Seattle Succotash Salad

Pop quiz! What makes succotash, succotash? A. Lima beans B. Corn C. Cooking the vegetables D. Pork E. Who knows? All of the above. On a multiple choice test, they always say, pick C, but in this case, I’m going with E. Merriam Webster says succotash is corn and lima beans. The word comes from the Narragansett for boiled corn, “msíckquatash.” Some recipes add bacon or ham. Most recipes cook the vegetables. Others add tomatoes, or red or green bell peppers. Sufferin’ succotash!

ByMichelleJuly 26, 20122Comments

Bittman’s Corn Chowder with Chorizo and Green Onion

When corn is finally in season, it's hard not to eat it non-stop. The first corn for us is always reserved for bill's corn fritters, but after that, it's game on for corn in salads, or roasted on the cob, slathered in butter and salt, or sprinkled with chile powder and lime juice. One of the best ways to enjoy the pure flavor of corn is in chowder. Soup in the summer? Yes, oh yes.

ByMichelleJuly 23, 20121Comment

Restaurants

Cafe Juanita’s Al Fresco Pasta Dinner

As a food town, Seattle may not have the swagger of New York or San Francisco or LA, but it stands on its own. Ask foodies across the country about Seattle and they might mention Pike Place or the fact that Tom Douglas catered a fundraising lunch for President Obama, but ask them if they’ve heard of Kirkland, Washington and they’ll say, “Oh yeah, like at Costco. Kirkland.” A Microsoft bedroom community, Kirkland is the home of Costco #1, but it’s also the home to one of the best restaurants in the Seattle area -- Café Juanita. Specializing in northern Italian cuisine with a focus on locally sourced ingredients, Café Juanita is casually elegant, at once special occasion and neighborhood spot. You might know chef/owner Holly Smith as winner of the James Beard Foundation’s 2008 Best Chef Northwest, or for her turn on Iron Chef America, where she won her bout with Iron Chef Cat Cora. This year, Chef Smith was nominated as Outstanding Chef in the US by the Beard Foundation. But I gotta tell ya, I didn’t need the Beard Foundation to confirm that Chef Smith’s got game.

ByMichelleJuly 19, 20123Comments

Main Course Recipes Restaurants Salads

Summer Chopped Salad w/ Soba Noodles

In the summer, it's supposed to be easy to be extra virtuous. Cherries, berries, peaches. Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers...the markets are overflowing with lovely produce to tempt your tastebuds. But I was anything but virtuous this weekend. It was glorious in Seattle. Summer truly arrived, the sundresses and sandals came out of hiding and we had a little barbecue. Nothing fancy, just sausages, potato salad, grilled peppers and zucchini. But something about sitting out in the warm summer sun put Doritos, Fritos and cupcakes on the menu, too. It was a "I'll start that diet on Monday," kind of weekend.

ByMichelleJuly 11, 20122Comments

Baking Dessert Fruit Recipes

Summer Desserts: Cornmeal Biscuit Peach Cobbler

One of my all time favorite summer songs is DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince's SummerTime. It's a head-bobbin', windows rolled down song that takes you right back to the summer of 1991, but is still a jam 20 years later. You know the one: Summa, summa, summa-time. Time to sit back and unwind... Here it is... the groove slightly transformed just a bit of a break from the norm just a little somethin' to break the monotony of all that hardcore dance that has gotten to be a little bit out of control it's cool to dance but what about the groove that soothes that moves romance give me a soft subtle mix and if ain't broke then don't try to fix it...

ByMichelleJuly 5, 20121Comment

Dessert Recipes

Zoku Popsicle Maker: Fudgesicles with a Cayenne Kicker

Inspiration comes at the oddest moments. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do, still laying in bed, is a scroll-through of email, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to see what happened over night. Sunrise is at 5 something now, alarm goes off at 6, and there is zero chance I'm getting out of bed before that. On one of those scroll-throughs, Chronicle Books was doing a Twitter contest to win a signed copy of the Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream Bookand a bag of bacon peanut brittle. All you had to do to enter was come up with a dream Humphry Slocombe flavor. My idea: Chocolate y Churros -- a cayenne-kicked Mexican chocolate ice cream with churro chunks (I didn't win)...but it led to these cayenne-kicked fudgesicles for the Zoku.

ByMichelleMay 30, 20120Comments

Main Course Recipes

Rain or Shine: Sriracha Sloppy Joes

Long before the pink slime debacle, ground beef got a bad wrap. Other than its use for burgers and maybe cottage pie, it ranks pretty low on the beef totem pole. It's a rarity on upscale restaurant menus, except in comfort food preparations or in ironic, hipstery reduxes of Hamburger Helper. But I'm ok with…

ByMichelleMay 26, 20120Comments

Baking Fruit

Baked Strawberry Shortcake Doughnuts/Donuts

You've heard of the Donut Man in Glendora, California right? If not, let me introduce you, because what they do there, you need to know about it. The Donut Man is famous for their fresh strawberry donuts -- that's right, they take a glazed donut, slice it in half and sandwich in an enormous portion of fresh strawberries (or peaches, later in the summer) in goo. It's ridiculously deliciously goo-d. Today, I was thinking about those doughnuts and meant to stop by Top Pot on the way home for a couple of glazed and then I promptly forgot. Instead, I came up with these baked strawberry shortcake doughnuts (or in this case: short, cake doughnuts). Doesn't it look like one of those spongy dessert cups they sell right next to the strawberries in the produce department?

ByMichelleFebruary 20, 20121Comment

Entertaining Photo One-offs Side Dishes

Out with the Old, In With the New: Ancho Creamed Corn

This year we had a smaller crew together for Thanksgiving, so I pretty much scaled everything back so that we'd end up with a manageable amount of leftovers (read: a lot of stuffing and only a little of everything else!). In the end, our regular corn pudding was crossed off the list entirely. I even…

ByMichelleNovember 27, 20111Comment

Photo One-offs

Photo One-Off: Goodbye Summer

This year I only had one hanging cherry tomato plant -- yep, just one. I almost killed it twice this summer, with um, inadvertent dry farming experiments (aka vacations). I did find out that poking holes in the bottom of a water bottle and jamming it into the pot does work, I probably just needed one bottle for every day we were gone since that little Tumbler tomato was sucking down the water. Even still, it gave one big push in mid-July and then ramped up for a second push in September, and then the weather cooled off just after Labor Day.

ByMichelleOctober 17, 20110Comments