Eat All About It

We have the contestants names for The Next Iron Chef, and Seattle’s Holly Smith is on the list! Smith, of Cafe Juanita and Poco Carretto, recently joined other top chefs in five weeks of worldwide taping, flying ‘from Los Angeles to Japan to New York to compete in the food fight of their professional lives.’ Here’s how the Food Network described the competition, which premieres Oct. 4:

“Whether working with exotic ingredients like jelly fish, creating their own version of international “fast food” or experiencing umami…the chefs must demonstrate their speed, artistry, innovation and leadership in each dish.” Smith, a James Beard award winner whose place is one of the handful that restaurant critics long to visit long after their reviews are done, took on the show along with notables like Nate Appleman and Jehangir Mehta.

I caught up with Holly briefly by phone — she’s in L.A., cooking for the Television Critics Association — and learned a little bit more. (more…)

Absolutes almost always cause trouble in the food world, whether it’s “always eat organic” (but what if I can’t always afford it?) or “never eat carbs”. I’ve been glad to see some recent bookspromoting a more manageable middle ground, most recently, Almost Meatless by Joy Manning and Tara Mataraza Desmond. Today I’m joining a virtual potluck for the book, where food writers from around the country are making an Almost Meatless dish and sharing it online (look for a list of contributors at the end of this post).

The book champions several ways to eat healthier and improve the environment. We all know we need to eat less meat — but if you can’t go cold turkey (no pun intended), why not use just a few ounces of paper-thin rib roast for a homemade shabu-shabu, instead of grilling a whole steak? Or maybe spread a single chicken breast out over four servings for your buttermilk chicken salad, or, for the die-hard, at least cut the beef in your Philly Cheesesteak with malted portobellos? 

Compromise is involved, yes, but this is not wishy-washy dining. The authors state baldly that the majority of American beef and dairy cows “probably lived very unhappy lives,” and recommend ways to find animal products you can feel better about eating. With recipes for homemade mayonnaise and carbonaras, they also put numbers on a question that’s vexed me for some time, the odds of getting salmonella from a raw egg. (They put it at 1 in 20,000. “You are more likely to get in a car wreck or become the victim of a violent crime than you are to get sick from a bad egg. Really.”)  

For my potluck dish, I decided to move away from meat (there are also recipes using minimal amounts of lamb and pork and turkey), looking at parts of the book that dealt with eggs and fish. Representing the Northwest, I had to try the Roasted Salmon Citrus Salad. The recipe header lets readers know that salmon is a fine addition to the table — but to “take care in selecting our sources for the sake of sustaining the species.” If you grill the salmon outside instead of roasting it, it’s a great dish for our record-breaking heat wave, a tangy, crunchy, flavor-packed plate. And, remember that middle ground? I may have used wild-caught salmon, but it did cross my mind how few hardcore locavores would be on board with the dressing of limes and mangoes. I think that’s OK.  Here’s the recipe:

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Fellow dessert lovers, who among us has not wondered about the technical differences between a crisp and a crumble, a galette or a buckle? Enter Rustic Fruit Desserts, a collaboration between James Beard winner Cory Schreiber and Portland baker Julie Richardson, a book whose usefulness is clear straight from the introduction, where the authors describe each pastry-fruit iteration. (A galette? It’s a free-form tart that does not require a pan. A buckle has cake batter poured in a single layer, with berries added to the batter.)

In summer’s heat, flipping through the pages of their seasonal desserts makes me want to load up on ingredients for Raspberry-Red Currant Cobbler or Stone Fruit Slump. The recipes are straightforward, but irresistable– a bite of ginger here, candied rhubarb ribbons there, flavor combinations like plum and vanilla, peach and caramel. 

 The pair will be in town Wednesday, July 29, for a Cooks & Books event, with the exceptional Neil Robertson cooking up their recipes. They answered some questions in advance via e-mail, including my unusually impolite inquiry about whether the “rustic” of their title could properly be considered a code word for “ugly”. (Read about that in my Christian Science Monitor post here.)

Here’s what they had to say. And if you want to nibble on more than just their words, tickets to the event are online here:

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Hoping to make jam or pickles or other preserves, but not sure how? This year, we’re making it easy: Join Cans Across America, an event culminating Aug. 29-30 with home canning across the country. The project was dreamed up by Seattle’s own Kim O’Donnel, most recently of The Washington Post, who explains here how “with the use of internet technology, we are resurrecting a dying art that our grandmothers mastered.” (more…)

The big new Capitol Hill branch of Cupcake Royale opened July 22 with free babycakes for everyone who stopped by to say the magic words: “Legalize Frostitution!” After visiting for the pre-opening party, tasting more of the revamped recipes I wrote about a while back, and seeing the jumbo mixers and the 15-rack oven in the back kitchen, I think they’ll be prepared for the crowds descending on the pretty place. (Early bird note: The store will open for business at 6 a.m., and it’s at 1111 E. Pike St.)

I liked viewing the five-foot-high stained glass cupcake in the entryway, the candy-colored chairs and the chocolate-bar brown tables designed by Roy McMakin. I got to chat with the folks from Shepherd’s Grain, who are providing the Washington state flour that’s helping the cupcakes go locavore. But, mostly I enjoyed the chance to see how the experts frost a cupcake in CR’s trademark swirl, using a spreading knife and some basic wrist action.

Here’s a video to show you their techniques — we saw a few examples, using slightly different methods, but all with the same polished results. (Even on the last example on the video, where the froster — what a great job title! — is repairing my own clumsy first attempt.) For those of you who aren’t in the area, or who prefer baking at home, we also have a recipe for the shop’s new vanilla cupcake, scaled down for the home baker, which CR owner Jody Hall kindly shared. (The Medosweet dairy products would be tough for the home cook to find, and if you’re not in Washington you probably want to substitute your own local brands to follow the money-where-your-mouth-is ethos, but here’s how it’s done in these parts.)

Vanilla Buttercake Recipe

makes 1 dozen

2 3/4 c. Shepherd’s Grain cake flour
2 3/4 c. sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 c. local egg whites
1/2 c. warm water
1/3 c. Medosweet sour cream
5 ounces Medosweet butter
3 tbs expeller-pressed canola oil
1 tsp Gahara vanilla bean paste

Line a cupcake tin with your favorite cupcake wrappers, and set your oven to bake at 350 degrees. Combine dry ingredients in a mixer and mix on low speed. In a separate bowl, combine water and sour cream. Add vanilla paste and egg whites to this mixture and stir until combined. Add the butter, oil, and 1/4 of liquid mixture to your dry ingredients, and mix on low speed until moistened. Increase to medium speed and mix for one minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and gradually add the remainder of the liquid mixture in three doses, beating for 20 seconds after each dose. (Editorial note: Do you see now why it took 57 tries to develop the new recipes?) Scoop batter into wrappers. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, or until edges are slightly golden. Set cupcakes aside until they are cool to the touch, then frost ‘em up with real buttercream.

Anyone who eats dessert in my home often knows what a fan I am of David Lebovitz. He’s the guy who (on paper) showed me it was easy to make marshmallows and meringues and macaroons; his wonderful recipes in The Perfect Scoop are the main reason I invested in a serious ice cream machine.

I feel like I know the guy, between his books and his blog. But, of course, I don’t. I wrote about that in my post in The Christian Science Monitor this week on Lebovitz’s new book, The Sweet Life in Paris. It’s online here.

 Between recession and home-cooking renaissance, canning is making a comeback.

You can join in with a national “Cans Across America” event Aug. 29-30, spearheaded by some of our own Seattleites. Or, get an in-depth head start with a series of canning classes in Everett, offered by the WSU Snohomish County extension. 

Plenty of people have avoided canning because they’re afraid of risking botulism. Until recently, that category included me. I only canned my first tomatoes last year, taking a WSU King County Extension class to gain confidence, due to my acute… ah… awareness of food safety. As I wrote then, in my childhood home “any word association game would have paired “pork” in the same column as “trichinosis,” and the words “canned mushrooms” would logically have been followed by the term “botulism.”

I’ve had the canning bug since, moving on to jams and other preserves and pickles, reveling in the classic “ping” of a jar lid and the recipes of mavens like Marisa McClellan. But, as I’ve grown more comfortable with the safety procedures myself, I’ve started wondering: Is botulism really that prevalent? Do I need to wash my jars in hot soapy water AND sterilize them in boiling water AND dry them in an oven at the appropriate temperature AND add the proper amount of acidifying ingredients AND process them for the recommended length of time in boiling water? 

I don’t want to fool around with anything marked “fatal nerve toxin,” of course, but I also wondered how significant the risk is. While we do hear about occasional botulism cases –a nurse and her young children dangerously sickened by green beans this year, for instance — we hear about far more deaths from e. coli and salmonella and listeriosis. I don’t hear a lot about death by jam.

Checking in with the experts, here’s what I learned: (more…)

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Enter these contests! You, too, could win cash prizes, kitchen gear, fame and (at least some) fortune. I can say this with particular certainty after interviewing winners like Ellie Mathews, 1998 winner of the Pillsbury Bake-Off, who treated the contest like a $1 million code, which she proceeded to break. I’ve seen enough recipes from readers to know plenty of you are good enough to beat the odds, so consider putting your culinary creativity toward:

Chipotle Mexican Grill: Create a new burrito, make a video or record a song or otherwise sing its praises, and win $10,000 through the “My Chipotle” campaign. Winners will be picked based on how well the submissions “discuss Chipotle menu items while remaining consistent with the company’s values and image.” (Talking points hints: Sustainable. Organic. Big chain does not have to mean bad guy.) Besides the dough, the first place winner also gets the burrito added to the Chipotle menu. Second prize in the contest is $5,000 plus a Chipotle party for 50. Third prize is a free burrito a week for a year. Submit entries by Aug. 14, full details at mychipotle.com.

Pietopia: Could a pie describe the way you are feeling right now? Act fast, and you can make today’s deadline for Pietopia, a Portland-based contest where I’m interested in reading every entry. The rules: “(P)lease submit your pie recipe and written explanation, including why you chose the recipe and how the taste of it relates to the current state of your life in under 300 words by July 15th, 2009. The project will culminate with an exhibition of the winners at the Portland Farmer’s Market Eastbank between 20th and Salmon on Thursday August 20, 2009. Each winning pie will receive a limited edition screen print reflecting the ideas in the written statement. Pies will be judged upon the creativity and innovativeness in ideas reflecting the ingredients used in the recipe.” Send statements and recipes to: pietopiacontest@gmail.com. Check out the blog for full details and some of last year’s winners, including the bittersweet “Chemo Savvy Apple Pie” and the “Homesick for Miami Pie”. (more…)

The summer months are supposed to be slow, but we’ve got an onslaught of can’t-miss food events coming up the next few weeks. Burning Beast is sold out, but you can still head out for free cupcakes or win a year’s worth of free chocolate or free tickets to a big-time dinner; you could learn about sustainable seafood or network with fellow food-lovers or snack on specialties from dozens of fine Seattle restaurants. Here’s a sampling of what’s in the works: (more…)

It’s still hard for me to believe that Korean food is the next hot cuisine. It’s like finding out that the singer you always loved, the one who never made it really big, is suddenly on America’s Top 40. As I wrote here in the Christian Science Monitor, I’m crazy about Korean food, but it’s the one cuisine that has been too esoteric for nearly all my friends and relatives to join in. They’ve dubbed it too spicy, too aggressive, too unusual.

Breaking through that logjam of fascination and fear is writer/artist Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee, who’s coming to town this week on tour for her new book, Quick and Easy Korean Cooking.  The book, chosen for Gourmet’s cookbook club, lives up to its name, and could legitimately have tagged a “delicious” on the title too. But even Lee’s previous book,  the autobiographical Eating Korean, made it clear that it was possible to get authentic and thoroughly satisfying Korean food on the table without a tremendous investment of time.

On the phone before her Northwest trip, I asked Lee if she’s been getting bigger crowds for her book signings, now that Korean is considered hot instead of esoteric. She doesn’t know yet — she’s starting the tour here. But she is glad to hear people saying, finally, “Oh, Korean food. We all love it. It’s like it’s been around forever.”

Look for Lee at book signings and cooking demos around town (schedule below). Here are also some highlights from our conversation, and a recipe for her spicy buckwheat noodles, which are fast becoming a summertime staple in our home. (more…)