This photo is one of several that was sent to me by one of my co-workers in the Tom Douglas Restaurants office, Julia Ottolini. It’s from her trip last Spring to the hill towns of Tuscany (Julia’s husband is Italian and she is lucky enough to have lived in Italy). The photo helps put me in the mood for my upcoming trip, with my husband Frank and several friends, to a villa just outside of Florence. My last trip to Florence was more than 30 years ago, so I’m overdue. We leave Friday and I plan to eat, drink, take notes, take photos and put up many blog posts on Italian food, wine, olive oil, cheese, honey, and more when I get back in 2 weeks.
May 27th, 2009 | No Comments »
As my vegetarian friend commented as she munched on a mushroom the other day, “this is as meaty as it gets.” The meat of the vegetarian is also a mystery of biology and a treasure of gourmands. The seasonal menus have begun to reflect the spring bounty of morels and ramps as they arrive at the restaurants. Since I was among the many who wondered about these funny foraged fungi and their traditional companion, the ramp, I thought I’d share some of my research at Family Meal blog.
So the season for these two wild fruits of the earth arrives like a holy week in the foraging camp. The ramp, or allium tricoccum, is a wild plant in the onion family that grows throughout the eastern U.S. It is predominant in Appalachian cuisine, and in the community of Richwood, West Virginia, the ramp is honored with an annual “Feast of the Ramson.” Locally known as “little stinkers,” the ramp’s flavor is characterized as earthy with similarities to garlic and scallions. When I think about it, there is something a little sacred in the plant being one of the first green things to shoot from the ground in the spring. Ramps are also used as an indicator to determine where and when morel mushrooms will begin to pop up. Read the rest of this entry »
May 26th, 2009 | No Comments »
I planted my first herb garden a couple weeks ago. Well, actually, my mother planted my first herb garden a couple weeks ago, but I watched AND chose the herbs that I wanted her to plant. I chose oregano, basil, chives, as well as parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. I was told those all grow easily and aren’t difficult to care for. On the drive home, I talked to my tiny little plants and prayed that they didn’t die within the week. I watered them as my mother told me to, kept them in the sun, and shockingly enough, they grew!
It’s only been a couple weeks, but my chives have big, beautiful blossoms, and my sage has practically doubled in size. I’ve officially worked at the Palace for a year now, and my appreciation for fresh herbs has grown exponentially. I’m particularly jazzed to put the basil in salads and cocktails.
I think that between the herbs that I have planted and the huge bay tree in my new backyard, I have a nice collection of delicious ingredients to add to the food I cook for my friends at home. There is something about using ingredients that you’ve grown in your backyard that makes the food you cook in your home more personal and delicious.
May 23rd, 2009 | 1 Comment »
The Grateful Palate is a beautiful, exciting catalog- a fun read. They offer all kinds of things, but especially bacon and they’re famous for their “Bacon of the Month” club. Several years ago, I had a bad, sad year. My co-workers at Dahlia pitched in together and bought me a full year of Grateful Palate’s Bacon of the Month Club. That’s an amazing, expensive gift.
Dan Philips is the founder of The Grateful Palate. Once, we were hosting a party at Dahlia that he was invited to and I knew I was going to wait on him. For me it was like meeting Michael Jordan; I got overheated and sweaty at the thought of it. I got special permission from management to wear my Grateful Palate bacon t-shirt the night I waited on him. He was charming and nice (and married.)
Anyway, you can order a couple pounds of bacon, or a couple months, or go whole hog and get the whole year, so take a look at their website.
May 21st, 2009 | No Comments »
Today we stopped by the Phinney house of Jeremy Faber, forager/owner of Found and Foraged Edibles, to check out what’s in season and available for the Little Tastes of Dahlia event that takes place next Wednesday, May 27. His mushroom filled warehouse smelled like the forest, with a chalkboard over a large double sink listing the day’s haul of foraged treasures.
Stacks and stacks of baskets held beautiful morel mushrooms (photo left). Jeremy also brought out a large basket of spring boletes for us to take a look at. One water-filled sink held wild watercress and the other, miner’s lettuce. We were slightly disappointed that spring nettle season is over, but we think we can make do with these glorious mushrooms and greens.
Check out Jeremy’s foraged delectations, as prepared by Dahlia chef Brian Walczyk, at next week’s Little Tastes, or you might be lucky enough to come across Jeremy’s wares at one of the local farmers’ markets.
May 21st, 2009 | No Comments »
Sake Nomi is a sake tasting room located in Pioneer Square. It was created by Johnnie and Taiko Stroud, with the vision of introducing sake to Americans. You can get a lot of information off their website.
The tastings are $5 and the fee is waved with any purchase from the shop, and that includes glass pours that start at $8. All the sake is served in kikijoko, traditional tasting cups used by sake breweries to assess the color, clarity, and brilliance of their sake. Here are some of the ones we tried and the notes I have on them:
Tenryo Koshu Junmai Daiginjo (Gifu)- slight gold tint with mild koshu sweetness in fragrance and flavor. Rich, yet gentle and mild. Soft, light mouth feel. Brewed with “flower yeast,” and bottle aged for 3 years. Goes well with sushi. Very nice. $16
Taiheikai “Pacific Ocean” Tokubetsu Junmai (Ibaraki)- Unfiltered. Thin golden color with melon and tropical fruit sweetness. Round, deep, and delicious. Loads of umami- definite favorite of Taiko and Johnnie, from Taiko’s home region. Named for the brewery’s location close to the coast, and their hope is to one day ship across the Pacific to the U.S. $10 Read the rest of this entry »
May 20th, 2009 | No Comments »
What do you do when you have a reputation as a vegetarian to uphold but also have a strong curiosity about an exotic meat dish? Well, my solution was to invite a friend to meet me at the Lola bar so that he could finish what I couldn’t handle and then claim “research” to anyone who saw me order the wild boar ribs. Wild boar, really? A vegetarian for nine years who swings with fish, I was a little worried about this experiment. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” a great president once said….so as soon as my back up eater arrived we ordered a pint of the Maritime Pacific Brewing Co.’s Maybock and the wild boar baby back rib special. The Maybock gets a really dreamy caramelly sweetness from the fusion of three malts and gets really lively with the addition of Mt. Hoods hops. The combo is sweet and crisp, and when the ribs arrived we were astonished at the compliments the pairing gave off. The beer and honey caramelized boar ribs dusted with fennel pollen had a crispy caramelized glaze and tender strands of flesh that I savored as they dripped from the bone.
The wild in wild boar is a little bit of a stretch. According to an old PI archived news article (the legacy lives on!), they are an imported breed that is farmed and then set free on giant estates where they are trapped or hunted. They pose quite a challenge according the websites that advertise hunting packages in the “wilds” of East Texas. But seriously, restaurants generally get their boars from razorbacks allowed to forage for non-cultivated food on these large estates so they do have a semblance of a free life.
All said and licked off the bone, the boar ribs were quite a treat and paired amazingly with the beer, and for seven bucks I could have eaten a second set if that wouldn’t have been way too carnivorous of me.
May 19th, 2009 | 1 Comment »
An article in the New York Times, titled “Food Companies Are Placing the Onus for Safety on Consumers,” asserts that “increasingly the corporations that supply Americans with processed foods are unable to guarantee the safety of their ingredients.” Large corporations such as ConAgra, Nestle, and the Blackstone Group (ie. Swanson and Hungry-Man) “concede that they cannot ensure the safety of items- from frozen vegetables to pizzas- and that they are shifting the burden to the consumer” to heat the product at home to a high enough temperature to kill off any potentially dangerous microbes. The strategy is to put detailed cooking instructions on items such as frozen pot pies, for example, directing the consumer to heat the product to “165°F as measured by a food thermometer in several spots.” Read the whole article here.
May 18th, 2009 | No Comments »
If you haven’t been before, you should try to get to Chicago this year for the Taste of Chicago in Grant Park. It runs from June 26 to July 5. It is not for the faint of heart though, as it tends to be hot, sunny, and thousands of people. This year will have over 70 vendors, and you can try some of the best cheesecake, Vienna hot dogs Chicago-style (the best in the world!), and some rockin’ ribs. This year will feature Stevie Wonder and Bonnie Raitt, and Emeril Lagasse will be there on opening day. And it is free to get in! When I lived in Indiana and Wisconsin, we would go all the time. Chicago offers some of the widest varieties of restaurants in the US and some of the friendliest people, and is super fun to explore.
If you go, try to get a room at the fabulous Hard Rock Hotel- it is an oasis just blocks from the park and right on Michigan Avenue. The rooms are amazingly comfortable with incredible views up Michigan Avenue, Grant Park, and downtown. I went last year and had a blast, again!
May 18th, 2009 | No Comments »
Food writer Leslie Kelly has posted a video of Pastry Chef Garrett Melkonian demo-ing Palace’s blue cheese panna cotta with butterscotch bacon on Amazon’s Al Dente blog. Check it out here.
If the video intrigues you, come on by, because this amazing dessert is still on the Palace Kitchen dessert menu.
May 18th, 2009 | No Comments »
This photo is one of several that was sent to me by one of my co-workers in the Tom Douglas Restaurants office, Julia Ottolini. It’s from her trip last Spring to the hill towns of Tuscany (Julia’s husband is Italian and she is lucky enough to have lived in Italy). The photo helps put me in the mood for my upcoming trip, with my husband Frank and several friends, to a villa just outside of Florence. My last trip to Florence was more than 30 years ago, so I’m overdue. We leave Friday and I plan to eat, drink, take notes, take photos and put up many blog posts on Italian food, wine, olive oil, cheese, honey, and more when I get back in 2 weeks.
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