Dancing in the Kitchen with Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef

Posted on September 20, 2010 by Chelsea

Shauna and Danny Ahern are my friends. I don’t know them, we’ve never met, and though I read Shauna’s blog Gluten-Free Girl with a dedication that trips along the border between religious devotion and obsessive-compulsive disorder, I doubt she has ever glanced at mine. I have drooled over the food (and made some of it!), I have laughed at her triumphs, I have felt my biological clock chime when she speaks of her daughter. In late July, I sat on my sofa with tears streaming down my face, choking for breath as I read the beautiful story of her wedding. As a writer myself, I admire her style, her skill with words, and her ability to talk lovingly, richly, thoughtfully about food, about family, about opportunity and love. I feel like I know these people. I wish I really did.

A few weeks ago, Shauna announced that along with the forthcoming publication of the cookbook/love story she and Danny “the Chef” wrote together (Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef: A Love Story with 100 Tempting Recipes, listed on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Gluten-Free-Girl-Shauna-James-Ahern/dp/0470419717), they were willing to share three preview recipes with interested parties. I was, of course, one of these, and in a flurried email exchange, I suddenly had three brilliant recipes, replete with stories, to dance to in my little kitchen.

I ended up only making two of the three, mostly because N. doesn’t like shrimp, so a plate of seared prawns in almond garlic sauce did not sound appealing to him. But if everything in the cookbook is as stellar in flavor and straightforward in instructions as the two recipes I did conquer over as many days, everyone should own a copy of this book, whether you eat gluten-free or not.

Friday night N. and I went to a last-hurrah-of-summer-bbq at the home of J., my birthday twin, and his partner HP. Troubled by the notion of bringing the chocolate cake again (I’ve made it several times this summer already), I cast about mentally for another idea, and there was the pdf recipe for GFG’s chocolate peanut butter brownies. My mouth started to moisten. Chocolate, butter, sugar, peanut butter, and my first experimentation with xantham gum? Yes, thank you, I think I will!

As brownies go, it was a fairly standard procedure of careful melting, mixing, swirling, baking, but oh the delight of tasting! In the short section about the recipe preceding the ingredient list, the words “Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup” appear. They aren’t kidding. With the peanut butter swirled gently into the deep chocolate batter (and there is no other word for the color than that: chocolate) and my fingers cautiously tasting stray blobs of batter, I wanted to stop and eat the batter. Half of it would bake up just as nicely as the whole pan, right?

I resisted, and slipped the dish into the oven, relinquishing it from sight for half an hour. Still tasting the batter, I could detect a slight grainy texture that I attributed to the alternative flours used (my previous experimentations with gluten-free flours have not always been great, but they have always been grainy), so I was a little worried about that. But after the pan cooked, cooled, and came to the party with me, my concern lifted. I wouldn’t have had to tell anyone these brownies were gluten-free. I wanted to, because I must admit I wanted to brag a bit about participating in this project (and get the word out there!), but there was no explaining to do.

Oh Shauna. Oh Danny. The taste! The crumb was rich and moist, the pockets of peanut butter were sticky bombs of candy-like delight. I couldn’t even get a photo in before the hordes descended on the pan. Seven people decimated ¾ of the pan in ten minutes. Almost everyone went back for seconds. Ever thoughtful of my not-so-narrow waistline (and hips, and thighs, and butt), I generally try to leave leftovers at other people’s houses when I choose dessert as my contribution to a meal. Not this time. The remaining brownies came with me, clasped tightly on my lap as we drove home in the rain.

Saturday, I ventured out into the weather again to pick up a few last ingredients for my second dance with Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef; it’s hard to make a pasta dish containing lemons, olives, anchovies and pine nuts when you don’t have lemons or pine nuts in your kitchen. I grumped to myself as I walked to the store and back. Why did I need this stuff? I knew I shouldn’t, but it would just be easier to substitute ingredients. The brownies had been good (liar, understatement of the century!), but this was just pasta. I could post about the brownies and leave it at that…

I was so wrong. With water for brown rice pasta considering coming to a boil, I prepped ingredients and tried to imagine what this was going to taste like. N. had already been frightened by the idea of anchovies, and I knew he was envisioning a cheap pizza draped with little fishy bodies. I told him that Shauna and Danny said not to be afraid. He said “hmph,” which meant he was unconvinced. He doesn’t know Shauna and Danny like I do.

With the toasty, nutty perfume of not-quite-burned pine nuts still lingering in the kitchen, I sautéed a collection of vegetables in my biggest skillet, hurriedly chopping and slicing in between stirring sessions. I’m always too anxious to cook to bother readying all my mise en place before scraping a boardful of ingredients into the pan. At the point that the roughly chopped mix of olives I’d kept stowed in the back of my fridge and the finely chopped little fillets of anchovy hit the pan, I felt my knees buckle. The smell was incredible. When I added capers and lemon juice, I had a Proustian epiphany of Corsica, of Greece, of Spain. Except I’ve never been to Spain. Or Corsica. Or anywhere in Greece. It was just a strong enough, rich enough, delicious enough smell that it lifted me from the stained hardwood floor of my kitchen and transported me onto some magical different plane of Mediterranean glory.

Carefully twirling the pasta through sauce, I had to be careful not to drool on it. These flavors: is this umami? It was almost more than I could manage to mix in pine nuts, lemon zest, a clumsy chiffonade of basil – I just wanted to eat it straight out of the skillet.

We sat down to eat. I tried to do one of those perfect forkfuls where you get a tiny sample of everything. I tried to think objectively about what I was about to experience, about what vocabulary I would use to describe it, about how I could speak like a food critic about it. I don’t know how. Here are my words, all I can manage: earthy. Warm. Salty-bright-tangy-acidic-perfect. Briny. Tart. Meltingly rich. Flavor bomb. Somewhat reminiscent of chicken piccata, but deeper, richer, earthier, nuttier.

And N.? He scraped his plate. I asked him what he thought so I could make a report. “It was excellent.” As I’ve written before, N. is generally restrained in his verbal praise of food. And this was “excellent.”

I’ve never bought anchovies before. I might never allow them out of my pantry again. This recipe, whether we use gluten-free pasta or not, will fast become one of my staples. For me, it’s too distinctive to have all the time. It’s too special. But for those nights when I need something powerful to wake my taste buds, when I need something that makes my mouth feel alive, this is it. This was like eating a tango.

Go to a bookstore. Order Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef: A Love Story with 100 Tempting Recipes. Rejoice in the story and in the recipes and in the wonderful opportunity to eat really, really good food. Dance in your kitchen. And then tell me about it. And tell Shauna. I know she’d want to know.

Seattle: Day Two

Posted on September 17, 2010 by Chelsea

This trip was extra special in the food indulgence area because we opted to stay at a bed and breakfast instead of the usual chain hotel. At the Villa Heidelberg, our hostess serves what she calls a “hearty breakfast,” which consists of coffee or tea and fruit, followed by a hot dish that changes every day. As we ate this hot dish the first morning – a croissant stuffed with Canadian bacon, cheddar cheese and sliced, cinnamon dusted apples, then coated in egg and baked until the pastry was even toastier and flakier than before and the apples were just softening – she explained that she has almost run out of room in her kitchen for her cookbook collection. Other bed and breakfast establishments have five or six standby breakfasts they alternate between or cycle through, but she said that early in her career as innkeeper she got tired of making the same things week in and week out. She keeps adding and adding to her repertoire, and with a side of maple syrup to absolutely drench this croissant in fantastic sticky decadence, we were well set to begin our adventures.

Despite this incredibly filling start to the day, when thoughts of lunch started to percolate as we strolled through Pike Place, I knew almost immediately what I wanted. The smells in the marketplace were so good that you’d think it would be hard to decide. But I knew.

The fish stalls here were impressive, and when I say that the place smelled like fish, I mean this in a positive way. Even raw, the fish was so fresh and so reminiscent of the salty spray of the Pacific that even N. admitted it smelled good. It didn’t hurt that the aromas of smoked salmon and fried seafood lingered around us as well, and this became my lunch quest: fried shrimp.

For $7.99, the sardonic but chatty expediter at one stall sold me this beautiful portion of beer battered and fried prawns with French fries. It was like heaven. Since N. doesn’t like shellfish, we never eat it at home. Not only were these fresh, plump, perfectly toothsome prawns, but they were coated in delicious rich batter and fried until they had soaked in just the right amount of grease. Enough to coat the fingers and shine suggestively in the corners of my mouth. Not quite enough to weigh me down. Perfect. Well, perfect if I’d had a beer on the side. Maybe a nice wheat beer with a generous lemon wedge. And bringing the expediter home, where he would become our local bartender. Then I could call it perfect.

Dinner this night was to be our belated anniversary dinner. Since I’d just celebrated my birthday, I decided it could do double duty. We chose Purple, a bistro and wine bar right downtown, and entered the enormous, dimly lit room slowly. Solid heavy doors and ceiling to floor windows protected a huge spiral staircase winding around a column of shelves packed with bottles. While I was still gaping at this collection of wine, we were seated and handed a binder full of beverage choices. Our poor server had to come back three times to get our order, as I, still a bit of a wine novice, was completely intimidated by the gratuitous supply and tremendous number of options. I selected a nice citrusy Gewürztraminer while N., always the beer man, had an Old Rasputin Stout. He gave me a sip and I was surprised by its dark smokiness.

With so many wine choices, I was almost dizzy with the rush of having to choose accompanying food. I get nervous at restaurants when I have a plethora of choices. Do I opt for something comforting, familiar, guaranteed to be good, or do I branch out and order something that sounds adventurous – a startling mix of flavors that might be outrageously good… or a slight disappointment? Here, though, I needn’t even have opened the menu; the first special on the front page was too good to pass up: risotto with roasted tomatoes, spinach, and Greek feta.

The poor quality here is due to the dim lighting, but I could just as easily claim it was thanks to my hands quivering from delight. It sounds so simple, and as I looked down at my plate I feared I had been too cautious, but I was wrong. The blend of flavors was stellar. The rice was tender and flavorful, the tomatoes had sharp tanginess that matched well with the feta, and the whole thing had that unbelievable magical creaminess risotto gains from twenty minutes of tireless stirring while the rice grains – little sponges that they are – slowly suck in more and more broth.

While my fork danced around my plate, N. enjoyed a more hands-on experience, ordering a gorgonzola and fig pizza, replete with walnuts and rosemary, and a shy sprinkling of Parmesan cheese. The thick purple slices of fresh fig looked so alien on pizza, as did the hefty chunks of walnut, but the finished product was tasty and intriguing. In my plans for recreation, I may try making a rosemary foccaccia dough as a base, and then replacing the fresh figs for dried.

Because it was a special occasion, and because our server told us the desserts were “tapas sized,” we decided we had to splurge. With options like these, there was simply no leaving before we had a sample or two. We decided to share two desserts: the red velvet cake with lavender cream cheese frosting, and the blackberry cheesecake with blackberry coulis and candied lime zest. Despite being barely bigger than golf balls, both were triumphant. The cake was moist and rich, and the lavender sprinkled atop the frosting was an unexpectedly good touch. It had a sophisticated flavor somehow and a light perfume, making this more than just good cake.

The cheesecake was rich and exceedingly smooth, and I found the perfect balance was a generous dip of blackberry coulis and a sliver of candied zest. I like a bite of sour citrus with my cheesecake, and without that tart, slightly bitter chew, this perfect little cylinder might have been bland. As it was, if I were slightly less polite I would have licked my plate. Hell, I would have licked both plates.

Thanks, Seattle, you were that good.

Seattle: Day One

Posted on September 16, 2010 by Chelsea

As the end of my first year of marriage to N. approached, we decided that instead of gifts, our anniversary treats to ourselves (and each other) would be brief trips to see or do something fantastic. Our first wedding anniversary, we saw Eddie Izzard live in Portland. It was fantastic. Then we went to the zoo. Our second year, we saw Macbeth in Ashland, then went to Crater Lake. Again, fantastic. This year, we outdid ourselves a bit and spent a few days in Seattle (again, ending the trip with the zoo… I have a weak spot for zoos…).

I write this here because we took this opportunity not only to see the sights, but to taste them. Seattle has a bit of a reputation for being a foodie haunt, and we decided if we were treating ourselves to the voyage, we might as well… well… eat well… during it. I sent out a call for suggestions and my friend S. responded with an impressive list of possibilities, so what I’ll present to you here are our highlights of Seattle in food.

After lunch on the road (smoked mozzarella sandwich at the McMenamin’s in Centralia, which unexpectedly came free because our server forgot to put in our order and consequently comped our whole lunch), we set foot in Seattle in mid-afternoon with plenty of time to sightsee a bit before dinner. We planned our evening at the top of the Space Needle, and ended up deciding on Oddfellows Café and Bar. The space was great: open and airy with lots of exposed wood ceiling beams, and one old, mellow brick wall. It’s close to the campus of Seattle Central Community College, and we could feel the youthful vibe of the place in the décor and the demeanor of our fellow diners. Our server had probably finished up classes an hour or two before serving us dinner.

And what a dinner! We started off with drinks, since it had been a long drive. N. had a local porter, and I had pear cider.

The menu was simple and clean, and though at first I was a bit disappointed by the small number of entrée choices, it only took me the first two lines on the menu to decide what I was having and to guess (accurately) what N. would order.

I had the rotolo, a beautiful rolled pasta, like conchiglioni mated with lasagna, lovingly topped with a blanket of this beautiful tangy, sweet, slightly acidic tomato sauce. The pasta itself was stuffed, rolled, sliced and flipped on its side to expose its creamy filling to the eye. It was filled with a mixture of spinach and ricotta cheese, with a light herbiness I haven’t figured out yet. Oregano, maybe, and perhaps chives. Though we had agreed upon ordering, I was almost unwilling to hand my plate across the table to share.

But it’s good to share. Really, really good. N. ordered the roasted chicken with summer vegetables, and when it came, almost half a chicken, I knew how good this would be. With N. a white meat man and me a dark meat fan, he would take a nibble of the thigh, consume the breast, and gladly pass along the rich leg to me. The chicken was very simply roasted, hot and juicy with crisp brown skin and perfect saltiness. Really a sexy lady all around. The meat was tender and rich, and as our knives took turns plunging into the flesh, little rivulets of fat trickled across the plate into the vegetables on the other side, which became the unexpected superstars of the dinner experience.

“Summer vegetables,” in this case, meant a mélange of green beans and thick medallions of green and yellow zucchini. They were crisp tender and lovingly coated in lemony buttery perfection. Crunchy, citrusy, peppery, and with the addition of the chicken fat mixing in, perfectly indulgent too.

We passed on dessert this evening, but only because we didn’t want to overdo it on the first night…

Homecoming

Posted on September 2, 2010 by Chelsea

Bodily home from vacation, but my mind is refusing to admit that it’s time to work again. With two writing related project deadlines in September, the beginning of the new school year, and that looming dissertation thing in the background, the time for reluctance and inactivity is over.

Yeah, tell that to my sunbathing motivation and my zinc-nosed inspiration. Since returning home, my productivity has been almost nil.

Far opposite holds true in my backyard. Despite a very, very slow start and still largely unresponsive tomatoes, the garden has rebounded and seems determined to make up for its early uncertainty. Every one of our eight peppers has a small green bell swelling on it. Tiny might-be tomatillos are forming inside wasted flower buds on each of the two plants. Cucumbers and zucchinis, oddly shaped but still tasty, are pushing their way out into the sun. Even the eggplants are growing and fruiting! But the real stars, the real miraculously successful, grocery-store quality items are my pole beans. The first sowing was a failure (too cold), but in the second sowing ten or twelve leaves pushed up out of the ground, and on Monday, as we crawled out of the car after a punishing nine hour drive, at least two pounds of ripe, juicy, six-inch long green beans hung ready from the vines.

What could be better, I thought as I looked at them with grinning awe, than a garden-fresh stir-fry to welcome us home? After two weeks of rich food and restaurant dates, we needed some vegetation in our systems, and here was our own garden graciously willing to oblige!

I started some sticky rice in the rice cooker and ran outside to divest our leafy residents of their harvest.

Eggplant and green bean stir-fry seemed to be the obvious menu choice. I simmered water in a skillet and tossed in the halved green beans, cooking them until they were just tender. Then I drained off the water, added vegetable oil and sesame oil, and tossed in chunks of eggplant and some white sesame seeds. Six minutes later, when the eggplant was juicy and soft and the beans had taken some dark marks from the heat of the pan, I scooped big spoonfuls onto a bed of fresh hot rice, and we ate without talking until every bite was gone.