Wright Eats

We had perfect weather last Sunday for Dog Mountain Farm’s fourth farm dinner of the season – skies with barely a cloud in sight, and warm sunshine, but not too hot (which was nice since the dinner tables are not shaded!).  We were looking forward to this dinner, since we thought it might be a bit like the Outstanding in the Field dinner we attended back in 2005, which we really enjoyed.  This time, we had the chance to experience the dinner directly on the farm, whereas in 2005 we toured a farm in the Skagit Valley before heading off to eat at a different location nearby.

We arrived just after 3:00 and got ourselves situated with a cool glass of white wine as we wandered the orchard and gardens.  Cindy Krepky, along with her husband David, gave a tour of their farm gardens, duck and chicken coop, and greenhouse.  The variety of products they grow is amazing, given that this is such a small operation, and especially given the harsh weather farmers were faced with this spring.  They supply a number of local restaurants, like Cafe Juanita, Canlis, Andaluca, and the Latona Pub.  Cindy explained how the land is former Weyerhaeuser land that the company sold off when the trees were no longer in good condition.  They’ve been clearing the trees and reviving the soil since they bought the land about seven years ago, and now they have a beautiful view of the Cascades.

Erik Jackson was the chef for our meal, assisted by Chef Tony who makes pies at Serious Pie in Seattle.  We were impressed with the meal, which had all the right elements for a farm dinner in the height of summer – a beautiful poached duck egg from the farm served with brioche and anchovy aioli, a cotechino sausage made by the chef and served Napoleon style with puff pastry and sweet Tiny’s farm nectarines, a delicious refreshing cold green gazpacho, a flavorful pork chop with onion jam and Muscat peach sauce, and three melon sorbets with port syrup.  It was all quite tasty, but a couple people in our party thought there wasn’t quite enough food and left a bit hungry.  My only wish was that they had used a local pork, given that it was the main dish of the whole meal – instead, it was shipped in from somewhere in Iowa, which seemed like an odd choice for a Washington farm dinner.

Dinner was served at a slow leisurely pace, so we had time to wander off to visit the two Percheron draft horses, Ike and Zeek.  Beautiful, and huge, animals!  We fed them big handfuls of green grass, and managed to keep our fingers too.

They’re hosting two more dinners this year, and their web site says they each have six seats left.  All of the previous dinners have been sold out, so if you have a chance to, I recommend signing up soon!

To see more photos from the event, you can view our album.

I nearly let strawberry season slip away without making my absolute favorite ice cream.  When Eric went to the market on Saturday he heard people talking about how it was the last weekend for strawberries, so he came home with a half flat for me.  I made a small batch of strawberry preserves with black pepper and mint, along with a double batch of Jerry Traunfeld’s strawberry rose geranium ice cream.  You can find the ice cream recipe in an earlier blog posting here.

Something about rose geranium makes berries taste even more intense, and this recipe has become almost an annual summer tradition for us since The Herbal Kitchen was published.  We have a huge gangly rose geranium plant whose sole reason for existence is this recipe (so if you want any leaves, let us know).  Know of any other great recipes we should try with it next?

As I found out when a part on my ice cream maker broke after the first batch, if you don’t have an ice cream maker, you can still make this recipe.  It won’t be quite as smooth as when made in an ice cream maker, but still creamy and delicious.  Just freeze a metal 13×9″ pan, pour in the mix, and place in the freezer.  Take it out and stir every half hour or so with a pastry scraper.  It will take several hours to freeze.

Twice this week, publications came out featuring copies of our photos.  On Wednesday, the Seattle P-I printed a photo of our friend Lauren Adler, owner of the new Chocolopolis shop on Queen Anne hill.  And then tonight, we picked up a copy of the August Travel + Leisure magazine, which has our photos of Licorous on page 30.  Last year, we did a photo shoot at Licorous for their new web site that I was designing, and this month T+L chose two of them for their Q&A about which restaurants a reader should try when they visit Seattle (Licorous and Txori was their answer).  Pretty exciting!

On a beautiful summer day like today, nothing beats a tall glass of lemonade.  I came across a recipe online years ago called “Best Ever Lemonade” and I’m convinced that it really is.  The trick is steeping the lemon rinds in boiling water to extract the tart lemon flavor, before combining it with the lemon juice.  Here is my slightly simplified version of the recipe:

Best Ever Lemonade

4 lemons
1 cup sugar
1 quart water

Halve and juice the lemons.  Set the juice aside and place the lemon rinds into a large bowl.  Cover with sugar and let stand for half an hour.  Meanwhile, boil the water, then pour the hot water over the lemons and stir to dissolve the sugar.  When cool, take out the rinds and strain the sugar water into a pitcher.  Stir in the lemon juice.  Chill and serve over ice.

Adaptations: Add four 4-inch sprigs of fresh rosemary or eight lavender sprigs into the hot water with the lemon rinds to make Rosemary Lemonade or Lavender Lemonade.

A recent farm basket from Tiny’s Organics included some beautiful fava beans.  Dawn and I look forward to favas each spring, and we ordered them at restaurants around town whenever we could this past month.  Now that we had our own, I spent an hour peeling them, twice – once for the outer pod, which provides a spongy cushion for the beans, and then again for the shell around each individual fava.  Talk about packaging!  But it’s worth the effort.

Since it was such a nice summer day, I wanted something to snack on while relaxing in the back yard.  I looked at what we had in our kitchen, and decided to make fava bean crostini with pecorino and mint.  It went well with a glass of Commanderie de la Bargemone 2007 Coteaux d’Aix en Provence Rosé (a great recommendation from Catherine while we were shopping at Bella Cosa).

Fava Bean Crostini with Pecorino and Mint
Makes 4 crostini

1.5 lbs fava beans
1 garlic clove
1 lemon
Rustic bread
Mint leaves
Olive oil
Pecorino cheese
Salt
Pepper

Remove the outer and inner fava bean shells.  Blanch favas in salted boiling water for a minute, then strain and run under cold water to prevent beans from cooking further. 

Whisk together 2 tsp lemon juice, 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/8 tsp salt, and pepper.  Taste the vinaigrette and adjust flavor as needed.  Toss the favas with just enough vinaigrette to lightly coat them.

Brush four pieces of 1/2″ thick bread with olive oil, and toast until golden brown.  Slice garlic clove in half, and rub the bread with the garlic.  Chop mint into thin strips.

To assemble: put a single layer of favas on each toast, shave pecorino cheese on top, sprinkle mint strips, drizzle a little olive oil, and crack pepper over each toast.

Starting this week, Skillet Street Food’s weekly downtown location will be on the corner of Boren and Denny Avenue.  I think it’s safe to say that I’ll be working remotely on an upcoming Wednesday.

And if that doesn’t fit your schedule, you can stop by Skillet at the upcoming Pioneer Square Fire Festival on July 11-12.

Chocolopolis opened on Wednesday to the Queen Anne neighborhood.  Grand opening festivities are scheduled to begin July 15, and Chocolopolis will be participating in the Queen Anne Sidewalk Sale on Saturday, July 19.

Take a look at our previous blog posting about Chocolopolis to learn more about Lauren Adler and her new store.

We’ve been fans of Sitka and Spruce since it opened, so when we heard last year that chef Matt Dillon was opening his second place, The Corson Building, we could hardly wait.  Whereas Sitka and Spruce is generally first-come-first-served, The Corson Building is reservations-only.  They’re only open for dinners a few nights a week, usually Thursday through Saturday, but it varies – their web site lists the dates.  They host a number of other events (more on that later) and periodic Sunday Suppers, too.  We scored our reservation for their first Sunday Supper, which was last weekend.

The Corson Building sits below the Corson Street off-ramp from I-5, in Georgetown.  You’d think this would make it easy to get to, but instead the ramp deposits you a block or two beyond the building, so we wound up making U-turns and backtracking before finally finding the rustic brick two-story.  The front half of the lower floor is the dining room with the original ornate fireplace taking center stage, and in back, Matt was cooking in the homey kitchen filled with windows.  The dining room was empty this evening because the tables had been moved outside.  Tonight’s dinner was to be the first official dinner on the patio (Matt joked that the meal he served outside to his family the previous week didn’t count).

For the first half hour, we wandered the yard, admiring the edible garden, chicken coop, and doves.  We enjoyed iced tea and oysters on the half shell while Matt’s friendly and mellow dog Che ambled about, greeting guests. The urban soundtrack of planes, trains, and automobiles was completed with the railroad tracks out back and Boeing Field nearby, both active this evening.

Two dozen people squeezed in around the single long table, some in chairs, others on wide wood benches.  When we had arrived, there were place settings on the ends which were missing when we sat down, so we asked if we could wrap someone around the end to get a touch more elbow room.  It only made a difference for one side of the table, unfortunately.  This would be a cozy supper.

Three wines were available for purchase on top of the $50 per person for dinner – a good deal given that the regular dinners are $80, but the pours were small and the dinner long so we would have preferred to purchase a couple bottles instead.  The wines were chilled and just right for the hot day.

Dinner finally commenced when heaping plates of radish and fennel salad with prosciutto arrived at each end of the table.  The salad was a refreshing start, though with just two plates to pass, there was sadly little left by the time each reached the other end of the table.  For the next course, we filled our plates with clams, bacon, and chorizo, plus crostini with rabbit liver pâté.  Both were delicious and a few of us wished for bread at the table to sop up the flavorful clam broth.  Instead we dumped our broth into the shells to make way for the next course after it was clear that there would be no fresh plates for the salad.  The roasted tomatoes were intense and really made the romaine, cucumber, and tomato salad stand out.

Everyone had a break to stretch their legs before the main dishes arrived in quick succession:  King salmon with fava beans, rabbit leg poached in olive oil, lemon, and bay, with green goddess dressing, and Bluebird Grain Farms emmer with morels, carrots, and lovage.  (Dawn and I predicted tonight’s meal would include fava beans and morels – ’tis the season!)  The salmon was amazing, and the tender rabbit’s simple preparation let the delicate flavor come through – definitely one of the best rabbit dishes we’ve had.  The meal finished with muscat wine, a large plate of Pecorino-like cheese, and a huge bowl of fresh strawberries with 25 year old balsamic on the side for dipping.

Dinners are only half of the picture of what The Corson Building is about.  Matt has plans to make it into a community center for the Georgetown neighborhood.  He’s collaborating with the nonprofit Seattle Youth Garden Works, providing the kids with a plot of land just down the street from the restaurant to grow produce that he’ll buy from them.  They will be growing some of the more interesting and unusual items that he can’t easily get elsewhere.  SYGW provides jobs for underserved youth, and you may have seen them selling their fresh produce at the University District farmers market.

Then he plans to host visiting chefs at The Corson Building.  Not only will he provide the chefs a venue for hosting dinners or classes, but if they’re from out of town, he’ll let them stay upstairs in The Corson Building.  The first chef’s dinner is this Sunday with Justin Neidermeyer, who is about to open his new Piemontese-style restaurant Spinasse Trattoria in Capitol Hill, where he’ll serve his amazing handmade pasta.  Matt also plans to have Jerry Traunfeld in a couple times before he opens his much-anticipated restaurant Poppy in September.  They know each other well, since Matt once worked in Jerry’s kitchen while he was at The Herbfarm.  And Matt will also soon be hosting Amaryll and Lori from Boulette’s Larder in San Francisco.

Matt has visions for his own larder next door.  He already has space in the back half of the neighboring building and plans to develop it into a café and retail space, where you can purchase top-notch ingredients for a party or your pantry.  He says it’s the place where you’ll be able to go buy a gallon of chicken stock or maybe some stuffed quail for your dinner party.

He’s open to other ideas for using The Corson Building space, too.  Let him know what you’re thinking about and he’ll try to make it happen.  Matt’s vision of The Corson Building as a vibrant community center for all things food-related is exciting, and we look forward to seeing it develop over the coming months.

The Corson Building
5609 Corson Ave, Seattle
(206) 762-3330