food – Riveted

The Walrus and the Carpenter

Laura Domela — Tue, 17 Feb 2015 12:55:19 +0000

Last night we went to The Walrus the the Carpenter over in Ballard for dinner. It was SO good. We started with some oysters (Hama Hama and Blue Pool…both from Hood Canal). Next came a perfectly spaced series of small plates to share: fried Brussells sprouts, beef tartare with egg yolk and rye toast, grilled sardines topped with walnut pesto, octopus ceviche with fennel, red onion, and cilantro, and the most surprising dish of all…a chicken liver mousse with fennel mustard and spiced prunes. This was incredible. I'm not a big liver fan (even the really good pate and stuff is often a bit of a challenge for me) but this dish was amazing. The spice prunes had a sweet sauce that swirled around the fennel mustard and the combination was crazy good. Anyway, yum! (We tried the cocktail called "mustache ride", which was bourbon, cynar, lemon, allspice dram, maple…also very good.)

The sunset was gorgeous again tonight. Here are two shots: (1) from the marina and then (2) from the car (Uber ride) on the way up to Ballard:

Sooke Harbour House

Laura Domela — Fri, 25 Jul 2014 12:32:13 +0000

Last night we had a second chance to have dinner at the Sooke Harbour House in Sooke BC, after our reservation spaceout last week. The above photo is the view from our dinner table (!!!) looking across the Strait of Juan de Fuca over at the tip of the Olympic Peninsula. (Our table came with binoculars…nice touch!)

This is the dining room looking back from the window view:

We ordered the four course tasting menu with wine pairings, and ordered two different things from each section, so we got to try quite a few dishes. The presentation of each dish was beautiful, and the light from the window on my left made for some pretty nice photos.

First courses

Black Pearl Oysters (on the half shell with begonia, radish, and verjus):

Morel Mushroom and Kombu Broth (morels, heirloom cherry tomatoes, radish and english peas):

Second courses

Steamed Smoked Sablefish (green beans, potato, candied hazelnut, pickled beets and beet gel, potato & sorrel vinaigrette) — this may have been my favorite dish:

Duck Leg & Smoked Breast (plums, walnuts, watercress, wild rice & popcorn, honey mustard and fig leaf ice cream):

Main courses

Seared Sockeye Salmon (beans, summer squash, tomato, Vernena roseti, lomon thyme soubise, basil emulsion, pursalane):

Grilled Lamb Sirloin (farro and blue cheese, kale, pink turnip, beets, hay oil, savory lamb jus and peas):

We opted for a local cheese plate as one of our desserts…

…and a chocolate something or other for our second dessert (that's an Earl Gray truffle there in the middle). The great light was starting to decline for these last couple images:

The bonus dessert (this was a cakey bit with a custard-like thing on top, with maybe bergamot, then some chocolate):

I didn't get a copy of the dessert menu so I'm less clear on what all these were (some of the servers that were not our main server didn't explain things too well). The desserts were good, but I'm not a huge dessert fan, so I thought the cheese plate was the best. Also, it was paired with a local dessert wine from Venturi Schulze vineyards, called Brandenburg No. 3 that was delicious. (I think all of the wine pairings were from the Okanagan area/local.)

The meal was good and the view was lovely. We're glad we got to do this!

Dinner at The Willows Inn

Laura Domela — Sat, 12 Jul 2014 14:23:50 +0000

Chef Blaine Wetzel was just 24 when he started at the Willows Inn in 2010. He was recently awarded the James Beard 2014 Rising Star Chef of the Year award. Prior to coming to The Willows Inn, he was a chef at Noma in Copenhagen (considered the No. 1 restaurant in the world, still).

Everything I start to write about this meal sounds cheesy, and I've deleted sentence after sentence. The truth is that this is likely the best meal we've ever had. If you know us (even just from this blog) you probably know we love this kind of dining experience…the chef's tasting menu. No choices, no food restrictions, no substitutions. We love the opportunity to experience a good chef's craft and creativity. Chef as artist.

Blaine Wetzel is a rare and talented artist, and has built a kickass kitchen team at The Willows Inn.

Most of the ingredients on the menu have been foraged, fished, or farmed on the nine square mile Lummi Island, and the menu changes constantly.

We began out on the patio with a cocktail and this view.

Pretty soon, someone brought us a cold bowl of rocks topped with four balanced oysters: two shigoku and two teeny tiny Olympia oysters that were fabulous. I ate my shigoku before I remembered I wanted to take a photo of each course:

Next was a small charcuterie plate with lamb, venison sausage, and a slice of rhubarb, topped with I think some dried lemon verbena:

The seating here is cool…everyone starts out on the deck with a cocktail or whatever and some small bites, and they move people inside to the dining room table by table. It's smooth and the wait staff and the service was wonderful.

Once inside, our waitress poured us a glass of Eaglemount semi-sweet Homestead cider from Port Townsend, WA (fabulous).

The next course arrived inside of a small lidded box. Removing the lid revelead a perfectly smoked Samish Bay mussel – with a waft of smoke still trapped inside the box.

Crispy crepe on the outside, steelhead roe, cream and herbs on the inside. The texture of these was insane:

Kale with black truffle and rye crumbs. This is the half after I took a bite and remembered to get a photo. Incredible flavor:

Shiitake mushroom roasted over the fire, served with sea salt. At some point in here we moved on to a 2012 Lemelson Vineyards Reserve Chardonnay from the Willamette Valley, OR.

Crispy halibut skins filled with a Manila clam puree:

Salt-baked beets with gin ice cream. These were paper thin and so good!

I missed photographing one dish (a spot prawn grilled with its roe).

This next dish was one of my favorites. Aged venison tartare, wild greens, and a rye "cracker" with shaved/(dried?) egg yolk.

Put it all together to make this (I want this again RIGHT NOW):

A simple, exquisite piece of smoked salmon (paired with a Boundary Bay IPA from Bellingham, WA), along with a piece of smoked halibut to share. That salmon was the best smoked fish I've ever eaten.

Braised wild seaweeds with Dungeness crab:

Next wine: 2009 Dusky Goose Pinot Noir from Dundee Hills, OR.

Lummi Island ling cod steamed in parsley and lovage:

Oh my god, the bread!! The bread was chewy and soft and crunchy and perfect. Served with butter and sea salt, and…hold yer britches!!!…chicken drippings!!

This was slow-roasted lamb, cooked en papillote, topped with tiny flowers, served with some cherries, and in that little dish with the wooden spoon: thin-sliced porcini mushrooms in honey — crazy good!! Another one of my favorite dishes of the evening.

Wild forest berries and a wild grass "sauce" and paired with a 2012 Brooks 'Tethys' Late Harvest Riesling from Eola-Amity Hills, OR:

Blueberries with woodruff and malt (I think the ice cream was woodruff ice cream):

I found this fabulous article about the chef Blaine Wetzel and the Willows Inn, and I think you'd enjoy learning how the whole thing came to be. It's a fantastic story.

After dinner we sat out on the deck and watched the last of the sunset.

What a magical evening.

Pappa al Pomodoro

Laura Domela — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 11:34:43 +0000

We had this Italian tomato and bread soup twice while we were in Florence. The first time was by far the best (at All'Antico Ristoro di'Cambi). Theirs was spicier than the other version we had and we both loved it, so I set out to recreate it on our first day back from Italy. I found a few recipes online to look at, and then made up my own. Here's a quick iPhone snap of the finished product:

Pappa al Pomodoro

Ingredients:

3 cups heirloom tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1/2 lb stale bread cut or torn into small pieces (I didn't have stale yesterday, since it was our first day home, and the fresh loaf of peasant como bread I bought worked fine)
About 4 cups vegetable broth, warmed
4 cloves of garlic, minced
basil, torn coarsely with your fingers, not chopped
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (I used a combination of about 2Tbsp EVOO and 1+ Tbsp of spicy EVOO that I've got in a bottle with a bunch of peppers)
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Put the bread in a large bowl and add the warm broth. Set aside for about an hour
In a wide pot, sauté the garlic in the olive oil. Add tomatoes and a little salt and pepper. Simmer for about 20 minutes.
Add the broth-soaked bread to the pot, squeezing the excess broth out with your hands before you add each handful to the pot. Simmer another 15 minutes, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon.
Serve warm, with fresh cut basil and a swirl of olive oil (or spicy oil) on top.

Also, I had the best Spaghetti alla Carbonara in Ravenna at the Ristorante Bella Venezia just a couple doors down from our hotel. I plan to try to recreate that one, too! This looks like a decent place to start.

From the Airstream Kitchen: Crab Enchiladas

Laura Domela — Mon, 27 Jan 2014 19:00:00 +0000

I took a quick photo of our dinner last night to post with this recipe, but the photo is really terrible. iPhone photos at night of food just really aren't very appetizing, so I'm going to borrow this photo from allrecipes.com where I looked up the basic ingredients people used to make seafood enchiladas with white sauce. This is just whey they looked like (without the black olives):

Here's my version:

Fresh Oregon Dungeness Crab Enchiladas

Ingredients:

Crab meat from two whole crabs, with some held back for our omelettes in the morning
6 good tortillas of your choice
About a cup of shredded pepper jack cheese
The leftover cream cheese/cheddar cheese/jack cheese/chorizo mixture we stuffed the jalapeno poppers with (cooked crumbled chorizo, grated cheddar, jack, and some light cream cheese to make it spreadable)
1 cup half and half
1/2 cup light sour cream
1/4 cup melted butter
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1/8 cup chopped Italian parsley
2-3 tsp. roasted garlic powder
1 8 oz can of salsa verde enchilada sauce
1 cup or more of chopped spinach

Preheat oven to 350.

Shell all the crabmeat. You might wanna start this first, and start the oven preheating after the first crab.

Lay out your tortillas and spread the jalapeno popper leftover filling mix equally among them…I had about 1Tbsp per tortilla (these were large enchiladas). Then put a bunch of crab meat in there, some chopped spinach, and some grated pepper jack. Roll the tortillas up and place cozily in a rectangular baking dish.

For the sauce: in a saucepan over medium/low heat add half and half, sour cream, and butter, and melt together slowly over low heat until just warm. Add chopped cilantro, parsley, garlic powder, and salsa verda enchilada sauce. Stir to combine, then pour over enchiladas. Sauce should come to the tops of the enchiladas, and if it doesn't, mash them down a bit with a big spatula. Top with extra grated pepper jack and cook for about 45 minutes at 350.

Garnish with chopped green onions and sliced avocado and serve. These enchiladas were quite possibly the best enchiladas I've ever had. Honestly.

Here's a shot of the stuffed jalapenos before the brown sugar had completely melted. They look kinda nasty, but they were fabulous. We cooked 'em on the Traeger for about two and a half hours at 225. They were smoky and super tasty!

I think next time we'll try brushing them with a little of our bourbon-barrel-aged maple syrup.

Our Holiday Was All About Food (and wine)

Laura Domela — Mon, 06 Jan 2014 16:06:44 +0000

Happy New Year! We hope everyone had a lovely holiday. We spent ours with friends and family and boy did we have a great time. We visited, played games, hiked, cooked, laughed, shopped, got pedicures, and had an overall fun and mellow break from it all.

But mostly, we ate.

Kevin's mom arrived from San Antonio on the 18th of December and we immediately took her up to The Herbfarm in Woodinville, WA for her birthday celebration. The place was decorated full-tilt boogie for the holidays, complete with Dickens Carolers. The food was delicious and expertly presented, as usual.

Then, back in Portland we did our version of kicked-up Southern BBQ for Christmas dinner (pulled pork, baby back ribs, hot links, chicken, salads, homemade BBQ sauce, cornbread, maple bacon bourbon cookies, candied bacon, truffled truffles, etc.). Fun, casual, and something for everyone.

On the 26th, as a holiday gift to our family, we took everyone out to Noisette for the chef's tasting menu. Lovely time and fantastic food.

On the 27th our friends Jake and Patti arrived from San Diego, and on New Year's Eve Jake and Kevin and I cooked up a doozie of a meal: six courses with wine pairings. I can't believe I didn't take any photos (I was busy), but here's our menu:

1. STARTERS (Jake & Laura)

Sweet piquanté peppers stuffed with Borsin garlic herbed cheese, chives

Cave-aged gruyere

Wild boar salami

Marcona almonds

Dibon cava brut reserve, Spain

2. ROASTED ASPARAGUS SOUP (Laura)

Roasted asparagus soup garnished with tiger prawn and truffled balsamic

Pavi 2011 Pinot Grigio, Napa Valley

3. FOIE GRAS (Jake)

Pan-seared foie gras, balsamic/loganberry liqueur drizzle
Lady apple, shallot, maple syrup relish, radish sprouts

Jackson-Triggs Vidal Icewine, 2011

4. TENDERLOINS WITH RISOTTO AND SALAD (Kevin & Laura)

Harris Ranch tenderloins, Oregon white truffle butter

Shrimp and chanterelle risotto, shaved fresh Oregon white truffles, chives

Arugula, Parmagiano Reggiano, white balsamic, olive oil

Vincent Arroyo Entrada, 2009, Napa Valley

5. CHEESE (Laura)

Anton's Red Love, washed-rind brie

Brie du Pommier

Sour cherry preserves

Salty date and almond cracker

Cypher 2008 "Strange Attraction" dessert wine, Paso Robles

6. DESSERT (Jake)

Puff pastry cups with guava jelly, lime cream and ginger creme Anglaise

Yalumba Muscat, Museum Reserve, South eastern Australia

Pretty fancy, eh? We rocked it, too! (Oh yeah, and a few days before this, our dishwasher quit, so for the full picture, imagine us doing dishes between each course!)

On New Year's Day, Jake made us a beautiful mushroom and cheese soufflé. I did manage to get a photo of that one.

I've been wanting to try making ramen at home (after going to Ippudo in NY), and Jake was game to help, so we headed over to Uwajimaya for supplies (after a TON of research). I read and read and read about all the different broths (shio, shoyu, miso, tonkatsu), and although the ramen I had and loved at Ippudo was a tonkatsu broth, that was the most difficult and time-consuming, so I opted to just wing it with a combination of my 24-hour chicken stock with some fish stock and miso. The broth was good, and solid for a first shot (if not traditional), but I have to say the toppings were the most fun. We did a braised pork belly, sliced fish cake, marinated soft-boiled eggs, sauteed corn, scallions, pickled ginger, sprouts, spinach, Tokyo negi, maitake and enoki mushrooms, wakeme, and bamboo shoots. (We quite possibly went a bit overboard with the toppings, but whatever.)

Here's what it looked like:

Luckily, we still managed to squeeze in regular hikes in the arboretum to burn a few calories. Here's a nice shot from the trail one foggy morning:

Tell us about your holiday meals! If you've got any good recipes to share, or want any of ours, just let us know!

*Oh yeah, the first shot at the top of this post is from Sauvage in Portland. I forgot to mention…we took Jake & Patti there on the 2nd. So. Much. Good. Food (and wine).