Every great journey should be a metamorphosis, and I can think of nothing more life-defining from the canons of literature than Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. In deciding to embody Alice for this, the sixth challenge for Project Food Blog, I was able to approach food from a whimsical perspective, but by the end of the challenge whimsy gave way to growth and in fact I find myself renewed for having seen it through. If you enjoy this journey, why not vote for it?

To Alice, eating and drinking is not about sustenance; rather it’s to evoke transformation. This is intrinsically linked with my own approach to food. Yes, I love to eat, but I especially like it when the food that passes my lips inspires mental and emotional reactions that lead to enveloping-contentment far beyond the physical. It’s like umami in the sense that you cannot put your finger on it but when it happens, it makes the bite that much richer, and yes, it can even change your life.

Alice eats a teacup

Ludwig Bemelmans said, “The true gourmet, like the true artist, is one of the unhappiest creatures existent. His trouble comes from so seldom finding what he constantly seeks: perfection.” I’m no true gourmet, but I do strive for Bemelman’s ideal. A handful of times throughout my years, I’ve taken a bite that has brought me to tears (and no, I am not talking about eating magic mushrooms here).

through the Looking-Glass House

Maybe that makes me a food nerd of the highest order, but one of my major life goals in writing this blog is to share that singular passion for perfect food with the world.  And to have a brillig-ly jabberwocky time while doing it, so let’s party, tea-party people.  Wonderland, here we come, through the Looking-Glass House.

Because a major tenet of the challenge was to fit the food into a cooler provided to us by Project Food Blog and Buick Lacrosse (bedazzled a la Mad Hatter), portability drove my selections. I started the journey the way Alice did, with a “drink me” bottle of magic potion. Alice said, “It had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavor of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast.” I thought about how to recreate it and I remembered Heston Blumenthal did an Alice-themed menu for The Fat Duck a few years ago.

from infusion to fruition

Sure enough, he made the potion using the method of infusion seen here. I started with all six of those foods and infused them into milk for 12 hours. Then I strained out the solids and thickened the layers with iota carageenan (1% by weight) so they would hold without bleeding into one another and blurring the individual flavor profiles.  I carefully layered them into bottles (with the help of my two co-conspirators, Emme and Andrea). While this drink may sound strange, it was pleasantly-staggering for the senses to distinctly sequentially identify all those flavors. It certainly made me think, even if it didn’t literally make me shrink.

I chose to miniaturize teacups, and rather than fill them with tea which might have been messy, I made blueberry foam “tea” instead. Taking a page from the Mad Hatter’s playbook, I constructed edible teacups from white chocolate using plastic hemisphere molds.

The only really difficult part of this dish is tempering the chocolate. The rest of it involves pouring chocolate into the molds, suspending them upside down until they solidify then popping out the cups. The handles are chocolate piped onto parchment and hardened, and the saucers are easily formed using round cutters. White chocolate “glue” holds everything together.

My favorite creation of the day was a riff I did on incorporating the Royal Hearts Family into the feast. I made a Royal Flush hand of cards by “tuile-ifying” dehydrated coconut milk. I stenciled out card shapes and sifted the coconut milk (along with isomalt, glucose and fondant sugar) inside the stencils.

Then I heated them at a very low temperature in the oven until they had congealed to paper-like consistency. I stenciled the heart shapes much the same way except I used paprika tuile powder instead. The added bonus- I discovered an idyllic flavor-pairing in the process: coconut and paprika. It’s worth a lick or ten.

Once again obfuscating the line between food and object, I created the Mad Hatter’s pocketwatch from an oversized raviolo in beurre noisette (since they butter the watch in the book). I filled the raviolo with a thin layer of Dungeness crab, and painted the backwards numbers on the “face” using squid ink. A little edible gold finished the look.

For the main course I deviated slightly from Alice. I thought paying homage to one of the most lauded restaurants of bygone days, The Quilted Giraffe, was related enough by sheer decadence plus I traveled back in cultural time for the dish’s inspiration. Charlie Trotter said of the Giraffe, “It was not just the food, it was the whole experience,” and I think that embodies Alice to a tee (yes, that was a really bad pun), which is why these crepes made the cut.

Barry Wine, infamous owner of The Quilted Giraffe (and this talented blogger’s father) used to serve a crepe formed into a beggar’s purse filled with caviar and crème fraiche, tied with a chive. I chose to roll the crepes instead so they’d look like little scrolls, and I am certain the golden (whitefish) caviar I used was not as decadent as the beluga from the days of old, but they were blissed-out bites of easily-portable culinary alchemy gone great.

Our blogs exist to record momentous occasions in the kitchen and elsewhere. We share our culinary creations and in the process little bits of our souls make their way to the page as well. Project Food Blog has forced me to go deeper inside to eek out posts worthy of your esteemed eyes, and for that I am grateful.

Much has been said about the project, competitive blogging in general, popularity contests, et cetera. The fact remains that regardless where you stand on these divisive issues as a blogger or reader of blogs, if you decided to take part in this contest and focused on the challenges with zeal, you couldn’t have helped but learned something in the process- made a transformation, just like Alice. Yes, I’ve *lost* my Saturdays (and most of the week, to be quite honest) but I’ve gained focus, an outlet for my madness where people seem to appreciate it, and a few new life experiences that I won’t soon forget. I deeply appreciate your votes in getting me this far, and I hope you’ll help me to continue the journey by voting again RIGHT HERE or using the Project Food Blog widget on the right side of the Salty Seattle homepage.

I get to wake up to this. La vita bella.

*I’ve got random bits to share with my precioussssesss today so I’ve decided to break it down into three categories: local, national and international. I won’t be a bit offended if you simply scroll to the section that applies to you, since if you don’t live in the state of Washington, for instance, The Taste of Tulalip likely won’t mean much to you. BUT BEFORE YOU SCROLL, I would love it if you would consider casting a vote for me in round 5 of the Project Food Blog contest. The competition is getting stiff- we’re down to 72 bloggers from over a thousand who entered, so at this stage of the game your vote would mean the solar system times infinity to me. You can vote here and you can read my entry here if you haven’t already.

Local: The Taste of Tulalip

a standout from the upcoming Taste of Tulalip

Last week I had the opportunity to attend a media preview of the annual Western Washington event, The Taste of Tulalip. The event will take place November 12^th and 13^th and it’s a don’t-miss. A myriad of courses carefully chosen by executive chef Perry Mascitti complete with expertly paired wines by sommelier Tommy Thompson will have you swimming in culinary ecstasy. Plan to nab extra bites of the Wagyu Beef Shortribs and Angus Beef Tenderloin on a bed of blue cheese potatoes- it’s a world-class dish. Tickets are available here. Consider staying the night, or even make a weekend of it. The (100% nonsmoking) luxurious hotel rooms are spacious, contemporary and well-appointed and the rates can’t be beat. There is also an adjacent outlet mall that boasts a deeply discounted Le Creuset store. Sound like a foodie wet-dream yet?

National: Figs and Quince Abound- Don’t let them get away

I recently had a craving for a seasonal slice of down-home pie, so I looked no further than the prolific produce at the farmer’s market. Both quince and figs are out in full-force, so I made a quince custard tart topped with spiraling figs, jewels of spherified balsamic vinegar, and foie gras Chantilly cream. Yes, that is as down-home as I get, and yes, this “pie” does benefit from international influences. For example, I love me a good pasta frolla crust, which is something I learned to make in Italy. I replace some of the butter for duck fat as an homage to scintillating decadence. While quince are widely used to make the Spanish spread, membrillo, they are quite readily abundant across the US; they are a great baking fruit. They pair perfectly with the figs that are bursting at their sweet seams this time of year, and both taste richer with a light acid touch- hence the balsamic jewels, which are simply spherified drops of balsamic vinegar. I had some leftover foie gras in the refrigerator and I love transforming it for sweet applications, so foie gras Chantilly was a natural light cream selection to top this heady tart.

International: Are you a Food Ninja?

Joan Nova's photo submission (image links to her blog)

I’ve noticed a good deal of internet chatter recently about the unfairness of many online opportunities being available only to US citizens. Well my fellow food ninjas, Bella Ninja, Fuji Ninja and I, Salty Ninja, are doing our small part to alleviate that with our Food Ninja contest. It is OPEN TO ANYONE on this fair planet (sorry to my peeps on Dagobah, we can’t yet ship intergalactically). You have to get your submissions in by October 24^th, and you can read the full details here if you think you’ve got what it takes. Remember, the prizes are off the hook, such as:

  Ninja Chef’s Knife from Ergo

  Ninja Rice Cooker from Zojirushi

  Ninja Spicy Sampler from Marx Foods

  Mark Bittman’s awesome new food ninja book Food Matters

  10″ Frying Pan from Mans Pans

So why are you still reading this? Go get your ninja on, dahlinks.

*Disclaimer: some images in this post may be considered slightly graphic in nature. I have chosen to present those images as thumbnails. Click to reveal a full-sized version. This post is an entry for Project Food Blog Challenge #4 which asks contestants to create an instructional photo tutorial. If you like it, vote using the Project Food Blog contestant widget in my right sidebar (scroll down) from 10/11-10/14.

As bloggers we have, at the minimum, a social responsibility, and, some argue, a journalistic one also.  Because of that, I inject a modicum of meaning into every wacky post I conjure. A how-to tutorial is a perfect place to make a difference, and I hope you take these words and pictures in the spirit in which they were intended. While this post is a departure from my molecular madness, I hope it becomes apparent that it’s all interconnected; after all, we need the raw materials before we can manipulate them in clever ways.

A brief history of why (sorry if you’ve heard this before, I’ll be quick): I was a vegetarian for over 20 years as a result of a traumatic experience as a child. My father bought me a calf one summer. I named him Slobber. I bottle-fed that wet-nosed gangle of awkwardness through his youth and we became best friends. Slobber had the run of our fenced acreage, but for me that wasn’t enough. I fashioned a leash for him from the ones we had for the dogs, and proudly walked him through the front yard, down the street, even to the neighbor’s house. I fed him the choicest scraps from my own plate and invented an imaginary world in which we were BMX racers, astronauts, or ice-cream vendors depending on the day.

At the end of the summer I went to stay with my grandparents for two weeks and when I came home, there was a hamburger on my plate. My dad asked me if I knew where it came from. The store? I answered, cautiously. No, we killed your cow so we would have meat for the winter. This was the first I had heard about eating our livestock; to me it was tantamount to cannibalism. Initially it catapulted me into my room in tears, and ultimately I made a stoic resolve never to eat a living creature. Nearly 30 years and a gradual return to omnivorism later, I look back at that as a missed educational opportunity. I should have been raising Slobber lovingly, but with the knowledge of why I was doing so.

Now I know firsthand that an animal raised with utmost care and then slaughtered to be eaten by reverential people is a vital thing. It took many years to get to this place, however, and I don’t want it to be the same for my child, which is why I try to get him involved in the process even at the tender age of two. It is imperative that we know where our food comes from. Yes, this is a trend among us who preach to the choir, so forgive me for beating a dead horse, but farm-to-table should not be a trend, it should be a given. With that in mind, I am going to show you how a chicken raised on organic feed and grass from a top-notch sustainable chicken farm in Washington- Stokesberry- leaves the field and lands on your plate.

a chicken tractor- note the eaten grass versus the ready-to-be-eaten grass

Once the chickens are old enough, they are taken to the pasture and are corralled in what are called “chicken tractors.” These are essentially 10x12’ floorless enclosures made from chicken-wire, wood and siding.  Every day, the chicken tractors get moved 10 feet to a new plot of grass. This is beneficial for several reasons. First, the chickens have fresh grass (and as much organic grain as they want) both to feed on, and to fertilize with their waste, thus creating a viable pasture for cycles to come. Next, the tractors protect the chickens from coyotes, raccoons and other predators.  Thirdly, because the tractors are not cramped, the chickens have plenty of room to roam within, yet not so much that they grow too lean and muscular, which is why chefs and consumers started taking issue with 100% free-range birds.

preparing to move the tractor (turkey in this case) to the next plot

Compared to a typical concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) where chickens are stacked a hundred deep and sometimes three high and never see the light of day, small-scale chicken tractors are palaces. (However Janelle and Jerry Stokesberry liken their chickens to urban apartment-dwellers. There’s plenty of space but it’s not McMansion-style living since that’s not a practical way to raise chickens- or people for that matter.) It is important to note that Stokesberry Farm is Janelle and Jerry’s livelihood. While they started the farm because they believed in providing healthy food to the community in a way that also fosters positive growth for the earth and people, they are not Pollyanna about what it means to run a business.  Their practices have to be streamlined and efficient while at the same time being mindful of good ecology. The concept of the chicken tractor is a great example of that because it is both humane and economically-feasible. Prior to the chickens being tractored in a particular pasture, cows are brought in to “pre-mow” the grass in order to achieve optimal height for the chickens, which drives home just how cyclically-sustainable this concept is. Incidentally, the chicken tractor was pioneered by Joel Salatin. You can read about his working farm and more on chicken tractors here.

weighing chickens

Stokesberry farm grows mostly Cornish Cross birds, and they are typically ready for butcher within eight to twelve weeks. The farm sells to local restaurants, butchers, and also at farmer’s markets. Restaurant chefs order birds with precise weights, so on the day of slaughter, Jon, the farm’s right-hand man, gathers birds from the tractors and weighs them. Assuming they lose roughly 30% of their weight when they are dressed out, Jon is mindful to select birds accordingly.

a barrowful of chickens earmarked for Seattle restaurant Sitka and Spruce

After the birds are weighed, Jon cages them and brings them to Jerry, who operates the kill station. The kill station consists of three main areas: chicken slaughter funnels, a scalder, and a plucker. The slaughter funnels are conical with head-sized holes in the bottom. The chicken is placed upside-down in the funnel so that just the head peeks out-thus providing easy access to the jugular. There are several sizes of funnels, depending on the girth of the bird being slaughtered.

slaughter funnels

It is worth mentioning that the vast majority of chickens produced in the US are killed by a machine.  By removing the individual from the “dirty-work” aspect of the process, machine-killing also creates a disconnect from the accountability associated with taking a life. Because of this, we often forget that our meat was a living creature at one point, which can lead to over-consumption. Medium-scale farms like Stokesberry that still shoulder the burden of responsibility for their animals inspire their patrons to appreciate the valuable service they provide. If you can’t kill it you have no business eating it, which is why I jumped in and helped Jerry at the kill station, and later helped Janelle process the freshly-plucked birds. (I personally killed 12 birds of the near-100 we processed that day.)

plucker

Once the birds were upside-down in the funnel, we used a sharp knife to make a clean, deliberate slice across the jugular vein. It is quick and painless, I am told.

clean jugular cut

bleeds out

The birds bled out for several minutes, and then we moved them to the scalder. The purpose of scalding is to loosen the skin so the feathers will come out in the plucker. The ideal temperature to scald a chicken depends on the size and the skin thickness, but Jerry tends to make sure the water is between 145-150°F.

ready to be scalded

We hung several chickens by their feet from the dipping wand, then plunged them into the water all-the-while agitating them for 20-25 seconds (Jerry counts his seconds in “hippopotamuses” which I find endearing).

chickens in scalder

Plucking is perhaps the single easiest aspect of the slaughter process if you have a fancy plucking barrel, but the hardest if you have to do it by hand (like I did with these turkeys last year). We simply tossed the chickens (a few at a time) into the plucker, turned it on, counted 15 or 20 hippopotamuses, and all the feathers were gone, save for a few tail-feathers, which we took care of with pliers. Right after plucking, the head must be removed, which I found a little tricky, but got the hang of after I had done a dozen birds. You grab the legs with one hand and the head with the other, then stretch them apart while twisting the head upward, which causes it to snap free of the body.

chickens in the plucker

At this point the birds get passed inside to a room which adheres to a strict code of sterility. When I helped Janelle with the gutting I had to wear a hairnet and a special suit.

removing the feet

Different gutters do things different ways, but Janelle’s way made a lot of sense to me, especially compared to how I had done it in the past (which took 10 times as long).  First she removes the feet at the ankle joint with a boning knife.

off go the necks

plucking pin feathers

Next she cuts off the neck with a cleaver and uses pliers to pull out any remaining feathers. Then, she opens the cavity by cutting an incision around the anus of the bird and removing the scent gland. Next, she pulls out the entrails and gizzard, and finally the organs. The lungs are tricky- they stick to the ribcage and you have to sort of dig to get them loose. None of this goes to waste. They sell feet, necks, and heads to anyone who wants them, including private individuals who make stock or pet food. If something doesn’t get sold, it gets composted in their state-of-the-art compost pile. I know it’s odd to think of compost as state-of-the-art, but the Stokesberrys have it down to a science and it works like a well-oiled machine.

access hole / scent gland

pulling out entrails

After the birds are processed, they go into a cold water bath, where they stay overnight.  This is because by law, within 4 hours the chickens must be cooled to below 40°F.

water bath

I fear I have waxed too-verbose to explain the next steps of what to do with a chicken, but most of you reading this have probably roasted, barbecued, boned, sous vided, or grilled a chicken before, no? Three things are worth mentioning regarding post-gutting should you ever wish to bring a chicken from field to feast. The first is that rigor mortis sets in within a few hours after a bird is killed and you do not want to eat a chicken in rigor mortis. It makes it tough and gamey. The solution? Wait 24-48 hours, or until the legs move freely. This ties in nicely with my next tip- brine your bird. You’ve heard it before, but it really is imperative for succulent meat. You can do it during rigor mortis. I use a 5% salt/water ratio and I like to add sage, thyme, garlic and lemon to my brine. If you are going to roast the chicken, be sure to remove it from the brine, pat it as dry as you can, then let it dry further on a rack in the refrigerator. That way you will have perfectly crisp skin to go with your perfectly tender, personally-butchered chicken.