Culinary Fool

Zuppa di Farro (Tuscan Farro Soup)

09-Jan-2011

We are well into soup season and winter weather will continue for several more months for many of us. It’s nice to have a few good soup recipes in your repertoire to help warm us both inside and out. And if the soup is good enough for company, that’s an added bonus!

Friday night I had my wine club over for our second round of tasting Tuscan wines. Two of the wines were super-Tuscans made with lots of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. These were big, sophisticated wines that are perfect with beef dishes. A couple of the members don’t eat beef or pork, however, so I wanted to make sure I had something that they would be able to enjoy with the wines. Mushrooms are often a good choice but I decided to go with the rich, earthy grain, farrro.

Farro is an ancient wheat that has recently regained popularity due in part to people like Bluebird Grain Farms who are making it available and educating us about it. It’s got a great nutty, earthy taste and remains firm and chewy even after extended cooking. In fact, you need to allow plenty of cooking time to allow farro to get to the right consistency.

Because this soup comes together very quickly and then just needs time to simmer until the farro is cooked, it’s a great option for company. Your work is done early and the soup is not fussy about needing to be served at a certain time. If guests are late or the pre-dinner conversation goes longer than expected the soup will patiently wait for you. On Friday, I made it early in the day, then let it cool and slowly reheated it about 30 minutes before I planned to serve it.

Zuppa di Farro

adapted from Biba’s Italy, by Biba Caggiano

1/3 cup olive oil plus more for drizzling
3 garlic cloves finely chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped (about 1 cup)
1 carrot, finely chopped (about 3/4 cup)
1 celery stalk, finely chopped (about 3/4 cup)
5 – 6 fresh sage leaves, shredded or a pinch of dried sage
1 28 oz can of Italian plum tomatoes with juices
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
6 cups chicken stock
1 pound farro (about 2 1/2 cups)

Soak the farro in cold water for 2 or 3 hours before cooking to help soften it. With the type of farro I use this step could be skipped but it doesn’t hurt to do it either. You may need to allow more cooking time if you skip this step.

Remove the seeds from the tomatoes by putting through a food mill. If you don’t have a food mill you could also use a blender to help chop the seeds a little but make sure the tomatoes still have some texture to them. Do not blend them until they are pure liquid.

Heat the 1/3 cup of oil in medium pan over medium heat. Add the garlic, onion, carrot and celery. Cook until the vegetables are soft and lightly golden, about 10 minutes.

Add the sage and stir for one minute. Add the tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper and then bring to a boil.

Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer until the sauce has slightly thickened, about 10 minutes. Stir occasionally.

In a large pot bring the chicken stock to a boil. Drain and rinse the farro and then add it to the stock. Bring the stock back to a boil and then add the vegetable sauce to the pot. Reduce the heat and simmer until the farro is tender and the soup has a thick consistency, 40 – 60 minutes.

Place in bowls and serve with a little drizzle of olive oil.

Note: If you can’t find farro, I think pearl barley or lentils would also work well in this recipe.

Newly Opened: Uneeda Burger

05-Jan-2011

Uneeda Burger’s official opening was December 27th and then they took a long weekend for the New Year’s holiday. By the time I had lunch there on January 3, they’d really only been officially open for 3 or 4 days. So this post is not meant so much as a critique or even a report on my experience, but more to give you a little information about the place.

Uneeda Burger is the latest project by Scott Staples who also owns Zoe and Quinn’s. Each place has its own character and the trend seems to be towards a more and more casual atmosphere, although still with great, high-quality food. So while Zoe is fine dining and Quinn’s an upscale pub, Uneeda is a casual burger joint with an industrial feel. Wooden two-person tables with metal chairs fill the bulk of the space. The tables are easily moved to accommodate groups of any size. A stainless steel bar-height counter borders two walls: one wall is a garage door with lots of windows. Metal bar stools provide seating for the counter. Walls are a combination of wood and painted, corrugated aluminum. One wall contains a little section filled with name patches of the sort you might see on coveralls or work shirts. Outdoors there’s a partially covered deck with picnic tables. I’m sure it will be very popular once the weather warms up. In fact since the inside tables were full a couple guys braved the (literally) freezing temperatures and sat out in the sunshine and seemed to be none the worse for wear.

Wine World Warehouse

04-Jan-2011

There’s a new superstore in town and it’s serving up a very attractive product – wine! Wine World Warehouse opened just in time for the holidays. My life has been quite a whirlwind for the last few months and it’s just now settling down enough that I was able to check it out yesterday.

I knew the place was going to be huge but I was not prepared for just exactly how big it is. Really big! It’s big in a couple of ways. As you’d expect by the name there are hundreds of wines, but the place also has high ceilings, lower-than-normal shelves which keeps you from feeling boxed in, and wide aisles so there’s plenty of room to stroll and review the wines without bumping into other shoppers. It feels spacious.

I was looking for a very specific wine yesterday, which they did not have, but I took a little time to walk around and get a feel for the place. I’m looking forward to going back when I have more time. From what I saw there will be all kinds of things to surprise and delight. I was wondering how their selections would compare to Esquin’s and from my quick perusal it looks like there will probably be quite an overlap in Northwest wines but there seemed to be different offerings from Italy and France, for instance. I’ll need more time to get a better feel for that.

Culinary Fool has Moved!

31-Dec-2010

Finally got around to moving the blog as I promised back in…. October. Everything you see now is just the default layout/graphics/fonts, etc. But I’m happy to say that a quick check seems to indicate most things came over intact. There are some odd things: for instance at least some apostrophes came over with a \ – so they look like \’ – but that’s the biggest issue I see so far. Keeping my fingers crossed that there’s nothing major broken.

If all goes well I should be back to blogging soon!

Culinary Fool is Moving

16-Oct-2010

For some time now, I’ve wanted to move this blog to a more flexible and better supported platform. I’ve resisted since Spaces makes it so hard to download old posts and I didn’t want to lose the history of this blog. Although looking at what it was in the early days to what is has migrated to, maybe that would be for the best! Still, I’m sentimental and I didn’t want to abandon all my old posts.

Well, the time has come for me to move – Spaces is actually going away and they have now made it "easy" (I’ll believe it when I see it) to migrate our blogs to WordPress. Once I press the "migrate" button, I’m not sure what will happen here. I know there will be redirects in place for a short while but I’m not sure if I’ll actually be able to post here and tell you that I’ve moved. I also have no idea how much clean-up I’ll have to do once the old posts are on the new platform.

I will, however, move the http://www.culinaryfool.com URL so that it points to the new blog. Overall I am looking forward to the move but it may take me a month or so to sort it all out. I hope you will come and find me in my new home. Among other things I plan to have comments enabled – WordPress has some good spam guards, which Spaces did not. It would be nice to be able to interact with you all.

So bookmark http://www.culinaryfool.com and check in now and then to see what’s going on!

Feast and Tweet #1 – Thai Food: September 29

28-Sep-2010

There’s a new event in town and it’s all about two of my favorite subjects: food and wine! Over the past years there have been several online events where bloggers virtually "get together" to cook something or taste something or do some sort of activity and then blog about it. But the bar for that is rather high since you have to have a blog to participate. And lately, with Twitter’s popularity growing and growing, there have been lots of different kinds of "Tweet-ups" where any individual could participate just by using a hashtag in their tweet. Sometimes those have felt like you’d better have a certain level of expertise to jump in.

This is the first event that I know of that combines both of those ideas and it focuses on food and wine, not just one or the other. This is an event for everyone from those with less experience to those with more. Welcome to Feast and Tweet!

The idea of these events is to try pairing food and wine. This is something many or most of us do on a fairly regular basis, even if it’s just in casual way. You know what I mean, you come home and decide you’re going to grill up a steak. Then you look at whatever wine you have in the house and pick something to drink. Your choices may be limited by what’s on hand, but I bet you still try to figure what would work best. And that’s all this event really is about. The food "category" will be assigned – so that there is a common basis for the comparisons – but then you get to pick your wine!

There are no right or wrong answers. The idea is to try something and then let people know how or if it worked. Some wines will work, some will not. And that’s okay. There is a super easy "grading system" for rating the wine on it’s own and then how it worked with the food. Using this system anyone can rate their experience. Then, if you are so inclined, you can also blog about your experience and provide more detail. But only if you choose to. The real "event" is the shared tweets.

For the first event, being held tomorrow night, the food category is Thai. Even if you don’t cook that’s generally something you can pick up as take-out, or even at the grocery store as a packaged meal and easily pull a dish or two together.

You can get all the details on the Feast and Tweet site but in general you should plan your tasting to start around 6:30 pm Pacific time. I realize that’s a little late for any East Coast folks and for future events I hope to see that change but for this first event that is our start time. While you are on the site, take a look at the information that’s already there for you. There’s all kinds of information including places to pickup food, recipes you can make on your own and some suggested ideas for wines.

I know this is late notice – I was out of town for a few days and am just planning my strategy now – but I bet you can do it!

I hope to see you online tomorrow night!

Matt’s in the Market

15-Sep-2010

I’ve talked about Matt’s in the Market before. I love everything about the place – the location with its view of Pike Place and on out to Puget Sound; the food, much of it fresh from the market vendors; the people; and the ambiance, although sometimes it can be a little noisy. Last night I joined a friend and visitors from Japan for dinner at Matt’s. The visitors are in town to learn more about how we interpret and implement the concepts of organic, local and sustainable in our food world. Matt’s is a great example of the concepts in action.

But I realized last night that the construction and retrofitting going on in the Market is about to affect The Corner Building where Matt’s is located. It’s a little hard to tell from the official construction document (pdf) exactly what the impact will be. The plan says they are impacted but remain open, however when looking at the work being done that’s hard to imagine. More likely, and what we heard unofficially last night, is that Matt’s and their neighbor, Chez Shea, will be closed for for about three months. I guess we’d all better get our fill of them now!

Last night’s dinner was as great as ever. We split several plates among us so we could all enjoy a little of everything. We started with shrimp and scallop ceviche, pork belly two ways and heirloom tomatoes with watermelon.

SWAG from IFBC 2010 and Muffins

13-Sep-2010

In the last post I mentioned I’d attended the International Food Blogger Conference (IFBC) a couple weekends ago. The first conference was last year. This year’s event was pretty well organized, considering this was just the second year. I find that conferences take a couple years to really find their own groove and work out the kinks. This event is well on it’s way to having it figured out.

One of the pieces I thought they did a great job pulling together was the SWAG bag. The term SWAG was originally an acronym for "SoftWare And Giveaways", "Stuff We All Got", or any of a number of similar phrases. But now it’s taken on a life of its own. Basically, it’s the term used for free items handed out at trade shows, conferences, marketing or PR events, or sometimes just as a "gift" for business partners.

The people at Sur La Table did all the work soliciting donations and assembling the SWAG bags for IFBC, I believe, and they did a good job. Sure, there were a few things I looked at and thought, "Hmm, not for me…", but I bet there was someone else in the group who was very excited to get those items.

This morning I made a batch of the Zucchini-Cranberry Muffins I blogged about (recipe) around this time last year. They are still just as good as ever!

And how does that tie in with IFBC and SWAG, you ask? Well, one of the items in my SWAG bag was a Chicago Metallic 12-Cup Nonstick Pretty Pansy Cupcake Pan (say that even one-time fast!) which I used to bake the muffins this morning. I normally try not to purchase things that are too cutesy or have limited use – although I did go through a phase where I collected several cast-iron muffin pans

in various shapes – but I kept this flower pan since I thought it could be used a variety of ways. I’d prefer that it wasn’t purple but that’s a small nit considering it baked very nicely and the muffins popped right out when they were done.

The resulting muffins were kind of cute. They’d be nice for a brunch, for instance. And cupcakes would probably work even better with the pan since cake batter is lighter and tends to expand more than muffin batter does so they’d take on even more of a flower shape.

In the top photo the background is a Chilewich table runner

which was also in our SWAG bag. I thought it might be a fun background for some photos – we’ll see how it works out over time. The color is not one I would have chosen but it might come in handy – especially around Valentine’s Day and Easter. Sur La Table carries a nice selection of Chilewich placemats (I actually have several I use for photo props) and Amazon.com carries several of their table runners.

So there are all my disclaimers about the free stuff used for this post! Kind of a long post just to say: "It’s zucchini season so go make some of these great muffins!" But you get the idea.

First Look: The Walrus and The Carpenter

08-Sep-2010

I’ve always loved Boat Street Café but don’t get to it as often as I’d like. The location and logistics of parking don’t appeal to me, although I think the issue is more in my head than based in reality. Still, long stretches of time seem to pass between visits. So, I was thrilled to hear that Renee Erickson was going to open a new place in Ballard. Not that parking there is often any easier! But at least it’s closer to my home and the streets are not as busy.

Last night I visited the freshly-opened The Walrus and The Carpenter with a new friend I’d met at the recent International Food Bloggers Conference (IFBC). I’ll probably mention IFBC off and on in the next few posts but for now I’ll just quickly say it was a very interesting conference and the best part was meeting and talking with so many people with similar and related interests.

The Walrus and The Carpenter is tucked away at the back of an industrial-type building at the far south end of Ballard Way. It’s in a refurbished former marine hardware brick building. To get to the entrance you follow a long corridor to the back of the building. Or, you can do as I did, and wander through the Dutch Bike Company admiring all the handsome bikes and as you exit out the back you’ll be right where you want to be.

The Walrus and The Carpenter space is both light-filled and cozy – two descriptors you don’t always hear together. There’s a nice covered patio for dining al fresco, large west-facing windows spilling light into the interior, a row of cheery white and yellow bar stools along the steel-gray kitchen bar and a row of tall tables along a bench on the south wall. The interior is completely open so you have a full view of the kitchen.

The menu is an enticing list of small plates, many of them featuring some sort of pickled element, which Renee is not only known for but now sells. We arrived during Happy Hour when the primary draw is the oyster special. There are also discounts on wine, beer and their specialty cocktails. Half a dozen oyster varieties were on the menu and our server gave us the rundown on each type.

The oysters were super-fresh, as I knew they would be. I loved the mignonette and fresh horseradish served along with them. We shared one of the several cheese selections, the Bayley Hazen Blue which was delicious with the Boat Street Pickled Raisins served with it. The Watermelon Panzanella was an interesting and refreshing twist on the typically tomato-based salad. We also tried the (in-house) Smoked Trout with Lentils. Once I’d had a bite I thought of keeping it all for myself but decided I’d just have to come back soon for more.

I am looking forward to my next visit. This is a place I’d love to show all my friends. And I need to try many more things on the menu – which I’m sure will be changing with the seasons. I predict lots of good times in this new space!

The Walrus and The Carpenter

4743 Ballard Avenue NW

In the newly renovated Kolstrand building

Ballard

Seattle

206.395.9227

Farro Tabboulleh with Roasted Chicken

30-Aug-2010

I became a little infatuated with farro a couple of years ago when I noticed a local company, Bluebird Grain Farms, selling it at the U-Dist Farmers’ Market. The earthy, warm-colored grains looked nutty and hearty. Soon after I would notice it every now and then on a restaurant menu but it took some time before I attempted to cook it myself.

Farro is a type of wheat. I’m still sorting through all of the information about farro but it is also sometimes called spelt – although spelt seems to be one type of farro which cooks up a little softer than other types. It is also sometimes called emmer which, is another type of farro and is the version Bluebird Grains grows and sells. Just leaving all the technical information aside for the moment, suffice it to say that farro is a type of wheat, most often sold as the whole grain. It is very popular in Italy and also in the Middle East. While it can be eaten plain, you are more likely to find it in a soup or salad or as the base for a side dish. Farro makes great summertime salads and, as fall draws near, adds a soul-warming hardiness to the plate.

It is often recommended that you soak it over night before cooking but I’ve found you can cook it without soaking, it just takes a little longer for it to reach the soft-but-firm stage that is characteristic of the grain.

I recently picked up a recipe from the Bluebird Grains booth at the Ballard Farmers’ Market (they are at several Seattle-area farmers’ markets and their products are available at many retail locations, as well as online) for Split Farro Tabboulleh. I used whole farro and just allowed a little more time for cooking. I was pleasantly surprised to notice the recipe is from a local chef I follow, Becky Selengut! That was a nice bonus.

Farro Tabboulleh

Adapted from the original recipe, courtesy of Chef Becky Selengut

1 cup Emmer-Farro
3 cups Water
1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
1 medium Cucumber, seeds removed, cut into medium dice
2 Roasted red peppers, cut into small dice
1 bunch Parsley, finely minced
3 tablespoons Mint, finely minced
1/4 cup Kalamata olives, chopped
3 Green onions, thinly sliced
1 Lemon, juiced
1/8 teaspoon Cayenne pepper
1/4 cup Extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup Feta (Israeli or French), small diced
Salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Add the farro, water and kosher salt to a medium saucepan over high heat. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, partially cover and cook until the farro is tender, about 50 – 60 minutes. Drain any remaining water. Transfer the farro to a medium to large bowl, toss it occasionally to help it cool.

Once cool add the cucumber, roasted red peppers, parsley, mint, olives and green onions. In a separate small bowl, mix the olive oil, lemon juice, cayenne pepper and a little salt and pepper. Combine with the farro mixture.

Taste and add more salt and pepper, if desired. Top with the feta and serve.

This salad should hold for a few days if you have leftovers.

Notes: Becky’s recipe called for all ingredients to be finely diced or minced but I prefer my ingredients to have a little more of a presence so I mostly left them a little larger. This is a great recipe to customize to your own tastes – vary the amounts or even the ingredients based on your preferences. For instance, adding some fresh corn to the salad would be really good.

I originally served this dish as a side dish as part of a picnic. The following day I topped it with some leftover roasted chicken and made it my lunch!