Lunching with a Brave Horse

About 15 years ago, I worked at a company whose offices were in downtown Seattle.  Every once in a while we'd go somewhere for a department lunch.  A couple of times, that place was the Dahlia Lounge. 

I still remember the Tuscan bread salad I had for lunch the first time I went there.  At that time, the Tom Douglas restaurant empire consisted of Dahlia Lounge, Etta's and the brand new Palace Kitchen. 

It says something about a restaurant (and a dish) when the food and the experience stays with you for 15 years.

In recent years, Douglas has become synonymous with the Seattle restaurant scene.  His stable of restaurants now numbers ten, with inspirations ranging from Italian to Greek to American to Asian. 

As my life changed and my employment took me elsewhere, I had fewer opportunities to patronize his establishments.  As I watched more and more restaurants open, I started to worry that perhaps he was stretching himself too thin. 

But as the years passed, the award nominations kept on coming.  And so did the wins. In fact, in 2012, Douglas won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurateur. So, I thought, things must be going pretty well.

I watched enviously as new restaurants opened and I didn't have the time to go to them.  Then I got laid off from work.  A personal setback, yes, but this meant that I could start catching up on some serious eating. 

One of the first things I did was go to lunch at Brave Horse Tavern with my wife.  Because I could.

Its location, amid the new buildings (and the Amazon campus) in the South Lake Union, is uber-urban and potentially very busy.  The last time I'd passed the place, this past May (on my way to another Douglas establishment, Serious Biscuit), it was packed with hungry workers from the area.  Which is why we showed up for lunch at around 11:15am.  We were having lunch there, damn it, and we didn't want to stand in line to get in.

After some debate over the menu, we decided to get a couple of snack plates and split the burger.  This way we could maximize our experience. 

Since I didn't have to work after lunch, I decided to imbibe.  I admit that my head was turned by the fact that, on that day, they had 4 ciders on draft.  Draft cider, people!  You don't get that very many places in this town. 

I drank a locally produced ginger apple hard cider by Schilling (Auburn, WA) that was delicious and very gingery.  Perhaps a little more gingery than I was wanting on that day, but I would definitely drink it again. 

Our snack plates came out first:  house made smoked bologna served with Beecher's Flagship cheddar, peach mustard, pretzel chips (also house made) and slices of apple.  This collection was served on an artfully charred slab of wood.  The presentation was really quite beautiful for such homey food. 

Don't let the term homey fool you.  By that I mean a richly flavored, satisfyingly smoky, crunchy, chewy, tart, sweet plate of comfort.  If I was by myself and looking to grab a light meal, I'd get that plate again in a heartbeat.  I might add a little salad, I might not.  It was a perfect little world of its own.

The second snack plate was a basket of fried cheddar cheese curds (this time Wisconsin cheese, for some reason).  Very yummy, though the fried cheese didn't really hit a home run.  It was the dill pickle tartar sauce that hit it out of the park for me.  Thick, vinegary, redolent with dill.  I would have (and I think I did) licked the little dish it came in after I finished eating the remaining sauce with my spoon.  It was everything tartar sauce should be.  It more than made up for my mild disappointment at the little pool of oil at the bottom of the empty basket after we'd finished the cheese bites. 

We were still munching on our snack plates when our burger arrived, already cut in half.  We had mentioned to the our waitress that we were sharing the burger, but were still pleasantly surprised that they'd cut the burger in half for us. 

I have to mention something before I go into the burger itself.  I love the fact that it doesn't come with sides.  You order fries or whatever separately.  And the burger was a reasonable size.  It wasn't the size of a human head.  It was a perfect sized portion of everything on a bun.  If I was to order it on my own, I wouldn't have to hurt myself to finish it.  THANK YOU!!

Now, how did it taste? 

It was pretty damned perfect, if you ask me. 

We had the beef chuck burger with bacon and smoked blue cheese.  The burger was juicy, the lettuce crisp, the smoky burger sauce a great replacement for ketchup (I don't really like ketchup on my burgers. I loved this sauce), and there were dill pickles (maybe house made, though I don't know for sure...they weren't bright green like the kind you get from the grocery store.) and mayo to round out what was between the buns. 

Everyone has different opinions about what should go on a burger.  This was my perfect combo. 

It was messy and drippy and soul-satisfyingly good.  It might actually be the best hamburger I've ever eaten.  And I've eaten a lot of burgers in my day.

We ended our meal with something that made me nearly cry with joy.  A warm-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookie (baked to order according to the menu).  Really, how could we not?  It's a warm chocolate chip cookie, for crying in the night!  A WARM CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE! It, too, exceeded our expectations.

We felt so comforted and cared for by the time we left.  We walked out into the warm autumn afternoon happy to our soul for our time at Brave Horse Tavern.

While we can't go every week, we will definitely be back soon!  The first thing on my list for that visit is the bacon spiked deviled eggs. 

So back to my apprehension that perhaps the restaurateur was spreading himself a little thin.  I'm not apprehensive anymore.  Douglas and his staff really seem to have their collective shit together. 

I actually had the pleasure of meeting Chef Douglas a number of years ago at a season preview for the Broadway at the Paramount Theatre series here in Seattle.  He and his team provided food for the reception.

I told him how much I enjoyed his food and asked him, essentially, why he was at the preview.  He excitedly led me from the stage into the house to show me the seat he sponsored.  He loved the opportunity to help support the theatre community. 

Several years later, he was at the Shoreline Central Market promoting his new cookbook, cooking and serving at the demo kitchen in the heart of the produce and meat sections.  But he wasn't just there promoting himself; he was promoting local food, local sourcing and the store itself.

So not only does he seem to have a golden touch when it comes to developing new restaurants and menus, he is also a really nice guy. 

It's that in addition to the kick-ass food that keep me excited about his establishments.  And why, come hell or high water, I will have that goat cheese fondue that was on his Facebook page a few weeks ago.

As I reviewed the list of restaurants for this entry, I noted that of the 10 listed in the Wikipedia article, I have actually eaten at seven.  I'm not as behind as I thought I was.  But I still have meals to go before I sleep.  

Pumpkin Bread Pudding: Resolving a Dilemma

I had a problem to solve.  Over the summer, we ate a lot of hamburgers, but instead of buying hamburger buns, I cut rounds out of slices of bread to make our own buns. 

In order to not be wasteful, we kept collecting the crusts and saving them in the freezer.  We had no idea what we were going to do with them. 

I thought I might make croutons, but I wasn't sold on the idea.  The spelt bread we eat is more on the sweet side and I prefer my croutons to be something like sourdough or rustic Italian type bread. 

So the crusts languished in the freezer until we had a full gallon zippy bag full of them, plus some. 

Then a week or so ago, I realized we had a surplus of another ingredient.  Since our G wasn't drinking as much milk as he used to, we had a lot of milk that needed using. 

Bread.  Milk.  It's getting to be Fall.  Bingo!  Bread pudding!!  It would be the perfect application for the sweet-ish bread and the milk we needed to use.  Besides, my favorite part of the bread pudding is the crusts of bread.  They have a bit more tooth to them and I love the firm, chewy texture the crust gets in a bread pudding.  So this was going to be perfect!

I was just about ready to bake, having a lot of time on my hands now that I'm among the unemployed, when a trip to Trader Joe's gave me the final piece of inspiration I needed.  They had in their freezer case little two-serving boxes of Pumpkin Bread Pudding. 

I felt as if divine light suddenly shone upon me.  I had to make this!

So I started looking for recipes.  At first it was difficult to find a recipe that called for regular bread.  The first couple of recipes that came up on my Google search called for pumpkin bread as the bread component.  That certainly wouldn't do. 

But as with anything on Google, search long enough and you'll find what you are looking for. 

Still, I ended up with three recipes up in my browser, taking a bit from each before I settled upon my own. 

Most of what I ended up with is thanks to this recipe from Smitten Kitchen.  I also plan on making the Creme Anglaise from Bobby Flay's recipe, but I've got a lot of cooking and baking ahead of me this weekend, so it may wait a couple of days.  And a nod to the Betty Crocker recipe, too, because I didn't want to use just a part of a can of pumpkin.

Pumpkin Bread Pudding

8 cups of spelt bread crusts, dried and broken into pieces (or whole pieces of any kind of bread, cubed or torn into pieces and left out to go stale)

3 cups of milk

4 eggs and 2 egg yolks

1 small can of pumpkin

1 tsp kosher salt

2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp allspice

a couple of dashes ground cloves

1 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 350°F.  Butter the bottom and sides of a 13X9 inch baking pan.  Put the bread pieces into the prepared pan.  

In a large bowl, beat the eggs briefly.  Add the milk, pumpkin, salt, spices and sugar and whisk to combine. 

Pour custard over the bread pieces and mush things about until all the bread has been coated.  Ideally, the bread will be mostly submerged in the custard.  If you've got bits sticking up, that's okay. That means you'll have lovely crispy bits on the top.

Bake for 30-40 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.  (If you're baking in a glass dish, consider reducing the temperature to 325.) 

Enjoy for breakfast with some honey goat cheese or for dessert with some creme anglaise or whipped cream or ice cream.  Or whatever you like with pumpkin.

I will say two things.  I think I will add some maple syrup or some brown sugar next time.  The idea of some depth to the sweetness is appealing to me. 

Also, I think a little bourbon is in order (for the pudding, not necessarily for me).  That is one part of the Smitten Kitchen recipe that I didn't take to heart and I wish I had. :o)

Now the only dilemma I have is how we're going to eat it all.  But that is a good problem to have.  And I know I have friends who will help should it be necessary.  

If you make this and alter it at all, please let me know.  I would love to hear what you think and what you do with it!  

Happy Fall!  

Giving the bird to that chicken place

I’ve had a hard time seeing people I know participating in Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.  In fact, it has made me incredibly angry to see people all over this country flocking to support a company whose owner has contributed so much money to organizations who want to deny me rights. 

I know…it’s nothing personal, right?  They probably all have gay friends.  Or maybe not. 

Anyway, rather than stew about it, I thought I should write my feelings down.  And since I have a blog, I could share them.

Do I think a boycott is going to really accomplish anything?  I don’t really know.  I can’t truly participate because there isn’t a Chick-fil-A where I live.  It certainly won’t do much, if any, harm to the owner, the man who contributed all that money to anti-gay organizations.

Some gay Republicans call for calm.  They believe that all the boycott does is make the gays look like cry babies.  That all it does is further polarize the sides of this issue.  

Some pro-gay marriage people say that boycotting the restaurants unduly penalizes the people who work in those restaurants to support their families. 

Some people ask their gay friends not to condemn them for liking Chick-fil-A food…they love their gay friends, but they can’t deny themselves the deliciousness. 

I agree that there is some validity to all the arguments I’ve seen.  

Still, I have a really hard time supporting any organization that, at the top, wants to deny people rights. 

The company may very well employ gay people.  They, I am sure, serve them (though perhaps there are fewer now than there once was).  

I would venture to guess that very few of the people who participated in Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day in support of the company have had rights denied them.  

What really hurts, what really makes me angry, is the fact that at least one of those customers bought a sandwich today because they agree with the head of the company.  Someone out there in the US bought a sandwich because they want to deny me the right to marry the woman I love. 

How can I not take that personally?  How can I not be wounded by that? 

I lived on the straight side of the fence for 14 years.  I was lucky enough to have been married to a man who was kind and gracious when I told him I needed to leave because I wasn’t happy and knew I couldn’t make him happy. 

Now that I am happy and am with the love of my life, I am denied the same rights and protections I had when I was unhappy. 

Still, I have hope.  In November, the people of my state will vote on marriage equality.  I have hope that we will be the first state to pass the legislation in the popular vote. 

In November, I will vote for the right for gays to marry.

But for now, for today, I can choose not to support those businesses that are run by bigots.  

In quite a pickle

One of the things that floods my memory banks during the summer is pickles.  Summer didn’t just mean fresh fruits and jam-making growing up.  It also meant pickles.

The excitement would begin that day during the summer when I would go out on the side porch and inhale the warm smell of fresh dill.  I’d look over and there would be a bucket filled with huge stems of dill, roots soaking in water to help keep it fresh until dad was ready for it. 

Somewhere nearby would be big bags of large pickling cukes.  Somewhere else there would be bags of small cucumbers for my mom’s 14-day sweet pickles, but I didn’t really get excited about that. 

I know many people who thought my mom made the best sweet pickles they’d ever tasted.  I remember taking a couple of jars to a drama club picnic in high school and the sweet pickles got devoured, having been dipped in cheese whiz first.  But I’ve never been a fan of sweet pickles, so I’m not a qualified judge of their quality. 

I will still discuss their process in a little bit.  But first, dad’s dill pickles.

He’d make them in those enormous quart jars, stuffed to the gills with cukes, whole cloves of garlic, pearl onions (if he was in the mood to indulge me…he hated peeling them, but he knew I loved them) and either a split jalapeno or a dried Thai chili. 

I’m not sure what he did to the vinegar…I don’t have the recipe.  I’m sure there was lots of salt (it is, after all, a brine) and, of course, the vinegar.  White vinegar, I think, but I couldn’t swear to it.  There were gallons of white and apple cider vinegar all over the kitchen when it was pickling season.  Some alum, too, I think, to keep the pickles crisp. 

Then came the weeks of torture.  The pickles were done, and yet they weren’t.  They had to, well, pickle.  Six or eight weeks they would have to sit, I think.  Dad might let us open a jar a little early to see how they were doing.  Maybe. 

So for entertainment, I’d watch Mom make her 14-day sweet pickles.  The name of the pickle was derived from the amount of time it took to make them. 

She’d use the pint jars for her pickles as well as the smaller pickling cukes.  She also used her grandmother’s pickling crock.  I’m not sure how big it was, but it was dark brown on the inside and light on the outside and it sat in a dark, out of the way corner of the kitchen during those two weeks. 

The first week of the process was soaking the pickles in a brine.  Seven days the wee little cucumbers would sit in the crock, soaking in heavily salted liquid, weighted down by a blue and white Currier and Ives plate and a can of tomatoes or baked beans. 

At the end of the week, Mom would skim off the mold (yes, you read that right. It didn’t’ always happen, but if it did, it didn’t stop the process), pour off the brine and rinse the pickles.  She’s wash the crock, put the pickles back in and then make the syrup. 

Pickling spice, vinegar (apple cider this time, I think), sugar, boiled and then poured over the pickles. 

Every day for seven days the syrup was poured off into a pot and reboiled, then poured hot back over the pickles.  The syrup concentrates as it gets its daily boil and the heat makes the cucumbers soak up more and more deliciousness each night. 

Even though I never cared to eat the pickles, I still loved watching the process.  It was a summer ritual to me and to my mom, too, I suppose.  It was something deeply important to her to recreate this part of her formative years annually for her family. 

And, of course, by the time she was done with the sweet pickles, that meant we were that much closer to getting to eat this year’s dills. 

In later years, they’d make dilled green beans, pickled beets (blech), bread and butter pickles.  One year my dad made a whole jar of pickled garlic so we didn’t have to fight over the garlic in the jars of pickles.  Which we used to do.  We’d fight over the garlic and the onions.  Dad would eat the jalapeno.  :o)

After all that, it probably won’t surprise you that I suddenly had the urge to pickle a bunch of radishes we had hanging around.  They were starting to go south, so I decided to try doing a quick pickle on them. 

Quick pickling is not necessarily to preserve food.  It’s more to add flavor.  And I picked some Asian flavors with which to pickle those radishes. Rice vinegar, a little soy, a little bit of sugar (just to take the edge off the acid) and a good squirt of sriracha. 

The fridge still has a bit of radish funk smell to it, but it was worth it.  They turned out very tasty.  Not bad for a complete and utter experiment. 

Perhaps the ability to pickle is genetic.  If that’s the case, I’ve got some good pickling skills in my DNA.  And my son loves dill pickles, so it might behoove me to learn to make them.  

Look! It's Summer! I think....

You wouldn’t know it by looking out my window.  Today, the first full day of summer, it was barely 60 degrees and POURING rain. 

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah….it’s Seattle, I know.  But it’s Pride weekend!  It’s not supposed to rain on Pride! 

Even if the weather isn’t summer-like, there are things going on around town that signal the coming of the season.

Pride weekend, of course.  Happy Pride to all the Family out there! 

The most exciting thing that has signaled the arrival of the solstice is the coming of the farmers’ markets.  Here in Shoreline, we finally have our own market!!  And it’s just a couple of blocks from our house!!!!

Last weekend was the first weekend.  Since it has been fairly cool this year, there weren’t many produce stands up last Saturday.   But there were signs up saying that we should see a full complement this weekend. 

We started getting a weekly produce box from a local service, but now that we have a market so close, we may bag the box, at least for the summer. 

Still, between the two, the market and the box, we made some really killer dinners this week.

From the box, we had some chard and green beans and a red bell pepper.  From the grocery store, we got a box of heirloom mini tomatoes.  I tossed those in some olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper, then roasted the hell out of them. 

I took that lovely mess of roasted veg, tossed it with some pasta and some extra special olive oil (purchased from the Edmonds market last summer) and voila!  Dinner!

It was so good it made me want to cry.  Everything was fresh and gorgeous.  We feasted!

The other great thing about last weekend was when N suggested we get chicken for lunch on Saturday.  We went to Heaven Sent Chicken in Lake City, owned and operated by Ezell Stephens.  (If you go somewhere called Ezell’s these days, it is not a restaurant owned by the name himself.  After some legal ugliness, he let them keep the name and went somewhere else to keep making chicken.) 

Not only did N suggest we get chicken, she suggested we get chicken livers.  Which you can get at Heaven Sent.  It’s a special order…takes about 7 minutes…and it is worth the wait!

While I prefer my chicken livers fried with less batter on them, I couldn’t argue that these were very tasty.  They were a little overcooked…like maybe the oil in the fryer was a little too hot.  But there aren’t a lot of places in town were you can get fried chicken livers (I know of one other place, if it is even still open).  And the crunch of the crust and the creamy funk of the liver…I was in heaven!! 

Quick wine note: the Jones of Washington Cabernet Sauvignon is a perfect pairing with those livers. 

I got a pound of livers and we ate half for lunch.  Then we had the other half with the fabulous pasta and roasted veg for dinner the next night. 

There was one more really exciting thing we got at the market.  We had long been curious about the beef and pork sellers.  And these guys were having a special, so we got a 3 pound chuck roast and two 2-pound packages of ground beef.  Local, grass-fed beef. 

We did as they suggested and cooked the roast in the crock pot.  Wow.  Just…wow.  This was the most flavorful piece of chuck I have ever had.  I could definitely taste the difference. 

We’re looking forward to grilling some burgers when the weather clears up.  I bet that’s gonna be some really tasty burgers. 

I hope the weather is decent enough for us to walk to the market.  I’m looking forward to seeing what else they have in store for us. 

Oh!  Before I forget, we also got some sweets from a small bakery business called Butter and Love.  Love the name…loved the treats.  We got a couple of whoopie pies, which were delicious. I could taste both the butter and the love in those treats! 

This week, we are going to go a little later and buy some lunch.  The restaurant up the street, Jersey’s, has a stand.  There was also a place that was making fresh quesadillas with locally sourced meat, cheese and veg. 

So, come on over to Shoreline if you have the urge.  Meet us at the farmers’ market.  Get some local color and then take it home and eat it. 

As summer truly arrives, I’ll be watching for strawberries, apricots and other fruits for the making of the jam, a time-honored summer tradition in my family.

Happy Solstice, Happy Pride, Happy Summer!  May the blessings of the season grace your table often.  

A Rare Bit for a Bunny

I love cooking for my friends.  And every once in a while, one of them asks me to make something for them.  These rare requests are like gold, because they usually take me into new culinary territory. 

Recently, one of my dearest friends tagged me in a post on Facebook and asked me to learn how to make something because she only gets it once a year, she loves it and she wants to have it more often. 

The picture she sent was of great slabs of bread smothered in cheese sauce and broiled until the tops were golden and bubbly, sprinkled with a bit of parsley for color. 

Welsh rarebit, my friends, is my next culinary adventure. 

Also called Welsh rabbit (but, I would imagine, never by the Bunny), this dish is of questionable origins.  One legend states that the dish was conceived by poor Welsh folk who were not allowed to eat the rabbits from the English hunt, so they came up with this bread and cheese sauce concoction instead. 

Like they couldn’t tell the difference? What a crock!

Per the Wikipedia article, “the first recorded use of the term Welsh rabbit was in 1725, but the origin of the term is unknown.  It may have been an ironic name coined in the days when the Welsh were notoriously poor: only better-off people could afford meat.  In England the poor-man’s meat was rabbit, in Wales the poor man’s meat was cheese.” 

This I might actually buy. 

As I looked at some recipes, a couple of things crossed my mind. 

First, why had I never had this?  It’s cheese sauce and bread!  What’s not to love??

Second, for someone who doesn’t drink beer, this will be one more thing that I will probably love that contains beer. 

Some recipes call for the sauced slices of bread to be broiled, some just tell you to ladle the sauce over pieces of toast and enjoy.  Some call for beer, some don’t.  Some call for a béchamel base, some don’t.

At its heart, though, it is melted cheese stabilized with some flour and butter, thinned with some milk or cream (or beer) and served with bread.  Remind you of anything?

Let’s face it, people.  Welsh rarebit is really lazy man’s fondue. 

What is fondue at its most basic?  Cubes of bread dipped in melty cheese sauce (stabilized with some flour and thinned with beer or wine).  But it’s kind of fussy, isn’t it?  You have to cut up all that bread.  You have to have something to keep the cheese sauce warm so that you can dip your bread into it.  But the Welsh rarebit way, you just put it all on a plate and dig in.  And you don’t have to share a communal pot of cheese with people you may not like.  You get your own plate, your own cheese sauce.  You can even lick the plate if you want to.  Not something I would recommend you do with a fondue pot. 

And now it all makes sense.  Why my friend asked me to learn how to make this dish.  We all know Bunny loves fondue.  So of course she would love Welsh rarebit, too. 

So, dear Bunny, I am looking at recipes to choose one to make for you soon.  We just have to figure out when.  :o)

Because there are few things in this world that make me happier than feeding my friends.  

It's not pudding...it's fruit and cake.

Sometimes you get a suggestion from a friend that sounds so fascinating that, even though you’ve never eaten it before, you have to try it.

N came home one evening telling me that one of the gals on her team gave her a recipe for something she called yogurt pudding.  Plain yogurt, dried apricots, eggs, a little flour, a little sugar, maybe some sour cream. 

I was intrigued.  But I didn’t take a look at the recipe. 

I imagined something cooked in a saucepan on the stove, the eggs and flour thickening and smoothing the yogurt to make it, well, like pudding.  Then you put in the chopped apricots and chill. 

Right? 

Not at all. 

It would be accurate to say that this is pudding in the British sense.  It is dessert.  And it even might be kind of healthy. 

You start with plain yogurt, lots of chopped dried apricots, a couple of eggs, some flour, a little sugar.  Mix that all together, put it in a greased baking dish and bake it until the center gets puffy. 

Let me repeat that last part. 

You BAKE it until the center gets puffy. 

It’s a cake!!

Granted, it’s not a cake that a Bunny would eat because it has fruit in it, but it’s definitely a cake. 

Dense, creamy, tangy, sweet, chewy…it’s a feast for the senses. 

You can top it with sour cream before you bake it, which I recommend.  The sour cream keeps it from being too sweet. 

The recipe was given to us because the giver thought our son might like it.  He didn’t want to try it.  But N and I have been enjoying it all week.  It’s a great snack or it would make an awesome breakfast.  It’s solid enough that you could eat it on the go…no fork required. 

Now my brain is thinking of different ways to do this.  I already want to add dried tart cherries, because I love dried cherries.  We won’t be doing raisins, because, well, someone in the house doesn’t believe in raisins with baked goods.  And I respect that.  Maybe some dried blueberries or strawberries.  Or mango, maybe with a tiny pinch of curry. 

Not only is this dish really good, but it is ripe for transformation.  And that is something that makes a recipe more fascinating every time you try it. 

Thanks for stopping by!  Y’all have a good weekend!