little ms foodie

Playing in the Pizza cook off last night, we used Alton Brown's crust recipe. The first pizza was onion confit, mozzarela and basil on tomato sauce. Here's a shot before going into the oven The second was EVOO, fontina cheese, asparagus and parm. Then when it came out of the oven we drizzled some truffle oil and draped prosciutto over it.

My husband made the dough using Alton Brown's recipe- in the past we have tried dough recipes from The Best, Food & Wine and James McNair. This one had great taste but was much to 'thick' for us. It used bread flour. Here are our toppings for our 2 pies: The first pizza has tomato sauce (we chop the tomatoes and then cook them in a bit of EVOO with garlic, pureed for me), onion confit leftover from Bouchon cookbook cooking, mozzarella and basil (some cooked with, some on after). Here it is ready to go into the oven. It took about 6 minutes (we cranked the oven to 600F) Here is the second pizza in the oven on our stone. Generally we leave the pizza stone in the oven on the bottom on the element to help our old oven with heating. This pizza has EVOO, fontina cheese, asparagus, parm. Then we sprinkled it with truffle oil and draped prosciutto on it when it came out. Both pizzas tasted so good! We love making pizza but are still searching for our perfect dough. And we also need lots of practice at shaping/stretching the dough.

Crow is fantastic! Next door is a good bar- The Great Nabob. Also there is a place on Mercer called 10 Mercer (also the address) that makes great drinks and has nice food. Also on lower queen anne is the Sitting Room, great french bar with panini. Pesos has a 'hangover breakfast' that is pretty good and 'Downfall' ('Der Untergang') is playing at the old theater, The Uptown also on lower QA.

Maybe they'll pick goeduck!

White beans, really good canned tuna (in EVOO), red onion, capers, tossed in vineagrette from said tuna on a bed of rocket. YUM!

You definately want to get out of Seattle for a few days into wine country if you can. http://www.washingtonwine.org/ but if you just want to stay in Seattle and do a day or 2 in woodinville you might want to contact a few of the ones not open to the public and see if you can get a tasting set up. http://www.woodinvillewinecountry.com/wwc.php

I use Diamond Kosher for just about everything. Then I also have Mortons iodized for pasta water, baline large sea salt, fluer de sel and a citrus salt from Italy for finishing dishes.

Our box came yesterday. We had a head of leaf lettuce, 2 cucumbers, a bag of fava beans, 2 grapefruit, 4 bananas, 2 pears, 4 heads of garlic, a box of CA strawberries, carrots. I'm missing a few but I can't recall! This has totally changed our eating and cooking. We have a great time incorporating the weeks produce and of course there is always something new.

We went mid day mid week last July and there was no line at all. We put our name in for lunch and since there was a wait we went into the musuem for a while and then came back and ate. The museum is fantastic! inside and out. It is gorgeous!

hear hear!!!! I'm with you Rocky! Dressing up doesn't have to be expensive either as MsRamsey pointed out. The idea is that it is a special situation and it calls for 'your sunday best'. The one thing I hate about Seattle is the lack of places where people actually get dressed up to go to.

Sausage and onion strata with green salad question for you all, what is the difference between a strata and a savory bread pudding??

I made Thomas Keller's onion confit (and garlic confit) out of Bouchon last week. He doesn't go for the dark color, calls for it to be in a saucepan over low for a few hours with nice aromatics. And you use a parchment lid. this was turned into quiche lorraine

This awesome info guys! Exactly what I was looking for!! Do you think Texas de Brazil is ok to go by myself? It sounds fun!

oh that makes sense! thanks~ I guess I'll do some research on Dux so I know if it is casual, fancy and what they serve. anyone else? I just found out I'm staying at the ole so glamourous Quality Inn at 9000 International Drive.

Wow, We LOVE LOVE LOVE our ACSS. Why are you doubting?? We use it for everything except eggs. We use Barkeepers Friend to clean it and it comes out super shiny. We don't generally dishwasher them, mainly because they don't fit.

hubby made Alton Brown's fish and chips. It was fantastic! I doctored up the Bouchon left over aioli into tarter sauce. Served with Alaskan Amber beers. yum!

Went to Via Trib for the second time last week. I'm still in love with this place! It was warm out and they had the big garage door rolled up, so nice to have it open to the street. They also have a sign now in tile above the door. We waited 15 mins for a table for 3. Had well made martini's while we waited. Started with the Salumi plate, excellent as it should be. Both our waitress and busboy were exceptionally nice, polite and answered lots of questions from us. We each ordered a pizza- one Via Trib, one proscuitto and one lasagne. All were delish but I liked the smokey flavor of ricotta on the Via Trib best. We shared 2 dessets, the chocolate gelato with espresso and the ricotta tart with citrus. YUM! I really don't know what all the fuss is about the plates and knives! We haven't had any problems cutting our pizza. How is this pretentious??? anyway I guess I just don't have problems using utensils I can't wait to go back again!!!

Thanks Elie, I have read thru the recipe....I'll definately think of giving this a try.

Elie, Tell me about pig trotters, what is the taste/texture like. It's probably one of only a very few things that I don't feel inclined to try. I'm confused by them! What kind of icecream maker do you have. We are thinking of getting one. The tartine was excellent and we both really liked the roumelade. I'll have some as a side salad tonight and am looking for a way to turn some of the garlic aioli into tarter sauce!

Thanks Susan, I'm not staying at the Peabody but if I go to Dux what have you heard about it? I'm not sure I understand something you said...."You will be close to both Charley's Steak House and Vito's Chop House. It's awful... I can't remember which of those two it was that we ate, but both have good reputations, as steak houses go. " What is awful?? I'll do some more reading too!

mmmm, that leek frittata looks great!! and the lomo is from Salumi?? cool for you, Dino makes the best we all think! started with a piedmont goat cheese on crostin, fig jam on crostini, bayonne ham and Lillete blancs. then we had eggplant parmesean with capellini and a green salad. we both thought we didn't like eggplant but we got a white one in our produce delivery so we tried it. YUM!!! fantastic!

Last day of Bouchon cooking for a while. We had the Pork tartine with celeric roumelade for lunch. This was such a great balance of flavors. Making the aioli was great and luckily we had garlic confit on hand!

Merci Chef!! One of our favorite restaurants in Paris does food from the Jura region. The chicken in vin jaune is my favorite dish, so rich and velvet like. Yum!! I have tried to recreate it many times here in seattle but can not locate the vin jaune.

The PNW had a HUGE BBQ feast yesterday and I took home some Italian Casatiello de Salumi which vengroff made (I think it's being done on the bakery forum). Brushed it with EVOO, grilled in, fried egg on top and duck bacon alongside. Sorry for the blurry picture but it was good!

more Bouchon cooking.... pate campagne with Lillet blanc to start. Then raclette potatoes with Bayonne ham. Saffron and mustard mussels. Served with a white cote du rhone.