I had never been to the Corson Building but have been very happy with head chef Matt Dillon’s other enterprises around Seattle (including the newly revamped Sitka and Spruce) so thought it would be an appropriate setting for our third anniversary.  The actual structure and grounds of the building itself cast a spell on me the moment I arrived, and Jonas and I spent an enchanted half hour sipping an aperitif walking the spaces in marvel.  An Italian family is responsible for the building and it shows in the quality construction. It’s worth going to the Corson Building for the ambience alone.  I was able to snap some photos in the kitchen of our upcoming meal, and it was a good thing too, since once we were seated there was very little opportunity for photography. 

Saturday evening meals are done communally at the Corson building, with essentially four tables that each seat eight people. If you are fortunate you will dine with jovial compatriots as passionate about food and wine as yourselves, or maybe not. We got lucky with most of our table mates, the couple across from us regaled us with tales of the inner workings of being defense attorneys- talk about the underbelly of society! 

The other reason I wouldn’t have been able to photograph the food is that the dishes are served family-style for the entire table of eight, and since we were at the foot end of the table, by the time each platter reached me it was no longer in a terribly photogenic state.  I think this is a brilliant way to set up an evening, and I don’t think concessions or adjustments based on dietary preferences are necessary, however the menu should be posted in advance so diners can choose whether to attend that particular dinner.  When my husband called to make the reservation they basically asked if any food would kill him, which it won’t, though the fact that he doesn’t eat seafood or mushrooms limited him to just two courses of the entire meal, which is significant considering what you’re paying.  Again, I don’t think a chef should make apologies for the menu he creates, and diners should be encouraged to step out on a culinary limb and eat outside their comfort zone, just make the menu available in advance. 

This particular evening the menu consisted of smoked trout with pickled vegetables and fiddlehead ferns, brine-cured local lox with crème fraiche, bresaola with raw beets, fennel and dill as well as horseradish and purslane to start.  Next we moved to a delicate halibut bone broth with steamed halibut and mussels from Taylor’s shellfish along with watercress, and lovage.  It was the standout dish of the night.  Next were soft shell crabs served with porcini mushrooms on a walnut sauce, followed by duck eggs with morels from Cle Elum served with leeks and caraway seeds.  We completed the savory dishes with duck from Stokesberry Farm braised in red wine with fennel, green garlic, asparagus, spring onions, and pea shoots accompanied by duck fat fried potatoes with pork belly cured like pancetta but flat, not rolled.  Dessert was an effervescent sorbet made with goat’s milk yogurt finished with strawberries and two types of shortbread cookies.  I greatly appreciate their use of local producers such as Stokesberry Farms and Taylor’s Shellfish.

We went to the Corson Building on the evening of the soft-opening for Sitka and Spruce, the head chef’s other local restaurant, so naturally he was attending to the details of the opening and not at the Corson Building.  I wish he had been with us instead, although I understood the circumstances.  I think perhaps the food suffered a little in his absence as well.  All of the elements were there, but several of the dishes fell flat upon execution. Sometimes too many ingredients marred the natural elegance of the base flavor in the dish, as was the case with the bresaola. Bresaola is my favorite cured cut of meat, made from beef eye of round.  Perhaps my expectations are too high, given that. The bresaola itself was perfectly cured, perfectly sliced and a thing of beauty. Unfortunately too many ingredients masked its flavor, and it wasn’t just me as I asked around the table if folks knew what meat they were eating and most of them thought it was a very mild pork. Had it been allowed to stand with fewer accoutrements it would have shone brighter.  The stronger dishes were the less complicated ones, such as duck braised in wine, and duck eggs with mushrooms.  I was surprised that the delicate halibut in clear broth was so delightful given that it was much more refined in presentation than everything else. In fact it was the only dish that was served individually to each patron. 

A quick note on the wine: the sommelier is a self-proclaimed Francophile, which is a wonderful thing to be most of the time. I love French wines, almost as much as I love Piedmontese wines, so I was mostly happy with his wine pairings.  I wish there were a bona fide red-only wine pairing, as we opted out of the whites, though instead of adding additional reds to our pours, he simply poured us more glasses of the two reds in his original pairing.  In retrospect I probably would have gotten a bottle or two of something I really loved, then maybe had a glass or two of his selections if they intrigued me.  Since the meal lasts from 6:30 until 10ish (which is long by American standards, though short and early by Italian ones) you could easily bring a few bottles and just pay corkage, sampling from his glass pours when they tickle your fancy. 

On the whole it was a Seattle dining experience I would recommend, though next time I go I will make sure Matt Dillon is in the house and I will attempt to learn the basics of the menu of the evening as well.

I set out to make agnolotti stuffed with braised chuck and spinach but the universe conspired against me.  Well, not really, I just got three hours and nine hand-rolled pasta sheets into the dish and decided rather than take the time to carefully form agnolotti I would cheat and no one would be the wiser.  It’s not really cheating if you slow-braise your stuffing, hand cut your pasta and grow your own spinach, too, but I still felt a touch of guilt for not molding my little squares into perfect agnolotti.  You see agnolotti requires some fancy folding, pinching and crimping, but my lovely quadrati (squares) stay together so nicely with just a slathering of egg wash and a few quick cuts in a way I view them as the perfect filled pasta. 

I had a wine-soaked weekend of sexy soirees and tantalizing tastings, so I felt some classic comfort food was in order. My go-to is always hand-cut pasta because the meditative process is so soul-soothing.  I’m experimenting with different ratios of semolina, tipo 00 flour, and eggs/egg yolks in my dough lately.  This time I decided to try 100% tipo 00 (which is basically standard unbleached white flour), forego the semolina, and do whole eggs instead of a mixture of egg and yolk. I added a touch of salt, but held back adding oil, which I sometimes do for viscosity.

It turned out the oil was far from necessary this time- the dough lacked the stiffness semolina adds to it and it was malleable and soft as putty. It was a dream to roll into rectangular sheets, so acquiescent to the rolling pin, and not at all sticky.  I prefer semolina pasta if I’m going to turn it into tagliolini, fettucine or another non-filled noodle, but all-flour dough is a dream if you’re making precision pasta. 

I had a glut of spinach begging to be eaten, so I steamed it up and mixed it along with some duck eggs into braised, minced chuck.  I added a few sprinkles of parmesan and I had the perfect filling.  I retained the stock in which I braised the chuck; that’s what I used to make the sauce that would ultimately coat the quadrati.  Normally I would have braised in a wine/stock combo, but after such a heavy red weekend I was feeling a tad wined-out, so straight stock won in the end. 

I tend to make my pasta dough, let it rest for maybe half an hour while I’m finalizing the filling, then roll it into sheets as needed to stuff and cut.  This way the sheets won’t dry out, though it does go against the rule of finishing like tasks at the same time.  I roll out two rectangular sheets, maybe 3-4” wide by 30” long and dollop filling every few inches down one of the sheets.  Then I wash it with egg everywhere the filling is not. This way the top sheet sticks beautifully and they meld as if into one sheet. I also think the egg wash helps the two sheets to thin out once they grab one another, which makes for better, less chewy pasta. 

Once I drape the top sheet onto the bottom, I squeeze it shut down its entire length.  All that remains is to cut the final pasta forms (in this case quadrati, or squares) and set them to dry on a baking sheet.  Different pasta-makers have different rules on air-drying before the boiling plunge, but I’ve always found 30-45 minutes to be ideal. I like a touch of crispness, but not so dry the pasta cracks and cooks unevenly. 

I add a bit of stock to the pasta water so the meaty flavor soaks through the noodle- a little trick I happened upon accidentally when I had excess stock one day.  While the pasta is boiling I reheat the sauce and whisk in a few tablespoons of butter to emulsify it.  After three or four minutes of boiling I remove the pasta from the water with a slotted spoon, and toss it in the sauce.  The perfect comfort plate consists of three or four of these lovely quadrati drenched in sauce and topped with a generous shaving of parmesan.  After the three hour process of making this pasta any impurities from a weekend spent having a ball virtually vanish and suddenly a bottle of Barolo isn’t sounding like such a bad thing.  It sure complements the lovingly-prepared meal to a tee, but don’t let me be a bad influence, drink what you will.  Mangia!

Ok ok, I know I have a wee obsession with duck eggs.  I am seeking proper care to cure my addiction, but in the meantime I want to share yet another showcase meal featuring the lovely oval gems.  I present to you sous vide duck eggs on a bed of wilted greens flanked by butter egg biscuits and drizzled in Meyer lemon hollandaise.  Sexy factor is high on this one since you’ve got all sorts of beautiful consistencies playing off each other for a smooth mouthful. 

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When your birthday is three days before Christmas and you grow up in the United States, there is very little you can do to separate the day from the ever-eclipsing holiday mayhem.  There is the inevitable dual gifting you’ve heard about, I’m sure, coupled with an incessant round of holiday parties that tend to fall on your birthday itself, negating any possibility of a romantic birthday dinner sans red and green cheer.  I’ve always been ok with this though, preferring to look at it as merely a challenge to make my party the party of the season- the one people still feel the hungover effects of come Christmas morning.  When I was in my more “free-spirited” phase, the parties would be laced with glow sticks and body paints with all manner of eclectic music punctuating the reverberating cacophony.  The problem with those parties lie in the fact that no one would really remember anything about them either during or afterward, much less the fact that it was my birthday.  Now that I’ve got a burgeoning reputation as a social maven to uphold, a bit more organization and thought goes into planning each fete, and this year was no exception.

I went with a Mad Men theme, if you haven’t seen the show you ought to.  It’s set in the early 1960’s and filled with a cast of advertising execs on Madison Avenue and their wives/mistresses.  I chose the period for the attire and cuisine, thinking it would be easy and fun to transport ourselves into that world. I didn’t bargain on the fact that everyone would really get into the attitude as well, which is what made it a resounding success.  As many of you remember and some of you can imagine, a major focus is on the cocktails- drinking on the job from morning ‘til night is de rigueur a la Mad Men.  I so wanted to find a seven or eight year old to bartend, since kids back then would frequently mix drinks for their parents, but I couldn’t get anyone to volunteer their child, despite the major résumé-building potential!  Instead my dear husband Jonas transformed himself into a downright dandy bartender adopting the persona of a confident boss mixing up a bourbon concoction for a coworker before a “meeting.” 

I wanted my food and drink to match what likely would have been served back in the day so I went the class and sophistication route (ha ha) with homemade cheese balls, bonbons, rumaki, Swedish meatballs, a Roquefort molded salad mousse, deviled duck eggs, and Waldorf salad. 

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Dungeness crab cakes on pea sprouts with lemongrass kaffir sake beurre blanc

When daddy’s away, mama will play, you’d better believe it!  Jonas high-tailed it to Japan for work last week and left Bentley and I to our own devices.  The first thing I taught Bentley to do was jump on the bed. Every self-respecting 16 month old should know how to do that, right?  The next order of business on my list of infidelities? Cram in as much slithery slippery savory sexy seafood as possible over the week (and do so while watching all the chick flicks I need to catch up on since the last time he left town).  Jonas isn’t big into our fair friends from the sea with the exception of Ahi tuna, so it’s not easy to get my daily quota. 

edamame starter

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It’s truffle season again, my darlings; get out your sniffers and let’s get down and get woodsy with it.  I have heard tell that this season isn’t considered a vintage year in the grand scheme of things, but my craving is so strong once I go an entire year without a whiff that I’m willing to do just about anything for a fine white truffle from Alba.  I asked my friend Shane who works at DeLaurenti to keep his ear to the ground about impending truffle arrival and he gave me the heads’ up a few days ago that now is the time.  I headed down to pick up the fine specimen he hand-selected for me, and we did a mini photo shoot with Rachel, the Pike Place Market pig before I collected my prize and hunted for the rest of the ingredients of the feast. 

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