Where has the time gone?

Wow, last post at the end of May. Oh, that's right, my ecstacy over perfectly fried seafood. That jaunt to New England was a good one -- even the Mariners vs. Red Sox game we got into at Fenway was a win for the M's. We had great baked beans at Summer Shack in Boston, and an AMAZING meal at Blue Ginger.

That bears a little more detail -- believe it or not, celeb chef Ming Tsai actually cooks at his restaurant! That dinner was our one splurge on this trip, and we ordered the tasting menu. To our immense joy, Chef came out and served our amuse personally. Camomile-cured salmon. The menu was kind of a "greatest hits" off of the standard menu, but six courses of that was a lot of food. I wasn't wild about the black pepper lobster, but you know I'm not a big fan of black pepper; however, Dave loved it. We both thought the butterfish (aka black cod) was as great as the reviews. To top it off, Chef brought out a signed copy of our menu for the evening and had one of his staff take a photo of him with us. I'm not one for getting my picture taken, but how can you say no when the chef wants it to happen?

Since then? Enjoying the fresh bounty of the Pacific Northwest. We're getting a basket of food from an organic farm every week now that summer's started, and it includes some of my favorite things -- stone fruit. There's nothing -- nothing! -- like a perfectly ripe apricot. Except maybe a perfectly ripe peach :-). And have you ever eaten a sauteed radish? You're missing something interesting if you haven't.

Rum dinner, part deux

Last year, a rum tasting dinner at Elliott's Oyster House got me thinking about beverages other than wine to match with food. This year, Elliott's once again had a dinner with rum pairings. This year, instead of shots of rum (a challenge not only to pair with, but to drink 5-8 shots of rum and navigate the walk home) the five courses were paired with custom rum cocktails. So along with Chef Jeremy Anderson, the beverage team got into the act. With wonderful results!

First, the appetizers featured the return of "salmon candy," cured with brown sugar and Mount Gay rum and smoked. We also had oysters on the half shell with a Caribbean-style essence of salsa: mango, jalapeno, mint, and other flavors combined and juiced, then sauced on the oysters. That's one flavor I have to replicate here at home; I think it would be a great compliment to a ceviche. With this course we had a Bacardi Limon cosmopolitans and Caribbean margaritas.

Next we get a seafood "mojito" with scallops, rock shrimp, calamari, and ahi marinated in mojito. Very refreshing, and though I thought the delicacy of raw ahi was a little lost in the mix it did contribute a nice texture. The cocktail with this course was rum with blood orange juice, Grand Marnier, and sparking wine. A striking red contrast to the seafood.

Our favorite course came next: smoked black cod with a black rice cake and mango-papaya vinaigrette. The smoked cod was rich and silky, and had just the perfect touch of smoke. The chef said it only took 15-20 minutes for the black cod to take up all the smoke it needed, after marinating in ginger, coconut milk, habaneros. and rum. This course also had the best cocktail pairing: "Le Petite Fleur," with white rum, Cointreau, grapefruit, and lime served up with an orchid. Just the right tanginess to cut through the richness of the fish.

For the main course, we had something I'd never tried: veal cheeks, braised in root beer and dark rum. It was served over a sweet potato cake, with a sour cherry chutney. Somewhat leaner and not as rich as beef cheeks, but very good just the same. The cocktail? A rum Manhattan with Mount Gay Extra Old rum, Vya vermouth, and a rum-infused cherry. I really liked the cherry.

(During this course, I told Dave that I wished that ducks had cheeks -- they'd probably be terrifically good!)

Finally, individual banana tart tatins with a rum-infused ice cream. I don't know why I've never thought to make a banana tart tatin - it's a great little dessert, and there are so many tropical flavors you can then match with it. This was a nice time for "Rhuba Coffee" with Bailey's Irish Cream and Bacardi rum.

Great dinner, and this year it seemed a little easier to walk up the street and roll into bed.

Another great "underground" dinner

I've written before about "underground" dinners I have known. Last night, one of the best -- chef Joseph Conrad of Qube in Seattle, who's been in the city for just seven months. Boy, am I glad he's here. A combination of a finely tuned palate, a playful attitude towards food, and an amazing calm efficiency to his kitchen equate to seven+ courses that surprised and challenged my mouth and made it very, very happy. Photos and a little bit of description. Bet it will make you hungry!

An amuse-bouche of cured salmon and pickled cantaloupe inside avocado. Great array of textures and tastes - creamy/salty/ tangy.

This "seaweed" salad was comprised primarily of fennel fronds, with hijiki seaweed and tangerine, dressed with a nicoise olive viniagrette. Honestly, I never thought about cooking fennel fronds to serve; I just use them under fish when I roast it.

This was truly cool: yellowfin tuna "ramen" noodles with minced Asian pear and edamame, and a white soy broth/dressing. the radish sprouts added a nice spicy note, almost like having some wasabe alongside.

How about a little chorizo, made with shrimp instead of pork? The sausage rounds were topped with croutons and had a frisee salad hiding yummy pancetta cubes. The chorizo had some coarse-chopped shrimp integrated with the ground meat so in texture and appearance it looked like the fat you see in the pork sausage.

About here I was beginning to wonder if I'd make it through the entire meal! This is Maryland wild striped bass, over a fennel puree garnished with hearts of palm, pomelo, and trout roe. I usually don't care for fish skin, but I polished this one off.

Now for the pasta course, of course. But nothing ordinary about brioche gnocchi with black truffles and fois gras foam.

You almost can swing a cat and hit someone serving braised pork belly -- but with orange and sambal chile styrofoam and a tangerine jus? I think not. No, that's not a chicharrone on top, it's the styrofoam.

Dessert? Chocolate, of course. A Vahlrona chocolate cake with dulce de leche, Mexican hot chocolate emulsion, chicory coffee syrup, and "chile sugar."

With coffee I got a nice surprise. (When is a second dessert not a nice surprise?) This one was a mind-bender. Foie gras shortbread topped with fleur de sel, and some ethereal marshmallows that looked like chocolate truffles coated in cocoa, but were pretty much the exact opposite in texture.

The final amazing thing about this meal? I didn't have the wine pairings, so it was a little easier to waddle out to my car!

An amazing birthday dinner

Dave is celebrating a "significant" birthday this month. I'm spending most of the week cooking many things that he enjoys, but on Sunday we decided to go out to dinner. But not any dinner -- Chef Celinda at 94 Stewart (and her sous chef Jeff) planned and prepared this one especially for us. She seems to have had a pretty good time taking the budget I gave her and putting together a five-course meal with paired wines.

We started off with figs with an ale-washed cheese and balsamic. The wine, which was quite sweet, paired really well with it, even with the balsamic.

I think my favorite course may have been the "soup" -- a red and yellow tomato gazpacho with Dungeness crab and fresh horseradish. It was both beautiful and tasty. The Graves we had, which tasted of a lot of wood initially, harmonized perfectly with it, and the play between the tangyness of the tomato, the spice of jalapeno, and the sweetness of the crab was just plain fun.

Next we had two different meat courses -- veal medallions with poached pear and wild muchroom risotto, and moulard duck breast rubbed with pistachio and spices. The risotto was subtly scented with allspice, and it all went with a 2001 Chatea Ste. Michelle Cold Creek Merlot. With the duck (which you can see was cooked perfectly) we had an Australian Shiraz.

Finally, we closed with a dense vanilla cheesecake topped with a Colheita port caramel sauce, and a glass of the same 1980 port alongside it. Overall, we had a great time and a great meal, and I think Chef had about as much fun as we did.

How my weekend went a little "Sideways"

Got a chance to miss all the rain in Seattle last week by heading down to the Santa Barbara area for a few days. I've never been there, and it was quite a nice break. Great food and some fun wine tasting, as well as a sunburn (yes, I know, the sunscreen goes on *before* you go out in the sun, not after!). I'll apologize in advance for no pictures, don't quite know how that happened but we didn't take many. When I found out we were headed south, I went into research mode to see what restaurants they had down there. I wanted to be sure to try "Santa Maria" style barbecue, had heard a lot about it. Steaks grilled over red oak on a hanging grill. So I made reservations at the Hitching Post. No, I had forgotten they were the restaurant in "Sideways." And I felt like a silly tourist when I discovered that. But I was assured by locals that it really was a great place to eat. And it was. We enjoyed our duck, ribs, and filet quite a bit, thank you very much. I really wanted to try the Almond Joy tart but restrained myself. (An aside here -- yes, we did break some diet rules this week. But it wasn't bad, and we survived. And we did it fully knowing what we were doing, and didn't do silly things like eat all the bread in the basket!) Ah, but the highlight was Mexican food. At El Super-Rica, praised by the late great Julia Child, I had an amazing tamal de verduras, a vegetarian tamale that had chayote, corn, squash, and other goodies. And a taco with a homemade tortilla, zucchini, and pork that was heavenly. Everything there confirmed that the long line to eat at a bit of a "hole in the wall" was completely worth the wait. I still drool thinking about it. Then there was El Paseo. Normally I steer clear of places that do a lot of advertising in the local tourist guides, but I have a weakness for anyplace that makes their own tortillas. And on our first visit, for lunch on Friday, I didn't even eat any tortillas! Fridays are the one day a week that they serve lunch there, and it turned out to be a buffet. Oh, but not just any buffet. This one was good! There was an ethereal chicken tamale, rich pork carnitas, handmade guacamole, fresh beans, chile verde with fish (halibut I think), chile colorado -- all of it incredibly great. In fact we loved it so much that we went back for Sunday brunch, also normally a no-no. But not at El Paseo. On Sunday I did try two tortillas -- corn and flour. They were both great. Another very good meal: Emilio's, for Italian (they had a mash of artichokes and potatoes that was silky and just irresistable, chef says it was one part artichoke puree to three parts potatoes). So-so was Brophy's, where the chowder was great but the fish was uniformly overcooked. At the Harbor House, it took three prime rib portions to finally get one that was medium-rare, but their calamari strips were very good and the manager did come out to apologize for the problems with the prime rib. Wine tasting was fun, too. Went to Solvang, where you probably know a lot of "Sideways" took place. Cute little town, might have to go back and stay there sometime. Winery just west of town, Shoestring, was probably our favorite. We liked everything we tasted there. My biggest problem with tasting was that every winery charged quite a bit, and included a tasting glass. We did learn the strategy of sharing one tasting, and in the end did end up with six crystal tasting glasses and got them home successfully. I just chalked it up to buying Riedel glasses at $10 a pop.

Another trip to Steelhead Diner

I'm doing a review of Steelhead Diner for our condo newsletter, and we hadn't tried dinner there yet. Oh darn, more research :)

Saturday night for dinner was pretty slammed. We opted to not make reservations and take our chances at getting a counter seat. We ended up at the "tasting bar" which is about ten feet behind the kitchen counter. In some ways we had a better view. One reason for going again was to try the Caviar Pie, which one food editor was raving about to me. It certainly is pretty!

I had the Kasu Black Cod, and it was wonderful -- moist and flavorful. I'd never tried this entree though it shows up on enough menus around here. I really enjoyed it and would probably order it again.

Best crabcakes in Seattle, best gumbo too

We first dropped into Steelhead Diner, at the Pike Place Market, last weekend for lunch. They have a counter at the kitchen, which was like magic for me because "I like to watch." Dave is a sucker for gumbo, and so since it was on the menu, he went for that in a flash. I like to evaluate a restaurant by how well they fry things, so I ordered the fish and chips. First, though, we had a crabcake appetizer. WOW. Was that ever good. It was more like a crab salad fried up golden brown, with the poblano peppers and onions in the mix retaining some of their crunchy texture. Absolutely the best crabcake I've had here, and Dave agreed. Dave loved his gumbo, made with a nice dark roux. The fish and chips were light and crispy, with the fish perfectly cooked. And *finally* I've found fries that I like, crisp on the outside but cooked through inside. I don't see anything wrong with using frozen product for fries if you can turn out something great on the plate with them. My problem with "hand-cut" fries is that while the concept is good, the fries usually aren't. It was fun to watch Chef Kevin running the kitchen, and he was nice enough to chat with us some while we were there. This place is a labor of love for him, and it is so great to see his face light up when he talks about his food. Now I understand what Dave means when he says I "glow" when I talk about cooking, because I saw it in this chef too. On a return visit today, I tried the roasted pork sandwich. This is in a po'boy style, which means usually a knife and fork, because this baby was dressed to the nines. Chef Kevin roasts a pork leg for this, studded with serranos and garlic. By using the leg, you get a nice mixture of textures and different levels of chew. A couple of cool surprises, too -- chef handed me a place of fried smelt as kind of an amuse bouche, and I'd never had smelt before. He seemed pretty tickled that he fed me something new. They were very crisp and he served them with a sweet-hot mustard viniagrette. He also shared some fresh divinity with me -- great taste, so sweet it made my teeth hurt, though. He's doing a very good job of making me feel like family. Guess I'll have to take up some of my cured meats to share when they are done, and I told him I'd bring pickles later this summer when I put up some new ones.