6,000-mile Baklava

One of the distinct and delicious benefits to working with people from all over the world is that when they travel home, or when their respective families come to visit, all sorts of delicious and unique treats show up in the office hallways. This time, the mother of one of my Turkish colleagues came to visit bearing boxes of "the best balkava in the world" from a bakery in their hometown.Now I don't usually think of baklava as juicy but this stuff was exactly that (very different from the stuff at Gorgeous George's but both are amazingly delicious.) Practically dripping, as it was, with the sticky syrup that binds the 40 layers of dough and nuts together, it was just about impossible to extract a piece from the box without both becoming covered in stickiness and also without breaking the piece in half. But no matter - part of the fun is licking your fingers afterwards. The green in the picture is finely-ground pistachio that becomes a paste in the middle layer of the pasty and is also sprinled on top. The pistachios a little tart and salty, too. Somehow, despite the intense sweetness, the pastry is also savoury and even refreshing, though I might have found it a little overwhelmingly intense had I not, fortuitously, had a cup of iced mint tea to hand at the time.

The Lavender Festival

This is the fifth and final part of the chronicle of the culinary adventures of July 18/19/20 when my parents came to town for a particularly food-filled weekend. [Beginning]

Part 5: The Lavender Festival

One of my favorite things to do in Seattle in the summer actually takes place about two and a half hours away in a place called Sequim (say "Squim" despite whatever your brain may tell you about pronunciation.) The northern end of the Olympic peninsula is apparently an excellent climate in which to grow lavender (as is most of the pacific northwest given the large lavender plants in practically every other yard.) Once a year Sequim holds a festival to promote all things lavender and it is a great way to spend a day. Lavender is great both in cleaning products and also in food, though sometimes people have a hard time getting the image of soap out of their minds when eating something made with lavender. Sometimes dishes made with lavender can taste a little astringent and the real art of cooking with lavender is balancing the flavours so that you taste what lavender smells like - like with coffee, the aroma is sweet and rich and not harsh at all. I'm still trying to master that subtlty and nuance.

The lavender festival is great because it has two parts, a street fair with food and people selling stuff and also lavender farms where you can go pick your own bundles of different kinds of lavender and taste the various concoctions each farm creates for the festival. Some of these delicacies are just that - delicate and lightly perfumed with lavender. Others are flights of fancy - mixtures of flavours or experiments created simply for the joy of playing with a fun and versatile herb. Some of the highlights: Lemon-lavender sorbet - refreshing with a crispness from both the lemon and the lavender, but with a slightly rounder flavour than simple lemon sorbet. Peach-lavender ice cream - despite being cold it has a warm and soft flavour, like the outside of a peach. Lavender mini donuts - they don't even really taste like lavender but rather smell intensely of it because they're hot and steaming. Lavender crepes - powdered sugar with powdered lavender turns into a tart, savory (but still sweet!) syrup inside a hot, fresh crepe.

Some of the more peculiar items: Lavender-chocolate-orange ice cream - not quite sure where this one was trying to go, but too many flavours mixing in odd ways and one of those cases in which the whole thing ended up tasting a little soapy even though there wasn't much lavender in it. Lavender hot dogs - I was way too full with crepes and ice cream to try one of these but I'll try it next year. I suppose it shouldn't be that odd given that lavender is great in spice rubs on grilled meats but somehow it seems just a bit peculiar. Next year we shall see! And then there's the peace of submerging yourself in the sights, smells, sounds of a blooming field of lavender, which can't really be done justice in words.

Bon Odori

This is the fourth part of the chronicle of the culinary adventures of July 18/19/20 when my parents came to town for a particularly food-filled weekend. [Beginning]

Part 4: Bon Odori

The Bon festival in Japanese Buddhism is an occasion commemorating ancestors. It is a yearly festival that generally involves family reunion and Bon Odori, or the "Bon Dance." We were told about about the festival by one of the hosts at Etta's, with whom I was discussing the merits of soba noodles (which had accompanied my seared albacore tuna - yum!) Discussing soba turned into an exploration of cold Japanese noodles of all varieties and culminated with an exhortation to attend the Bon Odori at the Seattle Buddhist Temple the following day, at which many such noodle varieties could be sampled. So, what else, but off we went, after going to Bite of Seattle first! Bon Odori, according to wikipedia, is the traditional community dance done during the Bon festival. It is large - in this case several rings of people filling two blocks of street in front of the Buddhist temple. And since all that dancing works up quite the appetite, there are many varieties of food on offer. We went straight for the somen noodles and the first surprise was that they were ice cold. Thin noodles served in a brown bonito/miso broth with some scallions and a little chili powder and soy sauce, and all cold. As such, it was just about the perfect refreshing, yet filling, food for a hot, sunny day - a little sweet and a little salty at the same time, and it stayed cold until the last bite. Onto the list of things to try making, along with soba.

Then we discovered the grill around back of the temple and had yaki onigiri - grilled teriyaki rice balls. Sticky and sweet and crunchy, humming with ginger and soy and golden brown. Take a look - even the picture looks good enough to eat. A few Japanese restaurants make them and I can't think of any off the top of my head so I guess you'll just have to go exploring. As if a giant ball of rice on top of the heap of somen weren't enough, I had to try the shaved ice with sweet red beans and sweetened condensed milk in addition to the usual fruity syrups. The substance added by the milk makes the whole thing not quite so syrupy and sickly-sweet as were it just ice and fruity syrup and the beans add surprising little variations of texture and taste - a little salty, too - that complement the sweet, fruity crunchiness of the rest of the pile of ice shavings. It was a really good thing to eat while watching a taiko drumming performance.
[Part 5: The Lavender Festival >> ]

Bite of Seattle

This is the third part of the chronicle of the culinary adventures of July 18/19/20 when my parents came to town for a particularly food-filled weekend. [Beginning]

Part 3: Bite of Seattle

Every year Seattle Center hosts a food festival called Bite of Seattle at which all sorts of food vendors and artists display and distribute their respective wares and skills. This is the first time I have been able to attend and it was a zoo! Thousands of people thronging the paths and all other available space at Seattle Center, all in pursuit of something delicious (though some were also interested in getting soaked in the giant fountain because it was a hot and glorious day. Course #1 was another ear of roasted corn - two in as many days! And then we wandered into "The Alley" hosted by Tom Douglas and where a very obliging total stranger allowed me to take a photo of her delicious-looking plate of food. The Alley is sort of a planned, multi-course meal of morsels from some of Seattle's best restaurants. On this day, the offerings were as follows:

Prawn-stuffed Halibut - good fish, stuffed with other kinds of good fish, with a light mustard sauce that helped all of the flavours dance but not step on each other's toes.
Portage Bay Cafe

Ancient Roman Meatballs - following what seems an increasing interest in cooking things like the Romans did these are sweet and sour and savory all at once, and rather different. I liked them because of their intensity of flavour.
Al Boccalino

Crispy Duck Cake - which was rather like a duck falafel. Sort of peculiar, but tasty. I wanted more duck and less crunch.
Andaluca

Gazpacho - this took the cake. It had a pinch of crabmeat in it and was topped with some avocado coulis. It was also a wonderful silky texture and refreshing and sweet, but light, too.
Salty's on Alki Beach

Mini Steak Sandwich - managing to have tender fresh-roasted beef for thousands of people? I think these folks know what they're doing with meat.
The Daily Grill

Slow Smoked Pork Butt with Sweet Corn Chow Chow - quite a mouthful no matter how you slice it.
Dahlia Lounge

Marion Blackberry Sorbet - ever eaten a blackberry and a marionberry at the same time? This is what it tastes like. But actually, their pistachio was truly transcendent.
Gelatiamo

After this "meal" (and meal it was, small bites though it may have been) we meandered through the rest of the festival until we heard about the place selling cajun alligator on a stick. Now this I had to try. But first we had to sample the fresh-roasted salmon at the stand next to the cajun place. As you'll see in the photo, they were cooking the salmon completely simply, sandwiched between a few sticks that were stood around a fire. I've never had salmon so tender and juicy so I think I'll be trying to cook like that at some point (though I'd have to find an open firepit.) But on to the alligator. I wasn't sure quote what to expect when I asked for the cajun alligator but here it is:It was, in the finest cajun cooking traditions, battered and deep-fried, but frying done right actually seals the food and steams it inside the crispy batter shell so whatever is inside stays juicy and tender. And so was the alligator. I can best describe the flavour as incredibly intense pork, like carnitas only if you kept adding and cooking down more broth. And the texture was dense - very dense - but smooth and rich, with almost no fat anywhere. Conceptually it is a little odd to equate the meat, such as it was, to the large, scaly, dinosaurish reptile, but it certainly was tasty and I look forward to the next time I have it.

[Part 4: Bon Odori >> ]

Pike Place Market

This is the second part of the chronicle of the culinary adventures of July 18/19/20 when my parents came to town for a particularly food-filled weekend. [Beginning]

Part 2: Pike Place Market

One of my earliest experiences in Seattle food was wandering around Pike Place Market on a bitterly cold winter day, spending three hours or so having a meandering lunch among the many various foods on offer and I've been going back for more ever since. Some of the shops have changed, but almost every one distributes free samples or tastings or has small-sized things to purchase for very small prices. It being a tourist attraction, summer weekends are nuts at the Market, but if you're not in a hurry it's no big deal and if you are in a hurry there are all sorts of little back-passageways and side-doors that you can use as shortcuts to bypass the crowds of wandering out-of-towners wishing they had something so delicious much closer to home. This will not be an exhaustive list of the things one can eat at the market, but, instead, a shameless tempting of the tastebuds and imagination of you readers to go have a gastronomic adventure of your own.

You'll enter the market from a different corner depending on where you manage to find parking in the Saturday parking melee. On this particular visit, we were coming from near the park overlooking Elliot Bay, in which there has recently appeared a man in posession of a corn-roasting machine. Not just a glorified BBQ, the giant, stainless-steel, blast-furnace-like contraption can roast several hundred ears at once to perfection. If you're from or have been to the midwest in late summer, you'll understand the glorious explosion of sweet and savory juiciness that is a freshly-roasted ear of corn, painted with butter and sprinkled with salt and pepper (or completely naked - also delicious!) And the corn is now local. So get one (with several napkins for the juice that will dribble down your chin) and resist the temptation to get another because there's lots more to come.

It's a good thing to have something in your stomach before you go wandering up the aisle of stalls selling fruit and jams and fish and beef jerky and honey and more fish and asparagus and the biggest morel I've ever seen and more fish. Buy some fruit. It's delicious. Right now the raspberries are amazing despite the cold wet spring putting off the season for about a month. The day we were there one of the greengrocers was also selling the biggest morel I've ever seen and huge bunches of asparagus. And just when you thought you reached the other end of the market you find that the fish-throwers not only throw fish but also give out samples of cured salmon - either the hot-smoked stuff that is juicy and incredibly sweet and not fishy at all or the cold-smoked "belly strips" that are basically like salmon prosciutto and can be used either cubed for a salad or quiche or shaved and layered on top of a fillet of fresh fish under the broiler so the oily belly strips get crispy and keep the fillet juicy.

Step next door to Don & Joe's Meats and grab a landjäger "German walking sausage" to eat while you watch the guys behind the counter wrestle with huge slabs of meat in pursuit of the perfect cut, which is all I've ever received from them. You'll also have to mull over the inevitable comparisons between the slightly spicy and tangy landjäger and the various cured salmons so head to Marketspice while you're chewing for a small cup of their house-blend tea (I prefer it iced, which you get in the summer.) And then (finally?) to the mini-donut stand to grab a half-dozen tiny, crispy, steaming, cinnamon-sugar donuts that always disappear faster than would seem to be permitted by the laws of physics. And then, if you really have time on your hands and still miraculously have room in your stomach, go into De Laurenti, the gourmet food store at the corner of Pike and First. This time my parents and I went in to taste olive oils (of which about 20 open bottles sit, for such a purpose, at the top of the stairs the the store's second level.) But olive oil is due a more comprehensive discussion later. If you're in the mood, you can also taste any of the many cheeses and they usually have another special tasting of something - the day in question it happened to be chocolate.

There are many other delicious things to be had on a stroll through the market, such as cheesecake truffles, steamed buns with BBQ pork filling, and all the varieties of fresh fruit and vegetables that are great to snack on, but part of the fun of eating your way through the market is not knowing quite what you'll find or want. So go explore!

[Part 3: Bite of Seattle >> ]

Gorgeous George

This is the first part of the chronicle of the culinary adventures of July 18/19/20 when my parents came to town for a particularly food-filled weekend.

When my parents come to visit the entire experience usually centers around food - what we're going to eat when or what we're going to eat next. When their visit happens to coincide with a weekend that saw a particular embarassment of riches in the way of food-related events it makes for a particularly memorable (and full) couple of days. It so happens that Seattle has one hell of a summer, though for an indeterminate lenght of time ranging from several months (two summers ago) to a very few weeks (last summer.) The unpredictability of the summer seems to incline event and festival planners to all try to cram their respective events and festivals into the few weekends when they can be reasonably sure the weather will cooperate, though history dictates that even with such careful planning the cold and damp can strike any time. This year, the weekend of 19/20 July contained at least these events - Bite of Seattle, the Sequim Lavender Festival, Seattle Bon Odori, The Kirkland Wine Tasting, the Ballard Seafood Fest - and who knows how many others. Add to this list an inevitable trip to Pike Place Market and the desire to enjoy some of the other treasures of Seattle food and the idea of making it through the long weekend and remaining upright seems a bit of a tall order. But when faced with such an epic and delicious challenge what is there to do but accept it and enjoy the gastronomical adventure?

Part 1: Gorgeous George
Gorgeous George runs a delicious mediterranean restaurant on Greenwood Avenue at 77th Street. It is a small place that he's had for about a year, having finally opened his own place after working all over the Seattle area and in many places in Europe and Israel. It is hard to decide if the best thing about the place is food or George, so I think the best way to sum it up is by saying that going there will be good for the stomach and good for the soul. Let's start with the smell. On walking into the restaurant your nose is greeted with a mixture of garlic, hot pita bread, and the tart but savory mix of lemon, mint, oregano and rosemary that hints at the flavours of the meal to come. George himself is warm and affable and gregarious, and very accommodating, but also serious about his business of feeding you well in a comfortable environment. And you will be fed well.

The home-made hummus is smooth and refreshing, and the pita warm and addictive. The falafel is perfect - cruncy on the outside and hot and tender inside and a little bit sweet. In short, everything I've eaten there tastes like it was made by family - made with love. The greek salad - a huge pile of vegetables with that verges on sensory overload with lemon, oregano, and tarragon (I think...) and a generous handful of feta that makes the whole thing look like Mt. Rainier in the winter and seem almost as big. And the lamb kebob is simple and hearty, with rosemary and some other spices that sneak past under the radar but deepen and intensify the flavours of the juicy and velvety chunks of lamb tenderloin (!). And if you have room, by some miracle of the multi-dimensionality of stomachs, the baklava provides a suitably intense and beautiful finale to the tastebud fireworks, crispy and flaky, with crumbling ground pistachios, and a glowing sweetness that seems impossible in something so unassumingly small. And if this preceding paragraph smacks of sensationalism I guess you'll just have to go see for yourself!

[Part 2: Pike Place Market >> ]

Leave the gun...

On a recent trip to Boston, Massachusetts I found myself at North Station with about an hour to kill. So, in usual fashion, I said to myself, "I'll walk that direction." As it happens, I had unwittingly put myself on the way to the middle of the North End - the Italian neighborhood. Also unbeknownst to me, it was the evening of the Feast of Saint Joseph, which, of course, was as good a reason as any for the neighborhood to have a big festival. Cue me, stumbling onto a street decorated with all sorts of banners and food and amusement stalls of all sorts. It was still early and things were just getting started, but there were already plumes of steam from the giant pasta cookers and smoke from the grills and flattops with meats and peppers and sausages. And on one corner there was a much quiter stand with a pyramid of cannoli shells piled on a table. I'd resisted the other stalls because I was going to be eating dinner soon, but how could I possibly resist getting a cannoli on the street in the North End? Three fillings were on offer: chocolate, vanilla, and sweet ricotta with chocolate chips - no contest, especially when the maker's favorite was also mine - the ricotta. The shell was crispy yet solid, not a stiff, cardboard-like tube that I've had out of bakery refrigerator cases before. And the filling was dense and cheesy, but also sweet and a little floral and with the tartness of the bittersweet chocolate chips. Glorious.

My advice: take the cannoli.