The Seattle Times: All You Can Eat

Grilled quail: show some backbone and prep it yourself

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:06:29 PDT

In the latest installment of my Taste column, I shared my simple recipe for grilled quail, which you may have eaten in a restaurant but never considered making at home. Big mistake! I grill quail year-round. It's great dinner-party fare and if you're concerned that guests won't go for it (I promise, they will), do as I often do and serve the wee ones as part of a mixed grill (six quail, six lamb chops, six prawns -- you get my drift, right?).

As I mentioned in the column, you can go the easy route and buy quail that's already been prepped, or buy it frozen (for about $10 a six-pack) at an Asian supermarket and prep it yourself. Now, before you balk at the thought of handling a bitty bird (or a dozen), I assure you: there's nothing to it, especially if you've got a good pair of kitchen shears. If you don't, run don't walk and buy yourself a pair. Just remember, once you've got them in hand, listen to your mother: Don't run with scissors! And do listen to me, as I show you the ropes.

SOMM: Film follows would-be master sommeliers

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 08:15:58 PDT

Allow me to raise a glass to SOMM, a new documentary in which four guys vie for a spot on the court. I’m not talking Wimbledon here; I mean The Court of Master Sommeliers.

The quest to become a Master Sommelier, the highest distinction a professional in the fine wine and beverage industry can attain, requires the same commitment, perseverance and years of training as any professional sport. The final test requires candidates to prove their skills in Theory, Service and Tasting. It's the Ironman Triathlon of sommeliers. Very few succeed.

“The whole thing is really intense,” acknowledges Thomas Price, head sommelier at The Metropolitan Grill. “The athletic analogies get made constantly. But that’s the only thing I can compare it to. You put so much into it and you know going in that in all likelihood you may not pass.”

Price became a Master Sommelier in 2012, one of six in Washington. That's fewer than California, which has dozens, but more than New York (5) and Oregon (1). Of the 201 Master Sommeliers worldwide, 133 of them are in North America.

Filmmaker Jason Wise followed his subjects for two years, capturing the competitive all-night tastings with peers, the rigorous practice sessions with mentors, and the candid observations of the contenders, their wives and girlfriends.

Of the 50 who take the exam in the film, only six pass. I won’t reveal how the four stars fare, but you don’t have to be a wine geek to get caught up in the suspense and emotion as they pursue their goal.

It took Price just under nine years to advance through the four levels leading to the three-part final exam. He considers it the culmination of his whole career, he said in an interview last weekend on KIRO FM’s “Let’s Eat.” “The process is character building. It takes a lot of personal fortitude. Obviously the wine knowledge is an enormous component, but you really learn a lot about yourself on the journey.”

Though Price isn’t in the film, he knows the four somms featured very well and thinks the director did a good job capturing the friendships that develop.

“We seem crazy. I watch that movie and say man, I need my head examined. But when you’re in it, it’s the camaraderie that you build, and the nature of the quest. I think Brian McClintic in the film said it best. When people tell you about something impossible, some people say ‘wow that’s impressive,’ and some people say ‘wow I want to do that.’ For whatever reason, that became my attitude toward this thing.”

SOMM is showing June 21-27 at the SIFF Film Center and will also be available June 21 on iTunes. Opening night screenings include a wine tasting at Ten Mercer. During the run the restaurant is offering a Blind Tasting Contest. Purchase a mystery wine selection for $13 and if you correctly identify the varietals, you'll win a $13 gift card.

Listen to the complete interview with Price on “Let’s Eat” here: http://mynorthwest.com/?nid=574&p=1065&n=Let'sEat

Landmark vegetarian restaurant Carmelita is closing

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:46:07 PDT

Carmelita Vegetarian Restaurant and Bar, one of the first restaurants in Seattle to elevate vegetarian food to "dining out" status, will close its doors Sept. 29.

Kathryn Neumann and Michael Hughes opened the gracious Phinney-Greenwood bistro in 1996, overseeing it with a particular knack for hiring high-quality chefs who went on to omnivorous excellence in their own ventures. John Sundstrom of Lark cooked at Carmelita, as did Ericka Burke of Volunteer Park Cafe and Dan Braun of Oliver's Twist. Jonathan Fusell, a longtime sous chef, now heads the kitchen.

During Burke's tenure, at a time when veggie burgers and pasta were the eating-out norms, Nancy Leson wrote that Carmelita's food was "capable of changing the way so many of us feel about meatless diets in general, and vegetarian restaurants in particular." On its tenth anniversary, the verdict was this: "Date-night right, family friendly, perfect for gatherings large or small and home to a dreamy little garden patio, it remains, a decade later, one of the city's better neighborhood bistros."

The closure is bittersweet for the owners as well as customers. The recession hit the restaurant hard, as did rising costs and a rising workload, Neumann said. Adding a bar in 2009 helped -- but not enough. Consultants recommended adding meat to the menu or raising prices. "That just seemed like such a wrong idea."

But why make the final decision now, just when fine vegetarian fare is becoming mainstream?

"Several people have said that to me," Neumann said. "When we opened so many years ago, Cafe Flora was really the only other vegetarian restaurant in town. Since then, so many have opened, and it's also become so mainstream for high-quality restaurants to have really good vegetarian choices -- like Maria Hines, her restaurants have awesome vegetarian and vegan choices. I think that actually is great for people that are vegetarians, but I also think in part it may be diluting our hardcore customer base."

Carmelita didn't seem the sort of restaurant someone else could take over. It's named for Michael's mother, after all, and Hughes and Neumann and their friends, who have fine arts backgrounds, created most of the artwork inside. (Neumann painted the mural.) Instead, they've sold the spot to local restaurateurs Chris Navarra, Chris Gerke, and Shannon Wilkinson, who they say will be as committed to the community as they have been, and are planning on a "neighborhood-friendly restaurant" that will not be vegetarian.

Neumann said that Hughes has been working as a photo editor at Nordstrom for the past few years, and she's looking forward to getting back to her own home studio. They want to spend more time with their 10-year-old son. Long-term, they're not sure about their plans, but for the short-term, they want to make the most of the restaurant's final summer, for long-term employees and customers as well as for themselves.

"I know it sounds really cliche, but the restaurant really has been like our family," Neumann said.

They'll post plans for celebration dinners and customer appreciation nights on their Facebook page, and gift certificates will be honored through the last day, Sept. 29. They're planning a self-published book of Carmelita cocktail recipes, among other ideas, with profits going to a severance fund for employees.

"It's going to be fun over the next couple of months. That was one of those things we really wanted to be able to do, not to just shutter our doors..." she said.

In the summertime weather, "our patio is so great, so glorious -- it's kind of perfect timing to say goodbye."

Surprise picks for the best fruits and vegetables

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:16:05 PDT

Jo Robinson’s revelations about food weren’t secrets, but they weren’t exactly common knowledge either: Purple carrots are more nutritious than orange ones. Tomatoes are better for you cooked than raw -- and blueberries are, too. Dandelions, “the plague of urban lawns,” have eight times more antioxidants in their leaves than spinach.

Robinson, a Vashon Island resident, shares hundreds of such practical tidbits in “Eating on the Wild Side,” her well-received and highly readable new book on selecting and preparing the healthiest foods possible. Arguing that agriculture – not just in recent years, but over human history – has stripped many modern plants of their nutrients, she’s distilled information from sources as varied as the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the 1935 California Avocado Association Yearbook, and a long-classified 1951 government report on the effects of an atomic bomb explosion on corn seeds.

Robinson, who previously founded the Eat Wild national guide to finding grass-fed meat and dairy products, grew up in Tacoma and “imprinted” on Puget Sound. At home, she now oversees “the most beautiful garden plot I’ve ever had” – planted, naturally, with many of the varieties of vegetables and fruits she’s found to be the best-tasting and the best for our bodies. (The book includes recommended varieties for gardeners and farmers-market shoppers, from the historic Ozette potato to new Wild Treasure thornless blackberry.) She will speak at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, June 17, at Town Hall (Cost: $5). Check out her high-profile New York Times piece summarizing her research over here. Here’s an edited, condensed version of our phone conversation from earlier in her tour:

Q: I think of you as the person behind Eat Wild, which is such a useful resource for animal-based foods. What got you started on fruits and vegetables?

A: "I've been researching this for 10 years, and I haven't been sharing it at all, because I wanted to come out all at once. It's a continuation of my (earlier) research. I had an interest in what we ate as hunter-gatherers...I stayed with (meat) 10 years, and meanwhile I was researching fruits and vegetables because I wanted to move on to other foods on the plate. I wanted to cover everything we eat and compare it to wild foods."

Q: A lot of this information seems surprising and new. What were you trying to research and how did you go about your research?

A: "I read over 6000 scientific journals. The reason the information in the book is new is, I got it all from the original sources, from the studies themselves. I was specifically looking for information that had not been brought out to the public that I thought was important and that we should be able to use right now. The main thing I found with our fruits and vegetables was that we have bred out (nutrients), especially the antioxidants -- not just in the last 50 or 100 years, but in the entire history of agriculture, which is 10,000 years. So when we compare wild plants to what's in the supermarket, the ones in the supermarket are dramatically lower in these antioxidants that are proving to be so protective for our health."

Q: It's been hard enough to encourage people to eat more fruits and vegetables, period. Do you worry that people will throw up their hands at the idea of selecting particular ones and particular varieties for better health; that they'll think they have to grow their own broccoli instead of going to the supermarket?

A: "I have information on all levels, (but) I have really geared it toward what you can find in the supermarket and the farmers markets...It's pretty simple. Like, tomatoes, pick the smallest tomatoes you see because the smaller the tomato, the more lycopene that's in it. There are very simple rules with lettuce. Leafy greens are the most nutritious and ones that are red tinged or brown tinged are best of all."

Q: How did you screen out bad or inconclusive studies?

A: "These were all from peer-reviewed scientific journals, so that hurdle was crossed... but I had my own criteria, which was, 'Is this something the public can use right now?' ..I found this study about garlic that said if you take garlic and slice it or dice it, press it, and then immediately put it in hot oil, you have destroyed its cancer-fighting ability. I thought, the public needs to know this. We've been told that garlic is great for our health, but we didn't know we had to press it, chop it, slice it, and then keep it away from heat for 10 minutes and then cook with it."

Q: Were there any big questions that you hoped to answer but couldn't?

A: "The research into the nutritional differences between varieties of the same fruits or vegetables is pretty spotty. It's just now being done. I would have liked to be able to give people many more specific varieties than I was able to -- I have hundreds in the book, but I keep searching for more data, and I am finding it. Weekly, I'll find something new and important."

Q: Are there any specific varieties you recommend for Northwest gardeners?

A: "For apple growers, I highly recommend an apple that people haven't heard about much, it's called the Liberty Apple...it's not that super-sweet, plain kind of apple that fills the supermarkets. It's sweet and tart, so it's extremely refreshing, and it's five times more nutritious than what's in the supermarket. But the really cool thing about it is, it's incredibly disease resistant. It doesn't get black spot and apple scab, which are what makes it so difficult to grow apples here."

Our crayfish are better than yours

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 08:16:04 PDT

Like a proud papa, we constantly boast about our seafood bounty (oysters, salmon, etc.) to out-of-towners.

But who here has ever bragged about our native crayfish? It’s not a legend. They’re out there, lurking under rocks and logs in Lake Washington and other local bodies of water.

They’re bigger and meatier than those found in the waters of Louisiana. And they taste better too, I think.

I’ve tasted both native crayfish and those harvested from Louisiana. I’ve even tasted native and the Louisiana crayfish when both were caught in the same lake. I think the native Signal crayfish taste sweeter, less pungent than the Louisiana crayfish or crawfish or whatever you want to call them.

Most crayfish sold in local gourmet supermarkets come from Louisiana. Those crayfish served in etouffée and other Cajun dishes found in your local restaurants? Sorry, those are harvested in Louisiana also.

But you’re in luck. It’s prime crayfish-catching season. Here’s my crayfish story from last summer when I hung out with Julian Olden, the state’ leading crayfish expert and a freshwater biologist at the University of Washington.

From our catch: The tail of the Louisiana crayfish was more like a pinkie, the native closer in size to my thumb.

Later that afternoon, I cooked them in a butter-garlic sauce with corn on the cob and andouille sausage. Still the best crayfish boil I’ve ever had.

Canal House book signing today at Peter Miller

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:46:06 PDT

For years, local bookseller Peter Miller had only an epistolary relationship with Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton, two women behind the beloved Canal House cookbook series.

"They had someone send their book to us four years ago and asked if we would carry [their books]," explained Miller, as he prepped lunch for the staff of the architecture firm Suyama Peterson Deguchi. "We carried it for years, and they started sending us notes that said, 'Merry Christmas,' and we started sending them notes that said, 'Merry Christmas.'"

As the friendship developed, the Canal House series steadily gained popularity all over the country. "It turns out they have an army of people who love what they do," said Miller.

The three met in person only last December when Hirsheimer and Hamilton came to town for an event. By that time, Miller himself was working on a cookbook, based around the lunches he makes for his staff. For the book, fittingly titled "Lunches at the Shop," Miller asked Hamilton and Hersheimer to help out with the visuals. So, in their Lambertiville, N.J., studio, the duo made and photographed all of the 40-odd recipes in the book, and in the course of it, really got a sense of Miller's approach.

"We felt like there was this kinship," said Hamilton. "We've been living with Peter Miller for weeks." After the project concluded, the three decided Hersheimer and Hamilton would make trip to Seattle, to see Miller's lunch skills in action, and do a signing of their James Beard Award-winning book, "Canal House Cooks Every Day" (which will be today from 3 to 6 p.m. at Peter Miller Books, 2326 Second Ave., Seattle).

Miller, who was busy prepping food for 12 people, not long ago moved from his location of 25 years, on First and Virginia, into the space at the front of the Suyama offices on Second and Battery. He had developed the habit of making lunch for his staff, but now with the architects at Suyama to feed, he faces a considerably less leisurely task.

"Normally, lunch at the shop is for three or four," he laughed. "I'm going to have to get out of it. I'm gonna need help!"