Relax," I say. "It's supposed to."

I Heart Bacon
inspired by a comment

Pig?
Ha!
Your blog's
about sweets.
I can't help but ask,
What's pork got to do with pastry?

In Bloom

2006-04-13T09:53:00.000-07:00

My morning commute to work can be a daunting endeavor. It's a mere 6 block walk, taking 10 minutes at the most. A hop, skip, and a jump, I know. But for good reason, my fair city of Seattle has earned the nickname "Rain City". Through this endless drip I drag myself each day, coffee taking grip and prep lists forming in my waking brain. I often think, "I don't remember there being this much rain last year."

Just when I begin to think about packing my things and moving to a sunnier climate, the skies open a bit, and spring begins to spring. Light spills out of the sky, illuminating lush new growth, and teasing blossoms out of dry branches. My morning commute becomes a delight, walking down residential streets lined with trees in bloom.

As I enter the door to the kitchen, these blossoms fresh in mind, I can't help but bring spring inspiration to my menu. While flowers themselves haven't made their way into my desserts, one tart, made of apples, blooms.

To recreate this tart is simpler than it appears. The apples are halved, cored, and sliced thinly. The slices remain stiff, but soften after sitting an hour in a coating of sugar and spice. The juices are drained, and the soft petals of apple in concentric circles starting from the outside, working in. The juices are cooked into a syrup, mounted with butter, and brushed over the top before baking.

As the tart is sliced, warmed, and served aside burnt sugar icecream and salted creme fraiche caramels, the blossom is lost to the eye. It would surely bring spring into the dining room, alas, it's a joy I'll have to keep for myself... and my faithful readers.

Apple Blossom Tart

1 blind baked tart shell

7 tart apples
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp cornstarch

1. Peel, core, and slice the apples just under 1/8th an inch thick.

2. In a small bowl combine the sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Use your fingers to mix the ingredients together, making sure to break up all the brown sugar lumps.

3. Sprinkle the sugar over the apples and very lightly toss the apples, making sure not to break them up. If the apples are too stiff, and are beginning to crack, let the mixture sit 10 minutes before trying to toss again. The apples should be a little softer, and a little more forgiving. Let the apples sit for an hour.

4. In the mean time, I prepare the crust. I use a pie dough baked in a tart shell, but a pie crust baked in a shallow pie pan works just as well. Any crust recipe you are familiar with will work here. Roll the crust and transfer to your pan. Trim the sides 1/2 inch larger than the sides of the pan. With fingers moistened with water, wet the outer 1/4 inch of the pie crust. Fold the edge of the pie crust over enough so the fold is even with the top of the pan. Press the dough to adhere. Chill the crust for 20 minutes. With a fork, prick the surface of the crust in 1 inch intervals. Line the crust with foil and fill with pie weights, or a good amount of dried beans. Prebake the crust for 20 minutes with pie weights at 425 degrees, then remove the foil and pie weights, and bake for an additional 10 minutes, until the surface is light golden and looks baked. This blind baking ensures the crust will be cooked through after the moist apple filling is added.

5. Strain the juices from the apples and set aside in a small sauce pan. Sprinkle the cornstarch over the apples and toss them enough to distribute the cornstarch evenly.

6. Begin layering the apples, side by side, against the outer edge of the shell. Continue to lay them side by side, working around in concentric circles, filling the tart from the outside in.

7. When the tart is filled with apples, place the saucepan with the juices over a medium heat. Cook until the liquid is reduced by half and becomes bubbly and syrupy. Remove the pan from the heat, and add the 2 tbsp butter. Stir until the butter is melted and combined.

8. With a pastry brush, cover the apple tart evenly with the syrup, using a blotting motion. A stroke motion will dislodge the apple slices.

9. Cover the tart snugly in sheet of foil. Cut steam vents in the foil, and bake the tart at 375 for 45 minutes. After this time, remove the foil and check to see if the apples are cooked through. With the tip of a knife, check the inner apples, as they are the slowest to cook. If the apples need more time, replace the foil and bake for 15 more minutes. Check again and add time as necessary.

10. Let the tart cool at room temperature for at least 1 hour so the juices can set.

11. When the tart is cool enough to touch, press the apples lightly towards the outside to create the blossom effect.

12. When cutting the tart, use a serrated knife and use knife strokes that pull towards the crust. A knife stroke pushed towards the center will dislodge all the apples on either side of the knife.

Burnt Sugar

2006-04-06T19:05:00.000-07:00

It's a well known fact, that if you overcook caramel, even just for 2 seconds, the once sweet candy will turn unpleasently bitter. With great caution we avoid this, testing testing testing the caramelizing sugar's color on a white background.

For any that have stood in angst over a pot of caramel that has gone from amber to black, you may have noticed a perfumed aroma lingering in the air that was quite pleasant. I myself have burned a fair amount of caramel in my day (I blame multitasking), making this fragrant scent a strong memory for me.

So three weeks ago while flipping through Fran Biggelow's book, Pure Chocoate, I stumbled into a recipe for "Almost Burnt Sugar Icecream." The recipe requires you to bring the sugar past caramel, letting it get darker and darker, pulling it moments before the blackening begins. With the aroma of a batch of burnt caramel fresh in my nose, I couldn't wait to try it.

If you consider other bittersweet flavors, the burnt sugar icecream makes perfect sense. Coffee, and chocolate are unpleasant alone. Would you ever eat a spoonful of cocoa powder? Or chew on coffee grinds? (Please don't say yes) But dressed up with cream and sugar, the bitterness transforms near inedible flavors into two of the most adored flavors in the dessert world. Nay, the entire world.

After 3 weeks of making this ice cream, I declare the results fantastic. The icecream isn't sweet the way caramel is. The darker caramel gets, the more the sweet flavor disapates, leaving an aromatic bitterness in it's place. To taste this soothes the palate with memories of chocolate, and awakens the senses with a new and exciting flavor not often tasted.

In my version I really darken the sugar. Not just take it a little past dark, but let the sugar start to foam a little, singe almost. I wanted the aromatic quality to perservere after being added to the custard. Because it's cooked so far, hardly a trace of sweetness remains, so I add a little sugar and vanilla bean to the scalded cream.

Burnt Sugar Ice cream

½ vanilla bean
2 cups whole milk
2 cups heavy cream
½ cup plus 2 tbsp sugar
8 yolks

In a heavy saucepan combine the vanilla, milk, cream, and 2 tbsp of sugar. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring a few times to distribute the sugar and vanilla. Keep this over the lowest heat possible, it needs to be hot when added to the burnt sugar in the next step
Have a white plate ready. Using the remaining 1/2 cup sugar, place 2 tbsp in a heavy bottomed pan and cook over a medium high heat until it starts to melt. When the sugar has melted and started to take on a bit of color, stir (with a wooden spoon) in another 2 tbsp sugar. When this has melted and taken on color, add another 2 tbsp of sugar, stirring and repeating until all the sugar is in the pan.
Let the sugar caramelize, and then over caramelize. Begin testing the color of the caramel on the white plate. The mixture will smoke a bit and the bubbles will start to foam a little. It is important that your heat isn’t up too high at this point or the sugar will change from edible burnt to black and carbon before you can catch it.
When the caramel has become a nutty brown, start adding the cream in small amounts. It will sputter and spatter, so add the cream with caution. When the sputtering has died down enough to get your hand close, stir the cream into the burnt sugar. When all the cream is added bring back to a boil to dissolve any bits of caramel that remain.
In a mixing bowl, whisk the egg yolks. Slowly pour in the cream, stirring constantly to avoid curdling the eggs. Then pour the yolk mixture back into the saucepan, stirring continuously.
Return the pan to medium heat. Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. Remove from the heat, and strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl.
Set this bowl in an ice bath and chill, stirring occasionally until cool. If churning immediately, keep the ice cream base over the ice bath until very cold. If churning tomorrow, or much later in the day, store the base in the refrigerator.
Freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s directions.

I Heart Bacon

2006-04-02T23:17:00.000-07:00

We all like bacon. It's hard not to. Crispy, salty, fatty, it's perfect as a snack, as a start to start a lazy Sunday, sandwiched with lettuce and tomato, or as a boost of flavor in a dinner dish. I have even come across a ginger cookie recipe that takes advantage of bacon's mass appeal by calling for 3/4 cup of drippings instead of butter.

My general "like" of bacon became a big fat "heart" recently. I was given a parting gift after visiting my friend Gabe's cooking school in west Seattle in the form of bacon. About 6 inches square, this gift sat for weeks in my fridge, looking unassuming in it's cryovac coat. I knew it was going to be good, and I wanted it's final resting place to be appropriate.

But saving food quickly becomes hoarding it. And to hoard food denies said food it's destiny. To be eaten. I broke down one night with no plans in mind and sliced, cooked, and devoured the bacon helping it reach a glorious final resting place in my stomach. (stop picturing me alone with a pound of bacon, I had a little help from my better half.)

It was better than I thought possible. The meaty part became delicate and crisp, breaking and crumbling between my teeth. The white fatty part was nothing like commercial bacon which is stringy, often chewy. The structure within the fatty tissue was strong enough to hold much of the fat in place, but gave way to my teeth immediately, releasing a flood of flavor onto my tongue. Waves of endorphins were immediately released into my brain causing my eyes to flutter just a little, while a slightly audible "mmmmmm" was emitted from my upturned mouth.

This compares to only one other experience I have had, Pino Rogano's cured Lardon, just the belly fat, no trace of muscle tissue. It was used at Lampreia, scored and seared. It held the same texture, the same wave of salty fat rushing strait to my brain, the same flood of joy marked indelibly on my sensory memory. Like the joy of 5000 potato chips packed into one bite.

The bacon is made from organic Kurubuta pigs who's flavor is greatly improved from a pastured diet. The fresh pork bellies are rubbed in a cure of brown sugar, salt, and nitrates, 40 grams per kilo of pig. The curing process, held under refrigeration for 8 days, involves daily turning and basting. After the curing process is complete, the bellies are rinsed and hung to dry overnight in a cool room. Come morning, the bellies are held in smoker at 185 degrees, absorbing the mild applewood smoke until the internal temperature reaches 155 degrees. They are then cooled, cut, and packaged in cryovac to send home with the students and a lucky guest or two.

Unfortunately, at this time, the only way to taste this bacon is to take the class. Gabe has talked of one day starting to produce this bacon in a commercial setting for resale to restaurants and individuals. One can only hope this day comes soon.

The bacon began as a class project. While Culinary Communion, a small immersive cooking school run by Gabriel Claycamp in West Seattle started classes in December 2001, the charcuterie class wasn't introduced until the following summer. It has since become one of the most popular classes offered from their broad scope of education. The class spans 10 weeks and includes duck prosciutto, chorizo, saucisson sec, blood sausage, coppa cured tenderloin, comprising a curriculum of 26 items.

Students have fallen so hard for this class that they have been known to repeat it, in one case 3 times. This led to the creation of the preserving class starting up this summer.

This is a great class for the avid foodie, home enthusiast, and continuing education for professionals. The class size is small, the enthusiasm is large, as is the student participation and one on one time with the instructor. The dinner served after the class provides a forum for like minded people to share in discussion and camaraderie, often lasting hours after the class has ended.

I am adding Culinary Communion to my list of websites. Not only does it offer great classes taught by the resident chef's, but offers a guest chef roster with some of seattle's top chef's including Ethan Stowell of Union, Sue McCowen of Earth and Ocean, and Becky Selengut of Seasonal Cornucopia. Somehow I got thrown into the mix too, and am starting my first class tomorow, a 3 part series on plating desserts.

How the British do cheesecake

2006-03-23T03:09:00.000-08:00

So, I don't actually know how the British do cheesecake. For all I know they could do it just like Americans, although I didn't see any cheesecake factories on my last visit. But I do know how Gordon Ramsey does cheesecake. Or did cheesecake once in a cookbook titled "A chef for all seasons". Light, lime, both unbaked and sans gelatin, this dessert is much more a mousse than cake.

The dominating flavor in this dessert is lime. Clean, bright, refreshing lime. In order to bring such a clean release of flavor to a dessert that is often intentionally (and delightfully) overly rich, this cheesecake leaves out all the eggs, and much of the sugar. Cream cheese is paddled with creme fraiche and sugar, and dosed with fresh squeezed lime juice and zest. When this mixture is smooth it is folded with whipped cream and set in molds.

Ramsey set his cheesecake over a graham cracker crust in molds lined with poached rhubarb. With the first of season rhubarb cropping up in stores, this cheesecake is a tempting reason to purchase it.

But as this has been on the menu for 3 weeks now and rhubarb is barely available, I have been serving this lime cheesecake filling differently. First, I about doubled the cream cheese to pronounce the classic cheesecake flavor and increased the lime juice to my liking. I have set the filling atop a crushed gingersnap crust, laced with citrus zest and honey. Aside the individual cheesecakes are sunny-sweet, fragrant candied kumquats and tiny gingersnaps.

As for the molds, I am using an old trick I first saw in culinary school. Instead of purchasing 50 somewhat expensive ring molds, I had a length of PVC pipe cut into 2 inch cross sections at the hard ware store. These molds have to be lined with strips of parchment or acetate as there is no way to release the contents by heating the outside. And these molds must NEVER go in the oven as they release noxious fumes and would turn what ever is in them into cancer cakes. But the cost was under 20 dollars for a total of 50 molds. You do have to find a hard ware store willing to make 50 cuts on their saw for you. Home Depot did it once, but the next time they told me I was limited to 2 cuts per visit.

Lime cheesecakes

2 cups crushed gingersnaps
zest of 1 lemon
zest of 1 orange
2 tbsp honey
1/2 cup melted butter

1 cup cream cheese
1/2 cup cream fraiche
1/4 cup sugar
zest of 2 limes
2 to 4 tbsp of lime juice, to taste
1 cup cream (kept very cold to whip)

6 4-inch ring molds or an 8 inch spring form pan lined with parchment

1. Melt the butter with the honey and zests slowly. It shouldn't sizzle or heat up so the milk solids separate and cook. Let cool slightly and pour over the gingersnaps. Mix evenly with your hands, breaking up any clumps. It's best to add the butter in batches. Depending on the moisture already in the cookie, you may or may not need all the melted butter (and you may need more)

2. Distribute the crumbs evenly between the ring molds or over the bottom of the parchment lined spring form pan. Press with your hands or the smooth bottom of a glass and chill.

3. Beat the cream cheese until smooth and even (about 30 seconds to 1 minute on medium speed in a kitchen aid). Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

4. Add the sugar and mix on medium for 1 minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

5. Add the creme fraiche and mix until evenly combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

6. Add the lime zest and juice and mix on medium until the mixture is even and it begins to stiffen a bit.

7. Scrape the sides of the bowl so the mixture is in a mass. Place plastic wrap directly over the surface and store in the refrigerator while you whip the cream. Do not leave this for too long or it will set up stiff. You are just keeping it here to stay cool while you whip the cream.

8. Whip the cream to soft peaks. Fold half of the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture until just barely mixed. Fold in the remainder of whipped cream until the mixture is even.

9. Pipe or spoon the mixture into the prepared molds or cake pan. Smooth the tops with the back of a warm spoon or an off-set palate knife. Chill for 4 hours or over night.

To unmold, warm the sides of the molds or springform pan. You can do this with your blowtorch, or with a towel that has been wet with hot water and rung out.

Alternately for the crust you can also use graham cracker crumbs mixed with pinches of cinnamon, ginger, and clove to mimic the flavors in a gingersnap. Reduce the honey to 1 1/2 tbsp and add a hint of molasses.

I like to zest the limes directly over the sugar. This captures all the oils that spray out while zesting. Then I mix the zest into the sugar with my fingers which breaks it up evenly assuring there are no clumps of zest in the finished dessert.

Candied Kumquats

3 cups of kumquats, washed and sliced
2 cups sugar
1 cup water

1. Bring the sugar and water to a boil.

2. Add the kumquats and reduce to a simmer. Cook for about 5 minutes, undisturbed.

3. Push the kumquats back under the syrup gently, letting the bottom come to the top, and vice versa. Cook for 5 minute more.

4. Check for doneness, which will differ depending on the thickness of your slices. The skins should be translucent and it should have lost much of it's acidity. It will continue to candy away from the stove while it cools and is stored in the syrup.

5. Let cool at room temperature. Store the kumquats in their syrup, which is delicious drizzled over the plate (and mixed with a little bubbly water like a cordial.... me thinks even a granita could come from this syrup with some water adjustment)

Notes.....
The Kumpuat recipe isn't exact. The measures I give are guidelines. To put is as simply as possible, use a nice bowl full of kumquats, sliced up all pretty like, and a syrup in a ratio of 2 parts sugar to 1 part water.

Chocolate for Choice

2006-03-15T11:55:00.000-08:00

Every year as a fund raising event to help support a woman's right to choose, NARAL hosts a chocolate competition. And if we are talking about things women choose, chocolate is definitely on the list. What is more fitting than inviting Seattle's restaurants, bakeries, chocolateries, caterers, and passionate individuals to choose their favorite chocolate treat and dress it up for competition? Maybe shoes. I often choose shoes too.

The event was held at Safe-co field. Not actually on the field, but in a conference room in the building. The doors opened at 6 and people milled about, tasting, and stuffing take home boxes with their favorites. A celebrity panel of judges that included DJ Riz Rollins from KEXP, Sue McCown from Earth and Ocean, Holly Smith from Cafe Juanita, and King County Executive, the Honorable Ron Sims.

For the event I created a cake that captured what Rebekah Denn coined as my "deeper sense of Americana." It was a Peanut Butter chocolate Brownie Crunch Cake with Cocoa Nib Peanut Brittle. 7 layers make up the cake, 2 layers of brownie, 2 of milk chocolate ganache, 2 crunch layers, and a bittersweet chocolate glaze on the top. The crunch layers consisted of a salted peanut Daquoise, and a peanut butter ganache with rice crispies folded in. Unfortunately I didn't get a close up, but you can see the little flag of brittle poking out the top. The Cocoa nibs combined very well inside the peanut brittle, using a ratio of 3 parts peanut, 1 part nibs.

I can also say,with a rosy blush to my cheeks, that this cake won "Best of a restaurant; category one"

Here is Jessica from Yarrow Bay Grill's beautiful 4 layer Choctaw mousse cake. The cake to the right was donated for auction at the end of the night, but not before being mistaken for a large candy dish. Many a hand was slapped trying to sample the gold brushed hazelnuts and tiny hand rolled truffles that covered the top. This cake was deservedly the winner of "Best of a restaurant; category two"

I was happy to stand next to Serafina's pastry chef Mei-I Funtanilla, who brought a hazelnut torte, pictured below.

Bakeries from around the city also participated. Below was my favorite of the evening, a bakery I discovered for the first time, North Hill Bakery. While you can see the cake looks beautiful, what you might fail to notice is the very high level of craftsmanship this cake embodies. The layers are perfectly even, the glaze is perfect, shiny and unblemished, and it tasted amazing.

Here is a Seattle favorite, Macrina featuring what looks very much like a Macrina cake. It was titled "For the love of chocolate" The glittery sugar coated fruit decorates most of their cakes, it is their signature in my mind and always reminds me of Christmas. Or more appropriately, my grandma's Christmas table. I think she has some frosted, glittery fruit left over from the 70's as a centerpiece when I was young. Obviously, this fruit is not left over from the 70's, it's quite nice actually. It's easy to do, if you are so inclined. Brush the fruit in corn syrup, cranberries and kumquats work well, and roll them in sugar and let them dry a bit.

Cupcake Royal donated these twin cupcakes, titled, "Auroelas" for auction while an assortment of their chocolate baby cakes were sampled by all. While I did take a cupcake home for my baby cake, I also stocked up on the stickers and pins with catchy phrases like, "sprinkle me bad", and "legalize frostitution".

Here is the winner in the visual category, Starry Nights catering. Their inspiration was from none other than Willie Wonka himself.

This traditional looking show piece was donated by Essential Baking Company, and served along side a banana split mousse bombe.

This show piece from Edible Art by Jim Carlin won my peoples choice vote in the visual category. It contained a huge amount of craftmanship, various mediums, and did a good job capturing the spirit of the event.

Bittersweet Chocolate Terrine

2006-03-15T03:59:00.000-08:00

One of the most frequently asked questions of me is "what is a terrine?"

We see so many dishes labeled as terrines that it's easy to get confused. It seems to most often be associated with charcuterie or some sort, perhaps a foie gras terrine, a pate of sorts, or some kind of foreign looking meat set with meat jell-o. But it's not what is in a terrine that defines it. Rather, it is a reference to anything made in a terrine mold. Baked, set with gelatin, cold, hot, it matters not. It's the shape that the label refers to, which is much like a loaf pan.

So, yes, it's a loaf. Which is probably why we, in America, have adopted the much nicer sounding "terrine" to describe our loaf shaped creations. When ordering a terrine off a menu expect a nice slice off the described loaf.

I myself have a terrine on the menu. A Bittersweet chocolate terrine served with hazelnut praline and espresso cream. The recipe was requested by a customer a few days ago and rather than just email it to them, I thought I'd post it for all to see and email the link.

Bittersweet Chocolate Terrine
Addapted from Claudia Flemming

4-cup loaf pan lined neatly with foil
1 shallow oven proof dish

1/3 cup cream
8 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped fine
1 shot of espresso (or 1 tbsp instant espresso dissolved in 1 1/2 tbsp hot water)
2 eggs
1 yolk
1/4 cup sugar

preheat the oven to 325

1. This might seem funny, but trust me. Place the 3 eggs (one for yolks) in a bowl and cover with hot water. They need to be warm when whipped for maximum volume.

2. Whip the cream to soft peaks and keep cold

3. Melt the chocolate and espresso over a double boiler. Let it sit undisturbed until most of the chocolate appears melted. Then stir until the mixture is even. Because of the liquid espresso, it will thicken like a ganache. Remove from the double boiler and keep in a warm place.

4. Crack the warm eggs in the bowl, separating one yolk. Add the sugar and whisk until combined. Check the temperature with your finger. If it feels cool, then warm the mixture over the same double boiler you melted the chocolate in, whisking constantly to avoid any curdling. This should only take a minute. You just want it warm to the touch, not hot.

5. Whip the eggs on high for 5 minutes, until tripled in volume.

6. Fold 1/3 of the eggs into the chocolate, mixing until even. Fold half of the remaining eggs into the chocolate until even, and again with the last half of the eggs.

7. Fold in the softly whipped cream.

8. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and cover with foil. Pierce the foil in 8 places to create steam vents.

9. Put the loaf pan into the larger pan and set on the middle rack of your preheated oven. Add hot water to the outer pan until it is half way up the sides of the loaf pan. Bake for 20 minutes.

10. Remove from the oven and lift the foil to release steam. Cover with the foil and return to the oven and bake for 25 minutes more. Turn the pan so the side that was facing the front of the oven is now facing the back to ensure it cooks evenly.

11. Remove from the oven and check for doneness. It should still wiggle a little, but look set on the top. Look at the center, it shouldn't be glossy and wet looking any more. Bake in 5 minute intervals until this is achieved.

12. When done, remove the foil and take the loaf pan out of the water bath. Cool on a wire rack at room temperature for 2 hours. Cover and transfer to the refrigerator and let set over night, or for at least 4 hours.

13. To serve, lift the foil liner out of the pan. Peel the foil down carefully, just past the top of the terrine. Cover with a cutting board or plate and flip upside down. Peel the foil away and slice with a hot knife.

For the Espresso Cream

1/4 cup espresso beans
2 cups cream
powdered sugar to taste

1. Scald cream and pour over beans. Let the coffee infuse into the cream for an hour. Strain and chill the cream until very cold. Overnight is best. If I am in a hurry, I stir it over an ice bath until cold.

2. Add powdered sugar to taste and whip cream to stiff peaks

For the Hazelnut Praline

1 cup sugar
1 cup toasted, skinned hazelnuts

1. Turn the sugar into caramel. Use any method you are comfortable with, but here is my method. In a heavy bottomed pan, melt 2 tbsp sugar over high heat. When the sugar begins to take on color, stir with a heat proof spatula or wooden spoon until even. Add another 2 tbsp sugar and stir until mixed, melted, and the caramel looks amber and clear again. Continue doing this until all the sugar is mixed in and caramelized. If the sugar begins to take on too much color, remove from heat and stir in more sugar. Turn the heat down and return to the process over the heat. Make sure the sugar is dissolved before adding more.

2. When sugar reaches caramel, stir in the hazelnuts. Mix quickly, coating them evenly, and turn out onto parchment, or a silpat. Or if you don't have either, a lightly buttered pan. Let the praline cool for half an hour.

3. To crush praline, put in a large zip lock bag and break up with a rolling pin or the back of a pan. Stop when the nuts are broken and much of the sugar is crushed.

My tip on skinning hazelnuts...... toast them for 15 ot 20 minutes at 350. Here you will see them swell and crack their skins. Let them cool for about half an hour. They will shrink back to their normal size and the skins will be loose and brittle. If you try take their skins off while the nuts are warm, the skin will be too flexible, the nut to large, and the oils warm. You will end up adhering the skin to the nut and making the job harder than it is. Then to release the papery skins, rub about 10 in your hands like ball-bearings, letting the friction of the moving nuts take most of the skin off.

Best Preservation of Italian Meat and Spirit

2006-03-02T12:29:00.000-08:00

Today marks the opening day of the second annual Indepenent Food Awards. These awards, organized by Hillel at Tasting Menu, are my kind of awards. Rather than grouping nominees into broad categories, and voting on a few preselected nominees, this award gives bloggers one award to give away. They create the award, and give it to one person, product, food stuff that they feel passionate about. I am very proud to have created the category of "Best Preservation of Italian Meat and Spirit" and given it to Pino Rogano of Seattle.

4 years ago now I had my first taste of Pino. It was a skinny, pale sausage called the Periguina, hand made by one of Seattles best kept secrets, Italian meat specialist Pino Rogano. This sausage which makes many appearances on the menu at Lampreia, is little Scott, a little Pino, and a lot of foie gras.

During that first year I spent at Lampreia, I got glimpses of Pino Rogano here and there, but never in the flesh. Instead, it was a taste of culetello, sweet and mild, shaved paper thin and served as a carpaccio. Or the coppa, rich, deep, and rubbed with a coat of spice on the exterior. Sometimes it was a thick slice of the rustic 4 inch round sausage called Cotechino, seared and dripping with flavor. Or Chingalle, a wild boar sausage, primal and linked small for an intermezzo. And of course, the Periguina. This ethereal sausage is a recipe all Carsbergs that includes veal, seasonings, and foie gras in proportions that approach 40 percent. The production of this treasure is left in the cities most capable hands, those of Pino Rogano.

This is such a temperamental sausage, what with all the foie gras, that Pino has developed a system. This involves hand stuffing each casing with a piping bag. He told me he can stuff about 8 sausages before he has to chill the entire opperation in the freezer. Otherwise that foie gras would start to melt, and the emusion of the filling would break. A labor of love, it's true. It's details like this that seperate Pino from his competition.

After working at Lampreia for a year, I heard for the first time, "Ciao, Bella!" and in walked Pino with arms full of periguina. A short, stocky man with a bushy mustache stood there, embodying italy with his thick accent and friendly manner. From then on, I unloaded all sorts of goodies from Pino's arms, always with the same greeting and a warm smile.

For years Pino could only be glimpsed here and there on menu's around the area, in the periguina at Lampreia, in a sausage at Matt's in the Market, and at a Renton restaurant he was part owner of, Restaurant da Pino. However, after selling off his interest in the restaurant, Pino has opened a tiny cafe with a retail space to sell his cured meats and sausages. Located 4 blocks south of Columbia City, the restaurant is simply, fittingly called Da Pino. An unassuming building, hardly marked by more than a sandwich board can be easy to miss. But driving up and down Ranier avenue until you find the location is well worth the effort.

Pino's wares can be sampled best off the menu in the Affettato misto della casa, described as "cold cuts Pino style." This plate offers shavings off the cured meats that dangle invitingly in the case. These same cold cuts are also sold sandwiched in a crusty roll, served with traditional accompaniments of lettuce, tomato, and mustard.

The retail selection varies from day to day, depending on what is on hand, but often features Pino's wild boar sausage and a variety of cured meats. If you are lucky enough to live in the Seattle area, a trek (pilgrimage) is in order. Otherwise, keep your eyes on menu's around the city and you too might get a glimpse of Pino.

New Additions

2006-03-01T22:04:00.000-08:00

I tamper with my link list a fair amount, adding links I use often, and deleting them if I have stopped using them. I often do this with little fan fair, avoiding the "you're fired!" attitude of elimination, and saving you the obligation to look at the things I like to.

But I have recently added two links I feel are worth mention, both listed under the "website" section of my new and improved link list.

First is Sam Mason, NYC. A website created by Sam Mason, about Sam Mason, for you and me. It houses pictures, philosophies, histories, and all sorts of great information. For those of you who don't know yet, Sam Mason is the Pastry Chef of WD-50. His work is outstanding, succeeding where few have. He has crossed boundaries with desserts, paving the way for those willing to follow. The desserts he creates deny the sweetness that mark 99.9 percent of dessert and satisfy instead with intensity of flavor, color, life. He uses the doors opened by molecular gastronomy to create plated desserts with uncommon flavors, textures, presentations. And he uses ingredients that have been unrightly locked away in the savory kitchens stores for too many years now. I must say, the design of the sight is dead sexy too.

Second, is Seasonal Cornucopia. This website was built as an interactive tool used to find seasonal products in the Pacific Northwest. Built by a very passionate individual in the spare time between cooking in one of the Seattle area's restaurants (best known for intensely seasonal cuisine), teaching classes, private dinners, and having a life, this website is a labor of love. The user has only to type in an ingredient, be it vegetable, fish, game, cheese, and so on, and information regarding it's season, where it is found, and other helpful information pops up. It seems simple enough when navigating through the site, but when you stop to think of how one even starts to amass this vast amount of information, you realize how amazing it is that this page exists. It is not a marketing tool, rather one persons gift to the culinary world.

the early bird

2006-03-01T07:50:00.000-08:00

It's 7:30 in the morning and I am off to work. This can only mean one thing...... 25 for 25 has begun.

The memory of the frenzy that took over durring novembers 25 for 25 is like a freshly healed wound. While the sting is gone, a dull ache persists when I think of a particular tuesday last november. This ache drives me on to prep obsessively, pour over the menu making lists of menu components, mise en place, prep lists, lists of lists to make.

I am not sure how the 25 for 25 effects bigger kitchens. But as the kitchen at Eva stands, it is a small crew. The pastry department is smaller, just me. While others will plate the desserts on the pantry station, the entire production is left up to one person. And this promotion takes a fairly steady 35 to 38 percent dessert sales and sends it up around 100 percent. In addition, this promotion also raises the number of guests from a weekday/sunday average of 30 to 40 guests a night up near 100 guests a night.

Meaning, the guest count jumps from 200 to 500. If 500 people come in this week, (barring friday and saturday) I have to put out 500 desserts rather than 175 to 200. Which is of course a challenge I am not going to shy away from. But it's enough to wake me from my morning slumber and get me out the door early.

Did I mention it's my day off?

On the flip side

2006-02-26T13:03:00.000-08:00

My last post gushed over a brownie recipe. (The Since-I-Can't-Have-Brad-Pitt-This-Will-Do Brownie). It took one desirable trait of the brownie, a rich fudgy texture, and sent it to the extreme. While this does make for an excelent brownie, there are still other qualities in a brownie to celebrate.

My favorite part of the brownie as a child was bit between the fudgy part and the pan. That thin layer of overbaked goodness that had a little crunch, and was extra chewey. Bakeries often cut these off and discard them, selling only the "center cut" brownies. And as the one often doing the cutting, I have done most of my brownie nibbling off these ends.

I recently came across a recipe that gives me the same delight these "best end" of brownies have. It's called a Melting Chocolate Meringue. The recipe calls for a very minimal list of ingredients; eggs whites, sugar, and melted chocoalte. But rather than drying the cookie out in the oven for hours as meringues are commonly treated, this cookie is baked for a mere 10 minutes.

The result is a crackled, flaky top that gives way to a chewey interior. The flavor will reflect all the characteristics of the chocolate you include as it's only companions in the recipe are egg whites, and sugar, neither of which interfere with the chocolate.

Again I will include the recipe, as I often neglect to do. But it's sunday, I have all day, and I just happen to have the recipe at home with me. The recipe comes from a book that any fan of chocolate, and books that are centered around sound methodology and well tested recipes will find invaluable.

Melting Chocolate Meringues
Alice Medrich

6 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped coarsely
2 large egg whites at room temperature
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp pure vanilla
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cups chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350
Position racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven

1. Melt the chocolate over a double boiler. Keep melted chocolate in a warm place.

2. In a large bowl, or the bowl of your kitchen aid, beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar and vanilla until soft peaks form. Gradually add the sugar, continuing to beat until the egg whites are stiff and glossy, but not dry.

3. Add the warm chocolate, and nuts if desired, and fold in with a rubber spatula until the color of the batter is uniform. Do not let the batter wait.

4.Drop tablespoonfuls of the batter at least 1 inch apart onto parchment or silpat lined cookie sheets. (The perfectionist in me uses a piping bag and large round tip to pipe out quarter sized mounds.) Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, rotating the sheets form front to back, and top to bottom about half way through the baking period. The surface of the cookies should look dry and feel slightly firm but still gooey inside when you press them.

5. Slide the paper or silpat with the cookies attached onto a cooling rack. Let cool completely before removing and storing.

I heart Brad

2006-02-24T23:39:00.000-08:00

I have a confession. A crush, really. And no, it's not Brad Pitt. (Well, it was once, but I was a bit younger, and that was before the sous chef I work with told me he has terrible B.O.)

It is a brownie. But not just any brownie. It's the "Better-than-Brad-Pitt Brownie". This brownie from the recently shut Polka Dot Cake Studio in New York city is fully addicting. I swear I don't even have a sweet tooth. I might, however have a Better-than-Brad-Pitt Brownie tooth now.

I found the recipe in a recent addition of Chocolatier magazine. The article features many of New Yorks favorite bakeries, patisseries, and such, offering a recipe from each. And I'll admit, the name of these brownies peaked my interest. Could a brownie really be better than Brad? (ok, so I may still have a little crush) I had to find out.

These brownies get their amazing texture by being baked for a short period of time, then chilled in the refrigerator. This sets the texture into what is closer to fudge than the bar cookie many brownies are. Texturally speaking, they are to a brownie, what a cheesecake is to cake.

They are already on my menu sitting next to a chocolate peanut butter crunch cake and salted peanut ice cream.

I rarely feature a recipe, but since I have now made them twice in two days, I thought I'd share it with the world. And find a healthier way to celebrate these brownies than eating 8 of them in a row. (ok, 12, but I cut them small) Since the world can no longer go get these brownies from The Polka Dot Cake Studio, as Lovescool tells us, we can bake these brownies in tribute as often as we want.

Better-Than-Brad-Pitt Brownies
Polka Dot Cake Studio

14 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped (I used bittersweet)
1/4 cups cocoa powder
12 oz butter, softened (1 1/2 cups)
3 cups granulated sugar (if you use bittersweet, only use 2 1/2 cups)
1 tsp salt
6 eggs, at room temperature
2 cups all purpose flour, sifted
1 3/4 cups chocolate morsels (10 oz)
2 cups walnuts

Preheat oven to 300
Butter a 9 by 13 inch pan and line the bottom with parchment

1. Melt the chocolate and cocoa powder together in the top of a double boiler, or in the microwave in 5 second intervals.

2. Cream the butter, sugar, and salt for 2 minutes until fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well between each addition and scraping the bowl down.

3. Add the melted chocolate and mix until the color is even.

4. Add the flour in 3 additions, mixing gently. When all the flour is incorporated, fold in the chocolate chunks and walnuts and mix well.

5. Pour into the prepared pan and spread the batter evenly. Bake at 300 for 25 to 30 minutes. The top will look set and papery, the middle will feel very soft, and the edges will have just started to pull away from the sides of the pan. Do not overbake.

6. Cool the brownies on a cooling rack on the counter until completely cooled, about 1 to 2 hours. Then chill them in the refrigerator for 4 to 6 hours. The chilling is the most important part as it sets the fudge like texture.

7. You can glaze them with chocoalte glaze and scatter nuts over them at this point, but I like the papery top as it is characteristic of a brownie, and the flavor is so rich as is, I cant see how you would want too much more.

Enjoy!

8. Cut them small because they are very rich.

Busy Bee

2006-02-17T10:09:00.000-08:00

While my blog remains empty of recent posts, my life has been full. It seems every day has multiple obligations, and yes, I did take a nice mini vacation, but mostly work work work.

I still don't have time for a proper post, but thought I'd offer a link to an article that I participated in. It poses the question, "how do chef's battle the lack of seasonal abundance in winter." The writer, Rebekah Denn asked the question of 3 chefs who's cuisine celebrates seasonal produce. This included Jerry Traunfeld of the Herbfarm who's cuisine not only highlights what is in season, he grows most of it in his own gardens surrounding the restaurant. Next was the Kevin Fogarty, chef of the vegetarian restaurant Carmelita, who faces a very interesting challenge when his entire menu relies on vegetables. And finally, little old me, who is now creating a pastry menu void of the fresh fruit that desert enthusiasts love so much.

The decision to include me came from this humble little blog, I was told. The writer read a post I had written in which I talked about how lucky I was to have started my job in the summer when the seasonal fruit was in it's height of abundance. I learned how to manage a menu, develop desserts, while the fruit was doing most of the work. I just had to step back my own skills and let the fruit shine. I could slice peaches, nectarines, strawberries, and put them next to a buttermilk panna cotta with a zinfandel syrup and be done. But now that it is winter, it is time to put my skills and learned techniques to work.

And I must add, as soon as fruit goes out of season, chocolate comes in to season. A hot, sunny, summer day wets the appetite for light, clean, fruity flavors. However, as soon as the days turn dark, and cold, richer, deeper, more luxurious tastes like chocolate are craved. (And yes, I know there are many who feel that chocolate season runs 365 days a year.)

So take a minute to read the article!

"Cold, bleak winter? Not on their tables"

Marshmallows

2006-01-27T18:05:00.000-08:00

I was warned in August, that when cold weather rolled around it would be time for me to make marshmallows. I am not sure how I was supposed to use the advanced warning, or if Amy was just tired of the sunshine and daydreaming winter dreams. Soon enough, the grey days came, and shortly there after, the cold. Thus began my journey into marshmallows.

Amy brought me 3 recipes, one for standard white marshmallows, one for chocolate marshmallows, and one for old fashioned marshmallows. The old fashioned marshmallows stood out from the other recipes by calling for an ingredient I had never heard of.... marshmallow root.

Marshmallow root is the root of the Althea officinalis plant. The name is derived from the greek" Althe" which means, "to heal" referring to the plants medicinal value. Althea grows predominately in salt marshes, in damp meadows, by the sea, and on the banks of tidal rivers giving the plant it's common name, "Marshmallow". Tiny purple and white flowers cover the plant, and the young green leaves are said to be eaten in salads in France. During times of famine, the root was found to provide ample nourishment, and was considered a delicacy by the Romans. Even through the time of Charlemagne, marshmallow was cultivated for human consumption.

The plant is regarded as an herbal remedy to soothe sore throats and used as an expectorant for upper respiratory problems. In 19th century America, a throat lozenge made from whipped extract of the marshmallow root, sugar, and egg whites was given to children who suffered from chest colds. The flavor took on popularity and evolved from a hardened lozenge to the fluffy candy we know today. The binding properties of the marshmallow root were exchanged for those of gelatin, and the candy became sweeter, softer, fluffier, bearing little resemblance other than a name to the original.

While marshmallow root is readily available in capsule and liquid form, I chose to use a "modern" recipe which favors corn syrup and gelatin. The first recipe I made is representative of almost all recipes I have found. The sugar and corn syrup are boiled to 240 degrees, then whipped with gelatin for 15 minutes as high as your mixer goes. The resulting goop is spread on a greased, foil lined pan and let to set and dry out for a day or two.

I was quite pleased with the results until I tasted a marshmallow confection made by 3400 Phinney's chocolatier, Amber. I told her that her marshmallow was much fluffier than mine. She thought for a second, and rather than just accept the compliment, she ventured a question, "Do you use egg whites in yours?"

"No. I didn't know you could use egg whites!" I said.

"Oh," Amber said, "if you use egg whites, you get that melt-in-your-mouth texture."

Armed with this hot tip, I began to look for recipes using egg whites. It appeared easy, just whip egg whites and add the gelatin/sugar syrup after the whites have formed peaks. Just like an Italian meringue.

This method worked well. The texture is incredible light, melt in your mouth. I thought I was a genius, I must admit. But then I attempted to use them in a dessert I have on the menu. The dessert is a Millefuille of toasted marshmallow and chocolate cream with salted peanut ice cream. I got everything ready, toasted the marshmallow, and stacked it between layers of caramelized phyllo. Right before my eyes, they dessert collapsed, and the entire marshmallow spilled out the sides. Apparently, this method didn't hold up to heat well. In fact, it had completely liquefied, along with my "stay puffed" ego

I'll have to find out why, because logically, you can torch a meringue, and you can torch a marshmallow. So why cant you torch a marshmallow with a meringue base? There are many factors to play with, including, dare I say it..... human error?!?

While this dessert will be rotated off the menu shortly, a hot cocoa with home made marshmallows will remain as long as the cold rainy days create a longing for the warm beverage. Seattle's long rainy season should give me months more to perfect a marshmallow recipe.

Blogs givin' props to other blogs

2006-01-22T12:21:00.000-08:00

In this little universe of food blogging, we for the most part write about food. Sometimes we write about ourselves, but mostly food. And after we put up our post for the day, or week if we are busy, we immediately start to read other blogs. And there are a LOT of other blogs.

It seems that I find a new blog every day, either through the links left on other blogs, or through the comments left behind.

If I find myself scouring other peoples link lists for a certain site often enough, I will eventually get around to adding it to my own list.

It's hard to pick favorites, I don't want to exclude great blogs by including some into my favorites. But I can't deny that I find myself tracking back to the same 10 or so blogs each day.

The blog awards are great, but limited. They include a handful of candidates to vote on, chosen by a few people. Therefore, we are forced to choose " the best" based on someone else's idea of "the best". My humble little blog wasn't included within any of the award categories, but I did receive preliminary nominations from Nicky and Sam, two of the bloggers I respect the most. This is more of a compliment to me than being given an award.

I thought instead of voting for "the best", I'd just talk about the blogs that I find myself tracking back to over and over. I, like the rest of us, have no real reason to label one blog better than the rest. But I know what I like.

I love Delicious Days. It's humble approach, amazing photography, all capture a simple love and excitement for food. While the pair of writers frequently post, they exhibit their talent, and share their culinary adventures and growing knowledge of food. Within the writing there is never anything exclusive or snobbish at all. It's the purity with which they love food that shines through and keeps me coming back.

I also love Tasting Menu. And I must admit, tasting menu was my first love of all blog loves. And what a way to start loving blogs! Much like Delicious Days, Hillel's pure and simple love of food is what shines through. He manages to eat at many of the worlds top restaurants and writes humble and honest reviews of them. His reviews are absent from the "critiques" that most reviews suffer from and instead share with us his joy and pleasure in a meal. The worst thing you will hear him say is that plain and simple, it didn't taste good to him. Nothing is out of reach, Michelin stars, and the taco truck down the road all get the same respect from this man.

While I don't live in San Francisco, I still fully enjoy Becks and Posh. It was Sams British sensibility, or sense of humor that first drew me in. It was the immense amount of writing and information she includes in her writing to that kept me hooked. And it is in her ability to celebrate everything food and all other bloggers that makes me love this blog. With her "blogger of the week" column, and her constant organization of blogging events inside and outside the world wide web, I think it's safe to say she is the patron saint of bloggers.

This is the newest of my blog loves. I don't even really know how to pronounce it or what the heck it means, but none the less, I love Nordljus. It's not just the quality of the photography that draws me in. It's the quality of everything with in the photograph. It is clearly executed perfectly by Keiko, which is a feat in itself. But to take it further, she styles the photographs to look like they belong in a high end cookbook, and then sets the to one of the most attractive and functional templates I have found. The writing is simple, clear, direct, and like all the blogs I love, abstains from any negative or overly critical statements. And who can resist that beautiful cat that shows up from time to time.

I can't help but love Moveable Feast. I love the posts Luisa writes so much, that I miss it when she doesn't post. Mostly, it is the adventures through the trenches of high end cooking that I love. It's a life I longed to live once, and while I ended up dragging myself away from my own European gastronomic adventure back to Seattle, I still delight in seeing another girl succeed in that path. While she can boast with names like Ducasse and El Bulli on her resume, her writing is absent from any bragging. Instead, she shares with the world the wonder and joy of living the life she does.

And while Orangette, an extremely well written Seattle based blog, is on my frequently checked blog list, it's the column "cook and tell" written for Saucy magazine that I love about this writer. It seems that anything written by a female that is witty and intelligent is likened to Carrie Bradshaw these days, but to liken this column to sex and the city is not far off. A lot of food, a lot of men, and an honest sassy wit that has me rolling with laughter at times, this column doesn't come out nearly often enough to satisfy my hunger for it.

This list in no way categorizes these blogs as better than the blogs not on the list, and certainly doesn't encompass the vast number of blogs I enjoy reading every day. But it does share the blogs I love, and why I love them.

Tinkering with Tarts

2006-01-16T15:15:00.000-08:00

Tarts have a special place in the hearts of both chef's and home cooks alike. They are elegant, visually stunning, and can be filled with a myriad of delightful fillings for any season. Lacking the top crust of their rustic cousin the pie, the filling is open to display the wonders of the flavors within. And lets be honest, tarts make it possible to prepare 16 deserts at once. This is a time saving remedy that I utilize for both my restaurant menu and dinner parties. When preparing for a dinner party, the ability to prepare the dessert in one stroke, even the day before, is a god send.

Pictured here is my latest menu addition, a baked orange tart. The filling is made with 2 and a half cups of fresh squeezed orange juice that has been reduced to 3/4 of a cup. This concentrated orange flavor is mixed with zest, sugar, and eggs and baked just enough. The crust is perfumed with a hint of orange flower water to compliment the tangy orange in the filling. A slice of the tart is served simply with a rich vanilla bean anglaise for a desert that brings back memories of a creamsicle.

One thing has plagued me through out my various tart endeavors. They never look like the picture. I have had the hardest time getting the crust to be perfectly even all the way around. Inevitably, part of the dough will shrink during baking, creating a low lip in the crust. Then, to avoid the filling spilling out,the shell can only be filled to the lowest point leaving a portion of the shell raised and uneven.

I know, it's not a huge deal. Especially when you cut the tart into portions and no one will ever know of the tarts original "wabi sabi". But just as wabi sabi, or beauty in imperfection, (not a green firey paste), is the Japanese interpretation of aesthetics, perfection is the western interpretation. Within these western roots of mine I am bonded.

When I flipped through Gordon Ramsey's dessert book, I found a technique for a perfectly level tart shell. "Rejoice!" I thought, perfectly even tarts, here I come!

The method is simple. Roll the tart dough out 2 inches larger than the diameter of the tart pan to be used. Transfer the dough to the pan, centering it. Rather than trimming the dough and shaping it against the edge of the tart pan, gently fold it over the rim of the pan, letting the edges sit against the outside of the tart pan and rest on the parchment lined sheet pan sitting below.

Bake the tart shell with the overhanging dough.

When the shell cools, carefully trim the baked dough evenly along the top of the rim!

Now the filling can be poured in and set or baked. A second advantage, close behind the aesthetic value of this technique is the increased volume allowed of the filling. Because there are no recessed portions of the dough, the filling can come up to the very top of the tart, increasing the amount of the filling in the tart. While a nice tart shell is a key factor in a beautiful tart, the tart is truly about the filling. The more the merrier, so they say.

A third atvantage are the cookie shards that are trimmed from the shell. These tasty treats are never hard to give away, or devour all by yourself.

Thanks to this improvement, my tarts (and yours!) can incorporate wabi sabi in the uneven browning of a filling, the unique shape of individual fruits, the random sizes of nuts that fill the tart, all the while satisfying my western desire for perfection with the clean lines of a perfectly even tart shell. I found a deep eastern satisfaction in the uneven puckering of this orange tarts surface. It resembles the dimples of a real orange!

I wonder if Seabass likes tarts.....

Phat duck's addition 2/1/06 answering the question left in the comments,

" Dana-I noticed you used a dark tart pan for this. I always understood dark pans to brown too quickly and to be avoided. Can you comment on your experience and/or preference?"

So here I get back to you on the pan. The black pans absorb radiant heat in the oven, increasing browning on the surfaces touching the pan. Shiny pans reflect the radiant heat. What you see my tart siting on is obviously not a shiny pan, but not a black pan either. It was a shiny pan at one time but has lost it's luster with years in the oven and become a darker grey. The poor lighting in the photograph makes the pan look even darker, when infact, it is not a black pan and still has the ability to reflect the radiant heat rather than absorb it. You are correct in recognizing that a dark pan does brown too quickly.

Concepts in infusion

2006-01-12T22:19:00.000-08:00

Christmas brought my Santa through town. His name is Chris and he came directly from the atomic workshop of Heston Blumenthal in Bray, the north pole of molecular gastronomy. Just like the intelectual gifts he filled my culinary brain with on my last birthday so far from home, he brought with him a big bag filled with ideas and inspiration, and a few memories I almost forgot I had.

Durring the dinner we shared, one word brought back a concept I started to grasp at The Fat Duck. Not a method, not a recipe, not a new food I have never seen. The simple word "tea" reminded me of a new way of thinking about infusing flavors.

Imagine the way we make tea. Boiling water, a relatively large amount of flavorful leaves, and a resting period to steep. Now take this gentle treatment of beverage, and apply it in thought to other liquid infusions.

"We tea our stocks" Michael told me at midnight one late evening as we stood in the rain preparing to store the cooling stocks made that day. The bones and aromatics are infused with the water over a low heat, and then left to steep. After this is done, the stock is strained from the top down, leaving the sediment, bones, and what not on the bottom. The last 2 inches of liquid are also left. It is the pure clean liquid on the top that is of value. The pot is never tipped, the sediment never disturbed or redistributed into the stock.

Take this concept and apply it to icecream. Mint icecream. Fresh mint icecream that immediately brings a garden to mind. You want a clean fresh mint flavor in your icecream rather than one that brings menthol and toothpaste to mind. While reason and often recipe dictate us to boil cream and add a handfull of chopped mint before we make our custard, lets take a step back. Lets "tea" the mint by making a custard and pouring the hot liquid over a larger amount of whole, unbroken mint leaves. After a steeping time of 10 minutes the custard is strained off and chilled. The resulting flavor is clean and bright, and rather than remind us of mint, will mentally transport us directly to a mint patch.

This concept does require a bit of added time. A last minute infusion, while effective, requires us to break the herb, crush the nut, crack the seed, to release more flavor in less time. This is fine and dandy for adding a bit of rosemary to your chicken dinner. But if you are looking for a gentle, true rosemary flavor to make a baked custard sublime, tea the flavor instead. Dont dammage the herb to extract it's taste, bathe it, washing its flavor into your food.

I am going to take one more step here. Think of the flavor of a hot cup of black tea. Thin, aromatic, and tannic. Now, remember the taste of sun tea, made by leaving tea leaves in cold water in a jar on your window sill. The flavor is cleaner, milder, and much of the bitterness, or tanic quality that marks tea is left behind.

Transport this cold infusion with a long period of time to cooking. Imagine steeping a cold stock with tarragon overnight. The result should be a refreshing bright herbal note rather than the dragons bite the herb is named for.

Now if you try this at home (by all means do) and you find that it results in a weak flavor, dont fret! Don't think, "well that was a waste of time." Don't give up and resort to last minute infusions with chopped leaves. Add more herbs. Double, tripple, maybe even quadruple the amount of fresh leaves. If we use 2 tbsp of dried, concentrated tea leaves for an 8 oz beverage, imagine the amount of fresh leaves you might want for a half gallon of liquid.

Wether we apply this concept on a regular basis, or just carry it around in our minds as a way of seeing flavor addition doesn't matter. Sometimes just seeing things from a different point of view is as valuable.

The eggs and I (and some tart dough)

2006-01-11T10:25:00.001-08:00

We have all done it, one way or another. No, I am not talking about licking our fingers and sticking them back in the bowl! I am talking about Pate Sucre. Pate sucre is the fancy schmancy (frenchy schmenchy) word for sweet tart doughs, and roll out sugar cookie dough for cut out Christmas cookies. It's a very basic recipe that everyone who bakes has come across and used.

And for such a universally used recipe, it's a shock to see the broad scope of ingredient variations recipes use. Powdered sugar Vs. granulated is a common variation. Some incorporate milk, some incorporate water. And then there is the matter of the eggs.

Recipes that don't call for eggs at all are most commonly labeled as Shortbread. These recipes are a crumbly, buttery, rich, salty cookie. They tend to keep the shape suggested to them without shrinking much, or loosing defining lines from cutters and cookie stamps. This works well with tarts as the dough doesn't shrink much from the sides of the pan.

My favorite of all the shortbread recipes I have come across so far is Fannie Farmers Scotch Shortbread. With a short list of ingredients, butter, powdered sugar, flour, and salt, this is a snap to make and the taste and texture are good.

Within the category of recipes that do call for eggs is a little used method of hard boiling the eggs and passing them through a sieve before incorporating them into the dough. This is said to be an old Austrian trick (that I learned in England from a Scottish pastry chef). The resulting texture is the driving force behind this method. The baked dough becomes very delicate, almost melt in your mouth, which is heavenly next to a soft tart filling. But there is one snag, as Nicky from Delicious Days pointed out..... Sometimes the dough crumbles too much and fails.

The benefit of the cooked yolks is their lack of moisture. The cooking process has bonded the water molecules to the protein in the yolks, so while it is still present in the yolk, it no longer has the ability to wet and bind the dough.

The down side to raw eggs is the water in them. Water, when mixed with flour activates the flours proteins called gluten. With mixing and kneading, the wet proteins begin to bond to each other building a network of strong, flexible chains. Good for your chewey baguette, bad for a tart shell. Each time the dough is gathered and re-rolled, the chains become longer and longer, and the dough tougher and tougher. So by the time you have gathered and re-rolled the entire batch of dough, you have something closer to hard tack. The Austrians were wise to this problem and boiled their eggs to eliminate the water that caused the gluten development.

But, if the recipe isn't balanced just right, you end up lacking the moisture raw eggs provided to bind your dough and your dough crumbles. Obviously you cant just take your favorite tart dough and cook the eggs. If it is a good recipe, it will be balanced to rely on the moisture the eggs provided.

What to do, what to do. On one hand, you have cookies fit for the dog's chew toys, and on the other, you have cookie crumbs. I have started to think about this in two ways.

First, you can add a minimal amount of moisture back. With a linzer dough that was crumbling on me, I found that the addition of 1 tablespoon of rum helped, but it was the addition of a single raw yolk that did the trick. The dough was still delicate but had enough strength to stand up to baking.

Second, you can think of it as a shortbread with the added richness of the cooked yolks. The recipe is balanced to lack the eggs moisture. So adding the hard boiled yolks is both flavorful, and rich without tampering with the texture. This makes for a dough that can be rolled thin and stay strong, or be left thick and still be delicate.

Third..... this has nothing to do with the eggs. It is important to remember that when a recipe calls for soft butter, it does NOT mean warm butter, or squishy butter. Your butter should be pliable, your finger should push into it easily and the temperature should be cool to the touch. (Unless you keep the furnace on full blast so you can walk around in your undies, room temp means about 65 degrees, and butter melts around 80 degrees.) If the butter is warm, and your finger slides through the entire piece with ease, you are in trouble. This means your butter is beginning to melt. If you start your dough with melting butter, it will fall apart while you are trying to roll it. Your dough will crumble whether you boiled your eggs or not. You will be amazed at the difference the butters initial temperature makes in handling and end result.

I think I may have just written the most boring blog post ever. But for those who can work through it, I hope it was informative and helpful.

Seabass

2006-01-11T10:25:00.000-08:00

This is Seabass. Seabass loves the science of baking! I knew she was a genius.

New Years Eve

2006-01-04T21:53:00.000-08:00

New Years Eve is one of the biggest nights of the year for a dinner restaurant. I'’d say the biggest, but Valentines day rivals New Years Eve in popularity (but with an entirely different crowd.) The reservation book fills far in advance with patrons eager to celebrate the evening with the special menu planned by the chef. For an end of the year blow out the menu blatantly features items of luxury, in abundance.

Amy created a 5 course menu that humbly displayed decadence without the commonly used ingredients of luxury like foie gras, truffles, and caviar. Items like a smoked trout mousse and salt cod fritter started the menu along side a rillete made from duck. A very nice house made rabbit terrine followed as an "“in between"” course with a grain mustard aioli. The main courses included a wild boar chop and an amazing braised veal cheek. A cheese course was Amy'’s last contribution to the menu in a chevre tart with chestnut honey and fresh thyme. At this point in the menu I took over and provided 2 choices for dessert.

Of course, the first option was chocolate, and because I am fixated on my new discovery of ginger and chocolate together, I featured it NYE. I made a dark chocolate torte and layered it with a dense ganache that was studded with candied ginger. A fitting partner for the evening, the cake sat next to a slice of orange confit. Crowning the cake was a quenelle of whipped creme fraiche for a nice acidic balance to the rich of the chocolate, the bite of the ginger, and the sweet of the orange. Dotting the plate is a reduction of the orange confit syrup that has been infused mildly with clove.

The second option was a frozen winter spice parfait with dried cherry compote and linzer cookies. The frozen parfait was flavored with allspice, cinnamon, fresh grated nutmeg, and a pinch of black pepper. (As our server Kate put it, "“it tastes like everything I love in pumpkin pie, and but without the things I don'’t like about pumpkin pie. Which would be the pumpkin, I guess.”") The compote on the parfait was made from dried sour cherries. The cherries were simmered in balsamic vinegar, a splash of ammeretto, sugar, and water until plump again. After the cherries steeped for a spell, the juices were thickened with starch for a velvety “"goo" for lack of a better word. On the plate above the parfait was a preserved bing cherry puree underlaid with orange zest, cinnamon, and clove.

The cookies are what would be the crust for a Linzer Tart. They are made with almond, cinnamon, and brandy with a irrestable delicate mouth feel. The melt in your mouth texture comes from incorporating hard boiled egg yolks instead of raw yolks into the dough. This is an old Austrian trick that I first saw in a British restaurant and use a recipe from a French pastry chef. (Nicky.. I have a special post about these cookies and their method coming just for you!)

Gone Banana's

2005-12-30T22:54:00.000-08:00

Making my debut with a menu in the middle of summer was a blessing beyond anything I could see at the time. This blessing I speak of was fruit. I was blessed with fuzzy peaches from Yakima, plump little cherries, sugary strawberries from Carnation, blueberries, raspberries, apricots, blackberries, pumpkins, wild huckleberries, all of which needed little attention from me to shine on a plate. I was learning to manage a menu, draw from my creative pool, and research and develop recipes while these fruits did most of the work.

Now that winter has set in, the items on my menu are requiring much more from me. No longer can I slice a perfect peach, garnish it minimally and call it good. It is time for me to put my skills to work.

This week I put myself to the task of a banana desert. I chose a caramelized banana bavarian inspired by Gordon Ramsey. It is a lovely use of the bavarian method as the banana's texture add a luxurious mouth feel. The banana's are rolled in sugar and caramelized before being pureed, bringing out the fruits richness. It is set over the top of a very thin, rum soaked layer of geniose.

Aside this desert are some very playful flavors. A quenelle of rich milk chocolate mousse flanks the banana making for a classic flavor combination. Move over a little and you'll find a pool of malted cream remenecent of a vanilla malted milk shake. Finally for a little snap, crackle, and pop a line of caramelized rice crispies sweeps across the plate.

Creating a dramatic line with a loose garnish is not my idea, but an idea I love no less. My friend Anjana spoke of this design factor from her experience at Mary Elaine's, but I first saw it at The Fat Duck made with toasted coconut aside a rhubarb parfait. It slipped from my mind until a recent dinner at Seattle's Veil restaurant. After an absolutely exhilarating 5 courses, the desserts came out. Across a plate that featured a date ice cream was this exact sweeping line made with caramelized oats. It was the final touch I was looking for.

I underestimated the selling power of banana's until selling out of this desert two nights ago when a group of 8 people ordered 7 of this dessert for their table.

Study in Panna Cotta

2005-12-21T12:37:00.000-08:00

My first encounter with panna cotta was savory. It was made from creme fraiche and parmesean and served with an asparagus veloute. The texture was dense and thick like a mousse, hardly needing gelatin for structure as the parmesan set it. So when I decided to venture into sweet panna cotta's for my menu at Eva, I came to a startling discovery. Panna cotta is milk jello!

I began my panna cotta exploration with a lean buttermilk pannacotta. The flavor was nice but as buttermilk is very lean, the texture was too similar to jello. This turned me off from imediately furthering my explorations.

I kept this method in the back of my mind until a dinnner at Cafe Juanita brought it back up. My friend squeeled that I held a job in the industry so the kitchen sent out a second desert course, a simple lemon panna cotta with raspberry sauce. It blew me away.

The texture was so light and delicate, the flavor a subtle creamy lemon. I began a journy to recreate this texture for my own portfolio, and since have had two successes.

For the market menu last week I took inspiration from Wylie Dufrane's Blasphemists christmas dinner and made my own fresh chevre pannacotta. Using the Port Madison Farms goat cheese it subtly sweet and recieved the compliment from Karina, "I dont even like goat cheese, but this is really good!" The garnishes were a turkish dessert of pumpkin (mascerated in sugar then oven roasted to be candied on the outside and pudding like on the inside), candied cashews, and a maple brown sugar drizzle.

On the current menu is a Citrus Pannacotta with candied lemon and orange ginger sauce. The panna cotta is infused with lemon and orange zest, lemon grass, and a little chamomile. The candied lemon is a section of the rind with much of the fruit left on that has let to confit in a syrup made with lemon juice, star anise, peppercorns, and vanilla bean. After a week in the syrup it is cut into strips and dried a bit in the oven. I like that the fruit left on the rind absorbs much of the syrup for a lot of added flavor in the final product. The orange ginger syrup is agressive and has a tiny bit of kick from fresh ginger. For the plate, the panna cotta is turned out on a sable cookie.

A standing dish on the menu is a take on the Lampreia parmasean panna cotta. Instead of parmesan I used an aged sardinian goat cheese called Panteleo. It has stood aside various garnishes and will be making it's last appearance soon.

Gordon Ramsey calls panna cotta a "chic blancmange" and says that every panna cotta should have a "sexy wobble" as the plate is carried to the dining room. He calls it the chi-chi-lina. Working with a higher fat content and less gelatin, I am seeing this sexy little shimmy in my pannacotta's. They can be a pain to unmold because of their delicate nature, but well worth the effort.

Commissioned work

2005-12-16T21:56:00.000-08:00

Occasionally, the vast amount of creative freedom I have been given with Eva's desert menu wanes and I am assigned a commissioned piece. For a private lunch today James commissioned a desert with a brownie.

Well.... if you consider a brief suggestion said in passing followed by a shrug that implies, "why not" a commission. I believe the words were, "it's just a lunch, you might as well do a brownie." The statement was meant to say it's lunch, don't go overboard. But it got me to thinking, I might as well do a brownie.

So I made a brownie. And then I "kicked it up a notch."

I took a chocolate brownie recipe from Michael Deselunier's Deserts to Die For, (the sequel to Death By Chocolate) that was created to be layers in a gooey chocolate peanut butter brownie cake. A cake my friend Amanda has received so many requests for she put it on "weddings and batmitzvah's only" status.

With a whopping 1 and a half pounds of melted chocolate and a texture that is delicate and chewy, this brownie is on par with many decadent chocolate cakes I have tried. The brownie was baked in two sheet pans thinner than usual to allow for it to be layered. Between the two brownies was a layer of chocolate ginger ganache. The ganache was flavored with a nice strong ginger syrup and studded with finely diced candied ginger.

The ginger had such a kick I was sure it would taste over powering in the chocolate, so I added it, well...... gingerly. But the aggressive chocolate stood up to everything the ginger could dish out, and I eventually had the entire batch of syrup mixed in.

The brownie was served with a warm chocolate sauce, a scoop of sour cream ice cream, and ribbons of crystallized ginger. I wouldn't make sour cream ice cream again. I wanted it to be just like the creme fraiche ice cream I fell in love with earlier this year. Why ever didn't I just make the creme fraiche ice cream? Or even a fresh ginger ice cream? Eh, live and learn.

If you haven't had chocolate and ginger together yet, do. It's an amazing flavor combination. I might find it so amazing because I didn't expect it to be. I intend to use this combination again for the new years eve menu, a decadent chocolate ginger cake with citrus confit and whipped creme fraiche.

So my "just a lunch" brownie was a bit over board. But even Pierre Herme features a recipe for a brownie in his collection with the warning that the brownie has crept it's way into French hearts, their children's back packs, and desert menu's across the country. So if it's good enough for the French, well..... who doesn't love a brownie?

A Farmers Market Farewell

2005-12-14T15:53:00.000-08:00

The farmers markets around Seattle began to disappear as the summer faded to fall, but one lonely farmers weathered the autumn, and is running until winter sets in. The University farmers market will commence for the last time this coming weekend, just a small congregation of die hard purveyors remaining. Those that still have wares to sell will brave the 30 degree weather to sell the last of their honey, cheeses, hazelnuts, vegetables (just Chard, I am sure), and foraged mushrooms.

Fittingly so, the end of a long run has come for Eva's Market Menu. Each weekend the market is scoured for all things "showing well", inspiration is gathered, and a 3 course menu is created to showcase our findings. This past weekend was decidedly our last Market Menu.

For my finale I chose to make an understatement. With Holmquist Farms hazelnuts, I made a very rich hazelnut ice cream to sit aside a fallen chocolate cake. Served warm, the center of the cake was dense and moist, remniscent of a brownie but very delicate. The hazelnuts were toasted in the oven until deeply nutty before being broken to release the oils and infused into the cream.

The sweet duo said nothing more than they needed to, and ended the market menu with grace.

Lessons Learned

2005-12-11T17:41:00.000-08:00

I spent the better part of my day teaching another class. The title of this class was "Miniature deserts for your holiday buffet. The photograph on the left shows 3 of the 4 deserts that were featured in the class. On the left is a small apple turnover, in the back is a cream puff filled with chocolate cream, and in the front is a bite sized lemon cheesecake on a shortbread cookie. Not pictured is my favorite, a spoon served creme brulee. These deserts are all great because the bulk of the work can be done ahead of time and stored in the refrigerator or freezer.

The turnover is made from a flaky cream cheese crust and a caramelized apple filling. To make the filling, I cooked the apples in butter over a medium flame. The apples are covered in sugar as soon as they are put in the pan so the sugar mixes with the butter and released juices, and slowly caramelizes while the apples cook. When the apples are very tender they are mashed in the pan, mixed with the caramely buttery goo that they cooked in, and doused with apple brandy for the last 2 minutes of cooking. The flaky cream cheese crust is my favorite pie crust, but any pie crust recipe will work. It is rolled in a square, egg washed (for glue), and the filling is dropped by tablespoon in a grid. A second layer of thin pastry is laid on top and pressed down. This is very much like making ravioli. The turnovers are cut with a fluted wheel, and baked for about 20 to 25 minutes. They make delicious little hand held apple pies.

The cheesecake is a great idea I found in Gale Gand's "Just a bite" book. She suggests lining mini muffin pans with plastic wrap and filling them with cheesecake batter. They bake at 300 for 20 minutes, and no the plastic wrap doesn't catch on fire. These can be made days ahead of time wrapped well and refrigerated, then assembled last minute on a cookie of your choice. I chose to make a lemon cheesecake on a lemon shortbread cookie, but any cheesecake recipe should do fine. The great thing about this method is the crust is a crisp cookie rather than the crumb crust that can get so soggy, and because they are made in mini muffin tins, you can make quite a few of them with minimal effort. Dusted with a little powdered sugar, it's quite a gem and can be finished in two bites.

The chocolate filled cream puff is a lighter version of the pastry case delights. Instead of making pastry cream, I filled them with a rich chocolate whipped cream. The cream is made with semisweet chocolate melted into sweet scalded cream which is chilled before whipping. It whips up very thick and dense, more like a mousse than a whipped cream. The cream puff is made from Pate a choux, which takes its name from the French word for cabbage. Indeed, they do look like little cabbage heads. I enjoy their rugged exterior because they always hide something luxurious inside, a diamond in the rough so to speak. The nice thing about pate a choux is it's ability to be frozen. The little mounds of batter can be piped and frozen, then baked off at a later date. This means you can do all the (messy) work on a Wednesday night, and bake them just an hour before you want to serve them on a Saturday. A piping bag fitted with a small tip inserted into the bottom of each puff fills each "cabbage" discretely, and they require minimalistic garnishes like a quick dip in melted chocolate or a dusting of powdered sugar.

Finally, my favorite of the class, creme brulee served on a spoon. No picture exists because they were gobbled up before I could get my camera out. The method is very simple and can be applied to any recipe. Instead of breaking the custard up and baking it in individual molds, a shallow layer is baked in a large casserole dish. After the custard has chilled in the refrigerator, it is scooped onto a serving spoon. The rough scoop of custard is smoothed with a hot dry palette knife (or butter knife). This is dusted with sugar and brulee'd just as usual, and because the spoon has a long handle, you can use your gas oven's broiler if you don't own a torch. The custard can be baked days ahead of time, stored with plastic wrap on the surface in the refrigerator, and scooped just before serving. It's nice for the buffet because it has all power to impress that creme brulee does and the guests can enjoy it with out much commitment. There is no ramekin to hold onto, it can be eaten with one hand and a drink in the other, and is over in just a few bites.

Student and Teacher

2005-12-07T13:23:00.000-08:00

While I toil away daily in the kitchen at Eva exactly as I have done in other kitchens, stress about prep as service nears just like before, work in a nearly indistinguishable manner from all other jobs I have had, my current job comes with a label I have never had before, "Chef."

The label is in place to demonstrate that I have the creative control over the dessert menu. It is, however, often mistaken for another label, "Expert on all things in a pastry kitchen." The second title, I am not. Not even close.

I shy away from using the title "pastry chef" as much as possible. In many ways, it's a title I dont feel I have earned fully, sounds a little self important, and negates the student I still feel I am. While I am a far cry from the culinary school student I once was, I am in every way a student, and in this case, my own teacher. Every day is a journey in discovery. Each menu change is a chance to explore an aspect of the sweet kitchen I haven't mastered yet. Ok, sometimes things I haven't even tried yet.

To mend the "issues" I have had with bread making, I put a bread pudding on the menu and set myself to the task of Brioche. It began with reading countless Brioche recipes. Each was decidedly varied, Fanny Farmer even asked you to put the dough in a large container of hot water to proof. I tried 3 different recipes (avoiding the large bucket of hot water), and came out with a recipe I liked, and a good sense of what brioche is.

October was a lesson in pumpkin. I used different varieties of pumpkins, and tested different methods of extracting the flesh. I Peeled the pumpkins, didn't peel them, cut them small, quartered them, blanched them, steamed them, roasted them, salted the water, and didn't, put them through the food mill, put them in the robot coup, strained it, and finally froze it. I came up with a useful method. It became obvious that you want to invest as little time and labor into the laborious process as possible. Peeling was an unnecessary waste of 30 minutes when you could remove the cooked flesh from the peel in a matter of minutes. Blanching took half the time of roasting and cooked twice the amount of pumpkin as steaming. And finally, freezing. The freezing seperates the pumpkin from much of the water that it holds. Upon thawing, up to 20 percent water by volume was extracted. It made it very creamy.

This month I am delving into Choux pastry. It's a fascinating little dough that I am saving for an upcoming post.

My fascination with each daily discovery often reminds me of how much I don't know. But it's also a glimpse of how much is out there for me to learn. Safely said, I am at the begining of a life time of discovery that is in store for me. And I have a blog to share my discoveries with the world. (Or at least my sister.)

Holiday Eats

2005-11-28T19:32:00.000-08:00

As we all know, it's the middle of the season of holiday dinners. Thanksgiving has passed with 2 dinners on my part. Christmas parties, friendly dinners, company parties are soon to come with one last blow out on New Years Eve.

As my cooking career began and the restaurants filled up for the holidays, my desire to bake christmas cookies, make 3 different nut brittles for gifts, bake the desserts on thanksgiving, and do things like hollow out grapes and stuff them with goat cheese for holiday parties dwindled. Dwindled? Well, left me completely.

But I do love to read about it still. I have poured over the Martha Stewart holiday cookie magazine dreaming of the cookies I'd make if I had time (or a kitchen at home!), and drooled over holiday dinner plans in cooking magazines.

My favorite is The Blasphemist's Christmas printed in New York Magazine. Wylie Dufrane's meal plan gives the same twisted whimsy to christmas dinner as Tim Burton gave to the holiday in "A nightmare before Christmas". I loved his interpretation of the classic Lamb and mint jelly in which he crusts the lamb rack in crushed candy canes.

In the same magazine is featured The Perfectionists Thanksgiving by Thomas Keller. Good old Tom pulled the legs off the turkey and filled them with Foie Gras. And a traditionalists thanksgiving dinner by Dan Barber of Blue Hill. And to round the season out is the Hedonists Brunch for new years day.

I'll be teaching another class this december. This time the theme is miniature desserts for your holiday parties. The description of me is still uncomfortably flattering, but at least I am not described as a "dessert diva".

I may not have time to fill my friends and family with holiday sweets, but I do have a restaurant menu to play with!

Death by 25

2005-11-18T23:26:00.000-08:00

A morbid title, I know. Dramatic, who me?? And since I have (barely) passed the age by 25 you can rest at ease. The title plays on a previous post I wrote called "Death by Fat Duck" which toyed with the sheer exhaustion I felt after my 5th week of the rigorous schedule.

This time the cause of death is a promotion called "25 for 25." The exhaustion comes after 3 weeks of trying to keep up with 70 dessert orders a night.

After working through the first week of the promotion I arrived to work from weekend and realized that everything from the dessert menu was gone. EVERYTHING!!! There was hardly a scrap of dough, a lick of ice cream base, a crumb of cookie to start with. When I saw Amy I exclaimed, "They've eaten me out of house and home!!"

I began my day by writing the prep list, which was cause for laughter as it contained every step of every dessert on my menu. I titled it, "How to make everything from nothing.... in 6 hours."

Then the frenzy began.

It was all I could do to get things ready for service. At one point James encouraged diners to have the lemon tart thinking it would give me the most relief. He laughed when he saw me look at the ticket and run. I returned with the components to begin filling lemon tarts to order.

The rest of the week was spent sacrificing days off, prepping like mad, and finally giving in to the overwhelming insanity that is 25 for 25. Since then I haven't had time to blink, let alone blog, or develop new menu items properly. The bright side of this story (aside from it's time limit) is the refinement that can come with this kind of repetition.

December will bring the usual holiday rush to the restaurant, but will be nothing short of relief after this November.

25 for 25

2005-10-30T20:30:00.000-08:00

Each year the Seattle dining community is treated to a promotion called "25 for 25". This involves 25 restaurants featuring a 3 course dinner for 25 dollars. The promotion is available sunday through thursday and is well worth a weekday evening.

Many in the restaurant industry mock it, but the dining community loves it. The affordability of the menu tempts diners, introducing them to restaurants they haven't had a chance to try yet. They are able to experience the restaurant or chef at it's best, trying a starter, a main course, and getting a taste of the pastry chef's creations too as dessert is included.

Eva will be participating for the first time. This also marks the first time I have participated in this event. So what does this mean to me? It means to me that all the diners choosing the menu will have dessert. Lots of dessert.

The dessert menu for Eva is fairly current, but abbreviated. So I will expand on my menu here!

Autumn Fruit Crisp...... This is a crisp made from apples, pears, and quince. The fruit was roasted to bring out the individual flavors, then tossed with honey and a hint of cinnamon before being covered with an brown butter oat strussel. The quince brings a flavor of distinction to the richness of the pears and tartness of the apples. It is served warm with a scoop of soft brown sugar ice cream.

Frozen Honey Parfait with Darjeeling Tea Poached Pears and Honey-Kissed Lavender Shortbread..... This parfait is made with just 4 ingredients; honey, vanilla bean, egg yolks, and whipped cream. The clarity and focus of the honey is brought out by the vanilla seeds. The texture is light, creamy, and delicate. It is served with Bosc pears that have been poached in Darjeeling tea, and two lavender shortbread cookies that were baked with an indentation on the top. This small crater is filled with a tiny pool of wildflower honey just before serving.

Dark Chocolate Tart with Caramel Pecans and Chocolate Whipped Cream....... (the focus of my previous post) A rich almond and cocoa sable crust is filled with deep chocolate ganache and crowned with caramel coated pecans. Along side is a light creamy chocolate whipped cream.

Pumpkin Cheesecake with maple CremeFraiche and Roasted Pepitos......A thick dense cheesecake that highlights the Long Island cheese wheel Pumpkin. This pumpkin is thicker, more orange in color, and holds more flavor than a sugar pumpkin. The crust uses crushed gingersnaps that are made with a hefty dose of molasses and 4 inches of fresh ginger. Atop this cheesecake is whipped maple creme fraiche. Pepitos, a large shelled pumpkin seed popular in Mexico, have been made into a brittle. Fresh nutmeg is grated over the pepitos while still warm so it adheres.

Lemon Cream Tart with Wild Cascade Mountian Huckleberry Sauce...... This lemon tart is filled with a lemon cream rather than curd. No cream is added, rather the method incorporates ingredients in a manner that creates a creamy thick texture. It is set inside a pate sucre (or what I call my "perfect plain jane tart dough) that is enhanced with the juice and zest of a lemon. In the class I just taught we discussed that a perfect lemon tart rarely needs much garnish. So I limited this to one simple accompaniment, a wild huckleberry sauce that is sweet, robust, and a vivid purple.

Aged Sardinian Goat Cheese Pannacotta with Hand Made Crackers and Wildflower Honey.....For those who prefer a cheese course to a dessert, I offer a savory pannacotta. This is a delicately rich pannacotta made of Panteleo, a sardinian goat cheese, creme fraiche, and cream. The cheese is hard and aged for a year, the taste is a bit salty, but very nutty. The two different hand made crackers are a tender flaky aniseeed cracker and a crisp cinnamon cornmeal cracker that shatters on your teeth. Wildflower honey is drizzled to order adding the ever appealing sweetness that cheese loves.

I have made my reservations at Yarrow Bay Grill. I am excited to see pastry chef Jessica Campbell's offerings, and Amy speaks highly of the chef Vicky McCaffrey's talent. The pair opened the Waterfront. I had the opportunity to eat there the first week it was opened as my father built the structure (the old real world Seattle pier!). It was the first time I had seen a dessert menu with such creativity and passion. I was awed by the chai tea souffle cake and the petit four plate.

I remember looking at the dessert menu, seeing a girls name at the bottom, and thinking to myself, I am going to have my name on a menu someday.

The Darker Side of Pecan

2005-10-28T21:40:00.000-07:00

I just discovered that I am a week late for Sugar high friday. I thought it was the last friday of the month and have been saving this prepared post for the big day. Well, better late than never. The theme this month is "the dark side" refering to chocolate.

I chose to twist a pecan pie, turn it dark so to speak. The best part of the pecan pie, the sugary caramel wrapped pecans were preserved. Rather than filling a pie they crown a deep chocolate tart.

The base of this tart is a sable crust rich with ground almonds and dark with the bitter quality of cocoa powder. The chocolate in the filling is treated simply as a ganache ballanced with just enough cream and butter to hold it still at room temperature. It is truly like eating about 12 chocolate truffles all at once.

The pecans are toasted to bring out their sweet, almost maple notes. While still warm, they are rolled in a deep amber caramel just after the cream is stirred into the caremelized sugar. As the caramel comes down to room temp, it is stirred occasionally, bathing the pecans. The lustered pecans are spooned on top of the tart when it is firm enough to hold their weight.

Along side is none other than more chocolate, but in a very light creamy presentation of the flavor. An oval quenelle of chocolate whipped cream sits aside the tart. To make this melted chocolate is added with a little sugar to scalded cream then let to chill over night. It whips faster and denser than plain jane whipped cream with a texture that is velvety. It might as well be a mousse if you ask me.

So what began as a pecan pie became a presentation of 3 moods of dark chocolate; The bitterness of the cocoa in the crust, the ultra rich ganache, and the light creamy chocolate whipped cream.

Guest Chef Night at Fare Start

2005-10-21T18:34:00.000-07:00

This past thursday Amy McCray, the chef I work with, and I had the good fortune of working with the students and volunteers at Fare Start. Amy, the guest chef of the evening, featured a truly "Eva" menu highlighting locally produced Cameo Apples, hazelnuts, pears, pork, and oregon blue cheese. For dessert I provided the deep chocolate rice pudding with caramelized rice crispies. This was one of my first experiences with large quantity cooking. The fare start kitchen puts out 1200 meals a day to various shelters and their own dining room. While this dinner for 250 was HUGE for me, it was a light lunch to them.

Amy and I had an amazing time working with a great group of people. The students were enthusiastic, energetic, and worked very hard to achive the successful evening we had. Along side the students were volunteers who give their time and experience to make these evenings happen.

I thought I'd share the photo's I took of the fun evening.

Boris, the head chef instructor, filling the giant steam kettle. This kettle must hold 8 cases of potatoes at a time, maybe more!

Me cooking the rice pudding. This is one of two giant pots made for the evening.

Amy happily working with the giant tilting skillet. She talked about this tilting skillet for weeks before the event. In fact, I might not be too far off if I say she plans her fare start menu's so she can make use of the tilting skillet.

How many pigs do you think are in here? Well, technically it's only the shoulders. Amy's braised pork was absloutely delicious and was served with country mash, braised greens, roasted pears, and a warm Neuske bacon dressing.

Me and the biggest ladle I have ever seen. What you dont see is Nance and Korina laughing at me with the big ladle. Someone likened my rice puddng to refried beans. I imagine it has something to to with the immense amount of steaming rice pudding in the pots. Russell once said something like, "bowl full of mac and cheese, good. Garbage can full of mac and cheese, gross." I think these two huge pots full to the brim diminished the appetizing quality of the pudding. So much that someone thought it looked like refried beans!

Phillip mashing potatoes. Amy, much to my delight, leaves the skins on the red potatoes for a "country" mash. The skins have all the flavor and texture in my opinion.

Phillip asks "what can brown do for me?" The UPS executives provided the dining room with waiters for the evening, and happily gave an apron to Phillip who's last name happens to be Brown.

Our very tallented volunteer Nance caramelizing the rice crispies for the dessert. Nance's years of culinary experience and friendly banter were welcomed by all. She did abandon her hat after seeing that I wasn't wearing one myself. Nance had such a distaste for this hat that I found it under a table after she left!

Fare Start

2005-10-14T21:15:00.000-07:00

Fare Start is a program many of us in Seattle (and beyond) are familiar with. This program not only feeds many disadvantaged adults, but strives to re-educate them with culinary careers. Doesn't the saying go....You can catch a man a fish and he will eat for a day, you can teach a man to fish and he will never go hungry?

The most public side of Fare Start is the guest chef dinners held on Thursdays. Leading chef's around the city donate their time and the food for the evening. They plan a 3 course menu, teach the students in the program how to prepare it, and execute the it along side them. 200 or more guests make a 20 dollar donation to the program and are treated to an inspired 3 course meal.

This coming Thursday the guest chef is Amy McCray of Eva. At her side is none other than her trusty pastry chef.....Me!!!

Our menu has been planned and we are gearing up for the fun night. We were paired with McCrea winery and have been sold out for about a month. In fact, we are over sold and are expecting 243 guests.

I am very excited to be able to participate in such an incredible program.

Nutella Nanaimo Bars

2005-10-14T19:57:00.000-07:00

A recent post about regional food brought about a colision of thoughts. While thinking about the Nanaimo Bars I had been writing about, Russell commented that he had never tried Nutella. Why don't I pick some up when I go to the grocery store for Nanaimo Bar ingredients? Nutella, Nanaimo. Nutella, Nanaimo. Nutella Nanaimo Bars!!

The recipe lended itself perfectly to the variation. The base of this Canadian dessert is traditionally a mixture of graham cracker crumbs, coconut, and walnuts bound with an emulsion of butter, sugar, chocolate, and egg. The filling is traditionally (ugh) butter, a whole lot of powdered sugar, milk, and custard powder or vanilla pudding mix. The top layer is simply a thin spread of chocolate.

My variation substituted a cup of nutella for half of the powdered sugar, and I added roasted hazelnuts instead of the walnuts. The hazelnuts left in large chunks added texture and a delicious depth of flavor. By substituting nutella for half the sugar, the filling was not as sugary sweet, and of course, tasted of Nutella. (Who can argue with that?)

Libby remembers the pans of Nanaimo Bars my grandmother used to make often. Libby remembers hating them. But I believe this is a Nanaimo bar even Libby could love. And if Libby looks closely at the picture, she will recognize the pan as the one grandma used to make the Nanaimo bars in. The inside is a deep grid of knife grooves from years of brownie and bar cutting.

The original recipe calls for graham cracker crumbs for the crust, but any cookie crumb of good flavor will do nicely. Perhaps the McVitties Digestives? Or Sable's?

Nutella Nanaimo Bars

9 by 13 inch baking dish, buttered lightly

1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup sugar
2 oz. dark chocolate
2 tbsp Nutella
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg, beaten
2 cups fine cookie crumbs
1 cup flaked coconut
1 cup roasted hazelnuts, broken into large pieces

2 tbsp instand vanilla pudding or custard powder
3 tbsp milk
1/2 cup butter, soft
1 cup nutella
1 cup powdered sugar

8 oz good chocolate

1. Cook the butter, sugar, 2 oz. chocolate, Nutella, and vanilla over a double boiler untill blended. Add the egg while stirring, and cook untill the mixture thickens a bit. This takes about 3 to 5 minutes.

2. Remove from heat, and mix in cookie crumbs, and coconut. The mixture will look a bit dry and crumbly. Evenly spread the crumbly mixture over the pan bottom. Sprinkle the hazelnuts evenly over the crumb mixture and press the mixture firmly with the back of a spoon, or the bottom of a glass. (I used the bottom of a measuring cup.) Chill for 30 minutes.

3. Cream the butter and nutella together untill smooth. Add the pudding powder and the milk to the butter and mix untill smooth. Fold in the powdered sugar, and then beat the mixture untill smooth and light.

4. Spread the nutella cream over the base evenly. Chill for 30 minutes.

5. Melt the chocolate and spread evenly over the nutella cream layer. (It is nice to have a thinner layer of chocolate so the teeth can break through it without expelling all the cream out the sides of the bar.)

6. Chill for 10 minutes, untill chocolate is just set. Score the chocolate in desired portions for ease in cutting later. Return to the fridge and let chocolate set up completely.

Tom on TV

2005-10-12T19:55:00.000-07:00

I rubbed my eyes in disbelief as I read Culinary Fools posting today. But there it is, the inevitable. Tom Douglas is going to be on the iron chef.

The show will air on Sunday November 6th, with a gala event held at the Pallace
Ballroom. For a mere 95 dollars you can enjoy the dishes prepared for the filmed program. The ingredient is, what else, salmon.

Do you think he'll rub-with-love his way to the winners circle??

Local Yokel

2005-10-12T12:30:00.000-07:00

I grew up north of and still live in Seattle. My culinary education began in the pacific northwest, from a grandmother also raised in the state. It's safe to say that almost my entire life has been spent with the food of this region. My great grandma was a cattle rancher in eastern Washington, during the days when you still drove the cows through the mountains to pasture each year. My grandma Eva, her daughter, was the cook of the house, and eventually became the first college educated in the family with a degree in home economics. My youth was filled with old fashion cooking from the pacific northwest. So I can safely say I am a Local Yokel.

Recently I was invited to share my insight with a man writing a book on the subject of regional specialties. The book is titled Eat This, and will be published by HarperCollins in 2006. The Author, Ian Jackman describes his book, "It's about old-fashioned regional American food and the best stuff we can still find round the country when everywhere has the same restaurant chains and low-level paranoia about eating."

I spent the last couple of weeks grilling everyone I knew for other insight. Today I sent my list of specialties off, and thought I would share them with everyone.

Huckleberries

A regional flavor that haunts my childhood memories is that of Wild huckleberries. These dark cousins of the blueberry, also called Bilberry, have an intense flavor all their own, and great staining power. They grow wild through out eastern Washington. The only source our restaurant uses for them is a forager who will pick them while mushroom hunting. Other than that, there is a gas station in Trout Lake that sells them by the gallon that my dad likes.

My family would take a yearly camping trip the week before school started to a place on the Yakima reservation we called Huckleberry hill. There we would ride horses, run wild, and of course, pick huckleberries. The berries became breakfast every morning cooked into pancakes over the campfire. When we got home, berries in tow, jam was made, and the huckleberry pies began to come. The pie is best with a hint of lemon, cinnamon, and a binding starch to thicken the immense amount of juices the berries release. A reserve of berries was allays frozen to ensure the thanksgiving table would have a pie or two, but about half of them would end up on top of vanilla ice cream before the big day. As a pastry chef I have put them on my own dessert menu in mauve colored ice creams, cobblers, a shortcake, and my favorite, a huckleberry cheesecake topped with white chocolate. A regional specialty for these tart berries is a huckleberry buckle. My family from the east coast searches out the buckle on visits. ( I think they like the name as much as the flavor)

Nanaimo Bars

This rich dessert was made by my grandmother often as they are one of my fathers favorites. They are a chocolate and cream layer thing, not a brownie, not even baked. They originated in a town in British Columbia called Nanaimo. There they began to surface in ladies community cookbooks around 1953, and in the shops shortly after around 1955. I just saw these Canadian treats as far south as a tiny mountain coffee shop in a little town called Mill City. Mill City is where my own sweetie, Russell grew up, in the Santiam canyon on the way to Bend, Oregon. This very cute little coffee shop, Rosie's, sold the original Nanaimo bar and a peanut butter variation which I had never seen before. Further research provided many variations, all of which looked promising.

Smoked Salmon

It's no secret that the pacific northwest's coastal regions are known for the salmon that run through them. One of my first vivid child hood memories is in Seattles Ballard Locks, standing in front of the windows that expose the fish ladder watching these magnificent creatures fight their way up stream.

Each year my father and uncle would spend long weekend days fishing, and occasionally they would bring home a salmon. My father would call from the marina and my mother would set up the little chief home smoker. She would prepare a brine for the salmon that used a lot of brown sugar as I remember. The fish would spend around 4 hours out of the water before it made its way into the brine. The next day it was in the smoker on our front porch, the alder chips changed frequently by my mother. My favorite use of this was my mothers smoked salmon spread. She would mix the smoked salmon with cream cheese and a hint of horse radish, lemon juice, and chopped herbs. It was such a hit with our friends and family that one woman asked for this spread as her wedding gift!

Wapati

Wapati is the Shawnee word for the American Elk, a large greyish brown deer that roam the mountains of the pacific northwest. My dad's side of the family is largely of the Yakima Nation, and they would hunt for elk each fall. From them we would receive Elk meat. The steaks are a bit tough, but with a lot of flavor. My mom liked to use it for stew. The slaughter house my cousins took their Elk to also made Elk pepperoni sticks. My sisters and I went crazy for the elkaroni sticks!

Olympia Oysters

The Puget sound is a large oyster producing area, the favorite being the petit Olympia oyster. These silver dollar sized mollusk crops are maintained and harvested in the Hood canal, and in the Puget Sound down around Olympia. Around the Pacific Northwest these little gems turn up in oyster bars and on menus often, and are a favorite for oyster lovers.

In San Fransisco, they became part of a dish called Hangtown Fry which consists of scrambled eggs and oysters. Legend tells us it was a condemned man asking for the three most expensive things in San Fransisco to be made into his last meal. As it was the gold rush era, those ingredients were eggs, bacon, and oysters. Other stories compete for the origin of Hangtown fry, but the ingredients remain the same. I don't know that I would ever want to eat an oyster omelet

Hazelnuts

Hazelnuts, or Filberts are also a large regional specialty, hailing from Oregon. My first taste of Hazelnut was not in a regional dish, but from a jar of Nutella my sister brought from Germany. Since then, this "ageless nut" as I have seen it called, has fast become one of my favorite flavors.

I have recently been introduced to very nice Hazelnuts from a farm called Holmquist Orchards. These hazelnuts have a very delicate edible skin rather than the fibrous paper that usually envelopes the nut.

Hot for Teacher

2005-10-02T11:30:00.000-07:00

As cooks move up the pecking order in the kitchen learning new skills, they quickly learn how to teach. The hole a cook leaves behind is immediatley filled with someone less experienced, and it is the ascending cooks job to train their successor. With the constant flux of cooks coming and going from kitchens, a chef can develop very efficient training methods. They learn to pass months worth of lessons to a new cook within a few days. The best of them posses the patients to let the students learn and make mistakes while holding rigid standards for them until they can carry said standards on their own.

Over the past 3 years I have been consciously developing my teaching skills along side my cheffing skills. (How'd I do David?) This winter I will be put to the test. I will be instructing not a single student in the professional skills they want and need to succeed in a job, but teaching a classroom full of amateur enthusiasts a few things to play with.

A cooking school behind the U-Village has invited me to be a guest teacher. I have two classes lined up so far. The first is later this month, and is titled "Tricks from a pro". Amy said, "Pro's, they work at golf courses, right?" I don't know that I have that many tricks up my sleeve, but I do have some insight and a few recent discoveries that I am excited to share.

The curriculum will include a tart dough that uses an old Austrian trick of hard boiling the yolks before adding them to the mix. This allows for more handling while rolling and shaping. The moisture in raw yolks reacts with the protiens in the flour and builds gluten chains while working the dough. Gluten chains may build a nice sturdy loaf of bread, but they make for a tough tart dough. This "trick" creates a melt in your mouth tenderness.

The second "trick" is a lemon curd with a variation on the texture. The curd is made by standard methods until the last step. The final step traditionally is mounting the hot curd with butter which melts in as it is stirred and leaves a translucent, thick, viscous dessert. With this method the hot curd is poured in a blender, and let to sit 5 minutes, or until the temperature drops below 140. Then the butter is added 4 pieces at a time as the blender spins. The butter doesn't separate or melt and the result is an incredible creamy opaque texture with more structure than a traditional curd.

The second class is scheduled for December. The curriculum is not set yet, but the theme is miniature desserts for your holiday party. A class about tiny cute things? I am so there.

The classes are held at Cooks World cooking school. The description of me is enough to make me blush. But this new challenge should prove exciting and a great learning experience for me.

Other Peoples Restaurants

2005-09-26T18:28:00.000-07:00

These past few weeks I have been fortunate to partake in other peoples restaurants. Here are a few things I ate.

First I ate at Cafe Juanita with my old friend Mike. Mike travels up from San Francisco from time to time and we often share a meal. He joined me at Cafe Juanita for a very nice meal.

Here Mike is enjoying his dinner, the dry aged rib eye with a healthy portion of gorgonzola on the top.

This is one of the two starters we ordered. It is seared foie gras with a very nice addition of cocoa nibs on the top. It is nested in warm nectarines. The heating of the nectarines mellowed out their flavor making them subtle and luxurious.

This dish, hard to see as it is, is the braised rabbit. The rabbit leg is boned, and stuffed with an olive stuffing, wrapped in panchetta, and braised in Arneis. Along side is a crepe made of chickpeas and Liguarian olive oil. There are chanterelles all around in a very rich, buttery, creamy sauce made from the braising stock. And the breast of the rabbit, as tiny as it is, flanks the dish.

This is another starter we ordered of Octopus, a chickpea puree, fennell, and a green sauce. I don't remember what the green sauce was, honestly I was too taken with the Foie Gras at the time. I hadn't tasted Foie Gras since the Fat Duck and was having a moment with myself.

Market Street Grill

Russell and I ate again at the Market Street Grill not too long ago.

Here is the roasted chicken that Russell often orders while dining out. He was a vegetarian when he met me, so he rarely does meat. When he does choose meat, it is mostly just chicken or fish. So we have sampled a few different roasted chickens from a few different restaurants. This one impressed me more than any others for presentation and flavor. The petite chicken half sits atop very tender braised chard and a perfect square of potato gratain.

Here is a simple dessert of warm lemon yogurt cake with blueberry compote and vanilla icecream

And this is the crown for the dining out. The plate is Boudin Blanc, potato puree, watercress salads, and a brown butter balsamic sauce. The Boudin Blanc is a sausage made of veal, bread, egg, and cream. The texture was almost like a pudding.

Snap Crackle Pop

2005-09-18T00:17:00.000-07:00

My friend Amanda acquired a purse two years ago. Not just any purse. To the naked eye, this purse was a Prada. Amanda toted this purse as though it was Prada. One day in the grocery store, I was pushed out of my spot in the checkout line to hear the words..."Excuse me! Prada coming through!" But alas, no matter how she flaunted it, how she loved it, the label would allays read Prado. And it wasn't at an upscale boutique, but rather a duty free stall (or the trunk of someone's car) in the Virgin Islands that this purse came from. Most likely sitting next to the Goaches, the Fendy's, and the Cucchi's.

There is a dessert on my menu right now that reminds me of Amanda and her Prada.

The dish is Dark Chocolate Rice Pudding with Caramelized Rice Crispies. Anyone with the Pierre Herme Chocolate cookbook will recognize this genius dish.

I made a dark chocolate rice pudding of my own recipe one day. I had tested several garnishes. I found adorable dishes remnicent of soda shops and ice cream parlors of days past. And as I was flipping through PH's book, there it was. The perfect garnish, staring back at me. I couldn't avoid it. I couldn't beat it. Caramelized rice crispies sitting atop his chocolate rice pudding.

So I did it. I followed the instructions, coating the cereal in boiled sugar, letting them cool, and then stirring them in small batches over heat until each one was individually coated in a thin caramel shell. They are like a grown up version of a rice crispie treat. All sugar, but crisp rather than gooey.

And then I put them on my rice pudding and set it to the menu. And I love it, with all my pastry heart. Deeply.

Pierre Herme is often compared to fashion designers, even presenting a yearly line of desserts as a designer would, the last dish always being a wedding cake. So it is not a stretch of the imagination to compare an imitation of his perfection to the imitation Prada that Amanda carried. Pierre Sherme. Pierre Hermet.

But rather than flaunt something that's not mine, I'll be the first to admit the origin of this garnish. It's not uncommon or wrong for one chef to be inspired by another. But it is shameful to pass it off as your own, telling people you invented it. So I guess I'll just have to be the first to thank this man for his inspiration, give credit where credit is due, and pay my respects with good execution.

An Incredible Feast....Part Two

2005-09-15T08:23:00.000-07:00

Here is the second half of the chef/farmer duo's that were featured in last sunday's Incredible Feast held at the West Seattle's farmers market. For a description of the event and the first half of these pairs, scroll down and see my last post.

CRUSH
Chef Jason Wilson is a relative new comer to the Seattle restaurant scene. While he had been spreading his talent through catering for a few years, his restaurant in an old vintage home in madison park just opened within the past year. The last menu I checked looked tempting with local huckleberries paired with foie gras. His partner for the event was a salty man appropriately named "Oyster Bill" who runs an outfit out of Shelton called Taylor Shellfish. What you see in the picture is a tomato basil gazpacho with a freshly shucked oyster slipped into the bottom. Consumed in one quick shot, the clean salty flavor of the oyster shined through the mildly acidic quality of the gazpacho. The program promised Crush to deliver an English pea and oyster soup with lovage which I had high hopes for. But this replacement left nothing to long for.

TULIO

Chef Walter Pisano of Tulio was paired with the only cheesemaker of the evening, Port Madison Farm. This farm crafts very nice goats milk cheeses along with yogurt. The cheese featured by Pisano was the goat cheese Brie. This was served on a thin slice of baguette toasted crisp and dotted with a sweet tomato jam to make what Pisano called a Bruschetta. Goats milk creates cheeses that are fresh, lean, and acidic which could be considered the opposite of a ripe triple cream Brie. Port Madison hit the mark with this Brie bringing the usual characteristics of cheve with an added richness that was delightful. And by changing the traditional fresh, zesty tomato garlic topping of bruschetta into a sweet, deep tomato jam, Pisano found a better partner for this cheese.

MARKET STREET GRILL

From a farm called Tiny's Organics came a peach with a big flavor. Chef Blake Caldwell who recently took the helm at Ballard restaurant Market Street grill brought with him a minimalistic, refined style. With Tiny's perfect peach, Blake created the simple, perfect Peach Salad with Mint and Cardamom Creme Fraiche. The peaches were sliced and tossed lightly with lemon juice, honey, and a chiffonade of fresh mint leaves. Over the top was drizzled the lean flavor of creme fraiche barely sweetened and scented with the unmistakable presence of cardamom. Blakes refined simplicity has never failed to excite me, and his treatment of a peach was no exception.

CHISO

The odd couple of the evening must have been Skagit River Ranch and sushi chef Taichi of Chiso in Fremont. Dare I say it? A surf and turf couple? But these two answered the age old question, "what happens when you give a sushi chef a steak?" To be truly accurate, it was organic ribeye steak from grass fed cows. The answer is Ribeye Steak Bites in Hayashi Demi Glaze over Steamed Rice. This was my father's favorite bite of the evening as he went back for seconds twice. Here he is smiling, his eyes saying, "good stew!"

MONSOON

A kitchen headed by siblings Eric and Sophie Bahn, Monsoon has been using pacific northwest ingredients to enhance their Vietnamese cuisine for 6 years. For this event they were paired with Tonnemaker Farms and given the chance to show off with Heirloom tomatoes. They used these tomatoes to create the other salad (Eva's being the first) with watercress, a sesame vinaigrette, and a topping of sweet crispy fried shallots.

FLYING FISH

Chef Christine Keff has been receiving over 50 percent of Flying Fish's produce from Whistling Train Farm for years now. (My friend Becca and I recieved 100 percent of our produce from the same little farm last year with a summer subscription.) Whistling Train strives not just to grow vegetables, but keeps chickens for eggs and eating, and raises pigs. Flying Fish took atvantage of whistling trains lemon basil leaves using them as a bed for a lemon basil vinaigrette covered seared scallop.

HARVEST VINE

The flamboyant chef Joseba Jimenez de Jimenez paired with Willie Greens to bring us a basque delight. He used Willies fresh seasonal beans in a salad with caramelized carrots and onions. These nested a hidden artichoke heart that was used to prop a crisp slice of serrano ham up like the feather on a fedora. Over this salad was a dressing made from spanish paprika and a finish of smoked seasalt hand delivered by the chef himself. The composition of the dish was as striking as the subtle and honest flavors.

ROVERS

Rovers, the restaurant that is proud to be the home of "the chef in the hat", was paired with Loki Fish. They were given use of wild coho salmon. With these amazing fish, the chef in the hat Thierry Raututeau prepared them on the rare side of medium rare with a coating of Moroccan Olive-Harissa Tapende. The fish from the chef in the hat was deliciously rich with the deep flavor of olives and the heat of harissa.

An Incredible Feast....Part One

2005-09-12T17:00:00.000-07:00

Each Sunday the West Seattle Junction is home to one of Seattles many farmers markets. Here those who till the earth, tend the livestock, harvest the seas and lakes, forage through the forests, collect the bees busywork, and craft cheeses bring their bounty to share with the public. Often those first in line as these markets open are the chefs who's restaurants are in the neighborhood. These chefs, knowing that outstanding cuisine starts with beautiful products, are eager to bring the fruits of these markets into their kitchens.

This special relationship between farmer and chef was celebrated this past Sunday evening in the west seattle farmers market. The first annual Farmers Market alliance diner, dubbed "An Incredible Feast" paired 18 of the city's chefs with farmers, foragers, ranchers, fishermen, and cheese makers. The farmer, or producer, donated one of their signature products, and the chef's in turn created a dish to feature both the farmer's jewel, and their own cuisine.

EVA

Amy McCray, the chef I work for at Eva was partnered with a farmer named Mai Cha. I have often patronized Mai's booth, but only for the bright bouquets of flowers that I cant leave the market with out. For this event it was Mai's Amaranth, or Chinese spinach, that Amy put to use. The leaf is a striking dark green with a spray of crimson running up the center vein. This leaf became the green in a country Greek salad called Horiatiki. Tossed with the amaranth was cherry tomatoes, red onion, small white lima beans, and Bulgarian sheeps milk feta in a simple olive oil and vinegar dressing. Amy invited me along to work, but let me run free half the time to taste, photograph, and mingle with other restaurants.

BRASA

Brasa chef Tamara Murphy took time out of her busy schedule not only to organize and host the event, but to work with a farmer as well. Here her team is plating Brasa's signature Roast Suckling pig with Anderson Farms Pluots. Pluots, a cross between an Apricot and a plum, bring the best of both their parents with the sweetness of the plum and the fragrant tartness of an Apricot. For this dish Murphy grills the pluot halves for just a few minutes and dresses them with balsamic vinegar and thyme. The flavor of the pluots was lean and intense, and a nice balance to the rich tender pork.

CASCADIA

My first glimpse of Cascadia chef Kerry Sear was outside the market as he zipped up in a bright yellow Mini Cooper painted with block letters spelling the word "Miniburgers." I guess this sweet ride is one of the perks of his job. Once inside he went to work preparing his dish of Mixed Shell Bean Ragout with Smoked Lamb Breast and Herb Salad. His partner was Gretchen Hoyt of Alm Hill Gardens who shared with us the shell beans.

SERAFINA

Chef John Neumark was lucky to partner with a Tonasket farm called Billy's. This luck brought him what must be the sweetest of the late season strawberries. He paired these beauties with a Moscato Zabiglione. Moscato, or Muscat, is a musky grape, often believed to be one of the first varieties to be cultivated. This grape is often used to make sweet dessert wines, like the Italian Moscato. Here this wine is used in a simple Italian preparation of Zabiglione, and dripped over the fragrant, sweet berries. The flavor of the Moscato was definitely NOT lost in the cooking process, leading one mother to pull a sample out of her child's hand, and me to reach for a second.

EARTH AND OCEAN

Earth and Ocean, the restaurant in the W Hotel was paired with Cliffside Orchards. An orchard in Kettle Falls, Cliffside shared a trio of fruits, cherries, peaches, and nectarines. It was the Pastry Chef Sue McCown that took on the challenge of three fruits. She made a virgin sangria with puree's of the three fruits, thinning the thick goodness to a drinkable consistency with a lemon verbena syrup. The results were so delicious I doubt a single sampler was aware of an alcoholic absence.

CAFE JUANITA

There is a young man named Jeremy Faber who roams the wild, collecting edibles and bringing them to restaurants and farmers markets. I first encountered him a few years ago as he brought mushrooms, and greens like wild sorrel leaves to Lampreia. Now he brings Huckleberries, mushrooms, and even large Columbia river salmon to the kitchen at Eva, and is one of Amy's favorite people. For this event he paired with Holly Smith of Cafe Juanita and provided her with chantrelles and huckleberries. She used these to create a dish of Moscovy Duck Breast, Chantrelles, and Huckleberries with a Sherry Syrup. The dish was such a hit that by the time I got through the line, the duck was gone. But the remaining chanterelles with huckleberries were delightful.

SAZERAC

I will admit I have never been given a reason to venture interest in the Hotel Monacoo's restaurant Sazarac. But after tasting Chef Jason McClures simple preparation of the Martin Family Orchards Peaches, I have one. The simplicity of the preparation showed Jasons willingness to step back his talents, and let the peach speak for itself. To me this shows humility, and respect for the food. It is far to easy to think you need to do more, featuring your skills over the flavor of a fruit, or food. This was not the case as Jason paired Perfectly Ripe Peaches with Arugula, Manchego, and Toasted Almonds. The flavor of the peach stood out remarkably while the spiciness of the arugula, the richness of the manchego, and the nutty flavor of the almonds set a layered and balanced backdrop. A reduction of balsamic drizzled over the top seemed to possess all these individual qualities, rich, tart, nutty, spicy, and sweet, and tied the dish together.

MADISON PARK CAFE

"Razzleberry?!? Who's ever heard of a Razzleberry?" I said in my best Veruca Salt voice as I was handed a cup of Razzleberry Tomato Gazpacho from the guys at Madison Park Cafe's booth. My comment was greeted with laughter and the statement, "I know, it does sound like some crazy Willy Wonka fruit!" But come to find out, Razzleberry is a heirloom tomato provided by Wade Benent at Rockridge Orchards. This Wonkaland tomato was turned into a gazpacho and playfully paired with an apple cider sorbet. The texture of the sorbet was nice with the chilled soup.

This covers about half of the restaurants that shared their talents, and has exhausted my time for the evening. Rather than strain to fit them all in I am opting to post the second half soon and give each the attention they deserve. Soon....

Ring-a-ding dong

2005-09-02T08:12:00.000-07:00

It's shameless, I admit. But I did it. I put a ding dong on my menu.

I'd say it was the kid in me, but my mom gave us rice crackers with peanut butter, fruit leather, and nori as snacks when we were kids. Perhaps it's the part of me that thrives on nostalgia, or the girl in me that loves all things cute that led to the campy hostess treats appearance on the menu this week.

This miniature vanilla cream filled devils food cake is covered in a rich chocolate glaze, and then decorated with white chocolate piping. And this isn't your run of the mill chocolate cake. The recipe uses 4 shots of espresso and a healthy dose of buttermilk. The filling is a rich vanilla buttercream rather than the crisco whipped with corn syrup that would mimic the commercial product. The resulting treat is moist, rich, and delicate.... Really a fork and knife affair rather than the hand held version that comes wrapped in foil.

Yes, I know I have decorated the ding dong with the traditional hostess cupcake garnish. And before the chocolate glaze is applied, the cake resembles a Suzy-Q more than a ding dong. So it's really a medley of Hostess treats all participating in this nostalgic delight.

The ding dong does not stand alone....

Instead, it is participating in the After School Snack. Eva has a slot on the dessert menu called "The Eva Trio". This is an unchanging frame for me to play with. As a tribute to the children's return to school, I chose to do a playful take on nostalgic treats of childhood.

On the left is obviously the ding dong in all it's glory. In the center are three tiny lemon bars. And on the right is the vanilla/orange creamsicle swirl ice cream that we used to eat out of those plastic cups with the tiny wooden spoon. (If only I could get my hands on the tiny wooden spoons.) Garnishing the plate is a "circus" of animal crackers.

I started off using a recipe meant to replicate the original Barnums Circus Animals that come in the little circus train car box with a string handle. The recipe used corn flour, which I liked. But the resulting flavor was that of, well, cardboard. So for now I have reverted to Pierre Herme's fragrant orange tart dough (very tender, very flavorful) while I develop a recipe that incorporates the corn flour.

This is a rather untraditional circus. But if you think of it as a Pacific Northwest Circus, then it works. Here we have the parade of animals being led on the right by my favorite character, the Moose. Behind him is a pony, a pig, a bunny, and an elephant. Since this photo was taken 3 more animals have joined my circus.... A chicken, a goat, and thanks to my mom, a salmon.

Amy and James recently entertained their two nephews who offered help in researching this plate. They did however inform us that Animal Crackers are not snack to be had after school, rather, you eat them during school.

So after the grown ups send the little ones off to school with lunch sacks full of goodies, they can come in and enjoy a few of their own.

Berry good

2005-08-26T22:46:00.000-07:00

As the summer days grow warmer, the berries grow in abundance.

First come the strawberries, sun ripened and too delicate to transport. But no bother, we can keep them right here, and enjoy their sugary sweet goodness while they last. Then as the days are at their longest, the raspberries begin to become fragrant on the vine. Delicate and perfumed, they have a touch of elegance. Blackberries enter the scene when the warm august days linger and an evening walk along almost any neighborhood road can become a picking opportunity. They are deep, almost musty, but taste so good that the stains their dark juices leave on fingers and mouths are quickly overlooked. Labor day brings two tiny cousins to us, the blueberry and the huckleberry. These are sometimes mistaken for each other, but vastly different flavors distinguish the two. The blueberry is sweet, delicate, with a tender skin and very few seeds. The Huckleberry has a bold flavor that hits loud sweet and sour notes, has exactly 10 seeds inside, and a thicker skin that offers just enough resistance for each berry to burst between the teeth.

Here are two summer berry desserts that were used to showcase these summer delights.

First was on the menu in late July when the second cycle or strawberries came, raspberries were perfect, and the first blackberries were ripening in the long summer days. The there berries are left intact and piled on top of a lemon cream tart. The filling is made of a basic lemon curd with a twist on the method. Lemon curd is commonly made with plenty of butter, often added at the end to a hot lemon-egg-sugar mix whisked over a bain marie until thick. The butter melts while it is whisked in, leaving a glossy, translucent curd. This curd is cooled to 140 degrees before it is mounted with the butter. The butter is added slowly while the curd spins in a blender. After all the butter is incorporated, the blender is left to run for 5 minutes. This creates a texture that is creamy, light, and very delicate while the flavor is unchanged. The sauce underneath was an ever changing mix of berry puree's depending on availability.

The second dessert was the market menu feature last week, a "Rainbow-berry" sorbet. This was a sorbet terrine featuring the last of the seasons strawberries and raspberries, and the first of the seasons huckleberries. The sorbets were intense representations of the berries they came from. Sweetened just enough to let the berry flavors scream through, each berries individual characteristics were allowed to shine. To garnish the sorbets, we took a miniature version of a dessert that is commonly associated with berries, the shortcake. To the side is a little buttermilk shortcake filled with dense vanilla whipped cream, and scattered across the plate are fresh blueberries, strawberries, and blackberries. Nothing compliments berries like more berries!

September is coming, the kids are going back to school, and I am excited for the prospect of autumn fruits like apples, pears, and plums. But before I can invite them into my kitchen, I had to say this proper good bye to the berries. Until next year.......

All About Nectarines

2005-08-19T18:41:00.000-07:00

I should properly title my menu "all about nectarines" this week. Merv, our restaurants wonderful friend from Yakima arrives weekly with boxes of corn picked that morning, peaches ripened on the tree, perfumed melons, and even the zucchini that won him a ribbon at the fair. This past week he has brought two boxes of perfect nectarines along with the peaches I had ordered. So use them I must, even if that means a menu that tips the balance I try to preserve with 3 featured nectarine items.

The first is the buttermilk panna cotta with a fresh compote of nnectarines, peaches, little wild strawberries, and little lemon cookies. The panna cotta is sweet and lean, and has what Gordon Ramsey calls a "sexy wobble". This makes the texture light and delicate. The word compote brings cooked fruit to mind for me, but in this case, the fruit is macerated in a syrah syrup. This adds a very subtle spicy undertone to the fruit while leaving all the intensity of the tree ripe flavor. The pale pink syrup is brushed on the plate first to resemble a water color. There was no way to contain the syrup from running out of the compote, so I just went with it, "washing" the plate with it.

The second dessert is a frozen nectarine parfait. The nectarine looses much of it's intensity when pureed, becoming a more subtle, palatable version of the fire works that a bite of fresh nectarine dispatches in your mouth. So this moderate flavor is added to a soft rich frozen parfait. It is a very delicate presentation of flavor. The top is spread with a fan of very thin sliced nectarine. The flavor is all that a nectarine should be, adding a contrast to the more subtle parfait. A quenelle of whipped creme fraiche flavored with almond is placed next to it, and crisp sweet almond cookies add texture. The cookie is made from a dough intended to be the crust of a linzer tart. It is spiced lightly with cinnamon and rum. The texture is amazingly tender due to an old Austrain trick of hard boiling the eggs before incorporating them to the dough.

The third dessert is Clafouti. This menu spot was being filled by a peach cobbler which I was running out of nightly. While the word "cobbler" was a hot seller, the topping I was using was not ideal for the delicate texture and flavor of the fruit. I tested a few different styles of topping finally drawing back to a dish we used to make at Lampreia. This is the ultimate refinement of the cobbler, fitting for Chef Carsberg whose style is pure, minimalistic, and entirely focused on flavor. The batter something like a sponge cake folded with whipped cream, spread on top of the fruit, and baked to rise above the fruit. The texture is as delicate as the flavor, and truly lets the nectarines shine from below. The fruit is sliced thin like leaves, and tossed with just a little sugar to bring out the juices which then reduce and condense during the baking process. This is served strait from the oven with a scoop of plain-jane vanilla ice cream, which melts just a little by the time it gets to the table.

This offers 3 different moods of the nectarine. The panna cotta is lean, fresh, spicy, and clean. The parfait fills the role of my frozen dessert, showing a softer, more luxurious side to the fruit. And the clafouti is my only hot dessert which is warm, comforting, and very familiar.

Seasons will change, and the abundance of anything fresh will dwindle. Feast or famine, so they say.

Taste Tea

2005-08-08T18:58:00.000-07:00

I read all these fun blogging posts in which a theme is given by one blog to the other blogs, and then on one day, they all blog on said theme. I have never caught on early enough to play along. There is some current flowing through the sea of blogs, and I am still wading on the shore. But none the less, I am inspired to share my thoughts on the most recent of these themes....Taste Tea.

Summer isn't summer for me without the Arnold Palmer. This tributary drink, a blend of half iced tea, half lemonade, was said to be the golfers favorite beverage. I was first introduced to it while working at Rays Drive in.

Rays Drive in was a hold over from the 50's type burger stand with hand made fish and chips, huge cheese burgers with names like "the double double", hand cut fries, thick milk shakes in a rainbow of colors, and one of the last sources for a real green river soda. The crew was composed of my high school friends, and my sister libby and her group of friends. Nostalgia screams from those memories for all of us.

We allways had pitchers of iced tea and lemonade side by side in the reach in cooler. And as the temperature outside hit 80, the temperature inside that little shack hit 110. Nothing tasted better than the mixing of those two classic summer beverages in that heat. And since, nothing has quenched my summer thirst like an Arnold Palmer.

The recipe is simple. One part cold brewed black tea, one part lemonade.

There is no need to sweeten the tea, the lemonade takes care of that. Brewing tea without boiling water, or sun tea, is not an uncommon method to extract the flavor from the leaves. The reason this is a preferable method for brewing, is that it produces a cleaner flavor. Tea contains tannins like so many things, and in the heat of the boiling water, these tannins are released creating a bitter flavor. Through a slower infusion, these tannins are diminished. A little lesson from Hestons Atomic Kitchen.

So as I sit in this little mother in law apartment that is allways hotter inside than outside, I quench my thirst just as I learned to do so many years ago..... with the help of Arnold Palmer.

The V-word

2005-08-02T08:57:00.000-07:00

My sister lives with them, Theis HATES them, and the donut shop across the street from my restaurant is run by them. VEGANS.

Last month, I was invited to share the first meal my sister cooked for the co-op she lived in. It was there, over a bowl of beet soup, that I managed to make a grown man wince and shift uncomfortably. I was sharing a story of butchering whole pidgons and how sometimes when you'd chop off the head there would still be bird feed in the throat. This is when my sister so kindly informs me, "um, Dana, you know this is a vegan house?" I looked up to sharp glances and decided I would save the pigs head terrine story for later. Since that day the V-word has been coming up constantly.

The best thing to come of this recurrance is Mighty-O, the vegan donut shop across from my work. A donut snob I recently spoke to scorned the chewy texture caused by the soy flour, the greasy crunchy outside, and worst of all, the palm kernal oil they are fried in. But I am coming out of the closet here, I LOVE these vegan donuts for just those reasons. Maybe it is that I havent had a donut in 2 years...... but I might have to give into the fact that i prefer the vegan option here.

When I asked the girl at the counter what made their vegan donuts different from the way a regular donut was made, she gave me a pained look and said, "uh... they are made without using any animal products." The "Duh" was implied...... I said, "yes, I understand what vegan means..." A book on the counter told me that a soy flour was used to replace the texture given by eggs, and that palm kernal oil was used for the cooking instead of an animal based one. Beyond that, I may never know more. But I will be back for another french toast donut with maple frosting and chopped peanuts, or a selection of cuties like these.

Family Meal

2005-08-02T08:09:00.000-07:00

A few months ago a family meal would have found me on picknick benches on a patio out back of a kitchen, surrounded by other cooks all scarfing down their dinners, stretching the 15 minutes away from their stations to its fullest. And after 16 hours a day in a place far away from anything familiar, the bonds between cooks do grow to a kind of "family".

But this sunday family meal meant for me just that. My family. To celebrate nothing more than my mother herself, her 2 brothers and one sister visited seattle and we shared a meal at the restaurant I work at. This meal stretched into 3 hours with laughter and stories of my moms youth in New Jersey.

From left is my mom herself, Aunt Mary, Auntie Ellen, Diane, becca, her BOY friend Jared, then across the table in the back is uncle bill, my dad, Russell, me, and uncle tom. The 2 missing faces are those of my sisters Sarah and Libby. Libby is living a euro-life in germany, and we were sorry to have missed her. Sarah was there for a little while but had to leave early for a 9 pm appointment. What kind of appointment takes place at 9 at night? Duh, a tattoo.....

Leaving the comraderie i felt with those other cooks was very difficult. But I came home to family.

It's all in the presentation

2005-08-01T08:27:00.000-07:00

I had a rough day saturday. It seemed that I was going to be forced to surrender to the day when Russell suprised me with a home made meal. My favorite cheese, some hummous, and crackers. And when I saw the trouble he went to with the plate presentation i could do nothing but smile at his sweetness, and let a little cheer into my day.

"When you use foods that are all the same color, it is difficult. That's why I chose the colorful plate." Said the chef of the night on his mind set going into this plate.

The sentiment and smile this was served with make it a 3 star meal for me.

refined

2005-07-31T08:42:00.000-07:00

Do you ever look at an old picture of yourself, and laugh while remarking, "i thought i was looking good..." Maybe it was the old "Racheal" from friends hair cut, or a old torn flannel that smelled of teen spirit.

For me this often comes from pictures of plates I have done. So every time I look at my blog there sits one of those pictures.... The moon rock looking pizza thing of apricots and cheesecake. I only made it once, (twice) before the obvious refinement was clear. While it looked clownish, it had a lot of potential flavor wise. Here the cheese cake is baked in the bottom. After this is chilled, a layer of pureed apricot is set on top. Not only is the presentation much better, but i was better able to controll the flavor of the apricots. The poached apricots never addopted enough sweetness from their liquid, so here I am able to ballance their natural acidity with sugar. And for depth I added, of course, the flavor of their pits.

So this may be more for my own redemption than anything. But after all, it's my blog!

Noyaux

2005-07-26T08:36:00.000-07:00

One of the most amazing culinary discoveries for me was the kernel inside an apricot pit. While in highschool, I had read that peach pie could go from ordinary to extrodinary with just a little extra effort of extracting the almond inside the peach pits and adding it to the pie. I was young and impatient and never made the effort. But then a few years later, I was eating an apricot the pit fell apart, and there it was. The hidden gem I had read about. I cut it in half, and put it to my nose, and had one of those moments cooks have. You know, those "holy shit, food can be this amazing???" moments. The smell of a fragrant almond flooded my senses.

While at The Fat Duck I learned that this smell is attributed to a molecule called Benzaldahyde. The French have come up with a much more romantic name for this flavor, Noyaux. This is pronounced Nwa-yoh. Noyaux is the French word for clingstone fruits. And when spoken in terms of flavor, it refers to the almond flavor inside the stones themselves......The heart of these fruits.

For the market menu this week, I was able to feature this amazing flavor. I made a Noyaux Bavarian, and served it with a Bing cherry soup and peaches. The cherries and peaches both come from a nice farmer named Merv who has a clingstone orchard in Yakima. We had the last of his seasons cherries to use, and had just received the first of his amazing peaches. So to feature both of them, I tied them together with the flavor that lies at both their hearts.

I have honestly never tasted an almond that tastes like "almond" flavoring. So when I was forced to refer to my Noyaux Bavarian as Almond Bavarian on the menu, I was uncomfortable. But we had to present them with a flavor they could identify. However, the almond flavor inside noyaux is so much cleaner, lighter, and deeper than the ammeretto flavor that the word almond brings to mind. Luckily the waitstaff was as fascinated as I am with this flavor and were excited to use the story of my peach pits as a talking point with the customers.

A rhubarb legacy

2005-07-20T19:32:00.000-07:00

The previous pastry chef has left me her legacy.... gallons of rhubarb icecream base. In anticipation of her absence, she stocked the fridge for a smooth transition. But the amount of rhubarb icecream she left is daunting.

My challenge has been to incorporate it into my menu. It has been in a transient state, frequently shifted from one place to another. It started in its original composition as a scoop of icecream with mixed berry compote and a white chocolate chunk cookie. Then I was instructed to express my own personal visions of this blatant flavor.

First it became a frozen terrine, layered with a deep burgundy, spicy rhubarb puree. The icecream itself is very sweet and light in rhubarb flavor, so the puree made a nice contrast. But its failing was in that the different frozen textures came apart easily and weren't easy for the diners to eat.

From there the puree in the frozen terrine was replaced with apricot icecream. The layers of two icecreams had a nicer texture together, and the pastels looked nice next to each other. This was served with a yogurt cream flavored with a concentration of the poaching liquid that the apricots for the icecream were poached in. The poaching liquid tastes really good. It was enhanced with the pits of the apricots and vanilla pods. I am tempted to add some water and ice and drink it.

The next transition this rhubarb is taking is aside an apricot cheese cake tart. I have seen a new trend in cheesecake on other menu's. I am seeing cheesecakes that stray from the sweetness we are used to. The market street grill has a goat cheese cake much of this vein. So my take on it was a 10 inch tart, first filled with orbs of halved poached apricots. The empty space is filled with an unsweetened cheesecake batter made mostly of creme friache. The apricots will provide a balancing sweetness to the cheese. I usually try to avoid large cakes and tarts, opting instead for individual desserts. I think this makes the dining experience much more personal as that dessert was made just for your plate. Not just a big random dessert that you get a slice off of. But with this tart, the individual tart with one poached apricot in the center looked like an over easy egg. So I opted for the large tart as each slice will bisect many apricots. Next to this will sit the rhubarb icecream.

And its next incarnation when apricots fall out of season (or when I feel like it) will be between two soft thin gingerbread cookies to make a nostalgic looking icecream sandwich. I do enjoy an icecream sandwich, but my pet peeve is when you cant bite through the cookie without the icecream squeezing out the sides. The cookie has to be tender while in the frozen state. I think gingerbread often has this quality and the flavor is more what I like rhubarb with than other fruits. And as always, I have a love for all things nostalgic, and all things cute.

So goes the story of this rhubarb icecream. Round and round it goes, where it stops..........Nobody knows.

The tables have turned

2005-07-17T21:27:00.000-07:00

I sat on the other side of the line last night, enjoying dinner in a restaurant as a diner rather than a cook. Russell and I went to a restaurant in Ballard called Market Street Grill. This restaurant is fittingly named, as it is on Market Street. The restaurant recently hired a chef, Blake Caldwell, who has spent some time as a sous chef for Thomas Keller at Bouchon. The restaurant was recommended by a few people, and my curiosity was piqued as to what someone of the Thomas Keller vein was doing with a restaurant in Seattle.....Not even Seattle.....Ballard.

Ballard, a community that is home to movements to secede away from the metropolitan city of Seattle into itself, to preserve its industrial core disallowing urban growth, and has bumperstickers that say "visualize Ballard". So what is a chef that left to seek refinement in Napa under an American culinary icon doing there. I had to know.

The restaurant was nice. We sat at a nice booth (Russell said he likes privacy, but he really just wanted to play footsies). On the way in, Russ said, "I want to start with the cheese plate. Not the one on the dessert menu, but as a starter." He had obviously done his homework on the internet that afternoon. I was impressed that he took such a proactive approach to our dining experience.

So the cheese plate was our starter. It consisted of 3 cheeses, Le Chevrot, Cana de Oveja, Fourme d'Ambert, marcona almonds, sliced grannie smith apple, and some sliced bread. The presentation was clean and impressive. The apple was sliced super thin like I like it, but obviously on the same board they used to chop an onion, which I don't like. And the bread had a very nice chewy yet tender, dense yet light quality. And I am the type to pass on bread rather than eat a mediocre loaf.

There were other things on the menu I would have liked to try as a starter. There was a crispy duck confit canneloni that looked good. When I told James I had eaten there his eyes got big and he said, "ooohhh, did you try the pate?" I would have liked to have tried the counrty style pork pate, garnished simply with little cornichons.....I saw one walk past me. But the Pork Belly slow roasted with lentils and cippolini onions would have been my choice if cheese wasn't taking the number one slot. I developed a dear love for pork belly while in England. Well, good pork belly.

So all this day dreaming about the things I didn't have..... What did we eat? I had a lamb sausage, made and stuffed in house. It was served over grilled eggplant, zucchini, summer squash, and onions. These were cut into small, precise pieces that didn't suffer from a long drawn out cooking time that can make that common combination of vegies soggy and taste so bad. And off to the side was a little puddle of a balsamic reduction that had been mellowed out with some grain mustard. The flavors were all right on.

Russell had halibut, seared, and served atop a pile of wilted spinach. This was in a bowl with a grain mustard creme friache sauce poured around. The creme friache tasted amazing, but was runny and didn't adhere at all to the rest of the food. I don't know if this was the point, but I wanted to eat the sauce on the fish and I didn't have a spoon. All pickiness aside, both Russell and I really liked it. The flavors were clean, simple, and precise. As was all the plating.

For dessert we had a peach cobbler with vanilla icecream. The top of the cobbler was really good. It was soft, dense, almost cake like rather than a crumble or a biscuit. It reminded me of the "clafouti" Lampreia used to do. I liked this take on the cobbler better than most I have seen. We also had a tart that was filled with a lemony creme friache, and topped with fresh raspberries. Over this was a streaking of white chocolate sauce. The white chocolate was my favorite part. It was underlaid with an anise of some sort. This gave it a depth that white chocolate most often lacks, and created some warm tones while the temperature was cold. I really liked it.

Now I only wish I had not forgot my camera. Soon, I will learn to take it everywhere.

Market menu

2005-07-11T17:45:00.000-07:00

One of the joys of my job is the weekend market menu. This 3 course menu centers around ingredients found at the local farmers markets, highlighting local producers and the best they have to offer. The best part being that the third course is dessert.

I have allways found that I am more creative when a few restrictions are set up. I like to work within some structure. So having to work with what I find at the market is a lot of fun for me.

And I have to say that the fruit, honey, yogurt, and nuts that I have seen are amazing. The farmers often bring them in themselves, having had a relationship with the restaurant for years. And they bring us their pride and joy. I was often told at Lampreia that when a chef was truly passionate you could feel or see their own energy coming out of their plates. When you pour that much of yourself into what you do, it resonates from your creations. This is true of Scott Carsberg's work and true of the small producers too. The food they bring resonates with the pride they created it with.

For the menu this week I got to use plums from James's (The other half of Eva) garden. He didn't think that his yard was certified organic, but assured me that they were grown without the use of pesticides and with an all natural fertilizer provided by Hadley, their dog. They have a really amazing deep flavor, but no texture. Really just sweet juicy pulp under a tart skin. So clearly I was going to have to puree them. So to feature them on the menu I made a plum caramel. I couldnt believe how great the flavor was. Using a caramel to sweeten the plum puree instead of sugar added a deep, luxurious, rich flavor. And it made a vibrant, glossy color.

The caramel was flanked by four mounds of mousse I made out of a goats milk yogurt from the farmers market that was sweetened with some of the plum caramel and stiffened with a little home made creme friache (which is allways thicker than the store bought variety). This proved to be a challenge as the goats milk yogurt is very runny on its own. The color was a pale rose and very striking against the deep translucent plum caramel. Then I hid each mound from the caramel with super thin leaves made out of honey tuilles. They added a crisp texture, a golden color, and a sharp contrasting shape to the softness of the mousse and sauce.

The best thing about the market menu is that I am guarenteed an audience. So I can push the limits just a touch. And i get to do this each week!! How much fun is that!!

So, if anyone has a plum tree out back and you can't figure out what to do with all those plums, I HIGHLY recomend this plum caramel. Put it on icecream, inside german pancakes, on french toast, mix it with yogurt...... I based this off a recipe from Alice Waters. I changed the ratios to accomodate the taste of the plums I was using and to achieve the flavor profile I wanted.
1 pound plums
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1/3 cup water

1. Cut the plums in half and remove the stones.
2. Cook the plums in their own juice for 10 minutes or untill they are tender. If there isnt enough juice, add a little water.
3. Let the plums cool, and puree them with the cooking liquid. Pass through a fine mesh strainer. 4. Make the caramel. Combine the sugar and 1/4 cup water in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook untill caramelized.
5. Remove the caramel from heat and add 1/3 cup water. STAND BACK. this splatters much more than adding cream. When you can get close, stir the caramel untill even.
6. Return to the heat and stir in the plum puree. The caramel will clump up on the bottom, so bring it back up to temperature and stir to disolve the chunks. Strain through a fine mesh strainer.

Tools and toys

2005-07-08T18:05:00.000-07:00

While many chefs are exploring new toys for the kitchen like centrifuges, vac pac machines, water baths, I am begining to enjoy toys that kitchens have been using for years. Toys like kitchen aid mixers and roubot coups were vacant from the last kitchen i worked in. We did every thing by hand, being instructed to "feel" everything we worked with, to put your self into the food. So I learned to manipulate things without the aid of kitchen appliances. Just me, and a whisk.

While it was a valuable lesson to learn to lean on your own elbow grease, I am now learning the value of machine assistance.

The robot coup has been my best friend lately. It chops nuts better than I can and in about 1/20th of the time. And for my short doughs, it works the dough before the butter has a chance to soften giving me doughs that are amazing to work with. When short dough is made by hand the butter has to be brought to a workable temperature. When the dough comes together it doesnt hold together as well, is fragile, not as tender when baked, and simply, a pain in the freekin ass.

The kitchen aid may never replace a bowl and whisk for making a simple whipped cream for me. But for making a cake, it is hard to beat. Not only does it do the job in half the time, but it frees my hands up for multi tasking. And kitchen work is all about multi tasking.

Not all this may seem a bit naive. I am sure I have just elated over things that every house wife and culinary student consider the basics. So why is a professional exclaiming joy for something so ellementary? I guess I stumbled onto this late in life, but will never take these toys for granted.

I know the ballance between man and machine.

New Life

2005-07-06T08:35:00.000-07:00

I, the same girl, have returned to the same town I have allways lived in, to a life that is completely new. It feels so good to be home too.

New life fact number one. I am engaged!! Russell proposed to me this weekend. I couldnt be happier!!! We joked that I would announce his retirement from bachelorhood on my blog. My sister sarahs reaction was..."Yeah, of course I am thrilled for you, my only fear is that you are entering the adult world, and I cant come yet!!" And to the friends I haven't announced this to yet, well, lets just hope you are too busy with your own lives to read my silly blog.

New life fact number two. I have a new and wonderful job. I am the pastry chef at Eva restaurant in greenlake. The chef Amy is great, and has given me free reign over the dessert menu, encouraging me to express myself through it. I have to say, it's kinda nice to work with a woman. And the best part..... We share an obsession for those tiny cute little bowls from the asian markets and I get to plate with them as I wish!!! This is an amazing challenge maintaining a menu and doing all the developement and it is satisfying me deeply. I LOVE being in controll of myself and my own education. And for the first time in almost 6 years, I have friday and saturday nights off!!!!!!! WOAH, the value of this is beyond words. I will write more soon about the things I have been doing. Its kinda fun.

New life fact number three. My hair is not short anymore. Well, its kinda short. But not that super short pixy thing i was sporting for 2 years. Finally, I can tuck it behind my ears and put most of it in a pony tail. And I dont have to over style it to avoid looking manly!! I feel like a girl again.

New life fact number 4. I have a new car. Well, Russell and I have a new car. So this means I have car payments. From a gal who has only ever paid 700 for a car, this is huge. The car doesnt even have a license plate yet. Car payments, new car smell, a car that starts every time you turn the key, no strange noises...... Its a Subaru outback sporty wagon. Kinda a soccer mom car. Or a lesbo wagon according to becca who just told me I spelled Subaru wrong. she said it starts with an L, suggesting the spelling Lesbaru. Russell calls it the girlfriend grocery getter to save face when he drives a non-WRX up to a bike race. I think I am going to get matching sunglasses. If you go all out and buy a brand new car you might as well accessorize, right???

So, same me, same town, same friends (boy did I miss them!), new life.....

Hmmm...I am starting to feel like a grown up.

Cheerio

2005-06-28T06:18:00.000-07:00

This is my good bye to Europe. Or not so much good bye as I'll see you in a while. I am in London spending my last night of my adventure in a Hostel near Hyde Park.

I have said so many good byes its becoming routine. But none compared to having to say good bye to Libby. We shared a room for 17 years, and now there is half a world between us. Having to return to my sister being just a voice on the other end of the phone isnt something i am looking forward to. But so is life....

My plans today include a nice walk through Hyde park, a little grocery shopping, and maybe Star Wars. I made Russell promise to wait untill I got home to go see it. I wonder if he remembers....because the theater is right by my hostel and i am hungry for the cinema. My sister and her friends all took me to the one movie a week they show in English at the theater in Freiburg. We saw hitch hikers guide to the galaxy.

Just a quick note..... i was music shopping in germany and found that they group all hip hop, rap, and R and B music into a category called, "Black music". Seriously....is that ok? Um... I dont think so. And they dont translate it to Schwartz music or anything. So i now have a CD called Black Summer Party.

Well, time to go.

See you on the other side of the pond!!

Under the Radar

2005-06-25T03:09:00.000-07:00

I am still here!!

My travels have recently taken me very far under the radar so to speak. Away from computers, into a world of food, new places, and time with family and old friends that I see too rarely. I have stories that will be posted upon my return home. The italian family i was staying with laughed when I started to take notes on their family meals and called me a japanese tourist when I broke out the camera.

I am in Regensburg right now. My arrival here last night is an experience that I will only have once. It amounted to this. I went to a rest stop on the side of the freeway and got in a car with a strange man who then whisked me away down the Autobahn at speeds of 220 to 240 km per hour. My eyebrows were raised too when my sister suggested it. It is called mitfahrgelegenheit. It is something like arranged hitchhiking. There is a website in which people will post thier travel plans and for much much less than a train ticket you can carpool with them. It is very common. And safe.

I am now staying with an old friend, and will get just one more short day with my sister. Then tuesday I fly to London, and wednesday I fly home.

I have so much information back logged and the excitement of a new job to write about.

I spent one afternoon learning how to make buffalo mozzerella from an old italian couple.....and I have all the pictures to prove it!!!!

How to prepare for your stage

2005-06-09T05:03:00.000-07:00

Hey Saroya, you asked what you needed to prepare for your stage?? Well, here it is.

I packed everything I needed in a large Kelty day pack. I am low maitenance. Here is what my back pack consisted of.

Two pairs of checked pants
Two white t-shirts for under your uniform
one pair of kitchen clogs
7 pairs of underwear
7 pairs of white socks (you only have one day to do laundry)
2 pairs of fancy socks for the sunday sock competition held by the pastry crew
(there is also a sexy leg competition but Jocky wins that one every week. Seriously, I even shaved my legs and lotioned them up once but Jocky still beat me)
3 other t-shirts to wear on your day off
3 little hoodie/sporty type zip ups
one girly tank top for a special occasion
one little girly sweater
one white tank top
one skirt just in case
a bikini, (thank god I didn't need to wear that)
a coat
one pair of jeans
One jogging outfit that doubled as a lazy day apartment outfit and pajamas
one pair running shoes
one pair cute puma's

Personal care items
Shampoo and conditioner
soap
toothbrush
toothpaste (the stuff over here tastes like medicine so definately buy this at home)
minimum of make up
If you insist on bringing a hair dryer you will need two converters. One for the socket, and one for the voltage. After you buy both of those then you will have spent the same as buying a cheap hair dryer over here.
Deodorant
Hand lotion (your hands will be destroyed.)
As I learned the hard way, all this WILL explode in your bag if not wrapped up in zip lock bags.
And also remember, you can buy the same stuff over here, it's not that much different than the states. You'll see the same brands, the same items. So if you don't want to waste space transporting this stuff, you can buy it here. But remember, it's twice as expensive.

The Arsenal

Tools I used:
Chef's knife
paring knife
turning knife
peeler
5 inch serated knife
tiny tiny scissors
Sharpies (I bought the "professional" sharpies only available in the states. They are coveted by the entire staff and i found mine in Dan's pocket a few times!)
A small notebook and a ballpoint pen.

Tools I took but didn't use:
Large serated knife
boning knife
offset spatula

What I wished I had:
A knife case to carry all of my knives in. I just had plastic covers, which were really nice. But I wished i had something more than my Tim-buk-tu bag to haul them around in.
Tweezers, for those times you are allowed to plate.

Miscelaneous
A book to read
A digital camera
an umbrella- I know it's going to be summer, but that won't stop the rain
A few pictures of loved ones for your walls. Trust me, it keeps you sane

Things I didn't bring that I wished I had
My music
a steel for my knives
another cute girly outfit (after being in those frump frump outfits in the kitchen I wished I had something cuter to wear out on sundays. It's nice to feel like a girl at least once a week.)
flip flops or summer sandles

Money-
This I definately didn't have enough of. Our american dollars are worth exactly half of a sterling pound right now. And the prices on everything look the same as in america. So If a box of cereal is marked 3.50 over here it's really 7 dollars. And if you think that a 40.00 set lunch at Gordon Ramsey sounds like a reasonable price, it's really 80 dollars.

So here is my budget
Plane ticket- 700 dollars
Tiny tiny room- 600 a month, times 3, is 1800

Food- You will eat most of your meals at the Fat Duck so I have known others that only have butter and jam in their fridges, oddly not even bread. But you will need to feed yourself a couple times a week and have cereal and coffee around. So I spent about 150 on groceries a month.

Transportation- The bus costs 4.25 round trip. A train ride to London costs 25.00. My suggestion is to get the newspaper and buy a beater bike within the first week or two. It will cut down on your travel time to and from work which after 16 hours a day is worth it. And you can get in and out of town and to and from friends houses with ease. You can find one for about 20 to 30 dollars.

Bills back home. I was unable to get out of my 40 dollar gym membership, am paying 10 dollars a month to have my cell phone put on hold, and still have student load and credit card payments. So budget that in also, because these people don't care that you are off having the adventure of your life.

Phone cards. I found a good one that you buy online called Bizon. It is 2.2 cents a minute from the UK to the USA but you have to purchase it on a buisness day so plan ahead. I tried a few that ended up being 20 dollars for an hour. They advertise low rates, but then charge you connection fees, toll free toll's, and more. If you have a computer then you can download Skype and talk through your computer. That is really cheap too. But you are going to feel alone and isolated for a little while, so you will be longing to call family and friends. (If you can do it a cell phone over here is something to look into. I think you can get a prepaid one for very cheap and just use it to text for free. It's nice when you start to have some friends here to be able to communicate with them)

Dinner at The Fat Duck. 250.00. You can't come to this restaurant and not eat here, and you can't eat here and not have the tasting menu. I did this at the end of my trip. So I sat down to a familiar meal and finally understood what everything I had done for 2 months was leading up to. It was however, missing something. It was missing that awe striking feeling like, "holy fucking shit I can't believe food can be like this!!" But I did have a deeper understanding of every garnish, why flavors were paired like they were, and each process that led to why the food was so amazing, and was able to recognize every component in each dish (the waiters dont tell you). But I spent the first few weeks in awe like that just watching from the kitchen.

Beer. You will be going out to the pub, then another pub, and sometimes another one after that. The taxi's are expensive, and the beer sounds cheap, but it's consistantly 6 or 7 dollars after the exhange rate. This is where the cute girly outfits might pay off. You can wield your cute american accent and flash a little somethin-somethin and hope for your drinks to be purchased for you by some unsuspecting brittish lad. Not that I did this. I went out in tshrts and jeans and was once told that I wasn't a girl, I was a chef and that made me a dude. (Thanks Theis, you sure know how to make a girl feel good.)

Cookie money-
I spoiled the guys by baking them good old american cookies on my days off sometimes. Usually Chocolate chip, and once peanut butter with chocolate. It's a sure way to make friends and you know they will remember your name after that!! Besides, I am kinda a granny like that.

So this is the bare minimum of what I spent money on.

There are trips to London, picknicks along the river, and any other kind of fun you want.
But without anything fun, you will need just to get here, put a roof over your head, and eat a little, you will need to start with 3,500 dollars. That is literally just for the basics. Anything else is going to go on your credit card or sucked out of savings. That is beer, restaurants, and anything that could be labeled as fun.

So is that what you were looking for?? It takes about 24 hours to get door to door. So anything you pack with you will have to be carried through three airports, two train stations, and a taxi ride, and then home again. Jet lag sucks, but don't fight it. Just get here a few days early and over sleep. You are in for the shock of your life the first week. The hours are grueling. But you are so busy and stimulated with work that they fly by.

Next thing you know you will be giving advice to a future stagiere and crying a tear of nostalgia.

Cheers!!

student life

2005-06-07T05:27:00.000-07:00

I have just spent the day in student fashion. I slept in untill noon, threw on a bandana and some jeans, and rushed to meet my sisters boyfriend Arthur. He took me on a little walking tour of the university of Frieburg where he studies law. It included lunch at the Mensa which is the school caffeteria. Then we walked through campus to Portifino. This is a little icecream shop that Arthur swears makes the best icecream in the world. And he is half italian so he is judging this icecream above those delicious gelatto's in italy. I had an ammeretto icecream and Arthur had pistaciao. The flavors were really nice. I like the texture of the european icecreams. They are not churned as hard as those in america. The texture is velvety soft therefore the flavor seems creamier too.

I am now sitting in the library at the university using arthurs internet access and trying to navigate the german keyboard.

Sunday was my last day with Auntie Ellen. We spent the day in London. We even drove in london, if you can believe that. We bought tickets for one of those double decker tour busses of all things. But it was great because we did not have to do any of the thinking. It just drove us around and gave us the freedom to get on and off as we pleased. We got off once to see big ben and westminster, and then again to see the tower castle and the crown jewels. then we wandered around by hyde park and finally back to our hotel. We did miss out on Madamme Tousouts wax museum.

I have to say that I did fall for London. It is incredible. I have seen quite a few of the major cities in Europe now and London is challenging Barcelona for the top seat. Those two are a bit too different to be in competition with eachother, but none the less, I loved London and hope to see it again.

Libby and I said goodbye to London at about 4:30 mondy morning as we caught the bus to the airport. I had my first Ryan air experience!! This airline offers very cheap airfare, along with Ryan air scratch tikets and dual purpose bags that you can use to develope film or vomit into, which ever strikes your fancy.

We arrived in Frieburg at about 1 in the afternoon, took a little nap, and then went to the bike shop to assemble Libs bike. After 4 in the afternoon one can take their bike in to the shop and use the space and tools for free. You only pay for parts and provide the labor yourself. And I have to say that i have never seen such a parade of beaters in my life. Because bikes are such a primary mode of transportation here they really drag the life out of a bicycle. And you will also see the silliest things riding by. Like people smoking while riding (the outrage!!) holding umbrella's while riding, miniskirts while riding, and my favorite was this. To avoid her large pesant skirt from draggign on ground, a girl was holding the top of the skirt up while gripping the handle bars. This in turn made the entire front of her wide open and visible to anyone standing in front of her.

We then walked through town and went to a swiss grocery store and bought a few things for dinner.

Libby's apartment is sooooo cute. it is very modern and if can imagine the perfect setting for ikea then you aren't far off.

I dont know what are plans are for tonight. Its going to be a little harder for me here than in England. I cant go to the cinema here or anything, and i have to have a translator to do much of anything.

out and about

2005-06-04T13:08:00.000-07:00

I am sitting in a proper british cottage just a stones throw away from my old haunt, Bray. But it was my sister's travels that brought us here rather than mine. Her old mate Jane, with whom Libby studied with in Germany 3 years ago invited us out to her house warming party. I have never seen better use of a back yard than this. It has an edible garden, an orchard, chickens, lambies, a farm cat, a patio, and room to play. This is all fitting with the small scale of everything here. The yard is half the size of the lawn I played on as a child.

We have just stayed in Wales for the past 3 days. Our accomodations were in a house strait out of Pride and Predujice. I was just waiting for Mr. Darcy to appear under the wisteria. It was beautiful. We explored Cardiff, the capitol, and toured a castle. Wales has more castles than any other country in the world.

The next day we explored the great outdoors, or more exactly, the beaches. We first visited the Mumbles. This rocky coastline was beautiful and reminded me very much of Marin. Then we drove a little further to Pennarth?? It was a long and very wide stretch of soft sandy and duney beaches. I was told that it was used for setting land speed records before the salt flats in the states were favored. Again, it was familiar to the coast of Marin county with one distinct difference. The water was SO warm!! It is the same current that comes off of Florida I believe. Nothing like that frigid Alaskan current that runs the west coast.

Today we checked out of our romantic manor and visited Bath. This city was so beautiful. We saw old roman baths and took the tour. It was interesting to see the effects of the roman empire this far away. But they came, they saw, and they conquered. The city is built out of stone that has a golden hue. It was agreed that this was the prettiest place we have seen so far.

Now we are enroute to London where we will spend tomorow. We have all sorts of nerdy touristy ideas that even involve a tour bus!!! And monday, I fly to Germany!!

Our dinner at the Fat Duck was out of this world. It was the perfect culmination to my 2 months of work there. And it was an experience Libby and Auntie Ellen will remember forever. Auntie Ellen even said that the snail porridge was her favorite thing!!! She thinks cucumbers are too grown up, but likes snails!!!! I said my goodbyes, which pulled on my heart strings more than I thought. I even got the crew to sign my menu which felt so much like the last day of highschool yearbook signing!!! And I left them with my signiture, a plate of home made chocolate chip cookies which they assured me were 3 star to them.

Only one person was missing from the goodbyes. Chris, the other seattlite. I was really dissapointed to leave without a propper goodbye to him as he has become a friend to me. But no worries, I found him in the basement of the ruins at Bath today!!!!!! Small world, huh??