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Welcome to West Coast Cooking
Cooking with Northwest Cherries
It’s hard to imagine anything better than a bowl of fresh ripe Northwest cherries served with nothing more than a few drops of the water in which they were rinsed with one or two of their own bright green leaves for a garnish. Served alone, cherries are one of nature’s perfect foods. But once you start combining cherries with other great ingredients in your own kitchen, you’ll uncover a whole series of intense and magical flavors that may not have been immediately apparent.
Cherries not only taste great by themselves, they bring out the natural goodness in other foods, hot or cold and when they rub shoulders with sweet and savory foods we already love, they taste even better.
Northwest cherries, like most stone fruits, provide a well-rounded flavor with enough acid to balance their natural sweetness. So they can be served with savory dishes as well as sweet ones:
* Toss pitted cherries in salads, just as you would pieces of tart apple.
* Sizzle cherries in the pan-juices of quick sautés of chicken or pork.
* Toss cherries into an impromptu salsa to pair with grilled steak or fish.
* Try a fresh or frozen Northwest cherry as a cocktail garnish.
And don’t neglect Northwest Cherries’ potential in the pastry kitchen:
* Cherries freeze beautifully and frozen, they become a quick sorbet.
* Baked into a tart, bold dark cherries assume a more refined character.
* Dark cherries will form a rich layer between cake and crumb topping.
* Pitted and left in whole rounds, they become the ideal topping for cake.
Try them in some of my favorite recipes:
Northwest Cherry Salsa
Pan Seared Pork with Northwest Cherries
Cherry Sorbet
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Organic Ingredients Move From Fringes to Mainstream
Years ago, when I was cooking at a small French restaurant in Friday Harbor on San Juan Island, I started using local and organic ingredients because they were the best ingredients I could find on the island.
Product delivered from the mainland was not always in the best shape, and since deliveries came only once a week, I was hard pressed to keep my kitchen stocked with premium produce and seafood. So I turned to local suppliers. Even though I had to deal with a dozen individual suppliers instead of a single distributor, it was worth it. And eventually, I came to realize that the relationships I was establishing with farmers, fishermen and wild crafters had become the foundation of a new kind of cooking.
I was only dimly aware at the time that hundreds if not thousands of other chefs were doing the same thing in small towns and big cities all over the country. These days, organic, or otherwise sustainable ingredients comprise the foundation of most fine dining menus, at least in the most interesting places, and more and more, organic and local have become the rule instead of an exception.
Recently, when I was researching this topic for a story about Maria Hines and her restaurant, Tilth, the first certified organic restaurant in Seattle, it occurred to me that the iconoclastic chefs like me who broke away from mainstream distributors to find better ingredients had become the new icons. Dishes we forged during that era paved the way for New American Cuisine.
These days, new innovative techniques, combined with those local, sustainable ingredients which have become increasingly accessible to chefs, are generating better food than ever.
Watch for an upcoming article on this subject in Pacific Northwest, the Sunday newsmagazine of The Seattle Times that features a recipe from James Beard Award winning chef Maria Hines of Seattle’s Tilth restaurant.
Meanwhile, enjoy:
Green Pea Flan with Morel Mushrooms and Pea Vines
Balsamic Braised Short Ribs with Faro
and Panna Cotta with Strawberries and Rose Petal Foam
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In an essay called “A Plea for Culinary Modernism,” published in a journal called Gastronomica, the food historian Rachael Lauden points out that processed foods have been with us for at least as long as the written word and probably longer. She compares the demand that we stay away from processed foods to the demands of the Luddites, English handworkers who protested woolen mills in the eighteenth century because the factories would undo their traditional way of life.
The modern credo takes it for granted that fresh, whole and natural are good, while preserved, processed and treated foods are bad. But this is a pretty new idea, and one that upon close examination doesn't make good sense. To our grandparents and thousands of generations of our ancestors before them, fresh whole and natural meant dirty, unrefined and labor-intensive. As long ago as the second century BC, a Chinese philosopher sated that the most important foods were rice, salt, vinegar, soy sauce, oil and black tea. Four of these foods are highly processed, barely recognizable as products based on distilled and fermented grains and pulses, the fat pressed from the seeds of the plant in the mustard family and the oxidized and pressed leaves of a camellia bush.
In the Mediterranean, people deliberately fermented dairy products and pressed the oil from olives, salted their fish and transformed juices into wines because these foods were more stable, more easily digested and involved less work in the home. In pre-Columbian times, Meso-Americans bred their grain to the point where it could not reproduce without human assistance and they processed their corn with alkali to make it easier to cook and incidentally more nourishing. In fact, every culture on earth has enthusiastically embraced food processing with the same glee that the earliest humans embraced cooking because most forms of processing food result in a product that is in some way more nourishing and or more delicious than food in its natural state.
At Organic to Go, it’s never been our goal to go back to grinding our own grain to make bread or milking our own cows to make cheese. We want to encourage food processors who already do those things to continue producing the bread and cheese and myriad other foods we love in a way that makes the world a cleaner, more wholesome place. We do that by buying “processed” foods like bread and cheese only from the most conscientious producers; and we buy our fruits and vegetables and other “whole” foods from growers and distributors who take care of their land and their workers with the same ideals of ecological sensitivity and social justice that we would apply ourselves.
In short, I’m all for processed foods, but I want the foods themselves to be chemical free and humanely raised and I want the processing they undergo to be conducted in a way that does not damage the world in which I live. Frankly, I am very glad we live in a modern industrialized world where I have easy access to the rich and culturally diverse array of processed foods I enjoy every day like rice noodles to make my favorite pad Thai, or pre-made tortillas and cheese to make a quick burrito dinner for my family, not to mention simple pantry staples like processed olive oil and vinegar to make a quick salad dressing for greens from my own garden.
Dead Head Pad Thai
Before he settled down and became a stock broker and financial planner, my wife’s cousin Bob, who stood up for me as a groom’s man at our wedding, worked at various odd and colorful jobs. For years, he was housepainter. And for a while, during the early 1980’s, he used to follow The Grateful Dead concert tours pulling a trailer equipped with a rudimentary kitchen. In the trailer, he made and sold Pad Thai noodles which he served with Bob’s Hot Habañero Shake. Bob’s noodles were my introduction to the phenomenon that is Thai Food. I never got his recipe, but, after years of carefully dissecting the dish and studying other recipes, I have finally developed a recipe that comes close. I decided to forgo the habañero shake in favor of a few crushed red chilies.
Crispy Bean and Cheese Burritos
Cooking my way through college as a dinner cook at a family-owned Mexican restaurant in Bellingham, Washington, I became something of an authority on burritos. The burritos we served were not “soft;” instead, they were fried in oil until they were crisp. The frying took place either on top of the griddle or in a shallow pan of oil (depending on which of us cooks was in charge that night), and instead of simply turning the burritos over once too fry the second side, we developed a technique for rolling the filled burritos as they fried so that they took on a three-sided log shape, something like the famous Toblerone chocolate bars. A quarter century later, the restaurant, which is still in operation under new owners has long abandoned the three-sided burrito, but I still follow the procedure when I make burritos at home. Serve the burritos hot on a bed of shredded lettuce with homemade salsa and sour cream passed separately.
Chile and Tomato Salsa
Salsa made in big, commercial batches is usually composed of vegetables that have been smashed as well as chopped. What distinguishes a really fine salsa from an ordinary one is the care that's taken in how the vegetables are cut. Use your sharpest knife and take your time to make fine dice that burst with flavor in every bite.
Mixed Green Salad
In the last quarter of the twentieth century when young cooks first started localizing elements of country French cooking, finding good salad greens presented an almost insurmountable hurdle. These days, the mixed baby greens known as mesclun are available ready-to-eat in most supermarkets, making what was once a labor of love into an easy-to-prepare element of any weeknight dinner. This French-American Salad may be the quintessential accompaniment to a casual entrée.
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This month, in honor of St. Patrick's Day, we've got potatoes on our mind.
The great famine that hit Ireland in the mid nineteenth century was at least in part the result of a blight on the potato crop in a country where a third of the population had become completely dependent on the potato. Of course there were other factors -- political, social and economic -- that contributed to the disaster, but that potato blight was certainly the result of over-reliance on a single variety of potato.
In their original habitat in the Andes Mountains of South America, potatoes grew in an incredible variety of forms. If a late frost came or if the plants were infected with a particular pest, then at least some of the varieties were resilient enough to survive the hard times.
These days, the vast majority of our own local crop is a single variety, the Russett Burbank. Most of these are processed into French fries or other forms of "value added potato products." But Washington State boasts some of the best potato growing areas on earth and we have access to a considerably greater variety of potatoes than we did in decades past.
To learn more about the various potatoes grown in Washington and their culinary potential, visit The Washington Potato Commission.
Russets, the potatoes grown most extensively in Washington are the best choice for Baked potatoes and French fries. Of course they’re good for mashing and roasting too, but we think some other varieties can be even better for those preparations.
Yellow-fleshed potatoes like Yukon Golds and Yellow Finns are great for mashing. The texture though is less fluffy than russets, but handled correctly they are creamier and richer-tasting, even without butter or milk. They are perfect for steaming and for baking in gratin dishes with broth or cream. We like them cut into dice and tossed with olive oil and herbs for a quick weeknight roast. They are also good for thickening soups without using flour or cream.
White-fleshed potatoes can be used the same way yellow potatoes are used. They are also perfect for potato salads. One great advantage of most varieties of white potatoes is that their delicate skin never needs peeling. It makes a smooth dish even if its left intact and of course this helps preserve the vitamins and minerals that tend to concentrate on the outer layer of all spuds. We appreciate being able to skip the step of skinning potatoes when we’re in a hurry.
Waxy Red potatoes are another good choice for potato salads. And as long as they’re not over-whipped, they can make an excellent mash. One of our all time favorite dishes involves cooking sliced red potatoes in just enough salted water to barely cover them, then draining off the water and shaking them in the pan with a knot of butter and a handful of chopped parsley to approximate a dish that M.F.K. Fisher described as “Shook Potatoes.”
Blue potatoes lend themselves to all the uses listed for white and yellow potatoes and their extra dose of antioxidants makes them the most nourishing choice. Of course, their distinctive color is a consideration too, so keep them in mind when you want to dazzle.
Specialty fingerling potatoes like Russian banana or Ozette potatoes are especially dense fleshed and delightfully waxy. They are perfect for important dinners where each ingredient will be appreciated for its unique qualities. We never like to lose the look of these little charmers so we are reluctant to mash them. Try steaming them until they’re tender, then slicing them in half lengthwise and arranging them cut-side-down on a pan that’s been coated with olive oil and sprinkled with a generous amount of salt and pepper. Gently brown them on the stovetop or in the oven.
Storing:
Try to keep potatoes in roughly the same conditions in which they grew. The skins are delicate and it’s important to keep the skin intact to protect the flesh inside. Also, excess cold and moisture might cause the potatoes to rot. So don’t wash potatoes until just before you plan to use them. It’s important to keep them in the dark too. Light will cause the potatoes to turn green. Store them unwashed in a brown paper bag.
This week’s recipes:
Yukon Gold Cinnamon Rolls
We loved the way cinnamon rolls turned out when we baked them with a grandmother's recipe for potato bread in place of the usual dough, and when the food editor of Bon Appetit asked for recipes using Yukon Gold Potatoes, this recipe topped the list. Now it's at Epicuirous.
Yukon Gold Wrapped Halibut
The same thing happened with this formula for potato wrapped halibut filets with spinach. We first encountered the dish at Aureole Restaurant in new York and enjoyed something similar at Icon Grill in Seattle. We simplified the technique for home cooks.
Psychedelic Blue Potato Mash
Our hippie roots are revealed in this recipe that takes advantage of the brilliant and incidentally very healthy anthocyanine pigments found in naturally blue potatoes.
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Eating local in the summer is easy. In the winter, it might be a different story. If you have stocked up on local meats and preserved some fruits or vegetables, it’s as easy as reaching into your pantry or freezer. But even for those of us who don’t live quite like the family in Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, her wonderful book about spending a year eating food grown at home, eating local in winter is quite do-able if you know where and how to shop. Seattle Neighborhood Farmer’s Markets can help.
Even in these dark days of February, wild spot prawns, pasture raised pork and grass fed beef are well stocked. Rainbow hued root vegetables, winter mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, ruby red chard and sweet winter apples fill the stalls.
Here’s a not-quite-A to Z list of local vegetables available this week at farmer’s markets around Seattle.
Beets
Cabbage
Carrots
Greens
Leeks
Onions
Parsnips
Potatoes
Rutabagas
Squash
Turnips
Even if you didn’t get around to drying your own fruits, you can find: Apples, Wild Huckleberries, Peaches, Apricots, Prunes, Asian Pears, Bosc Pears, Tomatoes, Celery Leaf, Hot Chilies, and Garlic.
And of course there are artisan breads, butters, cheese, eggs, pasta, yogurt, honey, cider, seafood and meats galore.
We’ve put together a menu that will help you savor the flavors of winter and make you glad that spring is still a few weeks away.
Farmer’s Market Carrot Soup
The aromatic properties of well-grown carrots can be easily overlooked. Honing in on their natural sweetness, we tend to look right past their delicate herbal notes. But a fresh carrot from your own garden or from the farmer’s market will emit bright notes of caraway, lovage or fennel, it’s cousins in the herb garden. Nutmeg is a spice that contains some of the same aromatic compounds that carrots do. Try using a microplane grater to get the best flavor from whole nutmeg pods.
Pork Roast with Prunes
What makes a dish a classic? It could be tradition, or a natural affinity between the basic ingredients; maybe it’s a combination of those things. When a pork loin is filled with dried fruit and roasted in the oven, it just feels right, especially when winter has gone on a little too long. In this version, a “gastrique” or sweet-sour sauce built on the pan drippings, enhances the seasonal goodness of the dish. For the best results, look for pastured pork from local farms at Seattle Neighborhood Farmer’s Markets.
Apple Cider Custard Tart
Instead of apples baked in a crust, this unusual apple tart relies on poached apples tucked into a tart that’s baked “blind” or empty. Most fruit tarts like this one use a milk custard, but we think the poaching liquid, in this case a cup of apple cider spiked with a cinnamon stick and a little lemon juice or cider vinegar to cut the sweetness, makes a brighter and more appropriate filling. So making the tart involves three steps: making the crust, poaching the apples, then transforming the poaching liquid into a custard. Assembly of the three elements should take place just before the tart is served.
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