Eating In: Roasted Vegetable Panzanella

We failed.
I'd bought a loaf of Columbia City Bakery's excellent walnut loaf on Wednesday at the Farmers Market, but somehow by Saturday it was still whole and, since it was in a paper bag, getting pretty hard. But lemons...lemonade! I made panzanella.

I love panzanella. It's another one of those Italian leftover dishes that people in American (especially the ones that don't cook) think is so authentic and inventive when, in actuality, it's mostly just resourceful. It's a way to use up leftovers and other stuff you've got lying around. I guess that's what goulash is to Hungarians: a way to get rid of all the odds-n-ends without waste. In other words, it'd be perfect for my old bread.

Usually I make panzanella (which roughly translates to "bread salad") with fresh tomatoes, peppers, onions, lots of fresh herbs and whatever else is on hand. It's great for summer because it's a no-cook dish that can be served as an entree or as tasty side. But since I had walnut bread (versus a more neutral bread), I thought a roasted veggie version would be better. And since we were having November-in-August weather last weekend, heating up the house while roasting the veggies wasn't going to be a problem.


Roasted Vegetable Panzanella
1 large onion, chopped
3 carrots, peeled, cut in half and sliced into 1" pieces
3 peppers (of varying colors, or whatever you like), seeded and chopped
1 eggplant, cut into 1" cubes
3 zuchini or any combination of summer squash, cut into 1" pieces
6 cloves garlic, slightly crushes but still in the peel
1/2 c chopped fresh basil
1/4 c chopped Italian (flatleaf) parsley
(other fresh herbs--thyme, oregano, chives--you desire)
1/4 c Italian or Greek olives, chopped --optional
1/2 c chopped semi-firm cheese (such as feta or fresh mozzarella) --optional
1/4 c toasted pine nuts --optional
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
1/2 loaf stale artisan bread*



Preheat the oven to 415 degrees.
On a sturdy metal baking sheet or shallow roasting pan, mix onion, garlic cloves, carrot and peppers, drizzle with olive oil, then mix by hand to coat. Sprinkle generously with salt and fresh pepper and roast for 30-40 minutes, mixing once, until the edges are starting to get browned.

*On a separate baking sheet, mix eggplant and zuchini and drizzle with olive oil, then mix by hand and season with salt and pepper. Roast veggies for 30-40 minutes or until they're starting to get browned.


While vegetables are roasting, cut the bread into thick slices and then into 1" cubes, erring on the large side.
Allow veggies to cool.


Remove the roasted garlic from their skins and mash into a small bowl. Add 1/3 c olive oil and 1/4 c balsamic vinegar, 1/2 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper and stir.

Place all the roasted veggies in a large bowl. Add the fresh herbs, nuts, olives (if using) and the bread and stir a couple of times. Drizzle with half of the dressing and stir a couple of times, then add the other half of the dressing and stir again. Test for seasoning, and add vinegar or olive oil if the panzanella is a little dry. Add the cheese just before serving.


*Hints:
Instead of aging bread for this recipe, you can also oven-dry the bread by slicing it and placing it in a 300 degree oven for 1/2 hour, or you can grill the bread. It's really up to you.
*Using two baking sheets helps the vegetables actually roast vs just steaming; crowding the pan will decrease the chances of the vegetables caramelizing.

The Rainier Valley Bite bit

Our weekend was wide open and the getting-towards-the-end-of-summer events were piling up: Should we hit the KEXP barbecue or stay closer to home and head to Columbia City for the Ranier Valley Bite? We decided to be good locals and went to the Bite.

It started at noon and was supposed to run until 2:30, so when we got there at 1pm we were not expecting this:


Empty booths. Booths that had run out of food.

This is the first year of the bite, so maybe whoever organized this thing thought nobody'd show up. But empty stalls at 1pm? There were only 10 food stalls to begin with, so you can't really afford to lose any of them. Unfortunately, it wasn't just one. Roy's BBQ? Completely out of food. Kallaloo? Out of jerk chicken, but you can have red beans and rice (blah). And while we're at it, where's the La Medusa tent? Or Geraldine's? Or Jones BBQ?

Salima was serving chicken satay which had an unpleasantly stringy lemongrass marinade on it.

Tagla cafe served a sampler of their vegetarian Ethiopian fare.

Neither dish made me excited to visit these restaurants, but hell, they get credit for HAVING FOOD! Seeing empty stalls was a bummer. What I can't figure out is why Columbia City Bakery couldn't just whip up a bunch of their yummy gougeres and sell those.

The best part of the event was the great live jazz.

And the people watching.



We attempted to salvage the trip to Columbia City with an afternoon drink outside at Tutta Bella.

Here's hoping next year's Bite is better, but I won't be holding my breath.
[where: 98118]

Big noses, hairy everything "the new black"

According to this Newsweek article (yes, Newsweek, arbiter of style that it is), it's hip to be hairy and have a giant schnoz.

(There's a) growing group of retrosexuals—men who shun metrosexuality, with its often feminine esthetic, in favor of old-school masculinity.

Ed sent this link to me with nothing except a subject line that says,
"It's about time."

Copernicus = Genius

I discovered a genius about seven years ago. I was minding my own business working at the Citysearch office in Pioneer Square and in come seven cd's. We used to get hundreds when we had an actual staff with an actual music writer. Anyhoo, in the afternoons we'd get bored and I would put in a succession of cd's for, I dunno, a minute each. We'd all laugh, gag, boo, hiss, whatever at the music. BAD music, my friends. The world is littered with people who definitely do not deserve music deals.

But then it happened. Without warning, I discovered a mad genius. Copernicus is his name.



The album I was lucky to discover was called Immediate Eternity. I was attracted to the album for myriad reasons, not the least of which because an old, crazy, long-haired man was bursting into the universe in a halo of flames on the cover. Awesome, right? Well, you got that right.


The music, though...wow. How to begin? Here's a quote from an article on Copernicus:

Not only is "From Bacteria" one of Copernicus' golden rants, bellowing and raw, harking back to a previously unrecognized Age of Microscopy, before humans or even dinosaurs began fouling the nest, it leads straight into one of his most cherished pieces, "The Lament of Joe Apples," a drunken Bukowskovian narrative by a fictional frothing bullman running his ego against the leash.

I told you! Awesome. Read more here.

My friend Clare told me that her mom shows a fantastic high school history class video starring Clare, me and three other friends reenacting Odysseus but in "current" terms. This involved me creating a joint out of lawn grass and paper towels (and lighting it and having it literally burst into flames in my face), and the use of a canoe on the lawn and our friend Kathy throwing a wooden fish back and forth out of camera view. Clare, with her hair affro'd out in all directions, played a sea monster. Anyways, Clare's mom shows this to people in order to judge whether they have a sense of humor. And this is what I did with my new Copernicus album. Every time we'd hire a new person I'd play Copernicus and watch them try to figure out if I was serious. Good times.

Anyhow, it's worth looking this guy up. I promise, even though you'll spend the next hour wondering what the hell he's talking about, it'll be worth it.

Teriyaki is Seattle's slice

I'm so glad someone finally wrote this article about how teriyaki is Seattle's fast food of choice, like pizza in NY, cheesesteaks in Philly, etc.

I'm just kinda sorry it wasn't me writing it (and I'm also kind of surprised/bewildered that such a hilarious phenom isn't written about with a little more tongue in a little more cheek), but oh well. It's a little long-winded, but still worth an every-other-paragraph read anyways.

Eating In: Grilled prawns with corn-tomatillo salsa

Clare and Madeline came to visit Ruby and me last Friday afternoon. It's adorable watching the girls play together, especially since Clare and I have known each other since our Bellarmine days. It sort of amazes me that now, as moms, we're watching our own little ones play together.


We decided to pack the girls into the car and head to the Madison/Madrona farmers market (every Friday from 3-7). It's not my favorite market, but I'm partial to my local Columbia City one. And hey, going to the farmers market is always more fun that not going to the farmers market. We didn't know what we were going to cook for dinner, or even if Clare would be able to stay long enough, so I just grabbed what I thought looked good.

Corn!

I don't really eat corn when it's out of season, but when it's in season I'm all over it. I grabbed four ears. Then I spotted some tomatillos. I remembered reading Matthew Amster-Burton's piece on tomatillos (read more by MAB on Roots & Grubs) and thought, well, what the hell! Let's give 'em a shot. I took four of those too.

Madeline isn't a huge fan of her stroller. Actually, that's an understatement. If you remember when Jeff Van Gundy lunged at Alonzo Mourning's leg in this infamous scene, you'll get the idea.

I kid! But she does hate it, so we did our best to distract her by giving her little sample slices of the awesome peaches that grow here in Washington (which more than rival those from Georgia, y'all). I quickly grabbed a loaf of the Campagnole from the dreadlocked guy at Tall Grass Bakery, and by then Ruby was starting to get heavy in the front pack (she hates the stroller too!) so we headed back to our house.

We hadn't even had a glass of wine yet and it was 4:30 on a Friday! So we had some catching up to do. We opened a bottle of prosecco, sat on the deck and watched the little ones play. Then, slightly buzzed, I got to work in the kitchen.

We had a bag of frozen, cleaned prawns in the freezer, so I threw them into some water to defrost. Then I cut up four roma tomatoes, crushed four cloves of garlic and added both to about two tablespoons of olive oil over medium-low heat. The idea is to kind of create a garlicky tomato paste without browning the garlic. After a couple of minutes I added a little cumin and a touch of smoked paprika to the mix, then grabbed flat-leaf parsley, basil and chives from the patio planters, chopped them and set them aside. I cut the corn from two cobs of corn and chopped two tomatillos and added that to the tomato-garlic mix.

When the prawns were defrosted enough I grilled them, then I turned off the heat on the corn mixture, added the prawns and the fresh herbs plus a few red pepper flakes, and let it all continue to cook off the heat in the pan.

And that was it! Sweet corn, fresh herbs, grill-y prawns and smokey from the dash of smoked paprika, this was just exactly what we wanted on a hot summer evening. We cut the bread and dipped into the sauce on the prawns. Yum.

More on the cupcake craze

When you care enough to write 2,000 words.
Voila!

Related: Cupcakes in Seattle make me angry

Eating Seattle: Le Pichet

My dream came true: After working our tails off weeding and digging in the dirt (our dirt! I'm still getting used to the fact that we own this house!) we took quick showers and headed down to the market. We hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast and it was after four, so we were a little grumpy and a little slow to make a decision. The rooftop patio at Pink Door? A Post Alley table at Kell's? Nah, let's go see what they're serving at Le Pichet.


All the tables outside were taken but we decided to stay and take a seat near the front windows; almost as good. We ordered a pitcher (hence the name, Le Pichet) of a French white from the Gascogne (sorry, can't remember the exact name but it was fresh with a little mineral and perfectly chilled), plus their five-cheese plate and my personal favorite, the country pate with honeyed walnuts and grain mustard.

Ruby had decided to skip her afternoon nap so we were a little worried she might start erupting with her "talking to the seals" voices, aka making squeeking noises so piercing that only seals can understand. I'd brought all the essentials: ice water in a bottle (for teething), teething biscuits that taste like animal cookies, even her wiggly doggie sock toy. But instead of erupting, just as our cheese and pate arrived, she started falling asleep in my arms like a beautiful little angel. This is probably something that happens a lot with other 7 month olds, but I think the last time Ruby drifted off to sleep in my arms without at least a little struggle was probably when she was 4 months old or younger. You know what they say about the little things in life? Well, this was magic.

So was the food. I nibbled the wonderful cheeses and Ed helped me make perfect pate-walnut-mustard bites since I only had my tard arm at my disposal. We were having such a nice time--tired in that great way you only feel after physical work--and Ruby was being such a trooper that we decided to order one more thing: the warm chicken liver and spinach salad, with walnuts, parmesan and a fried egg! Hell yeah. Is it me or has the "salad" category seriously improved in the last 10 years? We shared a demi-pichet of a light red to go with the salad. Perfect. I think the entire bill was around $45 and it was one of the most enjoyable afternoon meals I can remember. Our server was warm and attentive (she even let a little girl sitting outside borrow her jacket when she got chilly). Damn, I love that place.