Seattle - last but not least...

(July 8th, 2012) All things being left up to me, my first night in Seattle would have been spent dining at Quinn's.  No, it doesn't have some super fancy, internationally acclaimed reputation that precedes it, but in passing by it I just picked up a vibe that drew me to it.  I almost didn't make it there at all, in fact.  I was originally scheduled to fly out Sunday afternoon, but while sitting outside chatting with a pair of Kim's friends, I received a half dozen texts from Southwest about how my flights were constantly being delayed and pushed back then moved forward. Well, I could only take so much of having my flights tweaked like that so, given how great of a company Southwest is, I changed my flights to Monday morning and only had to pay the difference in air fare.  Why can't all airlines still be people friendly like that?

So, there we were with an extra night in Seattle.  Sounds like the perfect opportunity to revisit the previously missed hole in the wall known as Quinn's Pub. As eager as I am to talk about the food, equally impressive was the drink selection.  I think some drool just escaped my lips and splattered against my key board as I recall their craft beer list.  The first bottle for the evening was A Saison Darkly, followed up by the Chimay Trippel, on draft.  That's right, Chimay on draft.  Those two beers were both exquisite in their own rights, but what really gets my heart racing is the last bottle that I sampled that evening: Ayinger Ur-Weisse.  Months ago I broke my tradition of only ordering beers that could be described as some shade of night while at Marble in Santa Fe.  That afternoon spent with the Brothertons found me ordering a double white ale that made me completely reconsider my opinions about non-opaque beers.  Ever since then I've been open to trying other white or Belgian ales, but nothing ever came anywhere close, until the Ayinger Ur-Weisse.  It's hard to describe why I consider it such a fantastic beer drinking experience - it's a light, summer beer that's crisp and unfiltered.  It doesn't sound too special, I admit, but sipping it was sublime.  The perfect ending to a good meal.  Speaking of which, it's about time that I describe it, don't you think?

In looking at the menu, I was faced with a severe case of indecision: too many things looked too good to not order.  So, I did the only sensible thing possible: I ordered them all.

Sauteed Swiss chard, bluebird farro, caramelized onion, and marscapone

Ever since my visit to One Market Restaurant in San Francisco, I've not been able to get enough farro in my diet.  It shouldn't be any surprise, then, that the first dish to come out was the Swiss chard and farro.  I'm slightly surprised, to be honest, that I haven't taken the time to find a local source of Farro in Albuquerque, but then again I have been gone for the most part...

Duck confit and foie gras croquettes with a stone fruit and mustard sauce

As any readers of this blog are well aware of, I'm a sucker for duck.  Foie gras, for the ethical implications associated with it, is something that even though I enjoy, I usually don't seek out.  These croquettes were a complete gastronomical experience in every bite...crispy exterior and soft interior.  Savory meat with a tangy sauce.  The only thing missing was some visual firework display...but that was taken care of with the next dish:

Bone marrow, served with bacon and fresh herbs

Bone marrow is one of those ingredients that I'm always curious about.  I've had a few fun experiences cooking with it, but I've never been offered a chunk of bone marrow to eat as is.  Usually when you cook with it, it's in chopped up, inch long sections of bone...not something that's easily accessible, and a lot of work to get out any way other than just melting out.  But this, six inch long segments that was ready to be spooned straight to your mouth?  This was something new and, for lack of a better way to put it, an eye closing experience (closing - so I can just focus on the taste, texture, and smell of what I'm eating).  Whenever my sister sees me make this face, she says that that's the best compliment I could possibly give a chef or a restaurant.

Pork belly and crispy pig ears, served over watercress and frisee salad, pickled ramps, and bing cherry compote

The other ingredient that I've been going crazy over this summer, ever since my first visit to Farm and Table, is pork belly.  I've enjoyed it several times since then, but it was the dish at Quinn's that launched me into a mission to obtain (at Keller's Farm Stores it turns out) and experiment with it on my own.

Orange flower pound cake with a ginger-peach compote, and lavender panna cotta with berry sauce

The fifth and final dish for the night was a pair of desserts (again, we couldn't settle on just one!).  I'm going to have to wait for my fact checker to refresh my memory about these since the four preceding dishes and beers far outweigh them in my memory.

And, believe it or not, we've now reached the culinary end to my North-West road trip.  Hope you enjoyed the food pictures.  More coming soon!

Oysters and Salmon and Crabs, Oh My!

(July 7th, 2012) Elizabeth’s still jealous.

I think that might be a theme to this summer really.  I’ve gone overboard on dining experiences, and she’s been forced to read about them and experience them vicariously through me and my blog.  And if you thought that it just wasn’t fair to this point, just wait till I get to the Berkley post in a few editions.

Seattle provided another ample wave of things for her to be jealous over, namely Sitka and Spruce, but, like with all things, I must start at the beginning and work my way forward…

Not everything we made it to was superbly gourmet and fantastically, melting in my mouth, sloberingly good.  The first restaurant that we went to, in fact, barely will be recorded here.  But, the thing that set it apart from my recent experiences is that it was an authentic Chinese restaurant, plus bakery, plus boba tea shop, in the middle of a trendy neighborhood.  Albuquerque, are you listening, why can’t we have just one of these?  I wouldn’t mind the nauseatingly proliferate amount of greenery either…’

Regent Bakery and Cafe

 

The gourmand portion of the trip started during our first morning in Seattle with a trip down to the farmer’s market, Pike's Place.

 

mmmm, all the fresh fish...

Pike's Place - Not just fish, but flowers, meats, fresh fruit, and so much more!

Not shown, for more reasons than I care to list, the original Starbucks, complete with the slightly off kilter version of the logo, menaced behind us.

As we didn’t have the time, nor the means really, to satisfactorily enjoy the sea food, we later found ourselves wandering into Elliot's Oyster House.  Mmmm, oysters…I think that after this trip I went through a mild withdrawal from lack of fresh oysters...the thought of living near the coast again is very appealing...

A sampling of oysters for lunch

  

For those of you following along at home: Humbolt, South Sound, Fanny Bay, Bay Water, Miyagi, and Muptor Bay.  My favorites were from 12 to 3 o’clock on the plate.  I think there was a time, though it seems such a distant memory ago, when I thought that all oysters were created equally.  Well, my friends, I’m glad that there’s no ‘Oyster Bill of Rights,’ because, just like with salt, there’s an unending bouquet of oyster flavors that treat me to new sensations every time I slurp down another briney body.

Before leaving Elliot's, I filled up with a bowl of Ciopino.  mmmm, I can never get enough of this seafood stew.

Matt at his finest, just before digging into the ciopino!

By far, the highlight of the trip, and really highlight of my summer culinary experiences to this point, was Sitka and Spruce.  Yes, the same, aforementioned, sibling jealousy inducing restaurant as from the start of this post.  What makes Sitka and Spruce so special you might ask?  Simply put, they get it.  If I thought that Pok Pok was special since they induced a pure harmony of flavors, textures, and appearances, Sitka and Spruce was the testosterone induced, one-upping sequel that just had to prove that it could be done even better. 

Realizing that my memory is far too flawed to keep track of these things, I developed the habit here of taking the menu home with me as a reminder of what I dined upon:

The king bolete with giblets, cherries, and fino sherry

For those of you like me who had no idea as to what a 'king bolete' was before I ordered this dish, it's a fancy type of mushroom evidently.  Continuing the aforementioned theme of compliments and contrasts, this dish picked up right where Pok Pok left off...savory giblets and mushrooms with sweet cherries and the sherry glaze. 

Messy Dungeness crab with treviso and salted lemon

So messy, but oh so good.  It's always slow eating working your way through a crab in shell...but worth every ounce of effort it takes to get the meat out.
 

Poached halibut with cucumbers in whey, purslane and sumac

See those cucumbers?  They provided just the right amount of tartness to compliment the delicate flavor of the halibut.  The purslane are the little green leaves.  Almost all of the ingredients are locally sourced/harvested, which should explain all of the unusual ingredients during this trip.

The trappings: cracked Winthrop emmer, beet green-yogurt salad, and nan-e lavash.

Not shown - whole beets with tarragon, yogurt, and za'atar.  The only reason this didn't receive a picture is that it was eaten far too quickly for me to possibly have taken a picture of it first. In fact, this dish launched a new phase of turnip cooking for us.

This post seems to have grown to pretty long, so up next will be Quinn's Pub.

Updated 8/22/12: Ciopino added.

Seattle - The Apartment

(July 6th, 2012) With a trunk full of salt and a box of donuts safely buckled into the front seat, I set off through the Pacific Northwest for the road portion of my trip to Seattle.  Winding through the coniferous forests while being serenaded over the radio by Johnny Cash singing Hurt, Cake performing Long Time, Of Monsters and Men, and many other bands, I set out to meet my once and future running buddy Yev.

Stock photo of Yev from a run through the Pecos.  On that day, Yev learned the hard way that you shouldn't store a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in your water bottle's pouch...

Yevgeniy Kaufman, a name I always easily remember as I fondly recall reading through Yevgeniy Zamyatin’s We, happened to be in Seattle that week on his apartment hunting trip.  Serendipitously, Kim was in flight to Seattle in order to rent out the apartment she owned there as her last tenant had just moved out.  The last thing she said to me before taking off was ‘There’re too many people that want to check this out, can’t you just find someone for me and take care of it?’  Well, little did she know that, upon landing, I already had her prospective tenant lined up and ready to view the place.  It’s always nice when things can work out that easily, especially since most things in life are far from easy now days.

Kim’s (and now Yev’s for the duration of his lease) apartment was our base of operations for the weekend.  With a borrowed air mattress for a bed, a borrowed shower curtain and single towel, we managed to have a rather cozy stay.  The apartment itself was settled in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, kind of the trendy/gay/young/up all night area that just screams out to twenty and thirty somethings without a family to live here!  Up all night, and slightly hung over in the mornings, the neighborhood lacked for no small amount of entertainment between the drag shows, gourmet restaurants, themed bars (one was in a former funeral home…I’ll let your imagination fill in the rest), and open parks filled with throngs of people enjoying life and bicycle polo.

Don’t get me wrong, other neighborhoods had a certain charm too…the fish markets

  

Pike's Place

the statue of Lenin surrounded by fire and guns

The controversial addition of Lenin to the Freemont neighborhood in Seattle.

 

and a troll under the bridge

No Mai there...Kim had to keep looking elsewhere...

amongst other oddities, but it was the Capitol Hill area that I’d want to live while young and single. 

Next up: the food of Seattle (did you expect anything less?)

Why I really visited Portland...

(July 6th, 2012) Portland, Day 2.  By now, some of you may be wondering why I went out of my way to visit Portland, accumulating all sorts of bills along the way.  Some of you may think that it was to pay homage to the land of the Brothertons, others might say that I just wanted to check out a new city for my next job search.  Well, patience my friends, the answer will become self-evident shortly.

My second day in Portland opened to a run through the botanical gardens/arboretum along the Wildwood trail.  Oh trees, how I miss thee!  The serenity that I found while cruising through redwood forests amongst other varieties, I felt a sense of relaxation that has eluded me this summer while running in sunny New Mexico.  Shade, new trails, easy hills (by my mountainous standards), gorgeous trees, quaint neighborhoods...this run almost had it all.

Once getting cleaned up, I headed out to Pok Pok.  Even though I arrived ten minutes before they opened, there were a good 20 people in line ahead of me.  Good sign.  In contrast to the Heathman from the night before, Pok Pok got it.  Every taste, every dish that I had, just played off each other so well.  It was a gastronomical symphony.  Yet superbly simple.  To drink, a lychee flavored drinking vinegar.  That's right, vinegar.  Imagine an old fashioned soda mixed with a vinegary tartness, and you're halfway there.  To eat, I enjoyed the Pok Pok special, half of a roasted game hen, with two sauces (one savory, one slightly sweet), sticky rice, and a papaya salad.  The sweet and savory flavors of the hen and sauces (not to mention the papaya salad), just melded perfectly with the drinking vinegar.  And the way the fizziness of the vinegar accentuated the spiciness of the food...No beer or cocktail could possibly have paired with this meal better.  The Pok Pok special definitely earned the right to it's name as Pok Pok's feature dish.

Lychee flavored drinking vinegar

The Pok Pok special.

I'm not done yet.  For dessert, a Vietnamese version of affogato.  Vietnamese coffee, with a ball of ice cream in the middle, complete with fried dough to dip.  Soft ice cream, crispy bread.  Bitter coffee, sweet ice cream.  The contrasts and the compliments were out in force with this dish.  Superb and highly recommended if you ever find yourself in Portland.  Most places I visit have so many restaurants that I don't feel like I'm able to visit one twice, but in Portland I feel obligated to revisit Pok Pok on my text trip to the city.  (And there're a lot of restaurants left on my list of places to visit in Portland!)

Vietnamese Affogato

As good as Pok Pok was, though, that's not why I went to Portland.  The primary motivator was a small store in a Northern suburb called The Meadow.  Ever since my sister gave me the manifesto "Salted" for Christmas a few years back, I've developed a small addiction to trying different varieties of salt.  The author of Salted, Mark Bitterman, just happens to have a boutique shop in Portland, featuring chocolates, wine, flowers, and, of course, salt.  Lot's of salt.  Say, over a hundred types of salt.  And I tried almost all of them.  You are reading correctly dear friends.  For the first time in months, my sodium craving was sated, albeit momentarily.  I spent approximately two hours in a store that couldn't have been any larger than 400 square feet.  You may think to yourself, how different can salt be?  Well, my friend, I can't do the descriptions justice, but the variety of salt can rival that of wine or beer.  From the deep sea salts with the unique mineral compositions, to the smoked salts and flavor infused varieties (vanilla, ghost chili extract, lavendar, etc.), to the naturally formed/mined oddities such as Prussian blue or the Djibouti cuties (naturally forming salt balls up to the size of a golf ball!).

Some of the salt at The Meadow

Salt blocks and wine

And chocolates, oh my!

I won't say how much money I spent there, but my cupboard is now well stocked with salt.  I keep finding myself making up new dishes purely for a good reason to try different types of salt.  I've already decided that I need to do a salt tasting, where a pinch of salt is presented with each dish that uses that specific type of salt.  Just need to find the time, somehow...

Stay tuned folks for more dining decadence and sight-seeing in Seattle!

Portland late night

(July 5th, 2012) When we last left our hero, he had finished gorging himself at The Heathman Restaurant in downtown Portland.  The night was young, and he was ready to enjoy the town.  What trouble will he find?  What people will he meet?  And, most importantly, what will he ingest and imbibe?  These questions and more will be answered in this episode of...Where in the world...Don't worry, I'm nowhere near as much of a tease as Soap...

The first stop in my evening of decadence was Bailey's Taproom.  It was here that I first appreciated that this was the motherland of the Brothertons. As I stepped into the taproom, I was greeted by a giant computer screen with up-to-date information on each keg.  How long ago it had been tapped, what it contained, how much was left, etc.  In my mind's eye, I could definitely see Chris sitting at the bar exchanging notes with the owners.

Bailey's Taproom.  Note the big beer screen above the 20 taps.

After leaving Bailey's Taproom, I ended up giving my sister a call as Elizabeth had just returned to the states.  By some serendipitous chance, she happened to know the brother of the owner of the bar that I was headed to next.  Small world.  So, I found myself seated at the Teardrop Lounge, enjoying a sazerac in honor of the owner's brother (who lives in New Orleans), and a pina colada (the special recommended by the bartender helping me).  Much like at the Heathman, the Teardrop Lounge was dedicated to using nothing but the best local, seasonal ingredients.  The pina colada, which I would normally shy away from, was made from freshly grated coconuts, topped with fresh, local berries.  After hearing how much effort the bartender put into grating the coconut and after seeing how delicious the berries looked, how could I pass it up?

Here's a Sazerac for you, New Orleans.

Freshly made pina colada...delicious.

Last up for the evening (it was starting to get well past midnight at this point), was Voodoo Doughnuts.  Where to begin?  "Good things come in pink boxes", "The magic is in the hole", or just simply listing the names of the doughnuts themselves...actually, on second thought, an incomplete list as I'd like to keep this blog G or PG rated...Bacon Maple, Dirty Old Bastard, Triple Chocolate Penetration, etc. etc.  Coincidentally, those are the doughnuts that I ended up getting to go...  Even though I found myself in line at 1 in the morning, I still had to wait over an hour with about fifty people in front of me.  By the time I got out, the line had grown even longer...and it still would have been worth the wait.  So decadent, yet so good...

Two dirty old bastards (chocolate and peanut butter), a triple chocolate penetration (coco puffs atop chocolate icing and a chocolate doughnut), and a bacon maple.

Stay tuned for Portland day 2 (the best is yet to come!).  Travel is starting up again for me, so maybe I'll have some time to sit down and update this blog...

Why didn't I watch Portlandia first?

(July 5th, 2012) Portland.  PDX.  The place with great food and an even better salt store (more on that later of course).  By whatever name you choose to call it, Portland on a sunny day is a transcendental experience.  I suppose I had the insane luck of not seeing a significant cloud at all during my west coast trip (July 5th-9th), though by New Mexican standards, it was beautifully overcast.

When I heard that Kim needed to go out to Seattle (in a few more posts...patience please!), I jumped at the opportunity to finally kick off the west coast road trip that I'd been contemplating for months.  First stop, as you can guess from the top of the post, Portland.

Now as has become the trend when I travel, everything was planned around reservations at James Beard award winning restaurant and other food musts.  Yeah, sure, there's culture and people to see and meet, but I'm far too much of a pretentious foodie to even give the illusion that I'm going on these trips for some other reason (okay, maybe I do have one other really good reason why I've been going on some of these trips, but we'll leave that out of these posts as I try to do).

Portland...it's the land of the 90s, and if you're not getting any of these Portlandia references, march yourself straight to Netflix and start watching.  Just the first episode will suffice as it tends to be a bit banal and repetitive if you watch the entire series in one sitting (hey, I was too sick to do anything else that day, okay?!?!), though still worth watching and enjoyable.

But, anyways, I digress as usual.  First stop: The Heathman Restaurant.  My trend of alternating hits and misses continued with this stop.  Let me clarify though...the food at the Heathman was quite pleasant.  Very nice, fresh, local, but not James Beard award winning.  That being said, I still thoroughly enjoyed it.  As you can guess, first up, since I was on the west coast again, oysters.  At times I regret that my love for oysters came so late in life.  I remember growing up, and even in my early twenties, how fond my father was of oysters.  Ah, if only I had known better at the time...just think of the experiences we could have had?  But, in lieu of that, I shall endeavor to enjoy them for him as well as myself.

Oysters, so good...all a local Oregonian type.

After a dish from the sea, I next brought my culinary experience back to land.  Apparently, this was the perfect season for fresh, local berries, and my waitress was raving about the fresh berry salad.  Her raves were well justified...I can still envision those berries in my mind...crisp, juicy, and just the right blend of sweet and tart.

Mixed fresh, local berry salad with goat cheese.

The dish that was a slight let down had to be the main course...fresh salmon served over succotash with a sweet corn fondue sauce.  I have no fact checker to verify the sauce (luckily I do have the internet to double check with), but it was good.  Unlike at the Fat Canary, this sauce was thick enough to hold together, and the succotash was filled with pacetta.  You all know my weaknesses by now...I just couldn't resist once I heard that.

Fresh salmon, succotash, sweet corn fondue sauce, and pickled red onions.

What really made this dish, though, was the pickled red onion.  I actually had to ask for a bowl filled with them since I loved how the crunchiness of the onions contrasted with the smoothness of the salmon, and how the vinergary taste complimented the smoothness of the fondue.  Those simple little onions actually inspired a lot of thought on my part about what makes food good.  I came to a startingly simple conclusion:   good food is characterized by the presence of complimenting and contrasting tastes, textures, and colors.  That one simple conclusion has helped me re-imagine the first chapter of my cook book...an excerpt of what's in my head:

Consider the following progression of food. 

• Cheese - on it's own, it can be nice, even good, but never something to write home about.  Okay, every so often there will be a cheese so fantastic that you have a moment of pure ecstasy as you consume it, but the average cheese is just one color, one texture, and one taste. 

• Cheese on crackers or bread.  On the surface, it's virtually the same, but now we've introduced a contrast in texture.  This still isn't going to be something to write home about normally, but it's a more enjoyable experience than gorging on cheese and nothing but cheese.  

• Caprese salad.  Here's where the fun starts.  Mozzarella, tomato, basil, and some balsamic vinegar.  Red, white, green, and balsamic...okay, you've got the complimenting and contrasting colors.  The balsamic also provides a bit of flavor contrast in itself, but it pairs well with both the mozzarella and tomato, and the basil does the same thing.  The textures, though...everything, unless the tomato is perfect, is going to be somewhat similar - soft... 

• Bruschetta.  Now that can be interesting.  Cheese, presumably mozzarella, toasted bread, a slice of tomato, and a sprig of basil topped with some balsamic vinegar.  All of the same visual queues and taste sensations, but now you've added that last dimension of texture.  The trick to make this a fantastic dish, though, is to pair the ingredients just right.  The failing of most bruschettas is that too much of something is used, or that the ingredients aren't fresh enough/crisp enough.  These small details are important.  Alternatively, you could do a spinach salad with crisp onions or croutons, grape tomatoes, goat cheese, etc. 

Good food doesn't happen by accident.  Okay, sometimes it might, like when a caveman left out some water and flour, and natural yeast started fermenting to lead to the precursor of the sour dough bread that we know and love today.  But more often than not it requires attention to these details of how everything pairs together.  Taste, Texture, Appearance.

But, I digress, back to the Heathman for the all important last course, dessert - berry trifle.  The same deliciously fresh, local berries as before were featured.  Pure bliss.  I need to start acquiring trifle dishes so that I can make this at home too...

Berry trifle.  Much like how the sauce is dripping down the side, I'm drooling as I think about this dessert.

It's a shame that I'm not being paid by the word, because that's just the start of the weekend...I'll continue the rest of Portland in the next post.  Stay tuned kiddos!

Nature's Fireworks

(July 3rd-4th, 2012) So, it's been a while...lots of trips keeping me busy, but I shall endeavor to get them all up here.  I hope you like looking at pictures of food, because after this post, the next several will be, shall we say, inundated with them.  But not this post.  This post is about how I spent the third and fourth of July - not enjoying fireworks, but enjoying the marvels of nature.

On the third, I found myself heading out of town again with Kim and her dog Soju to the Jemez.  The last trip to San Gregorio reservoir and Clear Creek with Mark turned out so well that I thought I should visit the area again.  Once again, even though it was a holiday, I was amazed at how few people we encountered.  After we got past the reservoir and all of the day hikers, we didn't see a single person until we returned to the reservoir trail on our way out.

Clear Creek, North of San Gregorio Reservoir.

Soju on his first camping trip, ever!

Maybe the lack of people was induced partly by the monsoon season.  Every year, New Mexico receives the majority of it's rainfall (read: 8 of the 11 inches we get a year when we're not experiencing a drought like we have been lately) over a few weeks during the summer.  Like clockwork, every afternoon the heavens open up and inundate us with a flash flood, which ends just as quickly as it started.  For some reason, the monsoon season came a month early this year. 

So, I know what you're thinking...camping in the rain doesn't sound pleasant, right?  Well, this is New Mexico...rain is to us as snow is to Floridians.  So, who cares if we get a little wet, right?  One added advantage of the monsoon is that we ended up with a private fireworks show put on by nature - all through the night, the sky was punctuated by lightning in the distance.  Just like Teddy Roosevelt's famous quote from his visit to Yellowstone ("It was like lying in a great solemn cathedral, far vaster and more beautiful than any built by the hand of man."), how could anything man-made compete with that (aside from San Diego's fireworks mishap...).

One other benefit of the monsoon season is the wildflower bonanza.  In the span of just a few days, the semi-lifeless desert explodes with flowers to become thousands of acres of painted meadows...

Know that flower name?  Leave it in the comments for Brake Newsletter points (a very valuable commodity I've been told).

Anyways, cheers!

Come on, you didn't expect me to not have any food in this post, right?  Santa Fe Java Stout in hand.