Traveling Feast

I claim that Spokane’s Donut Parade has the best maple bars in the Western Hemisphere (possibly the planet since large swaths of the world have no access to this pinnacle of raised donut perfect).  Yet food gurus Jane and Michael Stern have a different opinion in their fun volume entitled 500 Things To Eat Before It’s Too Late.

They claim the best maple bar they’ve had is at Voodoo Doughnuts in Portland where the iconic bar comes topped with strips of bacon.  I’m looking forward to trying a Voodoo bar, but believe a truly classic maple bar needs to stand on its own without a pork assist.

This leads me to their second recommendation: Countryside Donut House in Mountlake Terrace in the Seattle metro area.

Chance would have it that I’m in Seattle today for a family emergency, but I have a break this morning in my duties long enough to head to Countryside.  Who knows?  Maybe a fine maple bar delivered at the right moment could help in the family emergency.  I’m willing to try.  And I’ll get a chance to see how the bars at Countryside compare to Donut Parade.

Seattle WA: Last Monday night for dinner we slipped in for dinner at Tavolata on 2nd Avenue in Belltown.  Given the heat wave engulfing Seattle and the observation that air-conditioning had never been installed or wasn’t working, we opted for a table on the sidewalk out front and hoped for breeze.

Bingo.  Shade and vague air movement.

The parade of people past our table with different gaits and varied expressions turned out to be a bonus and a topic for conversation until the house focaccia from Columbia City Bakery ($2) arrived.  The focaccia received rave reviews from Megan, and held both of our attention unto the arrival of an Arugula Salad ($11) tossed with white nectarines, black cherries, almonds, and shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Points for both: good ingredients, not over-wrought.

Then onto two of the house pastas: the Gnocchi alla Romana ($16) and the Spaghetti ($15) served with anchovies, chili, garlic, and Parmigiano-Reggiano.  The spaghetti struck me as a risk, and turned out to be acceptable but not life-changing.  The Gnocchi, on the other hand, was intriguing.  “It isn’t what you might be expecting,” our server warned.  “It is baked.”

Up until two months ago, virtually every gnocchi I’d tried looked basically the same.  Small divots of potato or ricotta mixed with flour and possibly a binder.  These would then be boiled, sauced, and served.  This formula held true until two months ago and the most expensive meal of my life to date in New York City.

Now Tavolata has further expanded the category of gnocchi at a price in the teens.

Not only is Tavolata’s gnocchi baked, each piece is relatively huge.  The kitchen appears to roll them out into tubes two to three inches in diameter, slices them into inch portion and sets six into a personal baking pan.  Then they drench the said six in a bright tomato sauce, top them with mozzarella, and pop them in the oven.  At least this is my imagined recreation of the scene in the back of the house.

I can speak with more authority about the front of the house experience: hot, bubbling, and delicious.  If you like baked polenta, you might be tempted to compare.  Don’t.  The gnocchi is more tender and the flavor more subtle, and the match with the sauce and mozzarella is close to inspired.  Two bites and I thought: “Brilliant.”  Three and I began to scheme: “How can I recreate this at home?”

After a week of heavy eating with some of the best chefs in the Northwest, I planned to simply order a glass of juice or a cup of tea at Café Presse this morning.  I’d arranged to meet Charles Drabkin there to follow up on a conversation begun over the weekend at the International Pinot Noir Celebration, and while food and cooking would inevitably be part of the conversation, I didn’t plan to eat anything.

But Drabkin spoke so enthusiastically about the food coming out of the kitchen that I felt a moral obligation to try something on the menu.

I looked for something cheap and noticed the omelette for a buck or two less than on any breakfast menu I’ve seen for quite some time.   I ordered one with mushrooms… not expecting much given the price… and when it came my expectations were met.  It was plain and completely alone in its dish.

But two bites into the omelette I started to wonder how in the world I was going to make it in for breakfast weekly given the fact that our home is on the other side of the state.

Most places use omelettes as a comatose-producing egg wrap for a mess of cheese, meats, and occassionally vegetables.  The perfect omelette at Café Presse is a study in simplicity.  You taste egg, perfectly cooked, and, in my case, mushrooms.  There was also a slight tang inside that I’m still trying to identify in the hopes that I might try to make something similar at home.  I hate to admit I couldn’t identify that third element immediately, but I’m willing to fess up in the hopes that one of you do know and will tell me.  Please.

It didn’t even occur to me to reach for the salt or pepper.  And Tabasco?  Not a chance.  You don’t mess with perfection.

At the Mariners game last Thursday we couldn’t stop with just Garlic Fries.  In the 5th inning we went prowling the concourse for more to eat and happened upon a lonely tortilla themed booth at the far end of the 300 level.  Unlike nearly every one of the other stands we had passed, there was no line here.  It also occurred to us that nachos might make a good chaser for the garlic fries and deep-fried mushrooms we’d already polished off.

We place our order just as one woman was going on break so a second woman with iron grey hair and a severe expression stepped up to fill our order.  “Nachos?” she asked sharply.

“Yes.”

“Beef or chicken?”

“Chicken.”

“Black beans?”

“Yes.”

Actually we answered yes to almost every question that followed and could barely believe the mound of toppings that grew and grew on top of a fairly small bed of chips.  If anything I would have expected her to be stingy with us.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

I can’t say the nachos she handed us two minutes later were the best nachos I’ve ever had.  They weren’t.  But they just might have been the largest.  And the molten cheese goop laddled on top didn’t stay there; it cascaded down over the sides of the basket into the larger drink container and through the holes to drip on the concourse.  I think it took us the better part of an inning to excavate deep enough to find a chip.

I’m not quite sure what I expected from a 20-year college reunion, but I was disappointed by the gaping holes in attendance.  The place?  Seattle Pacific University tucked in between the north flank of Queen Anne Hill and the Ship Canal in Seattle.

Maybe it was because no one else knew quite what to expect, and preferred to avoid awkward and ill-defined situations.  Maybe nearly everyone but me decided that if they hadn’t talked for 20 years and not missed it, the relationships didn’t need attention.  Or maybe they have all moved to Malawi or have posts in the new administration or are on the run from the IRS.  All I know for sure is that only a few of the people I really wanted to see materialized to slap on a name tag.

Two great friends, Kevin and Marci Johnson, redeemed the situation, and in the middle of the day we slipped out for Thai food.  I can’t speak for them, but talking about life over lunch felt much more comfortable than standing in a cavernous lobby of a college building trying to remember names, summarize 20 years in a sentence or two, and internally assess who has benefited from 20 years and who hasn’t.

Maybe the discomfort of the reunion lowered my expectations for lunch.  Or maybe the fact that Ying Thai Kitchen looked closed and empty at high noon had something to do with it.

For whatever reason, I had resigned myself to mediocre fair.  I deferred to Kevin and Marci on what to order for our table after a half-hearted glance over the menu.  The Coriander Beef sounded vaguely interesting and the Roasted Duck Pineapple Curry looked like an intriguing departure from most Thai menus.  But Kevin was in the mood for Panang Curry and so Panang it was.

Dang Panang.

The dish clocking in at two stars offered almost no heat, but that can easily be remedied next time.  Because there needs to be a next time.  Panang Curry has not been one of my benchmark Thai dishes, but it just became one and the Ying Thai Kitchen version is going to be a tough standard to top.

Most among the food-obsessed are familiar with food and wine pairings.  Almost as many admit that certain beers complement pizza or Mexican fare.  But my first exposure to soda pop designed to be paired with food came today at my sister’s Seattle home during a lull in the SuperBowl Steeler-Cardinal match-up.

The swank soda seeking to transcend the plastic taps at 7-Eleven is Seattle-based Dry Soda, and just a glance at the flavors they offer and their intended market niche should be clear.

Lemongrass
Lavender
Rhubarb (my selection today to go with potato chips)
Vanilla Bean
Juniper Berry
Kumquat

I couldn’t pick a Kumquat out of a fruit line up if I wanted to, but I like the sound of the word enough that I just might order it simply to be able to use it in a sentence.  Here is the pitch on Dry Soda’s website:

“Seattle-based DRY Soda Co. offers today’s consumer a modern alternative in refreshment — a line of all-natural, lightly sweet sodas, flavored with fruit, flower or herb extracts, and sweetened with a small amount of pure cane sugar. Combining the subtle essence of nature and the kitchen, DRY’s unique design and clean finish make it the ideal soda to pair with a great meal or a refreshing beverage on its own. DRY Soda also makes a distinct and sophisticated mixer.”

Go figure. What should I order with my roast quail tonight?  White? Red? Lager? Stout? Or… Kumquat?

My tomatoes might not have survived the night in the back yard and the wind today has winter in it as well as fall.  In no time at all in this corner of the Inland Northwest there will be snow drifts piling up next to the fence.

As a way to prepare for the coming cold let me suggest a special Russian dumpling perfect for winter months.

Pelmeni ready for the snowbank or boiling water.

My first pelmeni came after an evening of rolling and stuffing and boiling with family friends in Seattle.  Pelmeni, in the Notkin home, takes on a sacramental feel.  The ingredients are combined by feel rather than recipe, and stories are told as everyone begins to collect around the counters in the kitchen.  Once the dough is rolled out, it gets cut in small circles with a tool passed down through the family (it looks like a short section of plumbing pipe with a machine tapered edge).  Kids and adults alike pitch in to stuff pinches of the ground meat and onion filling into each dough circle before sealing and folding each dumpling around your thumb and pinching it off.

At this point tradition suggests you take the dumplings outside and toss them in a snowdrift to freeze; Seattle in September didn’t afford a convenient snowbank so we packed them onto cookie sheets and slid them into the freezer.  This came after a family debate about the merits of freezing the dumplings if they were going to be boiled and eaten the same night.

Tradition won out and into the freezer they went.  But tradition only goes so far: we didn’t pack the frozen dumpling in saddlebags and ride off to war.

Our pelmeni came back out of the freezer 20 minutes later simply to be dumped into boiling water.

At the table, the dipping sauce (also tradition) was steak sauce sauce cut with vinegar.  After a few pelmeni sauced according to Notkin tradition I switched to dipping my dumplings in melted butter with the kids.  I did so even as I began to scheme about when I would recreate these tiny Russian dumplings at home.

In time I will rangle a written version of the Notkin recipe for pelmeni out of the family vault.  Until then here is a Kazakstani version:

Pelmeni

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 eggs
1/2 cup water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 pound ground beef
1/2 pound ground pork
2 medium onions, finely chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Garlic, to taste

To make the dough, combine the flour, eggs, water and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Knead mixture. Let rest for 30 minutes.

Mix the ground beef, ground pork, onions, 1 teaspoon salt, pepper and garlic together. Roll the dough into a thin layer and cut into small circles. Place a small amount of meat in the center of each circle of dough. Fold the edges of the dough over the meat to form a ravioli-shaped dumpling. Boil the Pelmeni in salted water for seven minutes, or until they float to the surface.  Serve hot.

Anne suggested we try Le Pichet or Lola for breakfast, and Lola’s online sample menu included a ’sweet pea omelette’. This tipped the scales in favor of Tom Douglas’ 4th Avenue restaurant.

I’ve been looking for an excuse to swing into Lola since last fall when I worked for five days alongside Cammie and Josie on an organic goat farm.  They both worked on Douglas’ staff at Lola, and spoke highly of the food.  Yesterday presented that opportunity in the hopes of a sweet pea omelette.

Unfortunately the sweet pea omelette was on hiatus in favor of a Dungeness crab version.  The only sweet peas on the menu appeared as part of Tom’s Big Breakfast that promised “pacific octopus, sweet peas, pork belly, and a sunny egg” for 16 clams.

Now my history with octopus-started years ago in Chinatown in college-has mainly consisted of chewing the tasteless equivalent of Michelin tires.  Yet if Douglas was willing to feature this member of the mollusk family so prominently on his menu, I decided to risk another run-in with rubber.

It was a risk worth taking.  Douglas’ octopus was stunning and anything but road-worthy.  Add in a light cream sauce with fresh herbs that puddled on the plate, the pork belly, sweet peas, and slivers of sauteed onion under an egg, and the result was both wonderful, unexpected, and a far cry from your typical big breakfast.  After several tentative bites, you forget the dish’s exotic ocean and farm origins in favor of simply enjoying the flavors.

Afterwards you can slip across the street and pick up a loaf of fresh bread from the Dahlia Bakery (another Douglas business) for lunch or dinner.  And if you don’t have a hard and fast rule of ‘no dessert after breakfast’ you might try one of the bakery’s cherry almond scones or a coconut cream pie bite.