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…

First fire

Posted on June 13, 2010 by Chelsea

Don’t look back. Don’t stop and talk to your loved ones. Do not pass GO or collect $200. Just grab your beer bottle, your children, your spouse, whoever, and run to your grill. You must make and eat this, now: Honey-lime Chicken Fajitas with Grilled Fresh Corn and Avocado-Orange Salad.

At my request, N. just lugged our baby gas grill out for its first showing of the season. It just needed to be dusted off, scraped down, and switched on. And then we cover it with unreasonably delectable things like these fajitas from the June 2008 issue of Cuisine at Home (the recipe for the chicken can be found here). With my numerous food magazine subscriptions expired, and me on a graduate student budget, I’ve started going back through old issues by month and, rather than cooking whatever I want willy-nilly, only permitting myself to use recipes from the month we’re in. Thus this month I have four issues of various titles from June to choose from. I didn’t need to look further than June 2008, though.

N. did an excellent job grilling the chicken breasts, which got crunchy caramelized exteriors from the honey in the marinade. While he was busy, I was able to compose our two sides.

Love it or hate it, the cilantro in this grilled corn mixture added bright, grassy freshness and went with the sweetness of the corn extremely well. Surprisingly, the queso fresco I crumbled over the top went along well too, probably because the salad was all freshness and crisp juiciness, and benefited from some creamy curds of cheese.

Because we had a sudden profusion (read: six) of tart garnet strawberries weighing down their respective stems in the backyard, I made a fruity addition to the Avocado-Orange salad Cuisine at Home offered. Eliminating the garlic from the recipe and using the orange’s dripping liqueur instead of lime juice (one of my limes was most reluctant to give up anything), I mixed the roughly chopped strawberries in with an avocado, an orange, a few pinches of cilantro, and some salt and pepper. Then I tried not to eat everything in the bowls while I waited for N. to bring the chicken in.

Fingers burning, we sliced it, then loaded up warm flour tortillas with thick moist slices of chicken, crumbles of queso fresco, sweet juicy pops of corn, and some green salsa (not homemade, but what can you do?). I substituted a spoonful of Avocado-Orange salad for the salsa on my second fajita, and was equally overwhelmed. So fresh. So fragrant. Such a pleasing, intriguing combination of flavors.

So quickly gone.

Roast Chicken, part III

Posted on October 14, 2009 by Chelsea

With one delicious dinner out of the way and several quarts of stock safely frozen, I used the remaining chicken (the bits I could save; N. kept snacking on succulent pieces straight from the refrigerator!) to make one of my all time favorite summer dinners. With two more big heirlooms ready on the vine, I made a simple chicken salad from the roasted leftovers. I shredded up the chicken into bite-sized chunks with my fingers, then added just the necessities. Well, mostly just the necessities. A creamy spoonful of mayonnaise. Finely chopped dill. Julienned yellow pole beans from our garden that I’d lightly steamed. A handful of mixed chives and green onions, diced up. Salt and pepper to taste.

Cut the tomatoes ¾ of the way through so that eight thick, juicy slices hang together by half an inch or so at the bottom, but begin to pull apart, leaving a perfectly ripe, red vessel for the chicken salad.

Pile it up good and high.

Sometimes for presentation’s sake, I place the tomato atop a ruffled piece of butter lettuce. Sometimes I don’t.

Then I eat it.

Roast Chicken, part II

Posted on October 14, 2009 by Chelsea

With the falling temperatures and rising rains of autumn comes another unfortunate event. Well, it’s unfortunate in the sense that it interrupts me from my otherwise regularly schedule internet time. So that means it’s unfortunate for the regular updating of this blog, because I stop posting.

School.

We’re in the middle of the third week now, and this is the first time I’ve really had the chance to sit down and get back to the story. It’s all being sitting on the back burner up until now. Which is oddly appropriate, given our current topic.

You’ll remember that when last we met, my first roast chicken had been liberated of meat. The carcass itself I lowered into my gigantic gleaming aluminum pasta pot. I added roughly chopped red onion chunks and quartered carrots. Then I tossed in a liberal mix of herbs: thyme, sage, parsley, rosemary, dill, two or three bay leaves, and a small cupped handful of black peppercorns. I finished by cracking a head of garlic and strewing several cloves, paper wrapped still, around the carcass. I added probably twelve cups of water, and lidded the whole pot up to simmer for two and a half hours.

When I strained out the bones and wasted vegetables, I was able to pour ten cups of rich, buttery-colored stock into my largest Tupperware. At Ina Garten’s helpful suggestion courtesy of the Food Network website, I stowed the container in the fridge overnight, and was rewarded the next morning by a thick layer of fat across the top of the broth, which I scooped off before portioning out the golden liquid into smaller amounts in freezable containers. Though I will not use it for everyday applications that only call for a cup or half a cup of broth, now I will have homemade chicken broth for clear soups and risottos. You can bet that if this roast chicken obsession continues, I will need to start saving every lidded container that goes through my kitchen. Scrubbed and labeled, yogurt and cottage cheese containers alike will be homes to ice-crystalled, rock hard pints of lovingly simmered stock. C’mon, winter cold, I dare you to take on my broth base.

Roast Chicken, part I

Posted on September 21, 2009 by Chelsea

Last night I faced another one of my food anxieties and bravely roasted a whole chicken. This doesn’t sound like much, but for a girl who is capable of producing every side dish in a Thanksgiving feast but is afraid of the turkey, it was kind of a big deal for me. First, I did my research. And my research, I mean I asked around for suggestions on Facebook. I got two recommendations, both from clever friends. A. told me to stuff an herb and garlic mixture under the skin and into the cavity. J. told me not to skimp on the rosemary. I heeded their words. At about 4 o’clock yesterday afternoon, I traipsed out to the garden in the misting spurts of drizzle and picked a big handful of parsley, pineapple sage, silver thyme, and several large twigs of the tiny rosemary bush I am so proud of.*

Back in the kitchen, I chopped the herbs roughly, threw them into a container with four cloves of garlic, a few tablespoons of butter, salt, pepper, and a splash of olive oil, before attacking the whole mixture with my immersion blender. What resulted looked and tasted like the best spread for garlic bread there has ever been.

The next part was probably the most fun, though it could also be construed as the most icky, depending on how you feel about raw chicken. To get the best flavors going, I carefully loosened the skin of the chicken from the meat by jamming my fingers in between them and breaking through the thin layer that attaches the skin to the muscles. When I had loosened quite a bit of the skin on the chicken’s back (I have adopted my mom’s suggestion to roast poultry breast-side down, so the white meat doesn’t dry out as much), I shoved several fingerfuls of my herb butter mixture underneath the chicken’s skin, massaging the flavor into the meat. The mixture was visible from the outside, making the chicken look like it had grown green spots. It was like some strange miniature speckled pterodactyl.

With the tiny bit of leftover butter mixture, I coated the inside of the cavity before placing my 4-pounder in the oven at 350F. Almost exactly 90 minutes later, it was done. I pulled it out and admired the crisp, brown skin for a few moments before quickly tenting it with aluminum foil to stay warm while I made our side dishes.

I steamed a bunch of asparagus to provide some greens, and then, with reverence, sliced up our first gigantic Brandywine tomato for caprese salad. We wanted to be sure and put this first huge beautiful heirloom to good use, since our bush is only promising a few choice specimens, and with the weather as schizophrenic as it usually is at this time of year, we may not get many more. Caprese seemed noble enough. I layered the thick, meaty slices of tomato with fresh mozzarella and just-picked basil, then sprinkled the whole thing with salt and pepper before giving it a healthy drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Gorgeous, no? Who needs lettuce?

We dug in. The caprese was marvelous; the acidic sweetness of the tomato juice mingled with the balsamic vinegar into a beautiful sweet-tangy jus that soaked into the fresh mozzarella, which had enough creaminess to stand up to the firm, meaty flesh of the tomato slices. It was perfect. And then it was gone.

The chicken was delicious as well. It was moist and savory, and the herbs both added some welcome flavors and made it smell really enticing. I forced myself not to eat more than a bite or two of the skin, which was crispy and golden and marvelous. It’s a shame that fat tastes so wonderful, because it is always difficult for me to avoid it. I love that marbling in any cut of meat, and I’m a fiend for the thigh and leg on poultry both because it is moister meat, but also because the skin often gets left on the leg, and I get to chew on some of it as a special treat.

Dinner was delectable, but almost more exciting than dinner was the fate of the leftovers. There was plenty of meat left over after we were finished; even at our hungriest, I doubt that N. and I could polish off a 4 pound chicken with just the two of us, so I picked the carcass pretty thoroughly and will use the meat again soon. As for the carcass, all I can tell you is to stay tuned for “Roast Chicken, part II.”

*Early this spring, I picked a sprig of rosemary from a bush in the neighborhood that was leaning out over the sidewalk. I put it in a vase (read: cleaned and dried empty artichoke hearts jar) and waited. It took about three weeks, but it sprouted roots and I, holding my breath, planted it in a small pot outside. It flourished. It is still pretty small, probably because I keep using its fragrant, pine-scented leaves to cook with, but next spring I will re-pot it to really let it go wild.

Slow and Steady wins the Roast

Posted on October 18, 2008 by Chelsea

Now that the slow-cooker and I are friends, I put it to work again yesterday.Calling on the small, tissue-papery pages of the instruction-and-recipe manual that came with the machine, I set out to break through N.’s clogged nostrils (courtesy of the first cold of the season) by embarking on Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic.

Still clad in pajamas, I made a bed for the chicken by cutting a few longish spears of celery and arranging them over the bottom of the stoneware. Then, after evicting the gizzards from the chicken’s insides, I shoved a sprig each of Italian parsley, thyme, rosemary, and sage safely inside to flavor our bird from the ribs out. The chicken settled nicely into the pot as well. After counting up and scattering around forty cloves of unpeeled garlic, which was an impressive 2½ bulbs, I chopped up another sprig of each type of herb and sprinkled that over the top of the chicken. I added some sea salt and pepper as well, for a little extra flavoring.

The smell that pervaded the house for the rest of the day would have driven away even the most determined vampire. It was divine. The dog spent much of her day pacing slowly through the kitchen, nose in the air and hard at work. I spent much of my day making excuses to go into the kitchen and cast loving glances at dinner. After about hour five, N. informed me that he could smell something, and after hour six or seven he altered his evaluation to decide that something smelled good! This was all I could have hoped for, but there was more.

After about nine hours, our bird was so tender that it fell into pieces when I tried to lift it from the slow cooker. I pulled out as many cloves of slow-roasted, golden-brown, almost sweet-smelling garlic as I could, and while the chicken cooled a little I sliced half a loaf of leftover sourdough bread and, after liberal application of olive oil, sea salt, and black pepper, broiled it until golden to serve as our vehicles for garlic consumption.

The chicken was moist and delicately herby, while the garlic oozed out of its skins to top the toast, needing no convincing whatsoever.We suffered a few burned fingertips from our anxious efforts, but as you can see, that didn’t even slow us down.