Wright Eats

It’s the time of year when many of us are hosting out of town visitors and family.  With the holidays, you may be planning a brunch, perhaps for Christmas morning, or maybe for New Year’s Day.  I’m curious: what are your favorite things to make for brunch?

I like to look for make-ahead recipes, so that I don’t have to wake at the crack of dawn, and can relax with my guests over a cup of coffee.  I’m a big fan of these cheese-filled blintzes from Chef Robin Leventhal.  Make them the night before, and all you have to do is fry them up, pop them in the oven, and set the table.

Or how about a granola parfait?  I’m so addicted to Molly’s homemade granola recipe that it’s an every-morning kind of thing for me to layer granola and yogurt together for breakfast.  But add some layers of fruit and serve in a trifle bowl, and it would make a lovely addition to a brunch buffet.

For something savory, an egg soufflé is a great dish to make the night before.  I’ve enjoyed this Greg Atkinson recipe, published in the Seattle Times a few years ago.  Made like a bread pudding, it was the centerpiece of our Christmas breakfast last year.

Citrus fruits are like jewels on the holiday table.  My favorite make-ahead side dish is a bowl of vanilla citrus fruits.  The fruit infuses overnight with vanilla bean and a touch of honey which mellows the tang, and it is beautiful served in glass goblets or a pretty holiday bowl.

I’m always looking for new brunch ideas.  Feel free to add your suggestions and links to the comments below.

Vanilla Bean Infused Citrus Fruit
Serves 8

5 oranges
4 ruby grapefruit
1 vanilla bean
Honey

Segment the fruit:  Slice off the top and bottom of the fruit, exposing the flesh inside.  Set the fruit on a cutting board, and slice off the skin and white pith in strips, by following the curve of the fruit with your knife.  When all the skin is gone, hold the fruit in your hand over a bowl and gently slide your knife between the membrane walls to release the segments.

Before discarding, squeeze any remaining juice out of the membrane and into the bowl of fruit.

Cut open a vanilla bean and extract the seeds with a knife.  Stir the seeds into the juice to evenly distribute them.  Place the vanilla pod into the bowl, too.

Stir in a few spoonfuls of honey, to taste.  Refrigerate overnight.  Serve chilled.

Hm, I’ve been slacking on the blogging front, haven’t I?  Life has gotten a bit crazy lately, but here I am again.  During crazy times, we often find ourselves digging around in our freezer on weeknights, looking for something that might make a quick and easy dinner.  Which got me to wondering, what do other people keep in their freezers?  I love it when I find a great recipe that’s perfect for making a big batch and freezing.  Here’s what you might find in our freezer:

Marcella Hazan’s Bolognese sauce – It takes hours to cook Marcella’s Bolognese sauce, but it’s the perfect thing to have on the stove on a cool weekend afternoon.  With beef and pork (optional), milk, white wine, tomatoes, and a touch of nutmeg, it leaves you looking forward to Sunday dinner.  We make plenty of extra for our freezer.  Just defrost and heat, add a dab of butter to the sauce, mix in with your favorite pasta, and grate some parmigiano on top.

Tom Douglas’ fruit crisp topping – This stuff is perfect for a super-fast dessert.  I make a triple-batch and freeze it.  Then when I’ve got some lovely fruit – apples, peaches, cherries, whatever – I just cut it up, mix in a touch of sugar, throw it into a pie dish with some crisp topping, and pop it in the oven.  A large apple is perfect for one of our individual-sized Emile Henry pie dishes, and then the two of us can share a yummy apple crisp.

Tamales – These are newcomers to our freezer.  I wrote a couple months back about making tamales at our friend Kathy’s house.  Our freezer stash of tamales has dwindled, though, so we may need to make some more.

Bruce Aidells’ chicken and apple sausage – This homemade sausage is great both for breakfast and in savory recipes.  It’s juicy and better than anything I’ve bought in grocery stores.  It’s not too hard to make, actually, unless you want to stuff it into links which takes longer.  We just form it into patties for the freezer.  Bruce Aidells has a recipe for French toast stuffed with sautéed apples and some of this sausage, which is a great Sunday breakfast.

Jerry Traunfeld’s apple black bean soup – a great winter soup, especially during the time when apples are the only fruit available at our local farmer’s markets.  Jerry’s absolutely right in his intro paragraph which says that it makes a huge pot – one recipe is plenty for several meals.

Vij’s – You’ll always find a cooler in our car on our way over the border to Vancouver, so that we can bring back cryovaced packs of our favorite Indian food for our freezer.

Soup and rolls from Dahlia Bakery – Every few weekends, we’ll stop in for a morning fried egg sandwich (the gourmet version of a McMuffin), and if we get there late enough, the lunch items are just coming out of the kitchen.  We might grab a soup or two, which comes with one of their traditional rolls, and freeze it for a weekday lunch at work.

Fu Man Dumplings – You need to call ahead 24 hours in advance to pick up a bag of Fu Man dumplings to-go.  With some of their super-garlicky sauce, the dumplings make a yummy snack.

Eat Local – We’ve mentioned this place on Queen Anne on our blog before.  Now they’ve set up tent at the U-District Farmer’s Market each Saturday, which means that you might find their dinners in our freezer a little more frequently now, or maybe one of their cracker-bread pizzas, pictured above.  Just as the name of the store implies, everything is made using local ingredients, and is quite delicious.

So, what do you keep in your freezer?  Favorite recipes?  Trader Joe finds?  Food that you’ve always got to have on hand?

For some reason, I always thought tamales would be hard to make, but they turn out to be easy work with a group of friends over margaritas.  We first met Kathy around the holidays a number of years ago, and she promised that one year she’d share her recipes and show us how.  It’s been part of her annual Christmas tradition for years.

This was the year for our tamalada (tamale making party).  After one raincheck (snowcheck?) on account of Seattle’s crazy winter weather, we finally gathered at Kathy’s house just after Christmas.  Joining us and Kathy (our tamalera, or tamale expert) were a group of dedicated foodies:  Kathy’s husband Patrick (retired and part-time “volunteer” at Salumi), along with our friends Catherine (Queso y Vino owner, and food blogger extraordinaire), her husband Ken (wine distributor and chef), and Eric and Kye (IMO, the couple most qualified to write a food blog who don’t actually have one).

Everyone brought something to contribute, and when you have eight people this dedicated to food in one room, it turns out to make for some awesome tamale fixin’s.  Not only were we stuffed after dinner, but we each went home with ten kinds of tamales, plus sweet dessert tamales.

Eric and I brought Mangalitsa carne picada filling with red mole, along with the sweet tamale filling: golden and black raisins stewed in rum.  Everyone else arrived with fillings too: duck with mole, roasted poblano rajas con queso, chicken and green chili, roasted yams and queso, spicy pastilla mushrooms, pork rib adobada, mushrooms with epazote y queso, and carnitas.

We made two types of tamale masa (plus the dessert masa, which was an adaptation of a recipe we found online).  Kathy started demonstrating with the sweet potato masa, showing us the secret she learned for keeping the tamale soft, fluffy and not too dense: at least 15 minutes beating in a stand mixer.

Next we made the lard version.  I had brought some homemade lard rendered from Mangalitsa fatback, which we mixed in with the fresh masa Kathy had purchased from the Pike Place Market outpost of La Mexicana Tortilla Factory.

Then we got to work wrapping the tamales, some with corn husks and others with banana leaves.  I thought there would be some kind of magic trick to wrapping them, but it wasn’t too difficult, and everyone seemed to develop their own technique and cute corn husk bows.

While we waited for the first batch to finish steaming (which requires almost an hour and a half), we noshed on homemade salsas, guacamole, and chips washed down with Kathy’s delicious blood orange margaritas.  Once the tamales were done, we sat down, enjoying them with red chili sauce on top and beans alongside.  They were among the best tamales I’ve eaten – I’m thinking that this might become a holiday tradition of our own.

For more photos of the evening, hop over to our Flickr stream.

Homemade Lard

Cut good quality leaf fat (preferred) or back fat into chunks.  Puree the chunks into a paste using a food processor.  Transfer to a Dutch oven or heavy pot, and leave it uncovered in a 250-degree oven for several hours, stirring periodically.  It’s done when you have a clear liquid with crisp brown cracklings on top.  Strain the liquid into containers and refrigerate up to three months or freeze up to a year.

Lard Tamale Masa
Adapted from Mexico: One Plate at a Time, by Rick Bayless

10 oz. lard or Crisco shortening
2 lb. fresh masa (4 cups) or 3½ cups dried masa harina for tamales mixed with 2¼ cups hot water (prep ahead of time and let sit for 20-30 minutes)
1½ teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons salt
1½ cups chicken broth

With a stand mixer, beat lard or shortening with salt and baking powder until light in texture, about one minute.  Continue beating as you add the masa in three additions.  Reduce speed and add one cup of broth, continue beating 3-4 minutes, then add the last half cup of broth.  Total mixing time should be 15-20 minutes.

Sweet Potato Tamale Masa

Roast one sweet potato (baked or diced).  Follow instructions above, adding half the potato at a time with the broth.

Red Chili Sauce
From Elena’s Secrets of Mexican Cooking, by Elena Zelayeta

12 large dried red chilies. Using a few different varieties is best.
1 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano
1 teaspoon salt
4 cloves garlic
1 8 oz. can tomato sauce or 3 oz. can tomato paste
2 tablespoons canola oil

Remove the stems and seeds from the chiles and dry toast 3-4 minutes in a skillet to release the oils.  Add to blender jar and cover with 4-5 cups of water.  Soak for 30+ minutes.

Add the next four ingredients to the blender and blend on high for 3-4 minutes.  Strain.

Heat oil in a sauce pan or skillet.  Add chili mixture into the hot oil and cook for 4-5 minutes until the color deepens.  Taste for salt and/or sugar.  Simmer 15-20 minutes.

This year, I went on a bit of a canning craze.  I’d actually never canned in my life before this year, but was “forced” into it by the bounty of fruit we received from our CSA.  We’ve done a CSA for years, but stopped doing it for the last couple years after the Pike Place Market stopped offering theirs.  We settled into a weekly routine of heading to the U-District market for our produce instead, which we were quite content with.

One of our favorite stands at the market is Tiny’s, since I love stone fruits and they are among the best and offer theirs for the longest season.  They have an amazing variety of plums, peaches, and cherries, along with melons, apples, and more.  So when I found out that they offer a CSA, I thought maybe we’d finally found a good replacement for the Pike Place CSA – local, good quality produce, and best of all, a much higher proportion of fruits than most CSAs.  I love snacking on fruit, and that was my one wish for the Pike Place CSA: more fruit.

Be careful what you ask for.  Every week, Tiny’s supplied us with the juiciest, most delicious fruit, at least several pounds per week.  And soon we had fruit coming out our ears, it seemed, and I was getting a little tired of plums, so I needed to start getting more creative.  Through the summer, we ate fruit sliced on our grilled fish and meat.  I made plum financiers, and peach crisps (not to mention enough zucchini bread to feed an army!).  But it wasn’t enough to keep up.

So I finally pulled out my jam book, Mes Confitures.  I was determined not to let the fruit go to waste, and preserves seemed just the thing.  And this book has some creative and tasty jam recipes.  This season, I made strawberry jam with mint and cracked black pepper, plum and rhubarb jam, peach jam with lemon verbena, pluot jam, and plum and apple jam with anise and vanilla bean.  I shared the jars with our neighbors and started collecting them to give as gifts for Christmas.

But when I started packaging the gifts, I realized that there was one kind missing: orange marmalade.  My dad’s favorite spread is this, and he even likes to ask for a jar sometimes for Christmas.  I’ve given him jars in the past, but never my own, even though I’ve had a marmalade recipe filed away that I’d clipped out of the newspaper years ago.  I was always a little nervous about making it because I’d never canned before and thought giving my family spoiled jam might not be the best Christmas gift.

Now that I’d learned how to preserve jams though, the recipe no longer looked very hard at all.  Four simple ingredients: oranges, sugar, water, and a touch of lemon.  It turned out to be as easy as the author, Greg Atkinson, says.  And it tastes better than any marmalade I’ve purchased.  I hope my dad enjoys his marmalade this year!

Here is Greg Atkinson’s recipe.  Check out the original newspaper article for his other recipes for maple and honey granola and ginger biscotti.

Satsuma Mandarin Orange Marmalade
by Greg Atkinson
Makes six half-pints

9 medium-sized mandarin oranges
2 cups water
¼ cup lemon juice
4 cups sugar

Peel the oranges and set the fruit and peel aside separately. Slice enough of the skins into fine julienne strips to measure 2 cups. In a large kettle over high heat, boil the sliced orange peel in water for 5 minutes. (If you want to make a marmalade that’s less bitter, pour the water in which the peels were boiled into a measuring cup and replace it with the same amount of fresh water.)

Meanwhile, sterilize six half-pint jars in boiling water, and allow them to simmer on low heat, undisturbed while you make the marmalade.

With the metal blade in the work bowl of a food processor, puree the fruit of the oranges and the lemon juice, then add this pulp and juice mixture to the mixture of orange peel and water. When the whole mixture reaches a lively boil, add the sugar and cook, stirring occasionally for 15 minutes, or until the marmalade has thickened slightly and a candy thermometer registers 220 degrees.

Transfer the marmalade to jars and seal with clean, new, two-part lids. Return the filled jars to the hot water bath where they were sterilized and let the jars simmer for 5 minutes. Allow the marmalade to stand undisturbed for several hours or overnight. Sealed jars will keep in a cool, dark place for a year; any jars that do not seal may be kept in the refrigerator.

Note: If you want to make more than just a few jars, make two or three batches in a row. If you try to double the recipe, it will not work as well.

We got two kinds of bittersweet baking chocolates from Lauren Adler, owner of Chocolopolis, to try an A / B baking chocolate experiment.  I wanted to make brownies, but haven’t found a really great brownie recipe.  So I went straight to David Lebovitz’s blog to see if he had one, since every dessert he touches is gold, and chocolate is his specialty.  The recipe I found there wasn’t his but Nick Malgieri’s “Supernatural” Brownies, which sounded great.  Then, before I had a chance to make the brownies, I was reading the September issue of Saveur, and the very same recipe is printed in there.  It was settled – now I knew I had to make them.

The chocolates we wanted to compare are Valrhona Manjari 64%, and Guittard Coucher du Soleil 72%.  On their own, they’re both good, but I like the Valrhona better because it has the hints of cherry that I really like.  But would we be able to tell the difference in brownies?

To make it a true A / B experiment, I used the same eggs, butter, vanilla, etc., and I baked them side-by-side in the oven, switching sides halfway through baking.

The result is a super fudgy moist brownie – exactly what I was hoping for!  So could we tell the difference?  Well, the Valrhona brownie had a slightly brighter chocolate flavor, while the Guittard has a bit deeper intense chocolate flavor.  But the difference is subtle.  No matter, because it turns out this recipe is awesome!  This is definitely going to be my brownie recipe of choice from now on.

We’ll be bringing a half pan of each batch to Chocolopolis tomorrow morning for Lauren to try.  If you’re reading this and would like to try the taste test for yourself, head on up to her store, ask for my brownies, and she’ll give you a sample of each.  The thing that isn’t mentioned in the Saveur issue but is mentioned on David’s blog is that brownies improve after sitting for a day or two.  Lauren says 3-4 days is even better which is why she told me she’ll keep them on hand until Wednesday, if they’re not gone before then.  If you’re planning on stopping by, note that the store is closed Mondays.  Report back here on what you think!

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.

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.

To me, nothing beats pasta made at home.  People think it’s difficult and time consuming, but it’s really one of those things that takes a few times to learn and get the swing of it, and then it’s actually pretty easy to make.  It takes me less than half an hour to go from flour and eggs to fresh noodles for the two of us, including cleanup.

The key to good homemade pasta is good fresh eggs.  We buy ours at the U-District market, usually from Skagit River Ranch or Sea Breeze Farm.  You only need to add flour and you’re on your way.  I’ve seen recipes using olive oil, water, semolina flour, salt, and other things, but I subscribe to the method I learned from Giuliano Hazan, which was passed down from his mother Marcella.  Marcella is an opinionated writer, but many including myself consider her the authority on authentic Italian cooking.  She says:

The basic dough for homemade pasta in the Bolognese-style consists of eggs and soft-wheat flour.  The only other ingredient used is spinach or Swiss chard, required for making green pasta.  No salt, no olive oil, no water are added.  Salt does nothing for the dough, since it will be present in the sauce; olive oil imparts slickness, flawing its texture; water makes it gummy.

I find that unbleached all-purpose flour works really well, and in Italy they typically use 00 soft-wheat flour.  Marcella points out that semolina is primarily used for factory-made pasta, which is in a completely different category than egg pasta:

The boxed, dry pasta one refers to as factory-made includes such familiar shapes as spaghetti, penne, and fusilli.  These cannot be made as successfully at home as they are in commercial pasta plants with industrial equipment.  Dry pasta from factories is not necessarily less fine than the fresh pasta one can make at home.  On the contrary, for many dishes, factory-made pasta is the better choice, although for some others, one may want the particular attributes of homemade pasta.

The Hazans’ cookbooks are great for getting a better feel for which sauces go with egg pasta and which with factory-made pasta.  A good rule of thumb (although there are plenty of exceptions) is to use factory-made pasta for olive oil based sauces and egg pasta for butter and cream based sauces.

Last Saturday evening, I made some fettuccine which we enjoyed with Bolognese sauce from our freezer.  Every once in a while we prepare a big batch of Bolognese so we can make sure we always have some in our freezer for quick meals.

Egg Pasta
Makes 2-3 servings

1 to 1½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 eggs

Pour about a cup of the flour into a mound on a wood surface, and set aside the rest to incorporate later if you need more.  Create a hollow in the center of the mound, like a volcano, and break the eggs into the hollow.  Using a fork, beat the eggs lightly while slowly incorporating some of the flour from the walls, a bit at a time until the eggs are no longer runny.  Bring the mound of flour toward the center with your hands and work it together with the eggs.  Incorporate more flour if it is too sticky.  You will know that you’ve added enough flour when you can press a clean finger into the center and it comes away clean.

Using the palm of your hand, knead the dough.  Push forward with the heel of your palm, stretching it a bit, then fold it in half as you pull your hand back toward you.  Turn a quarter turn and repeat this motion of stretching, folding, and turning until the dough is completely smooth, about five minutes.  Immediately wrap the dough in plastic wrap and allow to rest at room temperature for at least 10 minutes.

Set up your hand-crank pasta machine, and lay out a couple clean towels.  Cut the dough into 2-4 equal parts (it’s easier to work with smaller pieces, so start by using four parts).  Leave all but one part wrapped in the plastic wrap.  Flatten the ball of dough with your hand.

With the machine at its widest setting, roll the disk through the machine.  Remove it and fold it in thirds.  With the folds on the sides, roll it through the widest setting 2-3 more times.  Narrow the opening between the rollers by one notch.  Roll the dough through again, just once.  Continue narrowing the opening and rolling through until the pasta is the desired thickness.  When you are about halfway done, the pasta will become very long and unwieldy – you can place it on the towel, cut it in half, and switch between the two pieces each time you narrow the opening.

Allow the pasta sheets to dry for a few minutes on the towels until they are leathery but not too dry or brittle.  Cut strips using a fluted pastry wheel to make pappardelle, or feed it through the machine’s cutting attachment to make fettuccine.

We had the dessert assignment at this month’s dinner club. Dinner club is a regular event with five other couples who I either went to graduate school with, or who know one of the couples I went to school with. We rotate between homes each time and bring one course for the meal.

Since Eric and I were still on a quest to try recipes from David Lebovitz’s Perfect Scoop ice cream cookbook, we tried to think of something involving ice cream. I think the cover of the March issue of Gourmet was somewhere subconciously in mind when we came up with profiteroles. There was a salted butter caramel ice cream I remembered seeing, so we decided to do that with a chocolate sauce.

Then I went looking for the recipe but couldn’t find it in the book. Eventually, I realized that I actually had seen the recipe on David’s blog, not the book. He describes there how it didn’t make the cut since the book already had some other caramel ice creams, and there was a salted butter caramel sauce in his first book. It’s a good thing I stumbled upon it online because I can definitively say that this is the best ice cream I’ve ever eaten.

If you want to make it yourself, the ice cream recipe is here. We used the Gourmet recipe for the profiteroles. And then we went with David’s recommendation of pairing the caramel ice cream with his mocha sauce from the book. Here was the result:

What had I gotten myself into?  Just before our friends arrived, I pulled the meat out of the braising liquid.  It jiggled like jello.  I hope Heath Putnam is right, because this stuff appeared to be almost entirely fat.  And here we were going to serve it to friends and call this dinner.

We have been obsessing about Heath’s Wooly Pigs bacon since it showed up at the U-District market last winter, but we had yet to try the pork belly that everyone has been raving about.  How could any pork be worth $25/lb?  Well, we wouldn’t know without trying, so last weekend we were determined to bring some home from our weekly market run.

When I told Heath that we wanted some of the Mangalitsa pork belly, he rifled around in the coolers and pulled out a package of belly and ribs.  I was about to pay when he said, “You know, if you like pork belly, you should really try the jowl.  I think it’s even better than the belly.”  I paused.  “Ok, I’ll buy some jowl instead.”  I paid up, and as I was leaving, he said, “You’re brave.”  Brave?  What was that supposed to mean?  He said that apparently most people are squeamish about this sort of thing.  I have never cooked with jowl or any of his Mangalitsa pig products, so I had no idea what he was talking about.

He sent me away with instructions to cook it at low temperatures to avoid ruining the pork and said that I could cook it the same way as pork belly.  The recipe I had in mind was the belly recipe Rebekah Denn wrote about at the Seattle P-I.

We prepared the jowl, along with some tiny Brussels sprouts from the market, and carrots.  While the jowl was crisping in the oven, we had a roasted endive salad with orange segments, from The Herbfarm Cookbook.  Then, it was ready.

It turns out that this pig is worth every bit of hype that’s been surrounding it.  What incredible flavor.  The stuff is tender, moist and just melts in your mouth.  It is insanely rich and I can’t recall a more flavorful meat I’ve ever eaten.  Just amazing.

What makes these pigs taste so different from other pork?  Heath has a very unique thing going here.  He imported the heirloom breed of Mangalitsa pig from Europe, raises them on a special diet (including access to herbs in the pastures), and slaughters them humanely.

He only started selling these pigs at the end of last year and has already created a ton of buzz, even in national publications.  A couple months ago, Saveur magazine started a new feature highlighting one U.S. state each issue.  The premier state was Washington, and Wooly Pigs was on the list of ten food items not to miss.  We are lucky because you can’t buy this pork outside Washington at the moment since it’s prohibitively expensive to distribute it.  But Heath is starting to partner with farmers in other states, and has just sold some piglets to a farmer in the Bay Area who will be raising and selling them there.

To complete our locavore menu, we ended with a rhubarb crisp topped with crème fraîche ice cream.  The first rhubarb of the season was at the market on Saturday, and we wanted to try an ice cream recipe from my new Perfect Scoop cookbook.  We picked up crème fraîche, eggs, and raw milk from Sea Breeze Farm, and when we stopped for our morning crêpe from Anita’s Crêpes, she suggested we add some vanilla bean to the recipe.  We figured that a graduate of the CIA who formerly worked at the French Laundry would know what she’s talking about, so we did so.  It was a nice ending.

Market fresh ricotta from Sea Breeze Farm, spread on Tall Grass Bakery bread, drizzled with local honey, and sprinkled with salt and some thyme leaves from our garden.  The weather inspired us to brew up some iced tea (Barnes and Watson Tahitian Blend, our favorite tea for iced).  What could be better on a warm sunny Seattle afternoon?

Eric made me his famous waffles this morning.  What a great way to start the weekend!  He also makes a mean cappuccino.  There’s nothing like a Saturday morning with fresh espresso, waffles, and my favorite waffle topping, apricot syrup.  Eric usually opts for maple syrup, but ever since we came across this apricot syrup at ChefShop, I’ve been pretty hooked on the stuff.

In case you’re not familiar with ChefShop, it’s an online gourmet food shop.  They sell a lot of interesting foods that you can’t find elsewhere, sourced from artisan producers and small farmers.  They’re based out of Seattle, but they can ship to your doorstep.  Luckily, they also have a retail store in Seattle, and it’s fun to stop in and see what they have.  They offer samples of some products so you can try before you buy, which is nice when there is such a large array of vinegars and oils.  During the holidays, they even offer tastings of all of the holiday cakes that they have available.

There are so many things I love about ChefShop, but one of my favorites is Cornelia’s Apricot Syrup.  This stuff is amazing.  It’s like summer in a bottle, and combined with Eric’s waffles it’s… yum.

ChefShop.com
1415 Elliot Avenue W, Seattle
(206) 286-9988