My poor dog-earred food magazines. All those little folded over corners which continue to suffer from neglect. This month, I must have marked at least 40 some recipes. Including one in the May 2008 Gourmet for Chile Peanuts. I don’t even like peanuts. But, I fell in lust with the photo, and I love the combination of chile and lime. Enter the bag of pistachios that have been sitting on the counter, getting slowly nibbled away.

Do you like pistachios as much as I do? The addictive process of popping them out of their shells. I’ll just shell 10 more, I think, only to find myself a few minutes later repeating the same thing, just 10 more. I give the thin brownish purple skins a little pinch to expose the green nut meat. It’s good that I enjoy the shelling process because I seem to eat almost as many as I’m going to need. For this recipe, I ended up with a healthy cup full… but who knows how many ended up in my belly along the way.

I think that this chile lime mixture would work well with almost any nuts… but I love the bright green color with the red spices from the paprika and chile. And the lime tang really wakes up the sweetness in the pistachios. These are the perfect little addictive snack to munch on if you are enjoying a little Cinco de Mayo cocktail as well.

A few years ago, if you had asked me what my favorite restaurant in Seattle was, I could have answered without hesitation. This is pretty unusual for me… I’m not one that easily compares things. I don’t have top 5 favorite albums or foods or movies. There are things I like, and things I don’t like, but putting them in order just seems beyond me. There are too many factors to weigh in… my mood, what I’ve been doing lately, who I’m with. So, it was odd that Osteria La Spiga always seemed to strike me as my favorite.

La Spiga was a tiny little, rustic in a kitschy sort of way, place tucked into the corner of shops along the south end of Broadway just before the “pill hill” where almost all of the hospitals in Seattle are situated. Service was always a little hit or miss, but the food, traditional Emilia-Romagna fare, was stunning. Handmade pastas with the perfect tenderness to make me swoon, slow-cooked meats which were fall off the bone tender, an affatatti misti plate with whisper thin proscuitto and other delights. But the one thing that drew me back over and over was the flat bread. Piadina is like a thick, tender flour tortilla, but with more flavor and bite. The little cut triangles of the warm bread are a perfect match for the prosciutto or cheese, or, even better, stuffed with goodies like fresh mozzarella, basil, wild mushrooms and truffle oil, and called a Crescione which in my mind translates to “food of the gods.” I could eat the flat bread, just plain and simple, piece after piece after piece if no one were around to stop me.

A couple of years ago, La Spiga moved from its funky and charming location to a new space that is about as different as is possible. Where the old location was always quite cramped, the new restaurant soars with double height ceilings and huge wooden beams, and at least 5 times the seating. The old place had a faux old world feel, while the new is warmly modern. The old location usually had one waitress or waiter for the whole room, where the new location seems to have staff winding their way around tables everywhere you look. It’s just as crowded as ever, but now there are pleasant places to wait instead of having to loom over the other diners. It’s truly a beautiful work of architecture.

The one thing, luckily, that hasn’t changed is the food. The menu may have grown along with the space, but my taglietelle ragu is as good as ever and I’d be hard pressed to find anyone that didn’t coo over the Filetto al Tartufo, butter knife tender filet drizzled with truffle oil. And then, there is the piadina. Yes, it’s still there and as good as ever.

These days though, when asked what my favorite restaurant in Seattle is, I hesitate. I still love La Spiga. I love the new space, the prompter service and the gorgeous food. But, still, I miss the old spot. I loved how its funky space and slowish service made you step back, slow down and stop worrying about what you were going to do next. You were going to sit there and eat your meal whenever it happened to arrive. And, with food like that, that was always enough. Especially when you could always ask for “a little more piadina please”.

All of that is a very long way of saying that after years and years, I finally got around to making piadina at home. Traditionally, piadina is made with lard, and as you know, I just happen to have a whole lot of lard right now. I’m sure you could substitute vegetable shortening, but I think you’d miss out on some of the flavor and tenderness of the flat bread. I’ve also seen recipes that substitute olive oil, although this would likely make a bigger change in the texture of the dough.

I ended up using a recipe from Food & Wine which was exceedingly simple to make. So simple, in fact, that I have been kicking myself for not making it sooner. The F&W recipe called for baking soda, although many of the recipes I’ve seen don’t add any type of levening. Next time around, I plan on either leaving it out, substituting baking powder or just using less, because I thought that the flatbread had a tiny bit of a bitter after-taste from the soda.

Regardless, the dough, after sitting, takes on this wonderfully smooth texture that is soft and easy to roll out to a nice thin round. Piadina should really be cooked on something like a pizza stone, but I don’t have one. A stove top griddle, however, works too, although getting the temperature right can be a little tricky. Near the end, my griddle was a little too hot in spots and I quickly scorched a few breads. Luckily, I still had plenty already cooked up for a nice lunch and nibble throughout the day.

Piadina
recipe from Food & Wine

Tradition has it that you must not make piadina when the south-westerly wind blows… the warm, damp wind makes the dough too soft. So, best to save your piadina making days for the dry season.

Makes 6 rounds

3 1/2 c all-purpose flour
1/2 t baking soda
Kosher salt
4 oz lard or vegetable shortening, at room temperature
3/4 c water
1 T olive oil, plus more for brushing

Combine the flour, baking soda and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer (or in a large bowl if you want to knead it by hand) and mix together with a fork. Cut the lard into 1 inch pieces and using a pastry knife cut the lard into the flour. You can just use the mixer for this, but I found it didn’t do a great job of mixing in the lard and the pastry knife was just easier.

Next, start to add the water, just a little bit at a time, and mix on the stand mixer with a dough hook on lowish speed until the dough starts to form into a ball. Increase the speed to medium, and let it knead until smooth, about 5 minutes.

Remove the bowl from the mixer and cover with a damp towel. Let the dough sit for 30 minutes at room temperature.

Preheat the oven to 225F. Heat the griddle on medium-high to quite hot.

Divide the dough into 6 pieces, and roll each piece out to 10 inch rounds. The discs should be about 1/8 inch thick. Lightly brush the bread on both sides with olive oil.

Place one or two rounds on the griddle (depending on the size of your griddle) and cook for about 2 minutes on each side, or until you see the little brown spots that mark when it’s done. Wrap in foil and place in the oven while the next round goes into the griddle. The piadina are best eaten warm, the day they are cooked.

It’s not like you really need another dip recipe. Not only are there old standbys, but there are some really gorgeous looking alternatives out there this week. So these two recipes, variations on a couple of heavenly looking dips in Marie Claire Seasonal Kitchen, are really overkill. But, they are so good, I hope you try them anyway.

First off, I give you carrot dip. Now, I was lucky enough to make mine from carrots that were pulled from the ground yesterday. Can you imagine? In January, you can still harvest carrots. And these were true beauties. Big, thick brilliantly orange sticks that smelled like earth and sunshine. Just washing off the caked mud was enough to make me swoon. And, when I saw the beet dip recipe, with its deep scarlet color, I knew that I could get gorgeous results with carrots instead. A bit of reduced blood orange juice (you can use any oranges or even meyer lemons if you want) makes the dip all the more vibrant, both in flavor and color.

I hadn’t actually meant to make two dips, but sitting right next to Seasonal Kitchen’s beet dip recipe was an Italian white bean dip that I couldn’t resist. My version replaces the white beans with black eyed peas, adds a bit of meyer lemon and leaves out the tuna for a veg friendly dip. A drizzle of truffle oil or a good salad-quality oil and a sprinkle of basil easily pushes this dip into the favorite category and a nice change from the usual. Again, crackers or crusty Italian bread would be lovely, but I just made some little toast triangles from bread I had at home.

Carrot Dip
Makes one good sized bowl full.

3 large carrots
4 cardamom pods
1 bay leaf
1 blood orange
1 t sugar
4 T plain yogurt
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 400F (200C).

Peel the carrots and slice into 1 inch chunks. Place them in a baking dish and fill about 1/2 way up with water. Add the cardamom pods and bay leaf. Cover with foil, and bake for about an hour or until the carrots are very soft. Remove the carrots from the baking dish and let them cool.

Mix the juice from the orange with the sugar in a small sauce pan and heat over medium-high until the liquid reduces by about half. Let cool.

In a food processor, blend the carrots until they are smooth, adding a bit of the reduced orange juice if it gets to thick. Transfer the carrot puree to a bowl and add the yogurt and remaining reduced orange juice. Stir to just combine. Season to taste with sea salt and black pepper.

Polenta-Garbanzo Bean Blinis
Makes 25-30

1/4 cup garbanzo bean (chick pea) flour
1/4 cup polenta corn meal
1/8 t baking powder
1 t salt
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/4 cup yogurt
1/4 cup skim milk

In a medium sized bowl, mix together the garbanzo bean flour, polenta, baking powder and salt. Add the egg and stir to combine until all the flour is moistened. Add the yogurt and milk. Let the mixture sit for 15 minutes.

Heat a griddle to medium heat and lightly brush with olive oil. Drop small spoonfuls (a bit smaller than 2 inches across) of batter onto the griddle. Let them cook until you start to see small bubbles bursting throughout and the edges just start to pull away. If the griddle is to hot the blini’s will rise more in the middle and get a bit weird looking so reduce the heat. You don’t want them to rise too quickly. Flip and cook on the other side for about the same amount of time. Let them cool on a baking sheet (it’s best not to stack them when they are hot).

Meyer Lemon and Black Eyed Pea Dip
Makes one good sized bowl full.

Note: You need to start this recipe the night before you want to serve it, or use canned black eyed peas.

1 cup dried black eyed peas
1/2 cup vegetable stock
2 T olive oil
1 Meyer lemon
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, julienned
salt and pepper to taste
oil for drizzling

Place the dried peas in a bowl and cover with water. Let sit over night.

Drain and rinse the peas and place in a heavy bottom sauce pan. Add the vegetable stock, cover and cook on low for about 1 hour until the peas are quite soft and have lost any of the mealy texture. Remove from the heat and let them cool.

Put the softened peas into a food processor with the olive oil, and juice from the lemon. Blend just a little until the oil has been incorporated and the peas have broken down a little. Don’t blend too much though, you don’t want a paste.

Place the puree in a bowl and stir in the basil leaves. Salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle with your choice of oils.

How can you not love a recipe that starts with this dough is magical? And, in fact it is. This rugelach dough that I found in Kate Zukerman’s The Sweet Life will fool you into thinking that you spent hours bookfolding dough to achieve it’s tender puffy layers… only you will know differently. It’s almost ridiculously easy. The toughest part is having to wait several hours for the dough to chill. But, then it’s just a quick roll and a bake to little pinwheels of soft, tangy goodness.

The first time I tried this dough, I stuck with just a slight variation to Zukerman’s original Walnut and Cinnamon Rugelach recipe, only substituting orange zest in place of the currents in the sweet filling. I’d make these again in a heart beat… but what I also found was that the dough was so light and mild, it would work equally well with savory fillings. So, I reworked a batch, with 1/2 the sugar, and rolled up one log with salmon and cream cheese and another with a simple pesto. It worked brilliantly, perfect for little party appetizers. You can play endlessly with combinations to use with this “magical” dough.

Cheater’s Puff Pastry Pinwheels
The original recipe for this dough used cream cheese, but I substituted in quark, which has even more of a pleasantly sour flavor. If you do use quark, pour off any standing liquid first. If you are filling the pastry with sweet stuff, increase the sugar to 1 t.

4 oz butter, at room temperature
4 oz cream cheese or quark, at room temperature
1 cup flour
1/4 t salt
1/2 t sugar

Sift together the flour, salt and sugar. Set aside.

Cream the butter and soft cheese together on medium until it is light and fluffy. Reduce the speed to low and slowly add the dry ingredients, beating until well combined. Increase the speed to medium, and beat for about 15 seconds.

Scrape the dough onto plastic wrap and press into a flat disk. Then, double rap the dough and refrigerate overnight.

To use, roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface into a large rectangle about 12 x 16 inches. Then, cut into two 6 x 16 pieces. Fill as desired with the long side facing you, and roll up. Wrap the dough in wrap again and chill for 30 minutes. Or, if you want, you can freeze the log to use later in the week.

To cook, slice the log into 1-inch cross sections, and place each little round about 1 inch apart on a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake at 350F for about 15 minutes, or until the dough is a light golden brown. Allow the pinwheels to cool for about 15 minutes before serving. They will keep up to 4 days, depending on your filling.

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Our first stop gave us delicate crepes stuffed with winter squash with a swirl of goat cheese sauce, paired up with Kir & Prosecco cocktails. Crepes for 4 people is hard enough to do… but we had 15 adults along with a few younger gourmets running around, making Stef’s success all the more impressive.

My house was up next. I had a big bout of indecision earlier in the day, and couldn’t pick just one recipe… so I made three… bacon-wrapped smoked peppers stuffed with goat raclette, bite-sized goat cheese and Chantrelle and potato tarts, and goat cheese stuffed fried risotto balls. The risotto balls, based on a combination of recipes… Jamie Oliver’s risotto blac recipe and Donna Hay’s risotto cakes were a huge hit and were quickly gobbled up, as was the mulled wine that Cam made. Trying to stay on schedule, we wrapped up at our place and moved on down to the next house.

At Jamie & Randy’s house, we had home-made goat cheese & pork sausages and light and flaky walnut stuffed phyllo with goat cheese and big glasses of sangria. Did you catch that home-made sausage part? Yes, Jamie spent the morning stuffing her own sausages.

Finally, on to our last house for the evening, Steve & Caroline hosted with two luscious goat cheese quiches and fresh greens, while Kirt muddled limes for some knock your socks off Caprihinas.

Once the party was done, we all headed home to clean up our respective houses… the only real problem with the whole progressive party thing is that you muss up 4 houses instead of just one. Still craving risotto balls, I found myself cranking out a few more with the rest of the risotto the next day and hording them all to myself.

Crispy Risotto Cheese Balls

This recipe assumes that you have leftover risotto already. You can use just about any risotto recipe, as long as it has good and sticky and has sufficiently cooled. I found the recipe in Jamie’s Italy to work beautifully. It’s rich with butter and parm, but can still handle being stuffed with a light goat cheese.

For the cheese, you want something that will melt well but is still easy to handle during stuffing, so avoid any fresh or runny goat cheese.

You can fry up the balls without the panko that I used, but you won’t get the same texture without them.

Left-over, cooked risotto
panko crumbs
firm goat cheese, cut into 1/4 inch cubes
high-heat frying oil, such as sunflower oil

Line a baking sheet with a layer of parchment. Place the panko in a wide bowl.

Take a good sized square of plastic wrap, and use it to pull about 1 T of the cooled, cooked risotto and form into a little ball. Then, create a little hole in the ball with your finger and stick in 1 piece of the goat cheese. Reform the ball of ristotto in the plastic wrap. Then, roll the ball in the panko. Set on the parchment and repeat with the remaining balls.

Heat about 1-2 inches of the oil in a deep frying pan or wok. Test the oil by dropping a bit of risotto into the oil… you want it to bubble fiercely. Line a plate with paper towels, and then begin frying up the risotto balls, adding in only about 3 at a time, carefully with tongs. It’s a good idea to use a screen to keep the oil from popping everywhere as you add each ball. Let the balls cook on one side till golden brown, and then roll them over carefully in the oil to brown on all sides. Remove the balls with tongs and place on the paper towel lined plate to drain. Repeat with the remaining balls. Sprinkle with a bit of flake sea salt.

You can keep these warm in the oven for a little while, but it’s best to serve them immediately. I like them plain, or with a tiny drizzle of truffle honey.

Don’t you love a treasure hunt? I think that’s why I love picking berries so much. Poking around under leaves in search of the next stash of sweetness. I grew up picking blackberries by the side of the road with my mother in Georgia, on those hot, hot summer days. Despite my overall lack of tolerance for heat and humidity, any sunburn or scratches from the briars seemed well were worth it with each berry bite.
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I’m a bit of a romantic at times. I don’t mean the roses and perfumey kind. I mean the idealizing kind. The kind that, on a whim with my significant other pops off to London at the last minute with basically no plans and thinks that it’s a good idea. The kind that really believes that it’s fun and spontaneous to just show up at Heathrow with the notion of catching a cheap flight somewhere sunny in Europe for two days before we need to be back to watch the Prologue of La Tour de France make its way through Hyde Park. Unfortunately, I’m not enough of a romantic to think that spending $2000 for that flight is a good idea nor do I really think its romantic to spend another four hours on a plane, after I’ve just spent 10 hours on one. But, there we were, Cam and I, at Heathrow on Wednesday morning, with no idea of what we were going to do next. And, clearly we weren’t the only loons doing this… the line at the British Airways ticket sales counter was about 100 people long, and after about 20 minutes waiting in line and moving about 5 steps, followed by running around to other airlines checking on flights to Cyprus, Lisbon and Reykjavik, we decide train travel must be the right way to go.
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About a month ago, a local spice maker contacted me about trying their spice mixes. I said I’d be happy to give them a try, and send some feedback because first, I really like spicy stuff and secondly, I love supporting small businesses. The owner of Nataraja Spices, Venkat and his mother are a two person team that make both their Sambar powder and their Chili Rub, packed with rich, South Indian flavors. Venkat’s website has all kinds of recipe suggestions as well, from salad dressings to grilled cheese sandwiches with a kick.
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When I was in second grade, my father remarried. I couldn’t have had any idea then, when I first met Carli, how much of an impact she’d have on my life. After an initial period of being quite uncomfortable and a bit intimidated by someone with such an amazing lifeforce… someone so different than anyone else in my life… she became someone that I would grow to learn from, rely on, and absolutely cherish. Her smile, her stories, her love of food, all shaped a great deal of who I am now. Her absolute insistence of being real and honest with ourselves about who we are, where we came from and where we are going.
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As I started to write this post, I was reminded of a game we used to play when I was a kid. You would say two words, one thing you like and one thing you don’t, and the other person would have to guess why. The things were always similar… usually even synonyms. Things like “I like yellow but I hate colors” or “I like happy but I hate glad.” The difference isn’t in the meaning, it’s in the words themselves… in this case, whether or not the words contained double letters. Did you ever play this game?
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