Culinary Fool

I Love Crab Cakes!

03-May-2006

Last night M and I attended the I Love Crab Cakes! book release party at The Palace Ballroom. This is Tom Douglas’ third cookbook and both he and co-author, Shelley Lance, were on hand to sign our copies.

We had arrived just after the venue opened and I’m so glad we did! People were starting to trickle in but it was by no means crowded. We grabbed a couple of sample crab cakes to try while we waited in the (very short) line to get our books signed. Without the pressure of a line stretching out we were free to jump into the conversation the women in front of us was having with Tom (about Tom’s Big Dinners – and we volunteered our Cooking Club experience) and then to spend more time chatting with him about the event and the various samples.

After getting our autographs we made our way around the various stations to sample one of everything – okay maybe two of some! What a fun way to eat dinner! The cookbook has 50 crab cake recipes plus a chapter on sauces and salsas. That last chapter alone is inspiring.

There was only one version we tried that didn’t seem quite as exciting as the others, but I think it wasn’t cooked as long as it should have been. That was the Tempura Crab Cakes with Shredded Nori. I think they could have used one more minute in the wok to bring them to perfection.

After sampling our way around, and browsing through the book before nodding off last night, I’m ready to have a little crab cake party!

Cheese by Hand

02-May-2006

I came across an interesting site the other day, Cheese by Hand. It seems this couple is planning to visit small cheesemakers around the country and then document their travels. It seems like a fun project, although I keep thinking I need to figure out one of these ideas where you can get people to do fundraisers to support your travel for a year! :-)

I’m not sure how they came up with their list of places to visit. They are from the east and so the east coast seems to be the primary focus. They only plan to visit one place in Seattle – probably the last place I’d choose if I were going to pick one, but the only small place I know of that has a more commercial presence. Still, it will be interesting to see their impressions.

You can check their site to follow their progress and to see if they will be coming to a cheesemaker near you!

Opening Day of the Neighborhood Markets!

01-May-2006

After torrential rain on Saturday afternoon, Sunday morning dawned clear and sunny. It was the perfect start to the Farmers’ Market season! It was a bit crisp when I left the house but by the time I reached West Seattle the air was warming slightly and, when in the sun, it was very pleasant.

I was pleased to see the crowds at the market – I love that the communities really support these independent producers. I took my normal stroll around the market to see what was being offered, another loop around to make my purchases and a final stop to pick up a little treat for later in the day.

I left the market with a bag full of treasure including pea vines, spring onions and other vegetables; beautiful brown eggs; fresh spring goat cheese and Chevre; a tomato plant and a couple of herb plants; and a bargain bottle of a Moroccan style marinade. My head was dancing with all the potential!

Lavender Cornmeal Pound Cake

30-Apr-2006

I brought home this little treat from the West Seattle Farmers’ Market this morning. Good thing I took a picture because it is now long gone… Moist, a bit crunchy from the cornmeal, and a little sweet it was the prefect late morning snack. It wasn’t quite as lavender-y as I would have liked, but it was still tasty.

Onion Tart … Again

30-Apr-2006

Another version of the Onion Tart. This has really become one of my favorite recipes as it’s so versatile and limited really only by your imagination. For this one I added a bit of Thai Dragon Pepper to the onions while sautéing them. It gave the tart a nice little zing – not enough to make even the most sensitive person uncomfortable just a quick hit of heat at the end. I used ricotta and Parmesan for the base cheeses, dried tart cherries for the fruit and a nice Stilton crumbled over the top. I like this blue better than the one I used at the Holiday Party.

This tart was my offering for a cocktail party/bridal shower for K. Several people mentioned how much they liked it – sometimes knowing I’d made it and sometimes recommending I go grab a piece – that’s always nice when you hear how much someone likes something and they didn’t know you made it. :-) Only about a month until the wedding!

This Week on The Spirit World

30-Apr-2006

We started off on Sunday with two reviews of a new beer: one from Donavan, a beer connoisseur, and one from me a beer, uhh, primordial.

Monday, Robert, gives us the lowdown on the real Martini – by the way he’s teaching a class here in Seattle on Tuesday!

Tuesday, Donavan gives us a little peek into Bube’s Brewery. Hmmm, interesting name…

Do you know what Dyk is? And even more importantly, how to pronounce it? Check out Sal’s post to find out.

As mentioned earlier the suggestions for Happy Hour at Home were Sangria and Ribs.

Friday, a new contributor, Lara gives us a great recipe for a Lemongrass Cooler.

And we round out the week with a bevy of pink and springy cocktails.

Seattle Farmers’ Markets Open Tomorrow!

29-Apr-2006

Yes, it’s finally that time of year! While I love Pike Place Market and shop there year-round, you just can’t beat the local neighborhood markets and the producers who set up shop at them each week.

As I’ve mentioned before, the U-District Market is my personal favorite (and the closest to my house, which is convenient!) but coming in at a close second is the West Seattle Market. This year West Seattle is the first to open at 10:00 am tomorrow. Columbia City opens May 3, U-Dist May 6th and the others follow shortly after.

To get more information on markets in your area check out the Seattle Farmers’ Market site or the Puget Sound Area Farmers’ Market site, which lists markets in the twelve counties around Puget Sound.

HHaH: Sangria & Ribs

27-Apr-2006

Today’s Happy Hour at Home over on The Spirit World is all about easy entertaining for Spring! Check out: Sangria and Ribs.

21st Dinner Club: Puget Sound Crab Feed Summary

25-Apr-2006

The night of the party was absolutely beautiful! For a while I toyed with having appetizers out on the deck but, as often happens with these spring days, around 6:00 the wind picked up and brought a chill back to the soft spring air. Instead, we stayed inside and pretended that the sun outside was the warm sun of summer.

Because this menu I’d picked from Tom’s Big Dinners is really a summer menu there were a few substitutions that would need to be made throughout the evening. The first was in the Peach Sangria. Peaches just aren’t in season and instead R used mangoes which bring the same summery color and sweet element to the drink. The sangria was great – light and refreshing – it would be nice to make up a pitcher and spend a lazy afternoon on the deck sipping through it! R had been a little worried about the squid, never having worked with them before, but in our area you can find both cleaned and uncleaned squid so she went with the cleaned – makes the work much easier! The squid itself was so great! The sambal oelek in the marinade added just a bit of heat. We removed the squid from the skewer and placed it directly on the garlic toast covered with lemony arugula. The combination of tastes and textures was heavenly! It was another one of those starters I would have been happy to have for the entire meal!

We served the Chop Salad with Corn, Snap Peas and Bacon; the Mac and Cheese Salad with Buttermilk Dressing and the Crab with Sea Salt Butter and Ginger Mayonnaise all at the same time.

K had lucked out and picked a wonderful smoky bacon for the the Chop Salad and it was a great counterpoint to the fresh peas, corn, cukes and other vegetables in the salad. The dressing, a mustard vinaigrette, was nice and bright as it had a nice bit of fresh lemon juice in it. I say lucked out on the bacon, as she just happened to use a pack her boyfriend’s mom had sent him from Montana – we all wish we knew what it was!

The Mac and Cheese salad was great – a simple pasta salad with greens and buttermilk dressing. Tangy and a little sticky, this salad would go with just about any summer meal from picnics to grilled steak from the BBQ! And it would be a great make-ahead dish, too!

Crab – what can you say about our beautiful, local Dungeness Crab? We love it. My local Central Market has a big tank of live crab so I picked a few up, brought them home and cooked them about 2 hours prior to serving them. Any kind of crab is good but fresh from the pot crab is the best! We all had a little surprise for the night though. We are pretty much crab purists – give us a crab to crack, a little melted butter and some lemon and we are good to go. No need for dips or dressings or anything that might hide the taste of our crab! Well, that has all changed now! The Ginger Mayonnaise was so good with the crab – even though my homemade mayo flopped, dang it! – the ginger and chives lightened and added a bit of heat to the mayo. A touch of it on a big ol’ hunk of crab leg and the ginger actually enhanced the flavor of the crab. Genius. In fact, M2 liked it so much she bought crab and made the mayo the next day just so she could have it again!

For our finale we had the Blueberry Cornmeal Crostata with whip cream. M2 did a great job with this dessert. The crust was soft yet a bit crunchy with cornmeal, the berry jam was sweet but not too sweet and mellowed with the buttery crust and whip cream. It was really the perfect ending to the meal.

I have one regret about this meal, well two. One it just didn’t last long enough! But I can fix that by making it again. The other regret though is that somehow I overlooked Tom’s wine recommendations for the menu and somehow got in my head that Sauvignon Blanc was the wine for the night (it was in the sangria). I would have liked to have done the meal with Tom’s wine choices. We did, however, have a very nice Sauvignon Blanc from one of my favorite areas. It was the 2004 Forefathers from Marlborough, New Zealand. Nice and crispy, dry and a bit minerally it went very well with all courses.

We all agreed this was a wonderful menu and meal. I know at least a couple of the members plan to do the whole menu at some point. Although it is intended as a summer menu, for us it was the perfect reminder that summer will soon be here and it brought that season just a bit closer as we ate our way through the summer tastes.

21st Dinner Club: Puget Sound Crab Feed Menu and Recipes

21st Dinner Club: Puget Sound Crab Feed Menu & Recipes

24-Apr-2006

It’s hard to believe but we are into our 4th year of dinner club and are staring our 5th rotation. Are you wondering how that works? There are 5 of us but we meet 6 times a year. You can see some administrative information here and here. So we do just over one rotation a year. Last year, near the end of the year we decided to got to a "hurry up offense" – instead of planning one gathering every two months we decided to try to have one every 6 weeks. By the time we made the decision last year it didn’t have much affect as we hit the holidays and our annual break time. This year we started with that in mind again and we have our 4th meeting of the year planned for late May. So it looks like we will get one or two more meetings in this year.

Anyway, since we are back to the beginning it means it’s my turn to host again. I had been thinking that with all the themes prior to this we’ve done several countries, some US regions and some concepts (A Hunting We Will Go) but we’ve never done anything from our own part of the world! How could that be? I decided to pick a theme from Tom Douglas’ book, Tom’s Big Dinners, and not only use that as the theme but also assign the menu. That was something we had talked about doing early on but it took us this long to actually do it.

This menu worked out as though it had been planned for us; there are five of us and basically five courses. Perfect!

Appetizer: Charred Squid Skewers on Garlic Toast with Arugula
Cocktail: Sauvignon Blanc Peach Sangria
Salad: Chop Salad with Corn, Snap Peas and Bacon
Main: Chilled Cracked Crab with Sea Salt Butter and Ginger Mayonnaise (recipe below)
Side: Mac and Cheese Salad with Buttermilk Dressing
Dessert: Blueberry Cornmeal Crostata

Ginger Mayonnaise
1 cup mayonnaise (homemade recipe below)* or good-quality store bought
1 tsp peeled and grated fresh ginger
2 Tbsp thinly sliced fresh chives
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Combine mayonnaise, ginger and chives in a small bowl and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Place the crabs** on a large platter and garnish the platter with a few of the top shells and lemon wedges. Serve with the butter and mayonnaise.

* I have to confess that I tried to make my own mayo and failed miserably. It was the first time I’ve ever tried to make it. I’m not usually a big mayo fan and so haven’t been that interested before. But for this meal I really wanted to make it and it just didn’t thicken. Now I’m challenged to figure out why and this coming weekend will probably find me trying again….. R says she’s had no trouble in the past. M says she didn’t even try this time (she had the Buttermilk Dressing) as she’s failed in the past, too. It looks so easy when I see the Food Network chefs do it! ;-)

** The cookbook tells you how to cook your crabs, which I did as I love fresh crab and have cooked it a lot in the past. It’s not hard at all. But if cooking the crabs just seems to be too overwhelming for you, head down to the local fish monger and pick up a few from them!

Homemade Mayonnaise
2 large egg yolks (freshy, fresh, fresh eggs!)
1 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tsp Dijon mustard
2/3 cup vegetable oil, pure olive oil (not extra-virgin) or a mixture

Put the yolks, lemon juice and mustard in the bowl of a food processor. Gradually pour in the oil with the machine running and process until emulsified. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

21st Dinner club: Puget Sound Crab Feed Summary