How does the human web of personal relationships connect me right up to our wonderful new president? Here’s how it goes: my husband’s first cousin’s son is Sam Kass. Sam has been working as the Obama family’s private chef in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, and Sam is going with the Obamas to the White House!! My husband has given me permission to go public with this information because it’s now all over the press including the New York Times.
I’ve only met Sam a few times, but here are a few reasons I’m head over heels about this guy:
1. He’s a really sweet young man, totally unpretentious and down to earth.
2. He’s passionate about food and interested in all kinds of issues: local and sustainable, small farms, wines and wineries, health and hunger, etc. I think he’s the perfect person to act as conduit to Obama on the food issues so many of us care deeply about.
3. He cooked on the line for awhile at Avec and Blackbird, Paul Kahan’s super-delicious joints in Chicago’s West Loop. (Avec is one of Tom Douglas’ favorite Chicago restaurants, by the way.)
4. Sam also worked at Jane Addams Hull House Museum, an historic Chicago institution, where he cooked soup for a soup-kitchen-food-issues-think-tank called “Re-thinking Soup.”
5. And don’t forget- HE’S MY COUSIN! (by marriage, anyway) Wow!!
Stay tuned. If I can find out more about what Sam’s up to, I will keep you posted.
January 29th, 2009 | No Comments »
Let’s face it, there are some restaurants that you don’t go to for the decor, the location, or the ambiance. It’s just for the food. Most of the restaurants in the ID fall into this category. Guanaco Pupuseria, located in the University District, is just this kind of place. Go for the El Salvadorean specials, the the pork and cheese filled pupusas, fried yucca, and fried plaintains. Everything was fresh, tasty, cheap, and fried in lard. My kind of place.
January 29th, 2009 | No Comments »
Mark Fuller of Spring Hill offers a Spaghetti and Meatball Feast for Monday Night Supper. It was great!!! The meatballs were huge and delightful and so light I’m surprised they didn’t float off the plate. You have a choice of red sauce or white sauce, and we all chose the red sauce. Caesar salad was perfect, not overdressed and romaine was nice and crisp. The cheesy bread was so cheesy, almost like Texas toast. And the spumoni…. all I can say is it was delicious. This is a GREAT deal. Spaghetti is $7, and the “xl” meatballs are $3 each.
January 29th, 2009 | No Comments »
In the February issue of Bon Appetit there is a great feature on kale. The recipe that caught my attention was the Tuscan Kale Chips. These are totally fun, easy and delicious. In the recipe, they suggest you use them as cocktail snacks, which we did, but there were some leftover that we crumbled as garnish on roasted butternut squash. Limitless possibilities on where this can be used, and it’s inspirational to think of the same treatment with other vegetables and fruits.
January 28th, 2009 | 1 Comment »
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Cookbook author Sheila Lukins
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Foodista, the online cooking encyclopedia
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January 26th, 2009 | No Comments »
Inspiration comes at the intersection of the right thing at the right time. A friend gave me a copy of the book The Big Oyster, by Mark Kurlansky, a while ago. It’s been out several years, but in the middle of winter it turns out to the be the perfect fodder for the Palace menu. Fresh seafood is few and far between in the gray months, especially while relying principally on things caught or harvested on the West coast. From the Puget Sound, shellfish is one of the last remaining seafoods available from what used to be a much wider harvest.
My very Northwest centric view of us as the king of the oyster world is all wrong. Guess I’ve been listening to the boys from Penn Cove shellfish too much. The Big Oyster tells the story of the New York oyster culture and a society that at its height produced 700 million oysters a year at the turn of the century, consumed by a population of about 5 million. Not just the luxury of the rich, oysters were consumed by folks from all walks of life, in every conceivable preparation, from carts, cellar restaurants, and posh mansions.
Today, New York is slowly reviving an oyster industry ruined by pollution and overconsumption (see this article in the New York Times). In the Northwest, we are lucky to have access to great oysters from our own backyard: Olympias, Virginicas, Pacifics– raw, fried, pickled, grilled, and stewed. Seems like a great time to celebrate the oyster.
January 26th, 2009 | No Comments »
Pick up a copy of the February issue of Gourmet magazine for a travel piece about Walla Walla, Washington, called “A Town So Nice.” The article does a good job describing the area’s stellar restaurants and wineries, such as Saffron Mediterranean Kitchen, Whitehouse Crawford, and Abeja Winery and Inn (where my husband and I snagged a cottage last May due to the intrepid efforts of my friend, Coleen. Yes, the dreamy photo of the entrance to Abeja which leads off the Gourmet article is entirely acurate!) For some reason, Gourmet’s reviewer made it to the tiny town of Waitsburg where she sampled cornmeal fried oysters at Whoopemup Hollow Cafe, but didn’t cross the street to check out jimgermanbar (see photo left)- a super cool spot where “Etruscan Snacks” (aka tapas) are served by cheerful artist-waiter-owners. Mark the Gourmet article with a post-it and keep the magazine in a handy spot so you can plan your next Washington Wine Country vacation.
January 23rd, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Palace Ballroom was hoppin’ with 220 guests watching our new president take the oath- the excitement was overflowing just like the mango mimosas served at 7:30 am! Guests dined on: monkey bread with caramel drizzle, Big Island fruit cup, Beecher’s cheddar scramble, and more. Here’s a photo taken right when President Obama was speaking and he had the Ballroom’s full attention!
January 23rd, 2009 | No Comments »
When I-5 opened back up after the snow and flooding, we drove south to Portland, checking into The Nines, a great little hotel where we got a room for only $99. Then we set off to tour North Willamette Valley wine country:
Argyle- sampled my favorite sparkling wines. Also picked up an interesting sparkling Pinot Noir
Four Graces- delish Pinot Gris
Daedalus- fun to be able to pop into small wineries such as this with tasting rooms– all very accessible
Dundee Bistro- owned by the Ponzi family. Met the chef, Andrew Turner, a nice guy who’s worked at impressive places like Patina and Boulud. We dined deliciously on Kumomoto oysters, chitarra (a traditional pasta from Abruzzo) with marinara and kale, and bouillabaisse. Then went next door to the Ponzi tasting room for more wine and to check out the sales rack.
Back in Portland, we dined at Toro Bravo for tapas (an hour and 45 minute wait!) and later went to the Secret Society Lounge for classic cocktails and a fun room. Both places are in a funky, gentrifying area of Northeast Portland.
Powell’s Bookstore- Portland’s fabulous and huge bookstore, where I picked up a copy of Imbibe Magazine.
January 22nd, 2009 | No Comments »
Being from a small town in northern New Jersey, moving to Seattle in the fall of 2004 was a big adjustment. People were different, the neighborhoods were different, and the attitude towards the environment was different. It wasn’t until I moved here that I realized the power, the importance, the obsessive compulsive nature of recycling.
Within a year, I had gone from throwing everything away, to designating different brown (recycled!) paper bags for plastic, cans, and glass. If I drank a can of Fresca, I would wait until I saw the proper receptacle in which to toss it. And then, at the last restaurant I worked in, my sous chef kept talking about this mystical concept commonly known as composting.
“Pardon?”
This was a completely new idea to me. It wasn’t until I came to the Palace Kitchen that I was actually exposed to the marvel of environmental modernism. There were separate containers for different recyclable materials, containers for food, buckets for oil to be used for biodiesel, everything separated and organized to be sent away to different places to be made into something else, used for something to make our world better. It’s one of the things that I love about the company that I work for. Not only to learn things about food, the inner workings of a solid kitche, but to learn about caring for the environment in a world filled with carelessness is something I find pretty valuable in this industry.
January 22nd, 2009 | No Comments »
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