The Eminence of Gordon Ramsay

There is a great article written by Bill Buford about my totally misunderstood boyfriend, Gordon Ramsay, in the newest issue of The New Yorker. It details the opening of the British chef's first New York restaurant (and at least partially explains the lackluster Hell's Kitchen).

If you get BBC America, the second season of his show, The F Word, is airing right now. #$%#ing hell, it is the best food show ever. No giggling or semi-homemade anything allowed, swearing and good-natured ribbing highly encouraged. The show is as well cut, simple and informative as it is entertaining. Gordon can be seen raising pigs for slaughter in his back yard, advocating the eating of Sunday lunch and all things local and British over anything imported & French, and exhibiting his famous drill sergeant-like behavior for visiting cooks. The recipe segments are all action, and the show's entire focus is on sensuous, comfort food and recipes you can easily make at home. (Which seven times out of ten is a stuffed and ham-wrapped piece of meat. Blimey!) Gordon's food is a lot like the man himself: straightforward, self-righteous, and singular. None of that poncey, test tube, reverse-micro-invitro mad scientist #$%@&.

A recent show featured the hilarity that is this site: Pimp That Snack, as reported by hottie Brit food critic Giles Coren.

Topics: Blogwatch and News

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Continuing Education Friday: plate lunches, Spam, and imus

If you were reading this week's review of Kauai Family Restaurant and wondered, "What's the deal with the two scoops rice, one scoop macaroni salad?" that define Hawaiian plate lunch, I'd refer you to this fantastic Honolulu Star-Bulletin feature by Cynthia Oi on how mac salad—and, by extension, plate lunch—came to be.

If you were curious about what ginormous spam sushi looks like, I would suggest you check out this site.

Furthermore, if you have eaten at Kauai Family Restaurant and are now idly considering, "How would I make Kalua pig at home so I could eat it every day?" I would have to direct you to either this pictorial on how to build your own imu (pit oven) or this cheater's how-to on how to slow-roast Kalua pig in your own oven.

If you do make your own Kalua pig and are wondering what to do with all the leftovers, well...

Topics: Continuing Education Fridays

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To Market

As spring begins to tease us with hopes of warmer, sunnier weather, the markets offer tangible evidence of the change of season-from new crops of fresh greens, including baby collards and arugula, to more exotic finds like gailon (a variety of Chinese broccoli with smaller flowers, slender stems, and leaves) and Spanish roja garlic. The U District market is open Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at University Way and Northeast 50th Street. To find a farmers market close to you, visit here.

For more Food events, visit Food Files.

Topics: Events

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Love Shack

Just stopped by Sugar Shack Baking Company, a new pit stop for fat and calories on Lake City Way. The interior isn't nearly as Jetsons as the logo lead me to believe; inside I found good, old-fashioned American baked goods (and huge American portions) and a distinct lack of decor, 50's or otherwise. This is a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your leanings - I say they go all the way with the theme they've got going on the outside. Everyone loves a frilly apron.

I'm not a huge fan of scones, but they had so many kinds I felt like I had to have one. I went for a massive strawberry-lemon, and I was happy: fresh, flaky dough was folded over huge chunks of strawberries and glazed with sugary goodness, so that each bite had a little extra sweetness on top. The lemon flavor didn't really come through, but I appreciated that they aren't selling little crumbly bricks like many bakeries do.

The Mexican chocolate cookie was also a winner—it's a cookie so big and hearty you want to palm it like a discus and see how far it'll go, only I would recommend eating this cakey concoction over hucking it. With Mexican and dark chocolates, nuts, coconut, and a healthy dose of cinnamon, it's a cookie worth the trip to Maple Leaf. Even if there's nothing to look at while you munch away.

Important note: Don't confuse Sugar Shack with West Seattle's Sugar, a bakery with quite a different approach, whose owner apparently has some issues with the new shop's name. 

Sugar Shack Baking Company, 8056 Lake City Way.

Open Tues. - Sun., 7 a.m. - 3 p.m. 

Topics: Blogwatch and Restaurant Gossip

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Morel Madness!

Today (Thursday, March 29) the Bellevue Whole Foods promises to teach us new and wonderful things to do with this strange-looking and delicious spring mushroom—like asparagus served with brown butter, sautéed morels and seared duck breast with a morel mushroom ragout. Dessert is a (mushroom-less) rhubarb tart with lavender ice cream. $30. 6-9 p.m. Whole Foods Market, 888 116th Avenue N.E., 425-462-1400.

For more Food events, visit Food Files.

Topics: Events

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The Goods From Orcas

Local Goods is a small company on Orcas Island producing, you guessed it,food stuffs from local ingredients. I first tried their stuff last year when a visiting blogger friend (Taj from The Cork and Demon) paid her room and board at my house in coffee beans and condiments from the island company. The horseradish and carrot mignonette is smack your momma good on oysters and the perfect sweet tangy heat as a marinade for fish. (It is halibut season.)

Everything I've tried from the line deserves entry into my pantry. The Riesling & basil vinagrette I usually drizzle over mozzarella or simple greens is just sitting in my fridge waiting for asparagus salad season, and their syrup with blackberry and lavender makes use of the local without coming off as yocal. It's subtle and makes for a nice change on your pancakes. And! These products are easily ordered through their website, making them a perfect gift for far away family and friends.

Topics: Eats report

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A Little Taste Of Some Big WA Wineries

I really enjoyed last week's media preview at El Gaucho of their tasting of Washington wine event, in a Sam-I-Am kinda way. (note: It was A taste of Washington, not to be confused with THE Taste of Washington.) Twelve of Washington's best known wineries, including Cadence, Owen Sullivan, and Matthews Cellars, exhibited a few of their wares to a sell out crowd, and those of us freeloaders who got to sneak in prior to the throngs.

Mark McNeilly, of Mark Ryan Winery, is best known for his big boy blends from the Red Mountain AVA, Long Haul and Dead Horse. But he showed his softer side with two downright pretty Viogniers. One was all crisp pear and blossoms, having seen only stainless steel. The other showed softer, richer fruit, more like mango salsa, from have mellowed out in oak for a spell. Some of the best Washington whites I've tasted lately are from winemakers who claimed to have been "just messing around." Maybe more Washington winemakers should take whites less seriously.

St. Michelle's Ethos 2005 Chardonnay - Having just come from a 2005 Burgundy preview before tasting this wine (go ahead and hate on me, but it's my job), I give this Chard high markes for balance and finesse because it could easily have fit in with some of the fruitier cru Burgundies of the same vintage—baked apple, great acidity, and a lingering taste that was the perfect mix of both.

Oh yeah, there was a lot of red wine, too. L'Ecole #41's 2004 Ferguson's Reserve is a tribute to the orginal founders of the winery. On a par with their Apogee and Perigee blends, it had a very cool fresh blueberry aroma and liqueur-like intensity, while still being medium bodied. Woodward Canyon's 2003 Estate Red is an ever changing blend, always Cab and Merlot dominated, that represents the best of their fruit for any given year, and how. Get in on the ground floor with their Nelm's Road Merlot and Cab, a second label of the utmost value for Washington reds.

The 2004 Sorella from Andrew Will was awesome—intensity and a layering of flavors that's only going to get better if you can hide a bottle and wait a few years. The Sorella is made with Cabernet from vines that are 35 years old, that's ancient history in Washington, but perfect grape-bearing age for any class act Cabs in the rest of the world. This Sorella, as other WA wines made from older vines, shows what our state can do and is something to aspire to. But it also reminded me of my beef with some Washington wines and makes me all the pissier about $40 bottles of sterile-tasting Merlot from pre-pube fruit. (and thus this post ends, much like a night of me drinking, on a instigative note)

Topics: Events

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The Last Slice

I was drinking and eating on the cheap during March Madness at the Duchess Saturday when a friend of mine who lives in the neighborhood informed me that the U-Village Round Table was shutting its doors this Saturday, March 31. Thus ends a 17-year legacy of scores of Little League after-parties and, as some have put it, "the best bad pizza in town" (i.e., Pizza Hut prices, yet a million times tastier — 'specially the pepperoni). Moreover, Seattleites will now have to schlep to the 'burbs for the Table's vaunted cheddar-mozzarella swirl, as the U-Village RT was the last remaining in the city limits. Its lease expired and rent raised to unattainable proportions, the parlor will make way for — what else — hundreds of residential units.

Topics: Restaurant Gossip

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Wine without the whining

Bainbridge islander Andrea Korican just announced that her new wine bar, The Living Room, is set to open on Bjune Drive in the next week or two. The Living Room will offer an eclectic wine list and a small bites menu designed by Gerry Ferraro (of Four Swallows Restaurant, also on Bainbridge) in a candle-lit room stuffed with low tables and sofas. Sound like the living room you designed for your dream house, the one with a well-stocked cellar and a waitstaff? That's the idea. Just don't bring your kids - Korican's touting The Living Room as one of the few places on the island where adults can wine without the whining.

The Living Room, 123 Bjune Drive SE, Unit 109, (206) 855-0959. BAINBRIDGE

Topics: Restaurant Gossip

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Tiny Bubbles

You think of yourself as the typical green Seattleite: when you can't bike to work, you drive a hybrid. You shop at the farmer's market and do your best to eat local. You backcountry ski because the lifts use so much damn energy. You drink water to avoid unnecessary sugars. But are your drinking habits at odds with your environmental goals?

A piece in the San Francisco Chronicle announced that Chez Panisse, the Bay Area restaurant lauded for its leadership in sustainable restaurant practices, stopped serving bottled seltzer water this week. In an effort to save the energy involved in shipping, the restaurant will be carbonating filtered local tap water in-house from now on, which sounds to me like a pretty good idea. Think about it: a pint's a pound, the world around. Each (two-pint) bottle of San Pellegrino you order gets shipped. In glass. From Italy. What's sustainable about that?

The news has me writhing with guilt. How could I have been so game about eating local food and so lame about drinking local water? I schlep bottles of seltzer home from Trader Joe's every week, and I don't always go for tap water at restaurants. Considering that Seattle's drinking water is relatively palatable compared to other cities, I'm up for the switch - I might have to get one of these countertop carbonating machines for my kitchen. Europeans have only been using them for, oh, a few decades.

Has anyone heard of any Seattle restaurants looking to make the switch?

Topics: Continuing Education Fridays

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Blind Item

Overheard this week: A waiter gesturing to the packed dining room around her, saying to one of the diners, “Yep, it’s 25 for $25 month. Only time we get men in Utilikilts in here.”

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What Would Buddha Snack On?

The all vegetarian Punjab Sweets in Kent serves some of the tastiest Indian food in the Seattle area (we even put them on the cover of the dining guide last year). But I can't get enough of their spicy snack mix.

Fried garbanzos, yellow dal and peas—coated in a salty and smoky light curry, with a delayed warm heat that fades fast enough for you to enjoy your next sip of beer, preferably a Red Menace or a Chopper's. Alternate with handfuls of cashews to really acheive bar snack nirvana.

Punjab Sweets
23617 104th Avenue SE, Suite C, KENT

Topics: Eats report

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Eat Food, Mostly Plants

If you need to inject a bit of green into your diet (what did Michael Pollan write recently in The New York Times magazine? "Eat food...mostly plants"), a lunch-time errand-run to this most visible (and most forgotten) year-round farmers' market might make a pleasant way to spend your lunch hour, if you're lucky enough to work downtown. Wade through the crowds for the most tempting spring produce, from asparagus to artichokes, and a full contingent of fresh herbs, from oregano to Thai basil. Visit the Pike Place Market, soon to turn 100, Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m.-6 p.m., Sundays 10 a.m.-5 p.m., located at Pike and First Avenue, along Pike Place.

For more Food events, visit Food Files.

Topics: Events

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Rockstar, Winemaker, Blogger

I stopped reading Wine Spectator years ago, and I've yet to suffer for it. Until... I see that there is now actually something cool to the Spew: Master Maynard James Keenan blogging about his winery. The lead singer of Tool and A Perfect Circle is a wine nerd. But unlike most nerds, he caught the fever while already a rockstar. And his cellar? Let's just says he collects like a rockstar (i.e., a complete vertical of Penfold's Grange dating back to the 1950s).

His winery he approaches with high hopes and zero expectations, and his co-conspirator is Eric Glomsky, who spent time at David Bruce Winery in California. The 2004 vintage of their Caduceus wines has already sold out. The 2005 vintage will be up for sale on the winery's site soon. Maynard planted a vineyard on his property in Arizona, focusing on Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, and Sangiovese. These varieties echo his favorite wines (big-ass Aussies and Italians). He saw enough similarities between the the high desert south of Sedona, Arizona, and the growing regions he saw during his time touring through Australia and the warmer parts of Europe to make a leap of faith.


Of course, it helps that he has a day job.

You can read his journal here: www.caduceus.org
You can read his blog for WS HERE.

Topics: Blogwatch

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The Intentional Hedonist

Local food blogger Kate Hopkins, AKA The Accidental Hedonist (check out her funny and useful "Laws"), has just posted on the differences between regular candy and Grandma Candy, and it got me thinking about my favorites as a kid. I have to admit I ate as much if not more candy than most kids, routinely stocking up on Airheads, Boston Baked Beans and Nerds. I distinctly remember the boys in my 4th grade class re-selling candy in a really shady manner—you got the shakes, huh? I've got a Mystery-flavor Airhead, IF you have a quarter.

Fig. 1. above was my favorite of all. An absolutely foul candy that turned your tongue various shades of deathly ill. I know my people weren't the only ones to hold contests over who could keep it in their mouth the longest without wincing.

And finally, Fig. 2 here is the ultimate Grandma Candy of my young life's experience. Seriously every grandma I knew, and every lady whose door opened to me when I was selling wrapping paper or whatever for school, would have a dish of this on their coffee table. Anybody still eat this stuff?

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