Eat All About It

Every time a friend visits Los Angeles lately, I’ve been asking about Kogi, the amazing taco truck that’s almost singlehandedly causing trendspotters to call Korean food the next hot thing. I went so far as to figure I could rustle up enough contributions, along with other curious Seattleites, to lure the Kogi trucks to Seattle for a day, and wrote asking if they’d consider a Northwest road trip. The lovely and polite answer: They’re flattered, but don’t think their trucks would survive the drive. We’re still talking options, but that’s a long introduction to say I was absolutely thrilled to learn of Marination Mobile, a Korean-Hawaiian taco truck opening soon on our own Seattle streets.

I talked today with Kamala Saxton, who is founding the venture with partner Roz Edison. In the truck kitchen will be Catherine Calleja, most recently of Yarrow Bay Grill. The first good sign: When Saxton answered the phone, she was busy cooking up a batch of kimchi fried rice, which will be one of the items sold on the truck, complete with a fried egg on top and a garnish of green onions, furakaki and sesame seeds. Other planned menu items: A kalbi taco, a spicy pork taco, braised tofu, and “Aloha Sliders” of kahlua pig on Hawaiian sweet rolls. And, says Saxton (whose heritage is both Hawaiian and Korean), she will not forget the Spam. Tacos start at $2, and nothing will run more than $5.

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Even before we got to the speakers part of the evening, the Palace Ballroom was a microcosm of Seattle’s food world last night. In line for “What We Talk About When We Talk About Food,” I was right behind Kim of A Mighty Appetite, followed a minute later by Bon Vivant and Lorna Yee and Jon Rowley. Then I turned around to say hi to Sheri and Barnaby from Foodista, and met Tea in person for the first time, and it went on from there.

We were all gathered for a book reading and panel discussion led by Maggie Dutton, featuring authors Matthew Amster-Burton, Shauna James Ahern, Erica Bauermeister, Kathleen Flinn, and Molly Wizenberg. The actual readings were fun — Kathleen Flinn turns out to do a mean Julia Child impression, and it was lovely to hear baby Lucy chirp from her father’s arms whenever Shauna spoke. What I enjoy most about these events, though, is learning a little more about the people behind the words. Here are some of the highlights:

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Hunger Challenge: The Final Day

I was mildly obsessed by fish during the United Way Hunger Challenge, probably because I’ve been so generally confounded seeking out an affordable fish dinner that doesn’t raise warnings of mercury, PCBs, or other environmental and ethical concerns. Shrimp once seemed a reasonable choice, for instance, until I read Taras Grescoe’s description of how “if you are eating cheap shrimp today, it almost certainly comes from a turbid, pesticide- and antibiotic-filled, virus-ridden pond in … one of the world’s poorest countries.” 

For the last day of the Hunger Challenge on Friday, I took advantage of the fish counter at Ranch 99 Market, which will clean and steak whole fish for no additional fee. I violated the prime directive of thoughtful shopping — don’t go with a toddler if you can possibly avoid it —  and wound up with this whole farm-raised trout at $4.99/lb (The total was $8.50, though it included the head, which I discarded). If I’d been thinking cogently, instead of assuring the frantic toddler that we would, indeed, return to watch the live “crabbies” in the tank, I might have gone for the mackerel, which was both cheaper and wild-caught, or the squid, which the kids would have liked better.

I’m starting to think that successful budget shopping is a mixture of careful planning and careful lack of planning: I went shopping without a recipe, so I could buy whatever fit my budget and survey what looked like the cheapest and most attractive accompaniments. Chicken thighs were on sale and would have been a quarter of the price, but I wanted to hold firm on buying only chicken with at least some sort of cruelty-free pedigree, as hard as that can be to validate. Spareribs were cheaper than fish, but I wasn’t in the mood for my favorite sparerib-daikon stew. So I wound up with the trout, along with scallions (25 cents a bunch, a fifth of what I’ve seen them for at other markets), and about 50 cents worth combined of fresh lime, ginger, and garlic. I had a vague idea of stir-frying the fish, but it looked far too thick, so I brushed the steaks in olive oil and baked them, then topped them with a sauce of garlic and ginger and scallions sauteed in olive oil, with a tablespoon of butter and the juice of a squeezed lime at the end. It wasn’t earth-shattering, but it was good, served with a side of grilled bok choy ($1.29/lb) and some sweet, insanely cheap soft sesame rolls from the Ranch 99 bakery (around 19 cents each.)

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Seattle has an uncanny concentration of fine food writers — it’s as particular a specialty here as our teenage jazz musicians — and six of them will participate in a Kim Ricketts event tomorrow titled “What We Talk About When We Talk About Food.” The marvelous Maggie Dutton will lead a talk with authors Matthew Amster-Burton, Shauna James Ahern, Erica Bauermeister, Kathleen Flinn, and Molly Wizenberg. The event is sold out (though you can try for the waiting list here), but I’ll be Twittering conversation highlights live from the Palace Ballroom. If you have questions for the authors, send them my way through the comments here, or by dropping me a line at rebekahdenn@gmail.com, and I’ll try to get answers. And, watch this space, because there’s talk of scheduling a summer cocktail event for Seattle authors with new drink-related books: Kathy Casey and Kate Hopkins. For a look at “What We Talk About…”, tune in here tomorrow night.

Photo courtesy of Wright Eats

I’ve been meaning for days to point you to this account of a most excellent blind taste test to determine the city’s best croissant. After hearing that our friends Kye and Eric had held their own croissant-off and declared a winning tie between Cafe Besalu and Honore, we decided a more elaborate rematch was in order. Eight of us gathered earlier this month with samples from seven different bakeries, and nibbled our way through each lettered entry.

I was surprised, in the end, by two things: (1) How many variations there can be in a “good” croissant, in flakiness, sweetness, richness, and crunch, and (2) How similar our opinions still were on which ones were best and worst.
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Good news for everyone awaiting Emmer, the new restaurant from Seth Caswell, president of Seattle Chef’s Collaborative and former chef at Stumbling Goat: He’s aiming for a summer opening for his own place, and he’s added something more to the menu: The food is still the locally sourced, seasonal menu he’s always planned — a sample menu  had me at  ”pickled fiddleheads” before he even got into “porcini tart” and “oyster pan roast” and “emmer farro fries”– but the name is now Emmer & Rye, the rye part referencing whiskey. Caswell is teaming up with Benjamin Hodgetts, former GM at the Alibi Room (and currently at Matt’s), adding “innovative, yet classically prepared cocktails” to the mix.

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Technically, the United Way Hunger Challenge doesn’t allow for home-grown food, but as a practical note, I’m struck by how much better and cheaper our diets are, spring through fall, just with what now “volunteers” in our garden. The planter boxes required an up-front investment, and we spent money this year in amending the soil, but we have more perennial edibles than we expected. The rhubarb that was here when we moved in produces a healthy annual crop. Last year’s sorrel is regrowing in the back yard, as slug-eaten as ever, but still lemony-sharp. The rosemary took a hit but survived, and the lovage, one of a handful of herbs I was inspired to plant by Jerry Traunfeld’s Herbal Kitchen, is already back, as glorious and aggressive as a weed. Marjoram, tarragon, oregano, and other herbs are thriving.

We recently planted our Big Daddy onion starts from Territorial Seeds, ($13.95 a bundle, but a great harvest), then moved some forgotten  potatoes from last year’s bed to a new home, where they have already sprouted. When we took a look at the bounty we had before the season had really begun, we felt quite rich.

The adults rushed out to a long-awaited concert last night, and the kids had a babysitter, which means they got to choose dinner. I would like to report that they voted for cioppino or tamago or the broccoli quiche from Mollie Katzen’s kids cookbooks or other past favorites. Truth compels me to report, though, that corn dogs are their current craze on Babysitter Night. A lot of research points to how much cheaper junk food is than wholesome food, but I found it interesting that the corn dogs, at $1.39 apiece at QFC, actually cost more than the adults’ dinner of grilled Gardenburgers (75 cents apiece).

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Preparing "Uighur Pastries" from Beyond The Great Wall

I meant the third day of the United Way Hunger Challenge to be fish night. I figured I would try to get around the conundrum of fish being one of the healthiest foods around (once you avoid the pollutants and environmental landmines) but also one of the most expensive. Instead, I found myself in my first experiment in deep-fat frying. 

Searching through Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid’s “Beyond The Great Wall” for inspiration on spectacular dishes within limited means, I became hypnotized by the little vegetable-filled turnovers (”Uighur Pastries With Pea Tendrils”) the authors found in the Turpan oasis of China. The dough couldn’t have been simpler or more inexpensive — 22 cents worth of flour, water, and salt. The recipe called for a filling of peavines, but I decided against a trip to the Asian markets and instead used $1.15 worth of the chard that I had bought on my run to Trader Joe’s, along with a 25 cent onion and a bit of bulk cumin and cayenne and salt.

I made a batch of dough early in the afternoon, but by cooking time I was running into the dinnertime limitations I struggle with even when cost isn’t such a concern: Me needing to be around a sharp knife and a hot stove when time is short and the children are hungry. So I did this: I fed each one a banana (19 cents apiece). I fed the toddler, who we once nicknamed “BPB” (it sounded more polite than “bottomless pit baby”) a second banana. And I managed to remember that lesson I keep relearning, that cooking with kids is just another, more practical, version of playing with them.

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Jody Hall of Cupcake Royale is heading to Washington D.C., and it’s not to try to woo President Obama away from his Fran’s. Hall wrote in an e-mail that she was one of the small business owners chosen for a roundtable with Nancy-Ann DeParle, Director of the White House Office of Health Care Reform. Hall is making a push for public health insurance, and speaks from the perspective of a small business owner who actually offers it. Here’s some of what she wrote on the CR blog:

“We have 51 employees here at Cupcake Royale, and as a company, we spend almost as much on insurance as we do on rent for all three stores. That’s pretty nutty. And if things don’t change, it’ll only get worse. Insurance rates continue to climb, (ours just spiked 40% - neat!) and small business owners are being forced to purchase plans with inadequate coverage, or to drop their policies completely, adding to the millions of already uninsured and underinsured Americans. Those who continue to fork it over to private insurance companies are giving out a good chunk of dough in some pretty tough financial times. Clearly, none of this is good for anyone.”

Want to learn more? She’ll be representing this group.