Top Chef: Why the Chefs Should Be Older

Last night's episode of Top Chef really chopped my hyde.

The "chefs" were gifted a trip to the gorgeous (I've been, and trust me, it's amazing) Stone Barns, where they were literally tripping over lush vegetation and fantastic produce, and what did they do? They bitched about not being able to go to Whole Foods. I'm sorry, but did we just time-travel back to 1994? Are all of these "chefs" really so unfamiliar with the not-exactly-cutting-edge farm-to-table movement, aka a walk through a farmers market as inspiration for a meal, that this kind of thing throws them off their game? Is this for real? Or are all the chefs just way too young?

During the episode, they, collectively, removed all the fat from a pork loin (and didn't, you know, render it and use it), they took the tender, lovely meat of a baby lamb off the bone and pounded it out like it was a tough piece of crappy grocery store flank steak, and they made CUTLETS (Jesus, 1983 much?) out of the farm-raised whole chickens. Is this for real?

Now, since the oldest contestant got kicked off last night (Ariane), it might seem illogical for me to argue that the reason all of these chefs f'ed up so badly is that they're too young. But I can't figure out another reason for their cluelessness. As Tom Colicchio kept saying (last week with the whole-fried fish, this week with all the meats): respect the protein. Maybe it sounds precious, but seriously: Respect the life of the animal that died for your meal.

When I worked in kitchens, it was always the young chefs who over-worked and over-thought things. Their attemtps to impress were never the "let the ingredients speak for themselves" variety. They were the "let me show you my skilz" variety. Sadly, up til now, those "skilz" are what the Top Chef judges have been asking to see.

But last night the "chefs" were cooking on a farm for the farmers who grew the food they were preparing. They were cooking for people who already know how incredibly sweet that corn is, and (I'm just guessing) want to see that the chefs recognize it too. Can you imagine spending all summer working the soil, weeding, waiting for your tomatoes to ripen, and then having some dufus come in, pick all your ripe summer tomatoes and make a tomato frickin' jam out of them? Tomato jam is what you eat in WINTER because you preserved summer tomatoes. Come on now. Is this food 101 or what?

Anyhoo, Ariane went home for literally butchering that poor baby lamb. But it could've been any one of them. Stupid Jeff and his fat-free pork, stupid Leah and her not-doing-anything when she knew how to tie the lamb. Maybe next year they'll actually get some older, wiser, more experienced, less desperately unsure-of-themselves "chefs" for the show. But probably not.


[where: 98118]

Eating Seattle: Farmers Markets, Open vs Shut

I can't believe it, but the University Farmers market is going to be up and running tomorrow at the crack of 9am! I knew farming was a game for the hard-nosed, hardy type, but holy cannoli people! Driving from Carnation to Seattle to sell us snow wussies a pot or two of jam? I'm impressed.

UPDATE: Chris Curtis emailed and gave me some specifics. Get all the info over here.



[where: 981o1]

Food News: Anita's Crepes gets a home

I absolutely cannot resist Anita's ham, egg and Estrella cheese crepes whenever I can make it to the Ballard Farmers Market, so I'm really looking forward to having a place to get 'em whenever the craving hits me.

Head over the my Seattle Mag blog page to read about Anita's new space, and to find out when (and where) she'll be opening the shop.


[where: 98101]

Foodie Holiday: Gifts for food obsessives

Andrea Strong, God bless her, did what I would not want to do and came up with some pretty good gift ideas for food nerds, star chef-f*ers, and your uncle Ron who thinks his baked brie appetizer is the ultimate uber gourmet horsey doover.


So, you know, worth a look. Me, I like to keep it a little closer to home. A pound of Pete's Perfect Toffee (or you know, two pounds would be ok too) from the Ballard Farmers Market would do me just fine.

Saturday at Pike Place Market, plus food news

Yesterday we got going too late to hit the U-District Farmers Market, so we decided to go down to the big kahuna, Pike Place. It was sunny, blue, chilly fall weather and it felt like the perfect thing to do. We even had good parking karma.

First stop was Sur la Table. I just love the hustle-and-bustle of that store during the holiday season. And it doesn't hurt that some of my favorite people still work there, ten years after I worked there with them.

Sur la Table image via Seattle Bon Vivant
We grabbed some calamari linguini from Pappardelle's, a pound of prawns and a half-pound of calamari for what turned out to be a fantastic dinner (more about that coming soon) and a loaf of Le Panier's seriously delicious onion bread, which I hadn't had in years. The bread has all these little bits of toasted onion through it. Amazing.


I also used to work there (yeah, yeah, where didn't I work in Pike Place, right?), and I remember making garlic bread (crushed garlic, butter, a little salt) using the onion bread. You either split the loaf in half, spread the garlic butter on it and broil it, or you slap the two buttered sides back together, wrap it in foil and bake it for 20-25 minutes at 350. I'm telling you, it's the best garlic bread you can make.

Of course we all shared a bbq pork hom bow (Ruby loves hom bows--smart kid), a sable chocolate from Le Panier (with big pieces of toasted hazelnut and dark chocolate slivers), and a terrific bratwurst from Taxi Dogs (my first time eating one). Damn, great brat--it literally popped with juice every bite we took.

Now for the food news: On our way to the car we walked by the Virginia Inn, which is expanding! They're taking over the space between Le Pichet and their current space, which used to be, um, what exactly? I don't remember.


There's a sign in the window that says Virginia Inn is building a new kitchen. Does this mean that one of Seattle's classic taverns (opened in 1903!) will be putting a little extra work into their food? I love the Virginia Inn--great space and a refreshing throw-back. I'll be keeping an eye on this one.

[where: 98101]

Saturday at the Bainbridge Island Farmers Market

I'd had my heart set on getting over to Bainbridge Island's farmers market all summer. Somehow it just never happened.

This weekend I was determined. So what if it was rainy? I kind of like taking the ferry in windy weather. Makes it more of an adventure. We bundled up and hit the road. Callie even got to come along.


It's a short walk to the market, and the trees were putting on a show, all red and orange and gorgeous.


The market itself is nice and small, yet it wins the award for having the most prepared food to eat at a farmer's market; there were three stalls selling hot food, including (get this) an omelet station!



Beautiful fall produce, including lots of winter squash, pumpkins, shallot braids and "ruby" taters!




One of the best things about Bainbridge (and islands in general) are the old-timers, the ones who've lived there forever and, despite all the gentrification and new money, still live humbly in a small cabin with a wood stove. They cook their cans of beans in cast iron and hunt for wild rabbits using blunderbusses. Or so I imagined when I saw this guy.



I made Ed do the "Say Anything" fake posing so I could take pictures of him.

After the market we had soup, a panini and some coffee at Victrola. And enjoyed a pretty nice view.



[where: 98110]

Eating In: Fresh Summer Corn Fritters

Local corn was at its absolute peak last week, so I had to get some at the Columbia City Farmers Market. But then what?


I went to my favorite recipe site, Simply Recipes, to see what Elise had in her archives. And I found this recipe for corn fritters. I'm not sure I've ever fritted before, but one look at that recipe (and the pictures) and I knew I was the fritten kind.

I cut the recipe in half since it was just for Ed and me, but after making the fritters and the dipping sauce, we decided that the dipping sauce sucked and that it took away from the pure corn taste. So I made some changes to the recipe. Here's my version.

Fresh Summer Corn Fritters
2/3 c flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
1/2 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp smoked paprika (optional)
1/4 tsp dried chili flakes

1 egg
juice of 1 lime
1/4 c water
3 scallions, thinly sliced white and green parts
2 large or 3 medium kernels of white corn, cut off the cob
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro, or more to taste
Vegetable or corn oil for frying.

Mix flour, baking powder, salt, pepper and spices together in a large bowl.

In a separate bowl beat egg slightly, then add lime juice and water. Add this mixture to the dry ingredients and beat until smooth.

Mix scallions, cilantro and corn in third bowl, then add to the flour-egg mixture. Stir to coat.



In a wide frying pan or saute pan, add enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan liberally. Heat over medium-high until oil is shimmering. Drop batter in 2 tablespoon portions and press down to flatten, leaving a little room between fritters.

Fry for 2-3 minutes or until bottom is golden brown. Serve immediately with a little sour cream mixted with lime juice and cilantro.

Or do what we did and dig into some of the best tomatoes of our lives (from our garden!!) alongside the fritters.



Awesome summer dinner.

Good read on Ruhlman

Russ Parson's showed Michael Ruhlman his ass on the subject of local farming and farmers markets on Ruhlman's blog today. Seriously, he starts out with

Ruhlman, you ignorant slut.

So yeah, it's worth a read.



If you couldn't tell, I'm obsessed with farmers markets (and gardening too), so this is right up my alley. The sustainability of our food supply is one thing, but what I'm more interested in is the subject of food that actually tastes good, ie the difference between the red thing you buy at the grocery store in November and the gorgeous tomatoes you wait and wait and wait for on your tomato plants every summer.

I'm reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle right now. In the book, Kingsolver writes about the year that she, her husband and their two children sustained themselves by eating food they grew and raised on their land in Virginia. Reading it makes me wonder: It's the end of summer, our eggplants, tomatoes, beets, carrots, corn, herbs, and squash are all peaking. Could I make a dinner of just food from our garden?

I'm not in the habit of making bread (at all, but especially in summer), so there'd be none. I could make pasta, but first I'd have to buy some eggs and flour, since Ed and I don't have a wheat field or chickens (much to the delight of our neighbors, I'm sure). Beans? Cheese? Anything for protein? Well, um, we aren't quite to the cheese-making point yet.

So the short answer is, sure, but we'd be vegans. Anyways, I'm not going down that road any further (because I'm definitely not giving up cheese, bread and pasta), it's just that Kingsolver's book challenges the reader to wake up from the cucumbers-in-February mentality a bit.

And I'm also thinking, hell, if we at just from what we grew, we sure would be skinny.

Eating In: Nectarine-Blueberry cobbler

We decided to road-trip to Lake Chelan for Labor Day weekend. Ed's parents were visiting and they're not really city people, and Ed and I needed a little vacation too. Plus, I have 20 years worth of swimming, waterskiing, knee-boarding, hand-stand competitions, putt-putt golf, jumping off "the rock", beach volleyball and flirting with the boys memories of Chelan. Needless to say, I was excited to introduce Ed to my family's favorite summer vacation spot.

I was also excited to go to the little farmers market in Manson, a town that used to be all about apples but is now becoming all about wine. So first thing Saturday morning we headed into "town" (it's 2 blocks long, so...) and were greeted by old bearded men with hands still dirty from picking the apples they were selling. This is my kind of place.

We picked up some corn and tomatillos (I made the prawn-corn-tomatillo dish for dinner that night). Then I happened upon an old couple: She was selling vintage linens and napkins with things like "There's nothing a Washington apple a day won't fix" on them. Her husband was selling gorgeous tree-ripened nectarines and some of his old cast iron pans.

So, you know, I had to get a little of both.

The pan is about 3" deep and has that "we've used this to make everything" look about it that I love about old Creuset pans and much-loved cast iron. I took one look, asked what he used it for ("I use that to fry my chicken") and said "how much?" It was mine in less than a minute.

Then I bought a bag of his nectarines for $3. I was already making blueberry-nectarine cobbler in my head.

Cobbler/crisp/pan-dowdy, etc are all pretty close to the same thing, just with different, sometimes regional names. We've always called it cobbler in my family, whether my mom used bisquick for her topping or whether she did the oatmeal-flour-butter-sugar crust. I prefer the latter, so that's what this had. The recipe below is approximate since I didn't actually use a recipe. The amount of sugar and flour that goes into the fruit mixture really varies widely depending on the type of fruit (juicy fruit requires more flour than, say, apples) and the ripeness (ie, if you've got tart apples you'll be using double than you might for super-ripe nectarines). As always, tasting is a good way to get an idea of how much you need.

Nectarine-Blueberry Cobbler
for fruit mixture:
3 c blueberries
5-6 large ripe nectarines
1/3 c sugar (more or less depending on ripeness)
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 c flour (less if your fruit is less juicy)

for topping:
1 c flour
3/4 c quick oats
3/4 lb (1 1/2 sticks) butter, cubed and kept cold
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c white sugar
1/2 c brown sugar

Preheat oven to 350F.
Mix all ingredients for fruit mixture in a large bowl and set aside.


Mix flour, oats, salt, and sugars. Add cubed butter, and working quickly, use fingers to rub butter into the flour mixture. You don't want the butter to melt, so try not to let your palms get into the action--keep it just on your fingertips. This doesn't need to be uniform; in fact, it's better if there are some larger chunks. The topping will be like a coarse meal with chunks when it's ready.

Look at the fruit mixture. If there seems to be a lot of liquid in the bowl, pour some of the liquid out and add a touch of flour. Then place fruit in a 9" x 13" glass baking dish. Use your hands to evenly sprinkle the topping onto the fruit.


Bake for 45 minutes to an hour (we had the world's oldest, crappiest oven over there, so I ended up baking for 45 minutes and then broiling the top for a few minutes to get it all nice and crunchy-brown). Let cool for at least a half-hour before serving with vanilla ice cream.

Moving to the country gonna eat a lot of peaches

Yesterday afternoon we got the fever. The fever for the country. So instead of going to a Farmers Market we went directly to the farm. Fall City Farms, that is.

Fall City Farm is surrounded by 10-foot-high sunflowers in yellows, golds and reds.


But it's these guys who sealed the deal for us.



We knew we had to get a closer look. But first! You've gotta go through the "gourd walk" to get there.



When's the last time you saw a goat this close up?



We bought some purple potatoes, heirloom tomatoes, red garlic (never'd heard of it before), and a loaf of rustic sourdough bread from Preston Bakery. The baker, Alex Williams, built his wood-fire oven himself and hand-forms each loaf. His breads are sold at the Bellevue Farmers Market, Fall City Farms, and nowhere else. Pick up a loaf. Tastes real good buttered.

Then it was time for some blueberry picking. The nice folks at Fall City Farms directed us to Bybee-Nims Farm, a gorgeous 42 acre farm at the foot of Mt. Si (which is 4,167ft, so I win the bet Eddie!)

We grabbed a bucket and out we went into the fields.


It was tricky keeping the branches from thwacking Ruby in the face, but she loves being outdoors and we all had a great time.


Now we've got 6lbs of beautiful ripe blueberries. Got ideas? Recipes?

Eating Seattle: Upcoming Foodie Events

There are some amazing food events coming up in the next couple of weeks, including a free coffee tasting, an almost-free farm dinner, and best-of-the-summer-season supperclub tasting menus.



Unfortunately, if I told you about them I'd have to kill you. Or rather, I'm writing about them for 80108.

Have you signed up yet? It's free, you lazy bum. Get on it and get the scoop on everything good to eat in Seattle. In the meantime, here's what you missed last week.

Sunday at the Ballard Farmers Market

Sunday mornings are wonderful, don't you think? This Sunday was particularly great because we had 5,000 women swimming, biking and running in the park by our house for the Danskin mini-triathlon.
image via Seattlest.
I'd prepped some walnut bread French toast the night before, so I popped that in the oven, made a batch of coffee and then headed down to watch the race with Callie while Ed played with Rubes.

It was drizzly, but you could see from the expressions on the women's faces that the weather wasn't keeping them from feeling proud and satisfied. My favorite part, though, was hearing the men and children cheer for their wives and moms. It reminded me of watching the NYC marathon with Marly, my roommate in NYC for two years. We'd get up early, hop on the subway to Harlem and find a spot to watch. The first year we stood on the sidelines of the race near a gospel choir. I think it was mile 21 or 22, and you could see the thankfulness in the runners' faces when they heard the choir. It was such an inspiration. And this was too.

Back at the house we had our French toast (it didn't work as well as I would've wanted. You need a more absorbent, pillowy bread) and Ruby napped.

Then we headed over to the Ballard Farmers Market.

I'm not sure why we both love this market, but we do. When we lived closer and when Ruby slept anywhere (especially in her carseat) we'd go almost every weekend, even when the only things the market had fresh were winter greens, winter squash, cheese and potatoes.

Things have changed! Oh, the produce is gorgeous. Peaches, nectarines, blackberries, blueberries, Walla Walla's.

And tomatoes! Beautiful heirloom tomatoes.


We grabbed a bunch of fresh veggies and fruit, and then Ed got a hankering for a reuben. Other Coast Cafe makes the best pastrami sandwiches in town, so we gave the reuben a shot.

It was awesome. A little heavy on the mustard, but mostly just a delicious mess.

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.