The Melting Teapot

In The News

The upcoming Top Chef Masters 2 will feature three well-known Seattle chefs: Jerry Traunfeld (Poppy), Maria Hines (Tilth),  and chef-in-the-hat Thierry Rautureau (Rover's).  Last summer's Top Chef Masters was a delight to watch, with more of an emphasis of professionalism and camaraderie than the back-biting competitiveness of the normal show.  I'm looking forward to seeing these three talented Seattle chefs.  Good luck to each of them!

Naga Bar (at Chantanee Thai Restaurant, Bellevue) proudly announced this week that bar manager Mike McSorley won the NW regional Level 42 Below cocktail competition. He proceeds to the national in New York, and hopefully the World Cup in New Zealand.   Go get some great food and ask Mike for his winning drink!  Actually, ask him for any drink, since he makes such fabulous cocktails.  How can you not like a place that makes its own tonic water and all of the syrups, stocks a wide range of specialty spirits, and offers historic cocktails as well as brand new concoctions?  My personal favorite is the Clover Club.

Clover Club - George Boldt, 1888: Old Tom Gin, Fresh Lemon, Egg White, House Made Raspberry Syrup.

The 2010 James Beard Awards semi-finalists have been announced, with several locals making the list.  Final nominations are announced on March 22nd, and the actual awards will be presented in early May.  Local nominees include often-nominated Tom Douglas (Outstanding Restaurateur) and Canlis (Outstanding Restaurant, Outstanding Wine Service), among several others.  I give a huge nod-of-the-head in agreement with Cafe Juanita's nomination for Outstanding Service; their service is simply the best I've ever experienced.

Here's a list of the semi-finalists for Best Chef Northwest:

• Chris Ainsworth, Saffron Mediterranean Kitchen (Walla Walla)
• Kevin Davis, Steelhead Diner
• Matt Dillon, The Corson Building
• Mark Fuller, Spring Hill
• Ethan Stowell, Union
• Jason Wilson, Crush
• Rachel Yang, Joule

Upcoming Events

Seattle Food and Wine Experience is tomorrow, Febuary 28th, at the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall.  For $49 ($59 at the door), you can try wines from around the world, food from top regional chefs, and even microbrews.  There are presentations, special pavilions, presentations, and music.

6th Annual Poverty Bay Wine Festival, March 5-7, located in the Landmark Event Center, Des Moines, WA.  Friday night is the Night in the Vineyard Gala, while Saturday and Sunday features wine tasting, food, and live jazz.  All proceeds fund charitable projects of the Des Moines Rotary Club.

Foodportunity, a series of networking events for Seattle food professionals, will take place on March 22nd, 2010, from 6 to 9 PM at  the Palace Ballroom.  This event is organized by well-known Seattle food blogger, Frantic Foodie, and she writes that "attendees will include local food writers, bloggers, restaurateurs, food producers, PR professionals and other companies from the food and hospitality industry." Tickets are on sale now via brown paper tickets.

Seattle Restaurant Week (April 18-29) is a new promotional event where local restaurants offer 3-course $25 menus.  Unlike 30-for-$30 or Urban Eats, there is an unlimited number of restaurants who can be involved.  Evidently, we're even going to be seeing big-name restaurants like Canlis in on this.  Their official web site has limited information right now, but you can read more about this on the All You Can Eat blog.

Taste Washington, Seattle, March 27-28, is always a popular event.  I went to the Saturday seminars two years ago and had a great time, tasting wine and learning quite a bit.  Sunday's grand tasting is filled with spectacular Washington wine and food.  Get your tickets now and make plans to attend!  Oh, and if you're from the east side of the state, head to Taste Washington, Spokane, on June 6th.

Passport to Woodinville , April 17-18, is a fun way to explore local boutique wineries.  You'll be given a "passport" and a glass, which you then use as you travel from one tasting room to the next.  It is a party-like atmosphere and can be fairly crowded, especially on Saturday. Going with a group or renting a limo/shuttle service helps with parking issues. Designated drivers are allowed into tastings for free, with no passport.  If you don't have a designated driver, have a designated spitter.

Spitting is absolutely appropriate when you're tasting wine, and it is very appreciated by wineries and other drivers on the road.  Don't know how to spit wine?  Take a look at this quick video demonstration:

 

A Few Months Away

 

Auction of Washington Wines, August 19-21, 2010 (tickets go on sale in June).  I have friends who are especially fond of the Barrel Auction & Picnic with the Winemakers, held on the grounds of Chateau St. Michelle in Woodinville.

 

Cheese-a-Topia:  The 2010 American Cheese Society is holding their annual conference in Seattle this August.  There are two events open to the public, the Cheese Oscars and the Festival of Cheese.  If you'd like to attend the full conference, membership is recquired.  They have various types of memberships that include both professionals and enthusiasts.

 

I am listening to a sudden rain shower, closing my eyes, and inhaling the steam from a hot cup of tea. It is a very young 2008 hand-braided wild arbor raw puerh, a bit sharp and green around the edges.  However, it still has that classic earthy quality that makes one think of muddy forest floors.  It is a puerh that I will keep in my cupboard for many years as it ages, revisiting it from time to time to see how the tea evolves.

Twenty minutes later and the rain has stopped for now, sunshine has broken through, birds are chirping, and I can see the smudged edge of a rainbow out my window. Mmmmmmmmmmm. . . puerh.

Drink Your Tea

by Thich Nhat Hahn

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis

on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without

rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment.

Only this moment is life.

This was a pairing that I didn’t just stumble upon but actually planned.  It turned out to be an even better match than expected!

I considered the different elements in the salad -- fennel, apple, and lemon.  Then, I pondered the flavor profiles of various white wines we had on hand and decided that the green apple and lemon peel notes in a dry Riesling would match the apple and lemon elements of the food.  We pulled a bottle of wine from British Columbia, Canada:  2005 Hawthorne Mountain Riesling.

The lemon and apple flavors did indeed compliment each other, and the Riesling also really popped the flavor of the fennel.  The Riesling became an extension of the salad, promoting the flavors instead of overwhelming them, but still providing a fresh finish with each bite.

This pairing was one of those nice moments, where you just want more wine and more salad to keep experiencing the combination.

Hawthorne Mountain winery has since changed their name to See Ya Later Ranch, but they still make a good dry Riesling for a reasonable price.  If you don't often see Canadian wines where you shop, Washington state has several comparable rieslings with great QPRs, and they also pair very well with fresh fennel.

Fennel-Apple Salad

Ingredients:

• 1 fennel bulb, sliced very thin
• ¼ cup of fennel “feathers,” chopped fine
• 1 medium apple, cored, peeled or unpeeled, sliced very thin (pick an apple that isn’t too tart – stay away from granny smiths, for instance)
• lemon peel from one lemon (use a micro-grater)

Toss these together with:

• Juice from one lemon
• 1 turn of Extra Virgin Olive Oil (not a lot, just enough to lightly coat everything)
• Freshly ground Pepper
• Fennel Salt (if you don’t have any, just substitute with a pinch of sea salt)

Optional: if you taste and find it to be a bit too tart for you, add a touch of honey (warm the honey or dilute it with a bit of lemon juice, so it doesn’t just clump in one spot)


Some Tips:

1. If you have a mandolin, this is a great time to use it.  You want very thin slices of fennel and apple

2. Pepper really does seem to be important, so you might end up adding more than you expect.

3. I am a big fan of Volterra’s Fennel Salt, available online and at various Seattle-area shops.

4. Don’t throw away the leftover fennel stalks and fronds!  Remove a small handful of the fluffy green “feathers” for the salad, and put the stalks in the freezer for stock.  Fennel is a beautiful flavor element in any broth, but it is especially wonderful in vegetarian or seafood stocks. Even if you don’t make your own stocks from scratch, use it to add flavor to those bland boxed broths – toss in a fennel frond (and maybe one or two dried mushrooms), then simmer for 10-20 minutes before using the broth in a dish.  You’ll end up with a more flavorful base to whatever you’re cooking!

5. If you’ve never cleaned or sliced fresh fennel, watch this quick video:

It's a beautiful, spring-like afternoon here in my neck of the woods.  We've had a very warm and dry winter in the Pacific Northwest, and there is nothing but sun in the forecast for the next several days.

To celebrate the sunshine, I pulled out my cheerful yellow tea set and gathered together a few oolongs to sip throughout the day.  The first pots will be a comparison of a couple of light and fragrant baozhong oolongs.  I'll move on from there to some Tie Guan Yin. . . and then wherever my tea fancy takes me.

I've been enjoying these small cups with a nice bowl of early season strawberries from California:

My oolong collection has been sadly neglected for the past few months, and it is starting to show its age.  Some of these teas have lost their sparkle, and  I'm really having to coax out their flavors.   Today's sipping will be a good opportunity to go through my older oolongs, setting aside those that have perhaps stepped down in quality and freshness.  I save these for brewing iced tea in the summer.

Hmmmmm, perhaps I can use this an excuse to spend a bit of time on the web sites of my favorite vendors, ordering more recently harvested oolongs. 

I read several blogs, and a relatively recent discovery for me is the amazonblog, Al Dente.  There are several contributing authors, including two much-missed writers from the now defunct Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Lately, I've especially been enjoying the contributions from StellaCadente*.  She posts interesting menus, fun insights about food, and mouth-watering recipes that look fabulous yet still seem manageable for home cooks like me.

I keep bookmarking her recipes to try soon, but yesterday’s was so tempting that I was determined to try it right away: Pasta e Fagioli.  I won’t include the entire recipe here, but please do follow the link to StellaCadente*'s post.

Start by making a tomato-basil sauce as a base:

Once the tomatoes have become a sauce, add beans and water to create a broth.  Just before it is ready to serve, a small pasta is added and cooked to al dente.  I tossed in some small seashells and put thick slices of roasted-garlic bread in the oven -- ten minutes later, the stew was ready.

We ladled the Pasta e Fagioli in a bowl, topped with it just a bit of shredded parm, and served it with the crunchy garlic toast.  Yum!

It sounds simple, using very basic flavors and canned ingredients, and it is indeed quite simple to make.  But, there are two important elements to this that make the flavor really come together.

• First, making a “sauce” from the tomatoes and herbs as the base of the soup makes a huge difference.  By creating a sauce base at the start,  the stew becomes more refined, less strident, than if the tomatoes were just mixed in at the same time as the beans. I have read that this is a traditional use for leftover marinara sauce.

• Second, the cannelloni beans are simmered just long enough that they begin to break down and create a creamy quality to the soup.  My husband said that he actually wondered for a moment if there was a melted chunk of cheese he was tasting, and then he realized it was the creaminess of the bean coming through.

We did also have a small amount of freshly shredded parm on top, which contributed to the creamy sensation (and added a nice level of saltiness).  The crunchy garlic bread was fabulous to dip in the soup as we ate.  This was a satisfying, home-style, comfort food that we have now added to our supper rotation.

Wine Pairing

The wine we chose was not a super sophisticated or expensive bottle, but the acidity and tannins worked nicely against the creamy herbaceous soup.  The 2007 Renato Ratti Dolcetto d'Alba Colombe is a fruity, refreshing Italian wine.  It had enough structure and good acidity to be the perfect table wine for this rustic meal.