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Food

Winter 2011

Bread books and videos

More than four decades ago, The Tassajara Bread Book opened up with the following epigram:

“We need more cooks, not more cookbooks.”

Now we have a lot more of both, plus video. Here are few of the latest gems of the genre:

 

My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method,Jim Lahey (W.W. Norton & Company)

A bread one doesn’t knead calls to mind a cake mix with a slew of mystery ingredients and food science. But Lahey’s bread has only four ingredients: flour, water, salt and yeast, and the yeast is a fraction of … » More …

bread loaves
Winter 2011

Wheat: A 10,000-year relationship

A while back, George DePasquale visited the ancient Italian city of Pompeii, not far from his ancestral home of Sorrento. Looking at a 2,000-year-old oven, DePasquale could easily imagine how its baker prepared and baked bread much as he does today at Seattle’s Essential Baking Company. He could feel he was part of a long, human continuum, “a river of history,” with “bazillions of people behind me, bazillions of people to come.”

But even the oldest rivers change, forming new channels, and sometimes doubling back on themselves.

bread loaves

» More …

Fall 2011

Recipes: Pumpkins

Pumpkin Ice Cream

2 cups milk

3 eggs

1 cup sugar

1 cup cream

1 tsp. vanilla

1 cup pumpkin, canned or baked and pureed

½ cup crystalized ginger, chopped to your liking

Whisk together milk and eggs. Stir in sugar. Cook over medium heat until slightly thickened. Mixture will coat spoon.

Let cool.

Add cream, vanilla, pumpkin, and ginger. Place in refrigerator for a few hours to chill.

Freeze.

 

Send us your pumpkin recipes!

Read more about pumpkins.

Fall 2011

Pumpkins

It’s a rare fruit that can fit in the palm of your hand or grace your table with colorful aplomb and also grow to the size of a small car. But such is the pumpkin. Our long Northwest days are a dream for growing the embodiment of Americana and Halloween.

Evoking American farm life and family outings in the crisp fall air, pumpkins are among the most compelling tools farmers have to lure their urban customers into the countryside. “It has become quite a draw,” says Bob Hulbert, whose Dugualla Bay Farms is a short drive north of Oak Harbor. “In the last two years … » More …

Video: How to clean a crab

Jim Haguewood demonstrates how to clean a crab. Haguewood, a 1981 graduate of Washington State University’s hotel and restaurant management programs, has been eating and cleaning crab for as long as he can remember. His family owned the Haguewoods Restaurant in Port Angeles, Washington, for 58 years.

He is a former director of the Clallam County Economic Development Council and works with the Dungeness Crab and Seafood Festival in Port Angeles.

Jim says his favorite way to eat Dungeness crab is the simplest: cooked in salted water and then chilled.

Read more in “Dungeness crab”

Food and drink pairings with fudge

Fresh fruit is always a winner. I love anything in season when it’s flavor is at it’s peak. Other than that, any kind of fruit works great; strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and pineapple are a few of my favorites.

Red Wine!! Any full-bodied red will do. Favorites are so subjective. Two Washington Syrahs that work are “Haystack Needle” or “Lick my Lips”. Another fun pairing is an Italian Negroamaro by Palama. It has fabulous notes of spice like cassis and pepper, also dark cherry and plum. Amazing with chocolate!!

Bread!! Think… pain au chocolat… Yum!! The simple version is to let the fudge sit at room … » More …

Summer 2011

Carrots

Although a wine and carrot pairing is not immediately obvious, it is intriguing that carrots and wine grapes appreciate the same environmental conditions. In fact, Horse Heaven Hills, Washington’s newest viticultural region, is also home to the bulk of our carrot production, the carrots thriving on the same soil and warm days and cool nights that produce such great wine grapes.

Rob Mercer ’91, president of Mercer Canyons, oversees the production of nearly 2,000 acres of carrots, which represents a good chunk not only of state, but national carrot production. A planting density of a million seeds per acre or more … » More …

Spring 2011

Kim Fay ’88—Communion: A Culinary Journey through Vietnam

Any prospective reader of Kim Fay’s book about Vietnamese food should be forewarned. Her descriptions are awfully good. In the city of Hue, following her first exposure to com hen, or clam rice, which was served to her Vietnamese-hot, well beyond the four-star scale, she returned the next morning for a lower heat version.

“It had not rained in the night,” she writes, “and so this com hen was topped with thin slivers of star fruit. Their tartness sparked against the dry crunch of the wonton sticks. The clams were light, and just a bit gritty from the alluvial bed of the Perfume River. The … » More …

Spring 2011

Dungeness crab

A few weeks ago, Brian Toste ’99 and his three-man crew set out from Westport, in southwest Washington, in Toste’s 45-foot vessel Huntress in search of Dungeness crab. They spent the first few days tying line and setting out some 500 crab traps, circles of metal and wire about the size and shape of large truck tires.

A few days later, when the traps were full, they returned to their buoys and pulled them out of the water. The crew quickly empties them by hand, says Toste. They toss the females and the male crabs smaller than 6-¼ inches across the back into the water, replenish … » More …