Pictured: Chinese Noodles with Sauteed Trumpet Mushrooms, Bone-In Pork Loin and Baby Squash
A few weeks ago I worked a day with Chef Christina Choi of Nettletown in the Eastlake Neighborhood of Seattle, picking cilantro seeds, cleaning fava bean pods, makin’ sauces, sipping on thyme-flavored soda and having honest conversations on farmers, the virtues of recycled toilet paper and how to build a restaurant with your significant other. She was recently showcased with a demonstration at our Tom Douglas Culinary Summer Camp, which honestly feels like YEARS ago. Hee hee.
One of my favorite parts of the day was a trip to the Columbia City farmers market, which just recived an America’s Best award from CNN. I had the pleasure of meeting new farmers, speaking to them about harvest times and discovering their just picked produce. I also loved seeing that the food that these people picked from the ground would be served at the restaurant the next day. I already understood that owning and running your own restaurant is an incomprehensible task, but visiting family owned farms and actually creating strong relationships through direct contact and a handshake must be one of the most rewarding parts of the job.
When Liana and I had dinner at Nettletown (Fridays and Saturdays at the moment), one of our dishes was the noodles with pork. It had great textures and had a light flavors that were so memorable, I still craved it days later. To appease my appetite, and gain brownie points with Liana’s co-workers, I made a big batch of noodles, strongly influenced by that dish.
Instead of writing down the recipe, In respect for Christina’s brand-spankin’ new restaurant (five months opened, right?), I’ll just recommend that you and your friends visit her at Nettletown. The food is incredibly fresh and is delicious.
What is Garrett Melkonian up to now?? He’s been working everyday in our little test kitchen, developing recipes for our upcoming Dahlia Bakery Cookbook. We’re on to the pie chapter now, and Garrett and I were both pretty happy about the way this tasty little number turned out. What is it? I’m not even going to tell you, but you can guess if you want to. (Hint: this is NOT a coconut cream pie!)
Dahlia Chef Brock Johnson continues to push the envelope to bring the freshest local products to the Dahlia menu. These days he’s ordering whole pigs from Kapowsin Meats in Sumner, Washington. (The pigs are raised in Montana.) In the photo left, you can see Dahlia Sous Chef, Desi, butchering a whole pig. The Dahlia team uses everything they can from the animal, including the head (for headcheese), liver, innards, kidney, and blood (for blood sausage), plus of course the more familiar muscle meats like loin and shoulder.
To sample some of this amazing porky lusciousness, just drop by the Dahlia at lunch or dinner. At dinner you can dine on “Wood Grilled Pork Loin and Housemade Morcilla (aka black pudding or blood sausage).” At lunch, there’s a selection of Yorkshire Pork Small Plates including “Potted Headcheese with Cherry Mustard,” “Slow Cooked Pork Shoulder with Cracklins and Watermelon (also on dinner menu),” and “Soy Braised Pork Belly with Steamed Buns and Hoisn BBQ.” I ordered the pork belly (photo top) and it was melt-in-your-mouth delicious with handmade buns and hoisin barbecue sauce- perfect!!!
Garrett is churning out one yummy delight after another as he proceeds to develop recipes for the Dahlia Bakery Cookbook. Who knew the fig bars would be one of the most difficult recipes to reproduce for the home cook? But the sugar cookie dough turned out to be right on the money after only one try!
Sunday, July 25, was already hot enough, and then Chef Ron Anderson of Etta’s jumped into a heated competition sponsored by the Pike Place Market. It was an Iron Chef- inspired event and Ron’s competition was Josh Green of the Virginia Inn. Their secret ingredients were Cornish game hens and dried cherries from Chukkar Cherries. Each chef was given $25 and 20 minutes to shop the market for the rest of their ingredients, and then 30 minutes to cook. There was friendly banter between the chefs while the Emcee offered commentary on what each chef was cooking. Ron broke down the game hen and prepared it simply with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and sumac in a hot skillet. He made a cherry vinaigrette of reconstituted dried cherries, then served that over a fresh salad of peaches, hazelnuts, cheese, and shaved fennel. The plate was piled high with the salad and a perfectly cooked game hen. In the end, Ron was victorious over Chef Green, who prepared a rustic succotash.
A year ago, Tony Catini, sous chef at Serious Pie, had such a bounty of gorgeous fresh produce from Tom and Jackie’s Prosser Farm, that he couldn’t possibly use all of it.
Since waste is not an option in our kitchens, Tony had the fabulous brainstorm of preserving it all for winter, and that’s why we were able to enjoy fabulously pickled artichokes with chile pepper, rhubarb with ginger and rosemary, beets with lavender, and green garlic with tarragon and peppercorns in the middle of winter!
Thanks Tony and Kenan (Serious Pie line cook who also got the canning bug!) for thinking ahead so we could enjoy a little taste of summer earlier this year! The next time you are in Pie, be sure to check out the gorgeous, colorful fruits of their labor above the wine rack and pizza serving counter!
Tony’s basic recipe is 1 part white wine or balsamic vinegar (depending on the vegetable being preserved) to 1 part water plus 1/2 cup of sugar- give or take again depending on what he is preserving.
I hope this comes in handy when the zucchini overtakes your garden next month!
We’re back full steam ahead working on the Dahlia Bakery Cookbook! Not that we ever stopped. Garrett has been working tirelessly. However, for the last several weeks, most of my time was taken up by Tom Douglas Culinary Summer Camp. At last, I can turn my attention to the cookbook!
Today was a great day! Look at the lovely brown butter maple glaze dripping off the whole wheat pecan coffee cake! And those little vanilla bean coffee cakes have the most tender and delicate crumb imaginable.
I’m pretty excited about how things are going on the cookbook; I just hope I don’t gain 10 pounds tasting. (The amount of whole wheat coffee cake I just consumed could definitely be described as “eating,” not “tasting.”) Not fair that Garrett doesn’t seem to ever gain weight.
A couple weeks ago, I ran through Serious Pie before it was time to unlock the doors for all of our hungry patrons and caught the cooks roasting off rosemary potatoes and chanterelle mushrooms for the incredible pies they would serve that day! Well don’t you know I just had to go back for lunch after smelling those divine ingredients, and Pie didn’t disappoint!!!
PS…. Did you know that pie hand forms, tops, and serves about 350 wood fired pizzas a day???
Following a romp in the Capitol Hill district for a cupping at Roy St. Cafe and delicious lunch at Jerry Traunfeld’s Poppy restaurant, the campers did not enter the Palace Ballroom as they expected. Nay, dear reader, these studious culinarians were transported to the 1970’s with Chef Thierry Rautureau welcoming them with a dance party! Debauchery ensued. JUST KIDDING.
After Shelley wrote about summer camp, I remembered that I had one of my favorite memories recorded on my laptop. As part of the summer camp staff, I was completely aware that this was scheduled… but I was still in awe when Robyn pulled back the curtain. This is what sets OUR summer camp from all other culinary experiences. I never had dance parties when *I* was in culinary school.
I don’t get to see, taste, and do everything at Tom Douglas Culinary Summer Camp since I spend most of my time overseeing the chef demos, but here are a few of my favorites from this year.
Eric Banh of Monsoon and Monsoon East showing us how to slice up a geoduck. Such a nice guy and such a great chef- how can you not fall in love with him??
Vikram Vij of Vij’s in Vancouver: His savory raw jackfruit curry was one of the most amazing tastes of all of Summer Camp. Have you ever tasted jackfruit? The texture was similar to eggplant and the warmly spiced masala was fabulous. I was also intrigued by Vikram’s advice that everyone should experience living in a third world country at some point in their lives.
Of course, it wouldn’t be Summer Camp without our almost tireless Executive Chef, Eric Tanaka, snagging a nap on the sly! (photo right)
Cathy Whims’ caponata- perfectly cooked, perfectly seasoned, and just the right amount of olive oil- I’m making this for my next party. (Cathy is chef of Nostrana in Portland.)
Tom Douglas breaking down a WHOLE PIG on a wooden table right in the Palace Ballroom.
Walking over from the office on Tuesday morning to the sight and aromas of a Cowboy breakfast (see middle photo of Jen at the grill, below): steak, beans, eggs, and pots of Cowboy Coffee being cooked up by our fabulous catering crew on grills outside the Ballroom.
Thierry Rautureau, of Rover’s and Luc, so funny and relaxed you almost forget to pay attention to his perfect technique. For his chilled heirloom tomato soup, he sliced an avocado in razor thin neat slices in about 30 seconds-see photo above, left. Thierry makes makes everything look deceptively easy. In the photos (at the very top of this post) he’s dancing with one of our campers.
Liam Spence, our own chef of Lola, charmed and delighted everyone as he deftly schooled us on how cook an octopus.
Another perfect taste: a thin slice of Culatello (similar to prosciutto) wrapped around a warm-from-the-fryer gnocco frito (small fritter of yeasted dough) from the demo of the always convivial Armandino Batali of Salumi. Pop it in your mouth for a sublime bite with perfect proportions of fat and salt surrounding a warm, yeasty puff.
The chocolate lacquer glaze that cookbook diva, Rose Levy Beranbaum, and her able assistant, Woody, poured on a chocolate passion cake was smooth and shiny as a mirror, not just when the glaze was fresh, but hours later.
A welcome break for me was dinner at Holly Smith’s Cafe Juanita. I never knew they had a private outdoor patio! The evening was beautifully mild and an Aperol (an Italian apertif made from rhubarb!) and Prosecco cocktail went down like a dream, as you can see in the photo to the left showing my husband, Frank, and me with big smiles on our faces. My favorite dish in a luscious multicourse meal was Holly’s tajarin (ie. a pasta similar to tagliatelle) with sturgeon caviar and creme fraiche. If anyone asks me what I want for my last meal, I’m choosing a plate of this creamy pasta (or maybe some osetra caviar from Dale and Betsy Sherrow’s Seattle Caviar on a classic buckwheat blini cooked in plenty of butter by Tom Douglas!)
Speaking of Holly Smith, I also enjoyed the conversation she and Tom engaged in during her demo in the Ballroom, about empty restaurants and busy restaurants and how intoxicating the vibe of a jamming joint is to the soul of the restaurant owner. Tom described how satisfying it is to him to sit in his car outside of Palace Kitchen on a summer evening and just listen to the hum and the energy coming through the open windows.
Last but not least, Demo Assistant Extraordinaire, Herschell Taghap, (slicing steak in the trio of photos above and all the way to the right) made my life easy this year. Herschell came in at 6am everyday and worked with ardor and enthusiasm all day long to make Summer Camp 2010, in my opinion, the smoothest production ever.
Hey, Campers and Summer Camp Staff, what were you’re favorite things? Write a comment and share.
Welcome to Family Meal, a blog that examines all things new and noteworthy in the world of food, wine, and dining.
At family meal, otherwise known as staff meal, there’s no hierarchy; you’re breaking bread with your friends. For those 30 minutes, everyone is equal- and hungry. Family meal is our version of the water cooler- but with better food.
I’ll be sharing my thoughts, tips, and observations, and, in the spirit of family meal, I’ve invited our creative, energetic staff- everyone from line cook to bartender to bookkeeper- to have a say. I hope you’ll add your own comments and join in the conversation.
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