218 replies to this topic

[MT-Tarragon]

Abra, very nice! Where is that BBQ in Ellensburg? I'm always driving through there and having trouble finding good places to eat. And I wish I had known about the sausages in Cle Elum!

I'm voting for French -- Onion soup, stuffed mushrooms, and sauteed chicken with shallots and artichoke hearts (when is artichoke season, anyway?).

[rjwong]

Wonderful blog, Abra!

The photos are great. It brings nice memories when I was traveling around the Puget Sound, the Olympic Mountains, Leavenworth, Cashmere ...

Personally, I vote for French, unless you want to tell your friends, "Tonight, we're going Dutch!"

What is your coffee preference: Starbucks? SBC? Or something else?

And finally, a dog in a blog. Woof!

[ruthcooks]

Glad to see you blogging again, Abra. Walla Walla is neat neat. Some random thoughts...

What is this trend of bloggers doing other people's recipes? It seems to me that you can tell a lot about a person's culinary preferences/philosophy when the person cooks from her own tried and true recipes, the ones she is passionate about. So French or Belgian or Dutch or whatever, let's see some of Abra's food, too.

Is that cup of Hollandaise for dipping the fries? I'd think it was for the egg. Never mind, I'd drink it...er, eat it on everything. Assuming it's real.

You might get a laugh out of Diane Mott Davidson's books. There is a small scare here and there, but the food sounds good. Mostly it's amusing, how she spends 90% of her time sleuthing and then tosses off her catering in a couple of hours. Do show everyone the boat load of stuff you have to cart around when acting as a personal chef. It's a rude awakening.

Have you decided on your T'day stuffing yet?

Edited by ruthcooks, 14 November 2005 - 11:37 PM.

[Mooshmouse]

I kid you not.  Leftover pesto pizza and carrot cake.  It was a once in a lifetime breakfast, I swear.

Abra, as stunning as your photographs are, they play second fiddle to the fact that you'll have leftover pizza, carrot cake and coffee for breakfast. A woman after my own heart!

[jackal10]

Hmm...frys with frite sauce - nearly Belgium already, Just need to add some mussels and wheat beer...maybe waffles and chocolates

Oh and I love oaky wines. I do regret they are out of fashion, and high alcohol fruit bombs are in. Bring back the butter and vanilla flavours I say!

[Chufi]

so, why are all these people voting for french food while I am asleep

Abra, everything looks so wonderful. The pictures of the scenery really take my breath away and make we want to fly to your part of the world Right Now.

Should I add that I vote for Dutch? I just can't wait to see what you would do with Dutch food! I'm pretty sure you would work magic with it!

Edited by Chufi, 15 November 2005 - 05:33 AM.

[Swisskaese]

Excited about your blog Abra. I am biased about Dutch food because I have family in Holland, but I think you should cook something from Paula's cookbook.

Can't wait to see more photos.

[tryingsomethingnew]

ohhhhh you make me want to move to Walla Walla.....

[Abra]

Good morning! We live on Sunrise Drive, and now you see why it's called that. I got a good start to the day with this (much more conservative) breakfast. Sorry Moosh!



Oh, it's so hard to decide on dinner. Between Paula's book and Klary's thread, I want to make about 20 different dishes, and since I also have a couple of other things I need to do today besides cook (how boring of me) I just have to go for a few that sound not too complicated and delicious.

So here's my menu, a Paula/Klary combo:

Paula's Salad of Duck Confit with Red Cabbage, Chestnuts and Watercress (I want to preview this as a possibility for the Orcas dinner. I made the confit using Paula's recipe, and it should be ready to eat by now)

Klary's Draadjesvlees (beef cooked in butter)
Paula's Potatoes in the Style of the Quercy
Paula's Pureed Celery Root with Apples
(and this plate will need some color)

Klary's Speculaas

Nothing fancy or hard here, just quite a few balls to get in the air. It sounds very wintery and comforting, no?

Ruth, you ask a good question about cooking with other people's recipes. I love to cook other people's food! Mostly because I love to try new dishes all the time, so although I do have "tried and true" stuff, I don't make anything often enough to get bored. This blog may disappoint you in that way, because it's mostly going to be about new (to me) dishes. And no, I'm still up in the air on Thanksgiving stuffing. Do I need to hurry into a decision? I still have 10 days, and a big dinner to do between now and then. Should I really be planning Thanksgiving already???

Jack, I tend to think of the big, oaky American wines as also being fruit bombs, a combination that particularly doesn't sound good to me. What are your favorite foods to serve with an oaky cabernet sauvignon, and an oaky chardonnay? American, mind you, no restrained Euro wine here.

As to the coffee preference, you shall see a bit later in the morning, when my camera follows me down to Shel's Espresso Bar.

The question for the morning is: yesterday I saw skate wing, and bought a piece. I've never cooked it or eaten it. Who knows a good recipe? My initial plan is to give it a pan saute and put it on a salad for lunch, but I'm open to suggestions about anything more interesting to do with it.

[Chufi]

So here's my menu, a Paula/Klary combo:

let me know if you need any assistance with those Dutch recipes Abra! Will you be making the speculaas with the almond paste filling, or the plain one?

[GourmetLight$]

I am, unabashedly, a fan of Big Oakey Chards! I think the best foil for such, at this time of year, would be a Chanterelle Risotto (nice and creamy with lots of Parmagiano Reggiano). Or basically any rich and creamy dish would go well. HTH,

[little ms foodie]

oh lord I love pan fried skate in brown butter sauce. YUM!!! I have a recipe but my books are packed for Sat's moving day.

[Smithy]

Hmm. I can't wait to see what you do with the skate, but I've never had it, so I'm no help there! In fact, I have more questions than answers!

First: Please, please do the speculaas with the almond paste, instead of the plain! I've been drooling over that recipe, as well as the rest of Chufi's photos and recipes. I'm glad my "Belgian" compromise was well-received, and your selections are all things I've been wanting to try.

What do you plan to do with your persimmons?

Your photos are GORGEOUS. I noticed that the apple orchard had a lot of fruit on the ground. Do you happen to know whether the orchard had been picked and the stuff on the ground were the culls? Or did that orchard just start dropping its load before the pickers got there? (Don't you love these questions, fired away about something you were just happened to see on the way? )

[Abra]

Speculaas with almond paste, of course! It never crossed my mind to make the plain one.

Mmm, brown butter and skate. Ok, that's for lunch.

And a risotto is a great suggestion, Carolyn. I needed a creamy dish, but the particular Chard, a Kistler, is reputed to have high acidity, so I might need to add some acid ingredient to the risotto, if that's what I go with.

There are a lot of apples on the ground, aren't there? I'm troubled by that myself, but I don't know why they weren't at least made into cider. The persimmons, the minute they are ripe, will be eaten straight out of hand, accompanied by ecstatic sounds. That's my favorite fruit, and they're usually not very nice around here, for some mysterious reason.

I'm back from shopping and need a coffee. Pictures of both will follow, and then I'm putting on my apron and rolling up my sleeves.

Oh, one schedule change. I also went to the chiropractor while I was out, and she ordered me not to carry heavy stuff for a few days, to try to relieve the tingling in my hand and arm. So I've rescheduled my tomorrow client, and will just concentrate on getting the menu together for Orcas, and planning Thanksgiving. We're having two of them, one with 20 eGers and a Rosengarten turkey, and one more traditional, except that most of the guests will be Thai and haven't had Thanksgiving before. So we can probably get some good Thanksgiving chat going in this blog too, if you all want to share your Thanksgiving hopes, dreams, and plans here.

[Irishgirl]

Abra
Enjoying the blog.
Nice to see someone with such a zest for life!

With the Chard...I would go with lobster (Classic) with something vanilla...Sauce....mayonnaise?

With the Cab....Lamb...or dry aged beef....something that will stand up to all that wood...With roasted garlic?

my 2 cents

Great Photos!!!!!!!

Wish it looked as nice here in Vancouver. Today it is grey....Grrrr.

[Smithy]

I'll be interested to learn the results of the food pairings with oaky wines. I personally don't like oak in wine if I can detect it; I suspect it's been severely overdone in the wines I've tried, and I've developed an aversion as a result. (It's entirely possible, at my usual price range, that the "oak" has come from wood chips thrown in instead of proper barrel aging.) That being said, I've been under the impression that the heavily oaked chardonnays don't pair well with food because they shout it down. Was that incorrect? Should I be suspicious that the person who says that is also a non-oak person?

As to the arm: this part may get too personal, and if so, please accept my apologies and ignore it. I went through something like that last year, and it turned out to be related more to posture and lack of stretching than to heavy lifting. The lifting (more specifically, the heavy briefcase suspended from a shoulder strap) was a contributing factor, but the stretching and muscle strengthening were what helped. Are you satisfied that the chiropractor is giving you sufficient information?

I don't know much about persimmons except that they grow readily where I grew up, in central California. Do they grow in your climate?

[Abra]

Here we are at the Bainbridge Island Town and Country store.



It's a community institution, the sort of place that serves free coffee to people when the power is out on the island, organizes food donations to the local food bank, has a float in the 4th of July parade, and is a thoroughly wonderful place to shop.

There's excellent bread



a huge organic produce section, of which this picture shows about 1/6 of the stock



a mind-boggling assortment of upscale oils and vinegars



a gorgeous fish counter



and even interesting housewares.



I spend a lot of time there, and I always enjoy it. We have a Safeway on the island too, but I go there as little as possible.

Riley loves to go shopping with me.



This is his favorite store, another community institution that's part nursery, part feed store, and also specializes in useful outdoor clothing.



Riley especially likes it because they let him come in and pick out his own cookies. I know, it looks like he's so well-mannered. You have no idea how hard it was to get him to keep his nose out of the bins and sit semi-still for this shot!



Yikes, I see that it's getting past lunchtime. Let me go whip up something with that skate before I post the coffee photos. Need a coffee fix? You'll just have to wait a minute!

[Genny]

Hi Abra! What beautiful pix you have here! OMG my mouth literally started to water looking at the poached egg on the salad...I had to go make one for myself!!!! (Seriously, I really did!) How do you get your photos so well lit and crisp? Do you doctor them at all or just publish them as is?

Persimmons sound wonderful. I haven't had one in years but I just saw them at my local grocers, I may just have to pick one up to see if they are any good. Here is a fabulous looking idea: frozen persimmon = sorbet for dessert. A beautiful presentation for sure. Here is the Mark Bittman site describing: Frozen Persimmon

I'm looking forward to the Belgian dinner (I was reading through thinking DUTCH, please do Dutch!) so it looks like you'll be able to please both sides with this one

Happy Blogging!

Genny

[Chris Amirault]

Abra, I'm a bit late, but can you tell me where you get your Urfa pepper? I hadn't heard of it before, but a bit of googling has me curious!

[Abra]

So, coffee.



This is the sign behind my husband's espresso bar. He's a certifiable coffee nut. I actually think he likes the machine as much as he likes the coffee.



He also has a ton of coffee gear - it sure makes it easy to find gifts for him.



Here's a cappucino he made for me. Well, actually, he made it for you.





Whenever Riley and Sushi hear the coffee grinder, which, in truth, can be heard all over the house, they come running. They're very ritualistic pets. Every morning Sushi jumps right up on the bar for a little coffeetime snack of dried crunchies. I might point out that she'll ignore these crunchies at mealtime, but as a coffee break treat, she laps them up.



She's not too photogenic, being all one dark color, and she refuses to smile for the camera. In fact, she stuck out her tongue at the very idea. Now Riley, his coffee break thing is to catch little cookies in his mouth. He has learned the command "back up" just so he can catch cookies from further away. He looks like he needs orthodontia in this shot, but if you look carefully you can see that he is just about to close on a little cheese heart.

[tryingsomethingnew]

that cappucino looks to die for! drool.......

[Chufi]

So, coffee.

Here's a cappucino he made for me.  Well, actually, he made it for you.

thanks.
That's just what I need as a midnight pick me up
very impressive coffeestation! It looks so professional!

Thanks for the shopping pictures. Pics of foodmarkets and shops are one of my favorite things in the blogs, it's so interesting to see how these things are differently organized in other parts of the world.

Hey, and cute pets too! this blog is getting better and better...

[Abra]

I was a skate wing virgin. I might wanna be one again. Assuming that you too have never cooked it, here's the graphic lowdown on why we don't much eat this creature. Not that it's in any way bad. It's just...weird to prepare, and very underwhelming to eat. If Wendy hadn't suggested the browned butter, I'm not sure it would have had any flavor at all. Here's what came home from the fish counter



The fish lady had told me that you have to peel the cartilage off after you pan fry it. I had no idea! I gave it a light dusting of seasoned flour, pan fried it in some browned butter, and voila. Half of the thing was the aforementioned cartilage. But it's kind of beautiful, no?



Here's what was left, plopped on a salad. I don't want to blame the poor skate, since there may be many better ways to prepare same, but I think this might be another one of those things that Only Comes Once a Year. Or even less often.



Perkiins is waiting to see whether any skate wing is coming his way. He's a very elderly cat, and patient, but he didn't get any.



Now off I go to work on tonight's dinner. But first, let me say that the Urfa Pepper, as well as Marash Pepper, come from Zingerman's. They're both really worth having. And yes, I've thought of a hint of vanilla with the Chard. Is there a seafood risotto with a vanilla bean in it?

The photos in this blog are taken without a flash, as opposed to my first blog, where I han't learned that trick. I do doctor them a little, "fixing" the contrast, sometimes the "levels" (whatever that really is) and occasionally also sharpening the focus. Perkins is still fuzzy though, even with doctoring. Mostly that's the indoor photos - the outdoors is beautiful all by itself, mainly I just crop and post.

I always love it when people post pictures of their markets, and their towns. My first blog was really tightly focused on the stove and the plate, so this time I wanted to open my world up a bit more for you. It's so nice to have you all here. Let's go play in the kitchen!

[Toliver]

Regarding the skate, here was a previous discussion on the beast:
"What do you think of skate?, Love it or hate it?"
I'd heard some not-so-reputable fish mongers will cut circular pieces from it and try to pass it off as scallops. So I'm thinking you could use whatever scallops recipes you have on the skate.

And I love your photos! What camera are you using?

[Dianne]

I am one of those who "lurks" and reads, but I must say here how much I enjoy veryone's blog. This one, however, is exceptioal. The photography is amazing and that food store had me drooling. I thought I had good shopping!!! Can't wait for the rest.

Dianne Ross.

[Daddy-A]

This is the sign behind my husband's espresso bar.  He's a certifiable coffee nut.  I actually think he likes the machine as much as he likes the coffee.



He also has a ton of coffee gear - it sure makes it easy to find gifts for him.



Here's a cappucino he made for me.  Well, actually, he made it for you.

We're not worthy! We're not worthy!

Now I know why I like the coffee culture so much ... all those shiney chrome things. It's the next best thing to automotive chrome!

A.

[Abra]

Eek, Klary, are you still up? Why oh why does Holland have to be 9 hours ahead of me? Should that beef be covered? I have the lid ajar right now, awaiting inspiration. And I've done a non-standard thing with the speculaas too. I hope the Netherlands Cooking Goddess is watching over me! Now to tackle the French stuff. Shouldn't I have started this about 2 hours earlier?

[MT-Tarragon]

I noticed that the apple orchard had a lot of fruit on the ground.  Do you happen to know whether the orchard had been picked and the stuff on the ground were the culls?  Or did that orchard just start dropping its load before the pickers got there?  (Don't you love these questions, fired away about something you were just happened to see on the way?  )

Apples on the ground are typically both culls and apples that have fallen off of the tree of their own accord. Also, earlier in the season the trees are thinned and a lot of small apples are removed and tossed on the ground. These apples are not sold for cider because it costs more to pick up the apples than the grower would get paid for the apples. The pay for cider apples is dismal.

[Placebo]

I've had fantastically tender and delicious skate wing at Crave. I was going to take a stab at Bourdaine's skate wing grenobloise but I got too much and had a lot of difficulty getting the cartilege ogff. It's the only food that's really actively weirded me out to work with. It felt alien in a way I'd never experienced. I will try again though.

[ludja]

When Riley gets to 'pick' which food he likes at the store does he always pick the same kind? (I also wonder what type of breed or mix he is; he's beautiful!)

Hope you're having a wonderful time at your dinner!