I’m probably not the first one to tell you that autumn is here. You might have heard it from the rustling leaves as they blew by you on the street corner. Or perhaps that shiver in your spine as you reached for your sweater last week. The cheers of football fans, the smell of wood smoke in the air and the bright colors on the trees all have their own ways of letting us know that the season has changed. Me? I know what’s up when I can grab butternut squash from my favorite vendor at the Pike...
I have great co-workers. One of the reasons I’m so sad to be moving on to my new job is because of them. Last week I brought some duck prosciutto to Lauren. She, in return brought me fresh homegrown vegetables from her garden. Today Anthony, the wonderful Executive Chef of our restaurants, dropped by to randomly gift me this beautiful smoked garlic. I’ve learned so much, culinarily and otherwise from them both, it seemed only appropriate to make something that combined these two gifts in one terrific, warming, fall dish. What is smoked garlic? I don’t know. I...
In the course of the last few days, many beautiful heirloom tomatos had randomly landed in my lap. Rather, my kitchen. I was not about to let these go to waste, but after a full summer of lovely tomato salads and capreses galore, I was ready for a new application. It occured to me that a cold gazpacho type soup would be the way to go. I had no plan as I threw all the tomatos (1 large and about 5 small heirloom tomatos) and the one and a half jalapeno peppers I had into a bowl, squeezed on...
Sometimes the right meal just comes to you. As we jumped out of a friend’s car on New Year’s eve, planning for sushi at Ototo (a very good neighborhood place) an empty restaurant caught our eye. Opal has been open for a little over a year now, and had a few rave reviews and some mediocre ones, but sounded far fancier and more celebratory than a sushi joint we frequented. In we went, seated right away. Champagne was on special, so we ordered that up right away. Service was impeccable, which was not lost on our table full of...
The two elements to my soup: Green tomatillo sauce, and velvety textured pumpkin soup. I had big thoughts for my soup last night when I got home. The city was battling a windstorm and I decided that the way to combat that was to make a nice fall soup with all the great produce from sunday’s ballard market. Luckily the power stayed on at my house, unfortunately B was driving home from Kenmore, where the lights were not on, and didn’t make it in time to share this with me before I went to my soccer game. There were...
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