That's it. I'm spending all of my summers in Seattle.

If it means I get to eat:
-perfectly pan-grilled sockeye salmon
-candy-sweet cherry tomatoes
-hand-picked blackberries

Sorry, salmon went from farmer's market to fridge to pan to stomach so quickly that I didn't snap a photo. I have witnesses of its splendor.

Dining out, NW-style. installment 1.

In rare form, this series of posts will actually be about dining out. It's something I RARELY do in LA, mainly because I'm cheap and think I cook better than restaurants do. But it's vacation, I'm with my girls, and dammit, we're splurging.

First stop: Ashland, OR. Can we say CUTE town? Home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and boutiques filled with greeting cards, kitchen trinkets, handmade jewelry, organic clothing.

On our stroll down the main boulevard, we came across The Enchanted Florist . They had this gorgeous batch of "drinking chocolate" just whirlpooling around in the window.
So, naturally, we had to go inside. m of mno ordered a 4 oz. of tasting of their drinking chocolate.

I may or may not have had a quick taste as well, but the consensus was: freakin' amazingly awesome. So awesome, in fact, that when we went to a bookstore down the street, we semi-joked to the bookkeeper that she could have the rest as we were tossing it (4 oz. of drinking chocolate is just way too rich). She wistfully looked at the cup of chocolate in the trash and really had wished we had told her what it was before tossing it so that she could have the rest. Emphasis: wistfully.

Then it was off to dinner at tease. It's supposed to be all about small plates, but these small plates were quite hefty servings. We had: 1) humbolt fog goat cheese with fig jam, 2) fennel tomato salad (with jalapeno honeyed foccacia), 3) duck confit, and 4) a lamb slider. It was more like two apps and two small entrees. We were stuffed. Oh, and m had a pinot gris (nice and light) and I had a tempranillo from Abacela, a winery we would visit the very next day!

Breakfast the next morning was light and healthy. NOT. (that was my quick ode to Borat) We ate right next to our hotel at highly acclaimed morning glory . Over our morning tea and coffee...

we chose the following menu items: a salmon/potato/dill/cream scramble (emphasis on the cream) with a side of white chedder polenta cakes...


and a bacon waffle. yes, bacon waffle. with the applewood smoked bacon built into the waffle. with walnut butter.



needless to say, breakfast was extremely tasty, but extremely heavy. if you choose to order these items, share amongst a football team and eat only fruit and veggies the rest of the day.

more to come. during next dissertation break. :)

photographic evidence to support previous post.

Today, we visited a beach house in Indian-OLA, and of course, they had an awesome veg garden. We picked tomatoes and green beans (and actually ate the green beans raw because they were so awesome). Oh, and we ate sugar snap peas as well, but we ate those so fast we didn't take photos. And the sweetest beets ever (in the most awesome beet salad ever. will post recipe later).


And of course, it's blackberry season up here in the great NW. Do these suckers grow elsewhere as well? Because really, they're everywhere. And you just pick them. When I heard "we should go blackberry picking", I was thinking we'd drive off to some nearby farm (you know, like cherry picking in LA). Nope. Blackberry picking means... pick the blackberries off the plants that grow everywhere. And again, these are the sweetest blackberries you'll ever taste.



And I had to take this photo, well, just because.

needs her own backyard and garden. now.

If there's one thing that I'm learning on my Pacific NW adventure, it's that everyone has superfresh, organic, locally-grown produce. Or at least everyone I'm encountering. This can be grown in your own backyard, purchased at the tiniest grocery store just down the street (and way cheaper than LA prices, I might add), bundled via your favorite CSA, or even delivered to your front doorstep every Tuesday morning.

Needless to say, I've been ODing on blueberries and heirloom tomatoes (perhaps the season is just a smidge later up here than in LA? if that's the case, let's migrate north according to harvesting season).

And no meal is complete without a sprinkling of fresh herbs. Yesterday, it was mint on everything. Green beans. Potatoes. You name it. Today, I thought I'd make hipcooks roasted pepper soup (part of their Healthy, Fresh, and Zingy class and quite possibly the best soup ever), and ek brought in a nice sampling of garden herbs for garnish. I'm not going to be able to name all of them, but it included basil, tarragon, chives, parsley, sage, rosemary...



And here's the leftover soup (yes, that's a quart container and yes, I made THAT much soup) garnished with a lovely sprig of sage.

Birthday dinner, fam style

My family made a lovely birthday dinner for me and we enjoyed it with some out-of-town relatives. Lots of awesome Chinese food that I rarely get to eat, so it was definitely a major treat.

Cold noodles. They have to be long because it's a birthday meal and they promote longevity or wealth or many male babies or something like that. Toss in some sliced cucumber, egg, bean sprouts, and a sesame sauce and some yummy green onion/garlic/ginger concoction.



Here's mamacita showing us how to plate it.



A traditional "appetizer" platter at a Chinese banquet. Tea eggs, beef tendon, baked tofu, you know, all the normal stuff you eat daily.



Tsong yo bing. Basically scallion pancakes, but these are way better than any you'll find anywhere. Could eat about a million and a half of these and get really fat.



I call these "Chinese Empanadas". They're meat-filled. I ate leftovers for lunch for about a week. yum.



Me and the kiddos with my Kings Hawaiian cake. you know, the three-layered kind. (yes, I am still not eating sugar. everyone else loved the cake. haha)

photo from last post

drool.

I heart podcasts.

I podcast KCRW's Good Food now. It's hard for me to keep up weekly, but I listen to, oh, four in a row when I'm spending Saturday cleaning the apt. One of the more recent ones I heard (which means it could've been from July or February...) had the greatest three words I have ever heard in the history of cooking: triple blanched garlic! Hopefully I'm not way behind on the times and this is something everyone is already doing, but what a fantastically fantastic idea! I hate mincing garlic and getting my fingers all garlicky sticky, I'm usually so impatient I burn it, and who wants to wait an hour to roast those suckers in the oven? All you gotta do is triple blanch it and the "harshness gets leeched out". Brilliant.

These lovely three words inspired a dinner, which I then replicated for a stay-at-home lunch. (God bless proposal writing). I triple blanched the garlic and just threw it under the broiler for good measure as my tomatoes got a nice char, but maybe that step was unnecessary. Then mashed it lovingly with a fork and added a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Loved it so much that I replicated it for a supper club meal. Photos to come.


Herbed chicken breast (at home I used italian seasonings mix, at Tyson's I used some of his roommate's Herb de provence which he brought home from Paris)-- seared on high high heat for 2 min per side, then finished off in a 325 oven for about 15 min, rested on the cutting board for another few min before slicing

And the piece de resistance: rustic roasted tomatoes and mashed garlic. It's so yummy you'll want to marry it. I sliced a variety of tomatoes (cherry, grape, heirloom, some from TJ's, some from fmrs' mkt, some from Kami's yard) and stuck them under the broiler for about 10 min. Drained excess liquid. Added the smashed garlic with extra virgin olive oil. Dash of salt and a chiffonade of basil for color.