It’s springtime in Seattle and the land is engorged with possibility.  You don’t need to go farther than your own neighborhood to make a meal fit for royalty, let me show you.  I cook by feel rather than by rote more often than not, and it’s a good habit to be in if you want to focus on seasonality. Rather than go to the store armed with a nitpicking recipe and a fastidious commitment to detail, loosen up. Go with the flow.  Take a walk. That’s what I did, and two blocks from my house I ran across a patch of stinging nettle ripe for the taking.  There may have been a touch more planning involved as I was armed with gloves, shears and a bag for my bounty- all necessary for harvesting stinging nettle lest you desire prickly pain all day.  In fact if you’re not sure it’s stinging nettle there is one surefire way to check, though I don’t recommend it :)

I brought my nettle home and lightly steamed it to render it harmless, then plucked the leaves from the tougher stems.  Harvest younger, shorter nettle for best flavor and tenderness.  Once I had my nettles ready to go the rest of the meal fell into place readily.  I had a fresh fat duck sitting in the refrigerator waiting to be fabricated (broken down) and cooked sous vide, so I thought I’d make a pasta with the nettles and some kind of saucy meaty accompaniment with the duck. 

I fabricated the duck into four parts and seasoned each quarter with homemade salt, thyme, smoked garlic powder, bay leaves, and oregano.  I packed each quarter into food-safe bags and sous vided the legs and thighs for 15 hours at 180° and the breasts at the same temperature for five hours. Normally you can get by with cooking duck breast at 140°, but since I kept the bone-in I maintained a higher cooking temperature as I was looking for more of a fall-off-the-bone tenderness rather than a firm breast.  Funny, kind of the opposite as you’d want in a human, no? 

Initially I thought of making gnocchi with the nettles, but settled on its ricotta-based cousin called gnudi (which means nude in Italian and is short for gnocchi gnudi- aka gnocchi nude of the pasta itself).  Some folks refer to gnudi as malfatti, which means badly made, but I like gnudi better, plus I take time in forming each gnudo, so they’re not really as roughly made as some malfatti can be.  As I see it, a main difference between malfatti and gnudi (though this varies regionally and is hotly debated) is that malfatti can be made by simply dropping dollops of dough into boiling water (you can even plop them out using a pastry bag) whereas gnudi tends to be formed using spoons or hands.  I thought gnudi rather than gnocchi would bring out the flavor of the nettle as it wouldn’t be competing with potato. I thought correctly- who woulda known? 

Making gnudi is fun. That sentence wasn’t meant to sound sexual, I promise.  First you press out all the liquid from one tub of ricotta and the nettles, then whir them in a food processor with either two duck egg yolks or three chicken yolks.  Plop the goo into a mixing bowl and add salt, smoked garlic powder if you wish, and flour as needed to form a light dough.  A cup and a half of flour should more or less suffice.  (tip- the amount of flour needed in most recipes will vary with your humidity and altitude. Learn to adjust by feel rather than rely on a specific number). 

To form the gnudi roll a teaspoon of dough between your palms into a little oval. Place on a parchment-lined sheetpan and repeat with remaining dough. Cover while waiting for the water to boil and finishing the duck and sauce.  Cook gnudi as you would gnocchi- by dropping into salted boiling water and removing with a slotted spoon once they float to the top.  Keep in warming oven while boiling the remainder. 

Rhubarb became the base for the duck sauce because it is seasonal and growing like mad all around Seattle.  I chopped it into small pieces and reduced it in moscato wine, chicken stock and the juice of one orange. After ten minutes I strained it, tossing the rhubarb chunks.  I poured some duck fat and jus from one of the duck pouches into the saucepan and lightly sautéed a spring onion in it. Then I added the rhubarb sauce and reduced a bit further, adjusting seasoning as needed.  To finish the dish, I crisped up the skin on the duck by deep-frying them for two minutes. Then I plated the gnocchi, a quarter of duck, and drizzled rhubarb reduction over both. 

This dining experience is an example of how relatively simple it is to incorporate local, seasonal elements into cuisine.  Rhubarb and nettles were foraged and duck eggs come from a local farm as does the duck itself.  Herbs all came from my garden, salt I made from Washington waters, garlic powder was made and smoked at home.  While I buy my ricotta from DeLaurenti in Pike Place Market and they make it themselves, I easily could have made it too. It’s one of the quickest cheeses to make; in fact it’s a byproduct of many other cheeses.   I hope this post inspires you to take a walk and cook off the beaten path.  Your diners will thank you for it.

When the cat’s away the mouse will play. In this case I’m the mouse, playing up a seafood storm while my non-fish-friendly husband’s away on business in Japan.  Salmon and scallops and sea bass, oh my!  The sea scallops trembled from behind the protective glass at the Uwajimaya fish counter as I set my sights on their plump firmness.  I got them in my mangy clutches and licked the edge of the butcher paper in anticipation. Sounds crazy, but I haven’t eaten hide nor hair of a scallop in years because Jonas trembles at their sight, therefore I feel I deserved my moment of insanity. 

The plantains were looking spectacular from their perch in the produce section, so I picked up a few wondering what I would do to incorporate scallops and plantains.  It occurred to me that plantains can be shaved into bacon-like pieces, and people often wrap scallops in bacon, so why not plantains?  A quick google search revealed that I’m not the only one to come up with this (damn!) so I set out to make a memorable meal for Bentley Danger, myself, and B’s two gay uncles Robert and Patrick (hereto forth shortened to guncles).

I shaved the plantains on my crap mandolin (I’m angling for a replacement but may have to shave off a knuckle to get it) and they came out in nice bacon-like strips.  I rinsed and dried the scallops and wrapped each one in a plantain. At this point I made the mistake of thinking that because the plantains stuck fine to the side of the scallop I did not need to affix them with toothpicks.  Next time I will pin them, since when cooking the plantains tend to unfurl from the scallop.  The frying is fairly straightforward, instead of just doing top and bottom I fried for 45 seconds a side on four sides. It worked great and the plantains were nicely caramelized just like the scallops. 

I served the scallops on a bed of pea sprouts tossed in tangelo juice.  I also made a little Thai coconut broth to drizzle over, in which I used ramps. If you live somewhere where ramps are in season right now go out and buy some, they really add a subtle yet superb flavor punch to just about everything. I’ve been subbing them in place of onions and/or garlic lately to excellent effect.  In the interest of full disclosure I must admit that I made this dish two nights in a row, I enjoyed it so much.  The second night I picked up the scallops from Mutual Fish which is very near my house. I normally love Mutual Fish for their freshness and vast selection, but this time I have to admit that Uwajimaya’s scallops clearly beat those of Mutual Fish for freshness. Shocking!

In honor of a recent visit from a distinguished out-of-town guest, aka my dad, I decided to prepare a veritable locavore’s delight to give him a little taste of what the Seattle surroundings have to offer.  If you’ve read my blog before, surely you know that I can’t resist an esoteric egg.  So tell me then, with what willpower was I supposed to refrain from purchasing Banty hen eggs when they practically begged me to take them home? That’s right, I was meant to buy them; and the amazing green-hued eggs from the Araucana hen that were sitting right next to them, too. I’m dreaming up something funky to do with those too, but for the time being please note the full splendor and beauty of the beholden Banty egg.

The size is quite nice, actually, smaller than a typical chicken egg, but larger than a quail egg.  I figured dolloping two atop each portion of pasta would just about do it, though two normal chicken eggs would have been too much. One duck egg might have done the trick, but damn, these Banty eggs are just so fresh and good I’m happy I used them.  I put the eggs in shell in a sous vide bath for one hour at 144° and they came out with the white just hardened enough to keep the yolk from spilling all over everything, but just runny enough to make a perfect custardy-carbonara-esque sauce for the handcut tagliatelle. 

On to the next ingredient du jour: fiddlehead ferns.  If I was a true locavore worth my SEA id I would have foraged these babies myself; in fact Jonas and I headed out to the yard where we typically have them growing this time of year, but sadly they were too mature. 

Spring came early in the Pacific Northwest, though it seems to be persisting indefinitely.  What that translates to in terms of flora and fauna is that things are blooming and hatching ahead of schedule.  Someone somewhere found some fiddleheads, though, as I was able to source them at the Pike Place Market along with some meaty morels.  I threw in some asparagus tips since I plan to make a puree of the stalks soon, and called it a good blend to top my tagliatelle. 

While I was rolling out the pasta dough I boiled the fiddleheads and asparagus for five minutes, then shocked in cold water to stop the cooking.  Once the pasta was rolled, cut, rested and ready, I boiled the noodles. Meanwhile I sautéed some green garlic in a nonstick frying pan and added the asparagus and fiddleheads.  I added ¼ c white wine and tossed in halved morels toward the end.  I seasoned simply with salt and pepper, preferring to let the flavors of the ingredients take the center stage to spices.  To assemble the dish I tossed the noodles into the morel mixture, plated it with a generous shaving of Parmigiano Reggiano, and topped each portion with two banty eggs that I gently coaxed out of their shells so as not to break the white.  Both native and non-native Seattleites will lust after the creamy woodsy nutty flavors in this dish. The added bonus: if eggs aren’t on the taboo list it’s totally vegetarian too.

Last night’s dinner was really a mouthful. So many different elements played off eachother to compose each tasty bite it was hard to keep from shoving it all in at warp speed.  First let me talk about the mmmlicious Meyer lemons. The blogosphere is Meyer lemon-mad right now; everyone and their Nana is using them in everything from curds to pannacotta, limoncello to lemonade.  It’s easy to understand why, the little hybrid sweet tart buggers couldn’t be more delicious right now at this moment AKA go out and buy some Meyer lemons if you haven’t already.  I have purchased them to excess, so last night’s dinner was to be about combining elements in which a Meyer lemon cream sauce would work.  Making it was straightforward enough- sautee some shallots, oregano and zest in butter, add and reduce white wine, bring it on home with the addition of heavy cream, and adjust seasonings with lotsa Meyer lemon juice and a little salt and pepper.  Make the sauce last, it only takes ten minutes to come together. 

I set out for the market yesterday morning intending to buy chickens as I’m about outta chicken stock and need to make more.  I came home with game hens, though, because the little buggers looked up at me all cute-like and said “Buy me, Linda, we’ve never been frozen, ran free when we were alive and come from a farm not 20 minutes from here. Let us meet our fate in your tasty kitchen, pretty please?” They had me at hello, plus dinner was only for four, so why not salt-encrust some game hens?  Then I could use their little carcasses to make a rich stock, plus it’s kind of fun to serve guests an individual bird all to themselves. 

I had some salt that needed using too, we made quite a big batch of it last time we went out seawater collecting and we’re planning a new collection mission soon, so I used some homemade sea salt to form the base of the game hen crust.  I like to do salt crusts because I love salt, but also because believe it or not, the salt crust keeps the meat inside so nice and tender it just falls off the carcass like melted butter.  Making a salt crust is easy, I’ll give you the ratio for one game hen, obviously for four, or a chicken, you’ll want to increase accordingly.  Mix four beaten egg whites with one pound of salt and 1.5c flour.  Add water until a medium-tacky dough is formed.  (You can add herbs too- they infuse flavor. I used oregano since it’s taking over my garden right now and is so fresh)

To encrust the bird, first stuff ‘em and truss ‘em.  I stuff’ em with half a lemon, half a shallot and a bunch of oregano.   Truss so that no pointy wings or legs puncture your crust.  Lay a base of crust on a jellyroll pan lined with parchment. Be sure the base is slightly larger than the bird, then set the bird on the crust.  Pack the remaining dough all around the bird, taking care not to leave any holes where moisture can escape.  Immediately put the bird into a 400° oven and cook for 15 minutes for the crust to solidify, then reduce heat to 350° and bake until an internal thermometer probe reads 160°.  Remove the bird from the oven, but do not remove crust- bird will continue to cook for another half hour or so since the crust acts as an oven.  When you are ready to serve, either remove the crust yourself or let the guest do it himself at the table for a more dramatic presentation. 

I knew that my little game hens would do well with a lemon sauce, so I wanted a starch that could handle it as well since encrusting the bird means you get no gravy as the crust soaks up the cooking jus.  My mind often leans toward gnocchi; it’s one of nature’s perfect foods.  Because the Meyer lemons have a touch of sweetness, however, I wanted to soften the starchiness of typical potato gnocchi.  Parsnips proved the perfect addition since they are a touch sweet themselves.  I used a ratio of 1/3 parsnips to 2/3 potato and it was just right. I’m not sure I’ll make plane ol’ potato gnocchi again anytime soon- try it with parsnip and you’ll see why.   I cooked my potatoes and parsnips sous vide before milling them with my potato ricer. Sous vide is perfect for gnocchi as boiling potatoes leaves too much residual water and makes for a gloppy texture, whereas sous vide doesn’t add any water, but nor does it take any away like baking can, often resulting in overly dry gnocchi.  If I didn’t have a Sous Vide Supreme I would cook the potatoes and parsnips by first boiling, then baking them before ricing. 

After the potatoes are milled into even texture, I add a touch of salt, some microplaned Parmigiano Reggiano, and I start adding flour.  The general ratio of flour to potato matter is 1/3-2/3, but I do this by feel.  You know you have enough flour when the dough doesn’t stick to your hands any longer and you can break off clumps and roll it into tubes without it leaving goo all over the counter.  Once you roll the tubes ¾” thick, cut them into ¾” pieces. At this point you can brand them with the tines of a fork if you are using a thin sauce that you want to adhere to the noodle better, but in the case of my cream sauce I wasn’t worried, so I didn’t brand them since I think they look prettier unadorned.  Cook them in gently boiling salted water until they float to the top, then remove them with a slotted spoon and keep them in a pan in a warming oven with a little butter to prevent them from sticking to one another.  You can start the lemon cream sauce when you’re halfway through cooking the gnocchi and your timing should be right.  Serve both the game hens and the gnocchi with the cream sauce drizzled over the top.

Disclaimer: this post will mention sous vide cooking, I know, I know, again.  It will have value for anyone, though, since good garlic powder is something all of us should have in our kitchen arsenal.

The lovely pulverized goodness that inspired this post came to be as a result of mucking and fuddling about with my newish favorite kitchen gadget- the Sous Vide Supreme.  Now that it’s been out for a few months there are plenty of converts and just as many naysayers on their respective bandwagons. All I can say is that it has revolutionized the way I cook, but no more than, say, my food processor or stand mixer. Funny how you don’t hear a bunch of divisive derision on either of those culinary staples. It’s not like by adding in the sous vide machine someone’s taking away your frying pan, blow torch, or dutch oven, it’s just another notch on the belt, people.  Ok, enough of my rant.  On to the garlic powder.

One thing I’ve learned from sous vide that I am now considering with various other cooking methods as well is that different foods are ideally cooked at different temperatures.  You would certainly cook a steak in the sous vide bath at 134°, though if you throw in some onions or garlic to give it extra flavor they won’t cook properly at such a low temperature.  In order to work around this quandary, you have to come up with a way to get the flavor you want without expecting the sous vide bath to do the cooking.  Same goes for lots of other flavor-enhancing ingredients in the sous vide such as wines, vinegars, ginger, some herbs, et cetera.  Often a chef will pre-cook an ingredient, or merely add it via sauce after the meat is done cooking on its own in the sous vide bath.  I really wanted to experiment with post and pre flavor additions in sous vide, however, to see if the slow and low approach lent any depth or detracted in some way.  This is how I came up with the idea of making garlic powder (aka pre-cooked garlic) to add at will to my sous vide concoctions.  I found a great post on the matter on Pablo Escolar’s blog and I decided to shake things up a bit by adding smoke. 

I was smoking some bacon and artichokes that day anyway, (bacon, always a success, artichokes, not so much) so I figured no harm done by throwing the garlic in the smoker and cooking it that way.  After two hours at 200° in the Weber Smoky Mountain, my garlic had taken on a burnt sienna hue and smelled like savory ambrosia.  I also really liked how I could truthfully state I was smoking cloves, but without the nasty smell and lung-hacking most clove-smoking high-schoolers experience.  Talk about umami- the fifth taste was all up in this piece that day.  That’s when the waiting game started.  Regardless whether you decide to make garlic powder by smoking or roasting the garlic first, unless you own a dehydrator you then need to air dry your garlic to the point that you can successfully pulverize it and it turns to powder, not paste.  I air dried my garlic for three weeks before I ground it in the mortar and pestle followed by the blender for good measure.  I didn’t mind much, though, because whenever I wanted to use some I just spirited away a clove or two from amongst the drying bulbs. 

I’ve been experimenting with the finished product for a week now and I couldn’t be happier with the result. The only thing I wish I had done differently is make more of it.  You might heed that if you try it.  For the trouble you go to, you may as well yield a greater quantity than half a cup, which is what I got from five heads of garlic.  In retrospect I probably would do twenty at a time- that way you would only need to repeat the process maybe twice a year.  It is absolutely perfect sealed into the sous vide bag with a grass-fed filet, a touch of fine salt and nothing more.  I considered pre-mixing some salt with the powder, but I kind of like to individually administer both because different foods require different amounts of both garlic and salt.  The smoke really lends a kick to the flavor, by the way.  Any notions I had of it softening the taste of the garlic are gone.  Instead, it intensifies it, much like smoke intensifies pork belly when making bacon whereas pancetta (which is the same thing sans smoke) has a more subtle flavor.

The VERY BEST THING about sushi in soCal is crispy rice topped with spicy tuna.  This is a non-debatable definitive fact.  I don’t know who originally invented this divinely-inspired dish, but it can be found at sushi-spots-in-the-know from Santa Monica to San Bernardino (ok, maybe not San Bernardino), Costa Mesa to Culver City.  If you’re in LA check it out at Katsuya or paparazzi-lovin’ Koi, but if you find yourself in Seattle, come over to my house. IT’S THE ONLY PLACE YOU’LL FIND IT IN THE 206 OR THE 425, YO! That last sentence isn’t actually verified all around town, but I’m pretty sure I make it the best since I have completed an apprenticeship as a ninja and that qualifies me to do most anything better than most anyone. 

An evil new friend of mine who shall remain nameless (Whitney, you know who you are) turned me on to these bundles of om nom fairly recently. I’m pretty sure she had no idea how single-minded and driven I get when I fall head-over-heartbeat in love with something, so don’t blame her for this crazed post, I take full responsibility.  Suffice it to say that for the last two weeks my kitchen has been a tossed-up warzone splattered in sashimi, soy, and various sauces whilst I tried to come up with just the right proportions to make this mellifluous mouthful chez Salty Seattle.  Leave it to me to upend one of the healthiest cuisines on the planet and slut it all up with gallons of grease and buckets of butter, by the way.  How awesome am I?

Seriously though, if you want a new obsession make these, but if you’re thinking about bikini season rapidly approaching you may want to steer clear.  They are in my top 10 greatest food discoveries of all time, and for that I am well and truly happy.  Enough of my blathering on, here is the recipe I’ve honed and cultivated- do with it what you will. 

Crispy Rice with Spicy Tuna

serves 6 as an appetizer

Tuna

• 1 lb Ahi tuna minced
• 3 tbsp Tobiko (roe)
• sesame oil to taste
• Sriracha to taste
• 2 scallions or ramps chopped ultrafine
• 1/4 c Kewpie Japanese Mayonnaise (don’t substitute, the rice vinegar in it gives a distinct flavor)

Crispy Rice

• 2 tbsp canola oil
• 4 tbsb butter
• 1 tsp tamari
• 3 cups cooked sushi rice (you can make from scratch or purchase cooked sushi rice at most Asian grocers)

For the tuna:

In a medium bowl, mix all tuna ingredients together. Cover and reserve in refrigerator.  You can make this up to four hours in advance, and two is ideal so that the flavors marry. 

For the rice:

I use a common sushi rice form just like the one pictured here called a spam sushi mold to pack my rice tight and get it to form perfect rectangles.  You could also form it by rolling it tightly in a sushi mat or even just cling wrap. The idea is to pack the rice as tightly as possible, cut it into rectangles about 2″x1.5″ and fry it in the butter, oil and tamari. The tighter the rice is packed the less rice crumbling you’ll experience.  If you have a non-stick sushi knife to cut through your rice, your bundles will stay together even better with minimal sticking.  Another idea would be to pack the rice into ice cube trays if you have nothing else on hand. 

To fry, use a non-stick skillet and heat a bit of butter, touch of oil and tad of tamari until hot. Fry rice pieces a few at a time on both sides to avoid overcrowding. I lid mine so that popping rice kernels don’t jump out all over the kitchen.  Once they are golden on both sides, they are ready for the tuna topping. 

Place a teaspoon-sized dollop of tuna on top of the rice.  Garnish with a few extra tobiko eggs for extra color. Alternatively you can garnish with a thinly sliced pepper, but I find the Sriracha gives these babies plenty of kick.