Savory French Toast

This was a complete and total experiment. We had some bread that was on its way out, and a craving for Mexican food. So Alex whipped up some french toast batter made with eggs, milk, cinnamon, paprika, and cumin. When all the bread was used up we scrambled the left over batter and constructed the picture above - Mexican Toast topped with scrambled batter, sauteed onions and asparagus, sour cream, cilantro, and cheddar cheese. And to our surprise, this was totally delicious! ...I definitely want to play with savor french toasts more!

Baked Eggs

Ever since Alex convinced me five years ago that eggs are delicious, I've been very slowly exploring the myriad of ways to cook an egg.  We had breakfast with our upstairs neighbors one morning and Candice made a dish simpler than scrambled eggs. It blew my mind and I went through a bit of a crazy egg-baking phase. It's just an egg or two in a ramekin with a splash of milk, some chopped kale (or spinach or whatever is in the fridge), topped with cheese, and baked in the oven just until it sets. If the eggs are still a tad runny, toast makes a great companion. And no breakfast is complete without a piece of Skagit River Valley bacon!

Love Soup

Several months ago I heard a friend of mine had caught a nasty cold, so set out on a mission of creating the most healing soup I possibly could. This is something I do for my friends every once in a while, and making soup for people always gives me the satisfying feeling that I'm some sort of good witch brewing up healing potions.

I started by making pasta.  This is where that magic ingredient of "love" comes in. I kneaded a lot of love into that dough!  Also, I find freshly made pasta is just generally a special treat.

Fresh made pasta is a simple ratio:

1lb. All Purpose Flour

4 Eggs

1oz. Water

1oz.Vegetable Oil

These ingredients are combined all at once and kneaded for at least a couple minutes either by hand or in a mixer. I usually eye-ball the amount of water and oil, I probably actually use more than 1oz. of water because it's much easier to add flour to a moist dough, then it is to add water to a dry dough later on. Anyway, making pasta honestly just takes practice to know what good pasta dough should feel like.  It should be neither sticky nor dry and it should have a tough elastic quality to it. After the initial knead, the dough must rest for at least an hour, preferably two, or overnight in the fridge. Then you can start rolling it out.  You can simply use a rolling pin (or a wine bottle!) and a knife to make noodles, but I have a manual pasta machine, so that's how I make my noodles.

To make the soup, I sauteed onions, leeks, carrots, fresh-frozen ginger, and garlic (I used a lot of ginger and garlic - for good health!). Then I added duck stock made from Stokesberry Farms magical ducks and let it simmer with a cinnamon stick and some dried chanterelle mushrooms. Meanwhile I roasted a chicken. When the soup was done, I added the fresh pasta since it only needs a minute to cook and will continue to absorb moisture as long as it's in the soup.  I finished the soup with pieces of roasted chicken, pesto, salt, and pepper.

Yay healing soup of love!

A life of its own...

I love edible art, so I'm dedicating this post to my favorite food artists.

1) Meatscapes - photographs by Carl Warner

...Seriously, this is a photo of meat.

He's not bound to meat either, check out these vegetables:

2) Alexandre Dubosc's Caketropes:

3) Jan Svenkmajer's meat interludes from the movie, Lunacy:

Catching up on my neglected blog!

I've been neglecting this blog and there's two reasons:

1) Between the end of winter and the slow start of spring, it's pretty easy to get jaded about cooking.  The farmers market still only has potatoes, kale, turnips, and if your lucky - some onions and carrots.  And even the freezer stash of peppers, broccoli, ginger, peas, and corn is starting to become monotonous.  It feels a bit like I'm in hibernation, patiently waiting for summer vegetables.

2) Alex and I are getting married this summer!! So I've been totally preoccupied by wedding planning.

Alex and I have also been eating out more than usual - partially because our cooking inspiration is in a lull, and partially because we've had some sun here in Seattle and we chase it any chance we get!  Here's some quick restaurant reviews of where we've been hanging out lately:

Skillet - If Alex and I ever created our own restaurant, this would probably be it. Creative breakfast and breakfast-inspired foods all day long.  The bacon jam on their burgers is amazing, and we swear there's a secret ingredient in the french fries (coconut oil?!). Also, Skillet is conveniently located on the South-West corner of Union & 14th Ave. and they have floor-to-ceiling windows, which makes this an excellent spot to be on a sunny day!

Captain Blacks - It looks like an itty bitty little ramshackle pirate-themed bar, until you walk out on their gigantic West-facing deck... this is the spot to be on a sunny day!! Oh and also, they have a pretty decent beer selection and you can often find a Skillet truck right next door.

Kimchi Bistro - We went here for our friend, Kris's birthday and OMG this is some of the best Korean food I've ever had! We need to go here more often!

Pinky's Pig & Chips - It's a food truck located in the parking lot of the gas station next to the liquor store in Wallingford.  This place is run by two guys from Detroit who seem to have found they're calling in life and they're stoked about it. They will blow your mind with their sassy molassy sauces and their meats will undoubtedly induce a multidimensional flavorgasm.  Oh and their sandwiches are huge, especially for the cheap price!  I definitely recommend starting with a slider and working your way up to a full size sandwich.

Wedding planing has largely consisted of foody things so far, of course. I'm totally stoked to be working with Madres Catering, they're a smaller company run by three mothers who simply love to cook and live by the motto, "Find a job you love and you'll never work another day in your life".  They focus on local/in-season ingredients, they have strong influences from Latin American cuisine, and they're excited to accommodate all my ridiculous requests like using only Skagit River Valley Ranch meats and severing homebrew made by us and our friends!

For dessert, it's not official yet, but Trophy Cupcakes is the plan.

What else is edible at a wedding? Flowers, of course! I'm growing all the flowers for our wedding, so I know they're edible and organic. And since there's a lot of text in this post, I think it's high time I posted some pictures.  Here's what my edible flowers look like so far - from top to bottom: Marigolds, Red Calendula seedling, Yellow Calendula that came back from last year, Pink Daisy's and Sweet Cicily that also came back from last year.  In addition to these, I've also planted Dahlias, Day Lillies, Nasturtiums, Dianthus, Bachelor Buttons, Chives, and all sorts of Brassicas. ...this should be a delicious wedding indeed!

 

Peas and Pasta

The other day in Mycology class we were studying powdery mildews on hazelnut leaves, this naturally lead to a conversation about Nutella, which somehow ended up in my professor telling stories about  various Italian pasta dishes (my professor is Italian). He said chickpeas and pasta were a staple at his house growing up. This was a surprisingly new concept for me. In my head, I always called them garbanzo beans, which means I mentally lump them together with pinto or black beans, and something about beans and pasta together just never occurred to me before.  Joe (my prof.) said it's just like peas and pasta - chickpeas, fava beans, really anything in the pea family goes great with pasta, not to mention peas or beans are cheap for the amount of nutrients they contain. So I had to go home and try it.  I followed Joe's vague directions of pasta with lots of garlic, olive oil, and chickpeas, plus I added some onions, tomatoes, broccoli, and ground beef.  Joe was right, chickpeas and pasta are fabulous together.

Chocolate Salad Dressing

Two weekends ago I flew to California to interview at UC Berekeley for graduate school.  It was a whole big interview weekend that included a couple different options for touring the area. I opted for a food tour of Berkeley. Traveling from Seattle, which is currently in the throes of winter with little more to offer than kale and potatoes -- Berkeley felt like the future; I had traveled to summer in a strange and wonderful place with citrus in January! A woman at the farmers market was handing out blood-orange samples, which blew my mind and I decided I had to buy some.  Then there were mangoes; voluptuous, curvaceous, and sticky with ripe juices. I brought back as many as I could fit in my carry-on bag.

Somehow I got inspired to make a fruit salad with my mangoes and blood oranges. I whipped up a dressing with equal parts olive oil and canola oil (wishing in retrospect I had used camelina oil instead), raspberry vinegar, dutch cocoa powder, cinnamon, paprika, and salt.  I cut up the fruit, dressed it, and then sprinkled toasted coriander seeds on top. Best. Salad. Ever. I could definitely get used to living in Berkeley...