Sandwich Challenge Update!

Time to check off another sandwich! The other day I was able to try the Rajun Cajun at Other Coast Cafe in Capitol Hill. If you like a sandwich that packs some heat, you're gonna love the spicy salsa mayo and pepperjack cheese (along with cajun turkey, tomato and onion) in this sando! Pair it with a cold Rainier and a sunny patch of grass, and it's the perfect meal!

Conquering Whole Roasted Chicken

Some people may be surprised that the one animal that most cooks/chefs find the most difficult to really do well, is of all things, chicken. Steak and lamb, you can eat raw to well done. Pork you can sear, grill, cook for 48 hours in braising liquid, and it will still be tasty. Chicken is less flexible. There is a small window of time in the cooking process where chicken goes from edible to inedible. Seasoning is key. You can't order chicken rare or well done. Usually when someone puts chicken on the menu, you get a groan from the line cooks. "That's going to be at LEAST a 20 minute fire." "How many of these are gonna be sent back because they found the bloodline and thought it was undercooked." The list goes on and on.

Cooking methods like sous-vide have made it easier for chefs to streamline the chicken cooking process and create a more consistent product. Chicken is easy to cook. But to cook it WELL, that is a different story.

I found the most amazing article in the Cook's Illustrated: All Time Best Recipes issue on how to cook the perfect whole chicken at home. I tested it out, and I must say the chicken came out beautifully and the whole process was relatively easy! Here's what they suggested:

1. Brine your chicken. This is the most effective way of seasoning your chicken all the way through. This is the recipe I used today:

1 C kosher salt

1/2 C sugar- helps chicken brown in the oven.

3T black peppercorns

3 bay leaves

1 small bunch sage leaves- if you go to the grocery store and find the "poultry herb" packets in the fresh herb section, they are perfect for roasting a chicken.

3-4 garlic cloves

1 gallon of water

- Add all ingredients to a pot and bring to a boil for 10 minutes. You can taste and see if you would like the liquid more salty than sweet or vice versa.

- Transfer brine to a bowl and set in the refrigerator to cool. 

Hint: If you are in a hurry, you can start with 3/4 of a gallon of water, then add a 3 cups of ice to the brine to cool it down faster. 

-When your brine is cooled, submerge your chicken in the brine, and let it sit in the fridge for 1 hour.

2. Season your chicken for roasting.

- This can be as simple as rubbing the chicken with oil and seasoning with salt and pepper, or making a compound butter. The great thing about butter is the water it contains creates steam and even cooking, and it also gives the skin flavor and color. I used the remaining herbs from the poultry packet (in this case rosemary and thyme), along with garlic, salt and pepper to make a compound butter. I stuffed the butter under the chicken skin, and rubbed it over the outside.

Buttered-up bird ready for the oven. If you dry the outside of the chicken with paper towel, the butter spreads easier.

3. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Place an oven-proof skillet or saute pan in the oven while it is preheating.

4. When the oven is ready, take out the hot skillet and place the chicken breast side up on the skillet. This will sear the legs and thigh and give them a "head start" to allow for overall even cooking.

5. Roast chicken in oven for about 25-30 minutes, or until a thermometer reads 120 degrees at the breast and 135 at the thigh.

6. Turn oven off. Leave chicken in oven until a thermometer reads 160 degrees at breast and 175 at thigh, another 20-25 min. Do not open oven too often during this process as you will lose oven heat quickly.

7. Take chicken out of the skillet and let it rest for 20 minutes before cutting. And there you have it, a perfectly roasted chicken!

Finished chicken! Could've done a better job rubbing the outside with butter for more even browning, but the inside was very juicy and the meat fell right off the bone! 

A Lesson on Rennet

In the next couple weeks I am hoping to add on a Farmer's Cheese Board on the menu at Flora. It will include local cheeses obtained from neighborhood farmer's markets around Seattle. Excited about the idea, I went in search of fun and different cheeses at the Ballard Farmer's Market. "One thing though..." Nat, the owner of Cafe Flora tells me before I began, "... be sure the cheeses you chose use vegetable rennet, not animal."

For a minute I vaguely remember a day in culinary school when we talked about cheese-making, and animal vs. vegetable rennet. And you would think that having worked in a creamery in Italy for a few months, I would know the difference. But I was notorious for not being fully aware (or awake) during class, and the farmer's I worked with in Italy didn't speak much English, so trying to extract information from them on how they made their cheese was difficult, I was more focused on keeping up with the goats than anything else. So I did some research and found the pros and cons of both.

First off:

Rennet- Is an enzyme used in cheese-making, that is added to milk to separate the solid curds (what becomes cheese) from the liquid whey. The two most common kinds are animal and vegetable.

Animal Rennet
This type of rennet is extracted from the stomach of a young calf, lamb or goat. The active enzyme is  this rennet is called chymosin, and is more promeninet in younger calves (they are still weaning off their mother and need it to digest milk). The stomachs of the calves are soaked in salt water, and sometimes whey, filtered, and the remaining rennet is used in cheese making.

Pros- Great for aged cheeses, some say provides a cleaner flavor (some vegetable rennets can leave a bitter aftertaste).
Cons- Not vegetarian friendly, limited supply.

Vegetable Rennet
Rennet derived from plant, fungi, molds or microbial sources that produce the same enzyme as animals. Thistle is a common plant that you can extract rennet from.

Pros- Vegetarian friendly, easily found, kosher friendly.
Cons- Not as effective as animal with whey/curd separation, especially for aged cheeses. The difference though is considered minimal. Sometimes leaves an aftertaste.

So next time you buy cheese at your local farmer's market, ask what kind of rennet they use, and see if you can taste the difference!

Baaaa! Cheese is awesome!

Sandwich Challenge? I Accept!

A few weeks ago, Eater Seattle posted their "18 Iconic Seattle Sandwich" list. This list, in my opinion is very accurate, and sounded very very delicious, so I decided that before summer is over, I would eat all 18 iconic Seattle sandwiches. Seeing that this wasn't going to be too difficult of a task (I 've already eaten most of them already before the list was posted) I set out to try the rest. The task at hand:

To Do: 

1. Baguette Box- Drunken Chicken

2. Bakeman's- Turkey Sandwich

3. Grinder's- Meatball Sub

4. Hi Spot Cafe- Tuna Melt

5. Market Grill- Blackened Salmon

6. Matt's at the Market- Pan Fried Catfish Sandwich

7. Other Coast Cafe-  Rajun Cajun

8. Pecos Pit- BBQ Pulled Pork

9. Tat's Deli- Pastrami Cheesesteak

10. Three Girls Bakery- Meatloaf Sandwich

DONE!

1. 74th Street Alehouse- Reuben

2. Paseo- Caribbean Roast Sandwich

3. Saigon Deli- Bahn Mi

4. Salumi- Porchetta AND Braised Oxtail

5. Tubs Subs- Joker's Dip

6. Where You At Matt?- Oyster PoBoy

And I will now add to the DONE! list:

Dot's Delicatessen Reuben- Stacked high with pastrami, sauerkraut, and Russian dressing. The house-cured and smoked pastrami makes this extra amazing.

 Marination Station Spicy Pork Torta- Their "nunya sauce", a spicy miso mayo blend, gives the pork and slaw an added kick, so delicious!

I will chronicle the rest of my sandwich adventures in my blog. Wish me (and my tummy) luck!

Pickling TIme!

As spring slowly changes to summer, so does the menu at Cafe Flora! Last week I brought in some freshly picked ramps and sea beans from Foraged and Found to add to our new "Pickle Jar" that we will be offering on our menu in a few weeks. If you are unfamiliar with these foraged items, here's a little summary:

Ramps: aka "wild leeks" are a wild onion found in the forest. They have a very strong onion flavor, and while they come with a large green leaf top, I trim that off when I pickle them and just use the bottom white root.

Sea beans: Found in coastal tidelands, they almost look like miniature asparagus. They grow in large beds and are harvested at the beginning of their growth before they flower and become too tough to eat. 

Ramps after they are pickled

Awesome Scone Recipe, Thanks Martha!

Now I know when you hear someone say "Martha Stewart" nowadays, instead of talking about food, the conversation goes to securities and stock fraud, her time in jail, and the crumbling of her huge food empire. But I will always think of her as that woman I watched on TV when I was a little kid, making the perfect cookies in the beautiful perfect kitchen, and always blatantly bossing around the guests she had on her show (why not, it's her show!).  I wouldn't quite put her up there with Miss Julia Child, but she has forever changed the way we cook at home, and made beautiful DIY home projects for us way before Pinterest came to be! 

I love looking through her website for recipes.  Her recipes are always accurate and turn out great every time. I recently made these sweet white scones that are quick, easy, and turned out delicious! Recipe below (along with a beautiful perfect Martha Stewart photo to accompany it :-) Thanks Martha!

Mummy's Sweet White Scones

Courtesy of the Martha Stewart Show and Petersham Nursery

• YieldMakes about 18 scones

Ingredients

6 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface

• Pinch of salt
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons superfine sugar
• 1 heaping tablespoon baking powder
• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, chilled and cut into pieces
• 4 large eggs
• 1 3/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons milk
• Granulated sugar, for sprinkling

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 475 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper; set aside.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, salt, superfine sugar, and baking powder. Make a well in the center and add butter. Using your fingers, work butter into flour mixture until a crumbly mixture is formed.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together 3 eggs and milk. Add milk mixture to flour mixture and stir to combine.
4. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured work surface; knead lightly and shape into a round. Roll dough out until it is 1 inch thick. Using a 3-inch biscuit cutter, cut out scones and transfer to prepared baking sheets.
5. In a small bowl, beat remaining egg and brush the top of each scone; sprinkle each with granulated sugar. Transfer baking sheets to oven and bake until golden brown and cooked through, 12 to 14 minutes. Transfer scones to a wire rack and let cool slightly before serving.

Can You Handle My Randall?

This past Monday, Nick and I went to a Seattle Beer Week Event at The Pine Box. The event was called "Can You Handle My Randall?" If you're not familiar with what a randall is, it's a process that involves passing beer through food (fruit, herbs, you name it) and infusing the beer with that flavor. There were 12 different infusion at this particular event, with different beers going through everything from grapefruit, to bacon and peanut butter chips, to skittles (yes the candy!). We were able to try all 12 and both of us decided that the Port Townsend Golden Ale infused with green tea was the winning combination. The lightness of the pale ale with a hint of green tea made for an amazing infusion!

Below is the menu of beers, plus a picture of the randalls where you can see the lines going into the fruit, and coming out the back to the taps! Delicious!

List of featured randalls

The randalls

Mmmmm, Morels!

Today at Cafe Flora, Foraged and Found brought us some beautiful morel and king oyster mushrooms. Morels are quite the luxury mushroom, and I'm very excited to have them on my Mother's Day spring garlic and pine nut pesto linguini dish!

Morel Mushrooms from F&F

Seattle Beer Week 2013!

Last night was the first of ten days of events celebrating something we do best here in the PNW, beer! Seattle Beer Week 2013 is upon us, so Nick and I decided to go to the opening party last night at The Pine Box in Capitol Hill, where we were able to try this year's featured SBW beer, Fremont's Seattle Beer Week Session Ale. Very tasty!

My earliest memories of this event was back when I worked at Quinn's, and we hosted some awesome food/beer pairing events and brought in beer that you cannot find anywhere else. Here's a link to the Seattle Beer Week website with a schedule of events going on around the city, there's something going on everyday so go check it out!

Springtime at Cafe Flora!

Looks like Spring flowers are in full bloom! I took this photo in front of the restaurant today of some beautiful wisteria growing along our roof. Just in time for Mother's Day!

Dinner at Altura

This past Tuesday my boyfriend Nick and I decided to visit our friend Ian at his new work, Altura in Capitol Hill. Ian and I had talked a little bit before about the food there, he showed me many pictures of their dishes, of some amazing grass-fed beautifully marbled beef that they served, but none of them really did their food justice. It was AMAZING! Altura is only open Tuesday-Saturday, and the same kitchen crew works everyday, so their attention to detail, freshness, and execution are spot on. Ian said they never serve prep that is more than two days old, and the Chef has an amazing eye for detail.

We were able to get a bar seat in front of Ian's station, and I kid you not I probably saw at least 15 components go into the plating of one bowl of soup! If you would like an excuse to splurge (dinner comes with a hefty price tag but it is worth the experience) go visit Altura!

Ian workin' his station!

Amuse Bouche

Octopus over a white bean puree on the left, cuttlefish on the right.

Pan seared king salmon, morels, fava bean puree.

Lamb cheek, "bone marrow"- a daikon hollowed out with bone marrow inside, pea shoots.

Beef carpaccio, soft poached egg yolk, pickled ramps.

Welcome to my blog!

Me at the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival April 2013

Hi! My name is Bernadette (Berny) and welcome to my first attempt at writing a blog! I hesitate to call this a "food blog" since I won't be writing solely about food. I thought this would be a great way to share my experiences not only as a lover of food, but also as a sous chef working in Seattle. I am currently the dinner sous chef of Cafe Flora, a vegetarian restaurant located in Madison Park in Seattle. Everyday I get the privilege of working with some of the most amazing ingredients, talking to local farmers and purveyors of food, visit farmer's markets across the city, and get to cook with local produce for our seasonal menu. It's an experience that I felt needed to be recorded and shared with all those who love food and would like a peek into the food industry from the perspective of a very new chef!

I hope to be able to write about my experiences, stories, share some awesome recipes I've found, and also give advice for those who have questions about their own cooking experiences at home. Feel free to comment or post to anything I write, I love hearing new ideas! I'll try my best to keep the posts fresh and current. Thanks again, here we go!

P.S. I would like to give credit to my creative friend Andrea for coming up with the title for my blog! :-)