That milk-braised pork I made last week for supper club? Here’s what I did with some of the leftovers: a lazy approximation of the roasted cauliflower pasta from one of my favorite cookbooks, Olives and Oranges. I sauteed garlic, anchovies, hot pepper flakes and breadcrumbs in lots of olive oil, then threw in capers, cauliflower florets roasted until sweet and golden, minced parsley and diced-up leftover pork, then added bowtie pasta and let it all simmer for a minute. Daaaaaang.
It was our turn to host supper club, but we hadn’t been sure what our theme would be. Then we heard the news of Marcella Hazan’s passing, and decided to have a dinner composed of her recipes to honor her work. I hope she would have been pleased. Continue reading
I got the Momofuku cookbook for my birthday! To break it in, we had some friends over to dinner and I made a bunch of things out of it: pork belly ssäm, pickled mustard seed sauce with pickled cucumbers (recipe below), sweet corn with miso butter, and steamed buns. Well, the buns were my own favorite bao recipe, but I shaped them based on David Chang’s process, folded over into little pockets before steaming, and it worked great. The sauce was killer. The salty-sweet roasted pork belly wasn’t bad either. There were very few leftovers. Continue reading
This week I have a cooking article in the Cascadia Weekly, explaining a dish that’s near and dear to my heart: German Apple Pancake. I finally sat down with my favorite recipes for clafoutis, Dutch Baby, and Yorkshire pudding, figured out the ratios and tried making a completely off-the-cuff breakfast with an apple I found in my parents’ fridge instead of referring to the original recipe. It worked pretty darn well. On our way home we stopped at a fruit stand and bought a bag of Jonagolds, I have my eye on a recipe for buckwheat apple tart from the new Deborah Madison cookbook.
And, speaking of Dutch Babies, I want to share a comic that my aunt Holly Tuttle did a while back for a cartoonist cookbook. (Note: cooking religious extremists is not recommended)
Usually when we drive through Ellensburg on our way back from the Tumbleweed Festival every year, we end up stopping for dinner at the Valley Cafe, one of our very favorite restaurants back when we lived in Eburg. This year we decided to throw caution to the winds and try out the Yellow Church Cafe.
We just got back from our annual road trip down to Santa Cruz, and as usual we planned our route to include visiting as many new-to-us breweries as possible. Not hard to do on the west coast these days.
Our band played a concert in Wenatchee, so we used my parents’ house as our starting point and headed down Hwy 97 to the Columbia Gorge. We stopped for lunch at Bert’s Pub in Yakima, which had some good reviews online. When we got there we realized it was the same space that used to be Grant’s Brewpub, where we’ve played music before. Weird. In any case, they had a great selection of local beers and some surprisingly good food. I had a Bale Breaker IPA and Jon had a Yakima Craft. Continue reading
We happened to be in Seattle earlier this week for a consultation for my new tattoo (I’m so excited!) so we took ourselves out for a belated anniversary dinner. We had gone out with friends on the actual day, so it was fun to do something just the two of us. We decided to try the chef’s choice tasting menu at Staple & Fancy in Ballard.
In an effort to post things in a more timely manner (i.e. When I’m actually thinking about them) I’m going to try posting from my phone. Here’s what we just made: grilled steak tossed in a sauce of nam pla prik, lime juice, basil and mint, mixed with grilled escarole, and piled on top of sticky rice. It was fantastic. Plus it used up all the nam pla prik we had lurking in the fridge.
To use up the remaining lime juice, Jon made us Hemingway daquiris. A nice pairing with the fiery, salty beef.
Another month, another supper club. This time we explored the heights (or depths) of American cuisine with a trailer trash/church potluck theme. Some of this stuff I grew up with (in the form of Grange potlucks), some of it was new to me. Altogether it was an oddly successful dinner.
It was a beautiful July evening, warm but not too hot and not too buggy. The table was set on the deck where we could watch the sunlight creep up the mountain across the lake. Continue reading
Food on the Brain 