Dinner!

Another wonderful meal at one of our favorite places in Seattle. Mashiko in West Seattle. This is a superb sushi place - creative, delicious, surprising, delightful, and now, all sustainable.



The first dish was some Kumimoto's with a bright yuzu garnish.


More oysters. These ones had more of a garlic-butter presentation, and were grilled. Delightful, and totally different than the first ones.


A geoduck salad.


This was Hawaiian farmed Abalone.


The abalone filter feeds, so the stomach/intestines of the abalone on this beautiful shell were sort of a seaweed pate, and were really good. (We all liked it better than the abalone itself, which was pretty mild.)


hmm - rainbow trout, and something else, i think. Someone else better come in an fill in the details.
I will say, one thing that you notice, in the sustainable format, is the use of a lot more small fish instead of the long-lived deep sea ones.


These were scallop-burgers, wrapped in prosciutto... They were really awesome!


A poke - not probably traditional, but really tasty. One thing i love about Mashiko's dishes is that they are both very flavorful, and subtle, and light.


This was a tartare in an avocado bowl.


Someone else will need to name the fish, but they are beautiful, aren't they? The one with the shizo is saba, i'm pretty sure.


Clams - with butter, shitake, i think some wine - the aroma alone was to die for.


oooo, help? I know it has a white sesame sauce. Something grilled, and so tender!




mmmmm... some rolls. The fish-bone cracker is one of those things i'd never have thought i'd eat, but they are always delightful at Mashiko.




My desert - a tempura fried green-tea ice cream.


Josh's desert - deep fried brownie and green tea ice cream.

good food northwest

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/allyoucaneat/2014252176_james_beard_awards_2011_semifi.html?cmpid=2628

mmmm.... coffee

Yes, it is true, there was a coffee maker that i still needed:




(Cold-brew, and beautiful.)

Good for what ails you

I'm probably too please with the whole being able to make chicken soup, thing, but it really makes me feel civilized.

campfires!

P1010065
Originally uploaded by saska01

I should let Saska blog this, but, just a hint of the tastiness that camping brings!

Cheese!!

http://www.cheesesociety.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=202

The end of a peach crisp - this was made in the winter, from Greenbluff Peaches, and, man-oh-man, that peach smell was still something else. The dessert may not have been beautiful, but, it sure was tasty.

turkey

turkey
Originally uploaded by meganursula

We hosted a quite small Thanksgiving in our home. Josh smoked a turkey. Smoking turns out to be a wonderful way to go - the turkey turned out really nicely, and was pretty low effort, and left the oven free.

We ended up with a nice spread, including some donations from Chris and George and Rachel. (Some of which aren't pictured here.)

We got to sit down to a wonderful meal, and a beautiful table, with great friends and family. Life doesn't get better than that!

tomatopie

tomatopie
Originally uploaded by meganursula

On a whim i tried to capture my dad's green tomato pie that i remembered growing up with. Lacking a recipe (my dad couldn't access his), this was the result of some web searches and some improvisation. I hope to improve the quality next fall, but i think this one looks quite pretty.

this place sounds like fun

http://www.pastafreska.com/

restaurant gossip

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/allyoucaneat/2010140240_harvest_vine_whats_going_on_jo.html?cmpid=2628

I feel a bit gossipy posting that, but, people who read this blog may care. I sure hope the quality of the restaurant stays up there, while wishing the owners the best individually. Its been too long since we all went and got happy on sherry.

This feels less gossipy, but also very very interesting:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/allyoucaneat/2009928822_the_swinery_mom_pop_butcher_sh.html?obref=obinsite

Also, if you don't want me to post stuff like this, someone needs to upload more photos.

basement cheese #1 2009

Made in a vaguely "Swiss mountain cheese in one-gallon miniature" style: thermophilic cultures, and Propionibacter but I didn't get any CO₂ evolved. Tastes... buttery, smooth, with some booty to it.

From basement cheese #1 2009

Bacon Bun Burger

I promised to upload pictures of the burgers we made with the bacon buns a while ago, and finally got around to getting them off my phone.



Ngh. That looks good. I also have a couple shots of our liquid accompaniment. First, the beer:



I've never had anything bad from Stone, and this was no exception. I don't remember the Tripel being exceptional. Meanwhile, we had a lovely red recommended by my boy Emile at Champion Wine Cellars, one of the treasures of Seattle:



A bright and fruity Medoc, it was lighter than many Bordeaux reds, but still had plenty of heft. Stood up the burgers nicely, and these were serious burgers.

smoked whale

CIMG1057
Originally uploaded by meganursula

While i Norway Josh and i tried some smoked whale. We both felt sort of weird about eating whale, but it is something traditionally Norwegian, and legal there. It was really pretty good. Although, since the foremost flavor was 'smoked' i don't think its something i'll miss never having again.
At that same meal i had some salt cod - really tasty, a bit too salty for me to eat such a large quantity. Josh had Elk. Over all, the food was really good. The presentation reminded us of a much more traditional time in the US - very meat and potatoes - but it tasty food. I was struck by how good the vegetables were - they all seemed to have a lot of flavor.

Yes please.

I found this photo on my computer today:



Thick cut bacon, heirloom tomatoes, butter lettuce, jalapeno mustard. Ungh.

And to think, at one time, I didn't like B.L.T.'s. I preferred just a "B".

Kentucky Hot Brown (not a euphemism )

This is a long overdue post, but I was uploading the photos off my phone and came across this gem. I had some leftover bacon from one of my traditional waffle breakfasts, and I wanted to do something fun with it. Besides just eat it, of course. I dug out my copy of Sara Perry's Everything Tastes Better With Bacon to have a look. And what caught my eye was the recipe for a "Kentucky Hot Brown". Despite sounding like something that belongs in Urban Dictionary (and, no surprise, it's there), this is a sandwich made with turkey and cheese sauce that is broiled (hence the brown). Sounds good to me! It actually sounds a lot like a sandwich I used to have at a diner that my father used to take us to sometimes, and sounded like a good idea.

The cheese sauce was simple, just a roux, some milk, wait for it to thicken, add the shredded cheddar, salt and pepper. The interesting addition was using Worcestershire sauce, which was a nice addition. I then layered the bread on a sheet pan, added some sliced tomatoes and turkey slices, and poured the cheese sauce liberally on top. It looked like this:



I just popped it under the broiler until it got nicely browned and topped it with crumbled bacon and chopped parsley:



Delicious!

Gazpacho recipe

I made this a few weeks ago for our Tuesday night gathering. Sadly I forgot to take pictures.

GAZPACHO (modified from America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook)
serves: 8
prep time: 20-25 minutes
total time: 2.5 hrs (includes 2 hours chilling time)

3 large ripe tomatoes (1.5 lbs) cored and quartered - I used heirloom, extra-tasty
2 red bell peppers, stemmed, seeded and chopped coarse (I cut them
into 1/8ths)
2 lg cucumbers, 1 peeled, halved, seeded and quartered; the other
unpeeled halved, seeded and chopped coarse
5 cups tomato juice
1 onion, minced (I used 1/4 onion)
1/3 cup sherry vinegar
2 garlic cloves, minced (I used one)
1/2 tsp Tabasco
salt and pepper
1/4 cup minced fresh parsley or cilantro (I forgot to add this and didn't really miss it)
extra virgin olive oil (optional - I did add this)

1. Pulse tomatoes in food processor until finely chopped, about 12
pulses. Transfer to a large bowl. Pulse the bell peppers and peeled
cucumber until finely chopped, about 15 pulses. Add to the bowl with
the tomatoes. Stir in the tomato juice, unpeeled chopped cucumber, onion, vinegar, garlic,
Tabasco and 1 tsp salt. Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours.

2. Season the soup with salt and pepper to taste. Ladle into chilled
bowls and sprinkle with the parsley and a drizzle of olive oil before
serving.

Notes:
Process the vegetables so that they are 1/8 inch to 1/4 inch in size.
If they are processed finer, the soup will resemble tomato slush.
The soup can also be garnished with chopped pitted black olives,
chopped avocados and croutons.
Gazpacho can be covered and refrigerated for up to 2 days.

This guy just gets cooler!

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/allyoucaneat/2009547909_seattles_first_sustainable_sus.html?cmpid=2628

Mashiko is awesome. Somewhere Josh has picture after picture of the many courses Hajime dishes up.

Bacon Buns

If you're like me, you have a problem: you always have a container full of bacon drippings in your refrigerator. (To clarify, the only problem with this plethora of bacon drippings is making sure they get used up before they go bad.) A discussion of this issue a week ago Tuesday led to this Tuesday's experiment: bacon buns.

I took my old reliable hamburger/hot dog roll recipe and substituted bacon drippings for the butter. Since the recipe calls for heating the milk and butter to 100F before combining ingredients, and since bacon drippings melt nicely at 100F, it seemed success would be likely. To account for the extra sodium in the drippings, and to give a boost to the bacony bouquet, I also reduced the 2.5t of salt in the recipe to 2t, using 1t of table salt and 1t of Bacon Salt (which does a nice job of lending "meaty smoky" flavor to things, but doesn't actually taste like bacon in our opinion).



For a final touch, I brushed some room-temperature bacon drippings on top of the rolls and crosscut the tops.



The verdict: while they were not strongly bacon-flavored, they did have a nice "meaty" flavor. They also had a nice crunch to the crust and were soft and dense on the inside, similar in texture to a potato roll. They stood up well against the very flavorful burgers from Thundering Hooves and the watercress, bitter greens, and strong mustard accompaniments. Josh will have to supply his photographs of the finished dinner product - stay tuned!