The class was on making parmesan, which was the draw for me, as well as fresh mozzarella, which I’d made before on my own.  Crazy thing is, I learned just as much about making mozzarella as I did the parmesan, because Julie shared tips here and there, sprinkled in with her stories about her past victories and failures.  Now I know that it’s not just how long I handle my fresh mozzarella that determines how tender or rubbery it is, but also the temperature at which the curds form.  And I know too that I can premake curds and freeze them, and then just pull them out and make cheese from them whenever the urge hits.  And I know what the best local farm is for buying milk.  And that’s just scratching the surface.  I have notes scribbled all over my recipe packet of the tips and tricks she shared with us.

And that’s just the mozzarella.  She walked us through the entire process of making the parmesan, from adding cultures, to cutting curds correctly (do it wrong, and you won’t end up with parmesan), to draining it in the molds. And now I have a 2 pound wheel of parmesan of my own, aging in my fridge (and hopefully, soon to be aging in a dedicated “cheese cave”….aka mini fridge.)  I left confident that, armed with Julie’s advice, I can age my cheese perfectly, refining the flavor with terroir, which I now know I can achieve by sticking carrots or parsley near my aging cheese.

And that’s just what I learned.  I also spend those three hours eating a disturbing amount of cheese.  Her amazing Tomme was dangerously piled high on a platter just a short arm’s length from my station, so I really can’t be blamed.  And that Tomme was just so damn good, I am already planning to return to her cheese room for her Natural Rind Tomme and Bavarian Feta class in June.   Her classes cost $145 per person, which is a steal when you factor in how much you learn, the cheese you stuff in your face during the class, the cheese you bring home with you, and a great afternoon spent in a room full of fellow cheese lovers.

See, the thing about Salumi is that it’s only opened from 11 am to 4 pm, Monday through Friday.  So if you hold down a 9-5 and don’t work in Pioneer Square, you may never have the good fortune to try this delectable food.  Since I’m about to start a new job and knew I would likely not get a chance to go again, I trudged down to Pioneer Square this Friday to queue up in line.  I ordered the Salumi Salami with fresh homemade mozzarella on olive oil bread and the (no lie) best sandwich I’ve ever had, the porchetta.  The line moved faster than I expected, and everyone in line was in a great mood, chatty and friendly in that Seattle way, as was Armandino Batali, who rang up my order.  I grabbed my food to go and headed down to South Lake Union to meet up with my boyfriend for a picnic at a park near his work.  It was a stunning day, and we both just about died over the porchetta sandwich.  Imagine the juiciest, most tender and rich pork, marinated in who-knows-what-deliciousness.  The bread just sopped up all the juices in the most beautiful way.  In case you think I’m just being melodramatic, I’m not the only one taken by the porchetta at Salumi.   Esquire Magazine named it one of the best sandwiches in the country, and the porchetta is named in 168 Salumi reviews on yelp, more than any other item on the menu.  So if you live and work here and get a week day off to spend in the city, or if you are coming to Seattle on vacation, Salumi is a must try.

And if you feel like trying to make some delectable porchetta at home, here is a recipe from food52 that looks fairly simple and received rave reviews from that foodie community.

*Note on the LA Farmer’s Market:  It’s not a farmer’s market like you think.  It’s a building and interior maze of food stalls and shops, and is connected to the Grove.  It’s a great resource, but if you’re looking for a true farmer’s market, hit up the Hollywood Farmer’s Market or the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market.

This week was a great week with lots of good news to celebrate.  M and I knew we wanted to celebrate with a night out at a restaurant we had yet to try, and my list of options? HUGE.  I’ve been bookmarking restaurants on yelp for the last two months of living here, taking suggestions from ‘best of’ lists, yelp reviews, chowhound threads, and individual recommendations.   After a terrible gnocchi experience in Redmond last week at a place reckless enough to serve us boxed, barilla brand gnocchi, I decided we needed a great gnocchi experience, one that would rival the amazing gnocchi at one of our favorite restaurants in Cambridge, Hungry Mother.  And oh did I find it.  I realized Dinette in Capitol Hill had the west coast gnocchi of my dreams when I read an insane person on yelp complain in a review that the gnocchi was too soft and fluffy.  Too soft and fluffy!  Like soft and fluffy gnocchi is a bad thing.  Crazy girl.

The gnocchi were little fluffy clouds of ricotta and pasta heaven.  They were served with a ragù of braised beef short ribs that just melted in my mouth.  It was the perfect hearty winter dish, comfort food at it’s finest.  Other winners of the night were the appetizer toasts, which were brilliantly conceived.  We ordered one that sounded somewhat frightening, a prosciutto toast with a fig and anchovy jam.  This is where online reviews are key, because I would never have tried this, had I not read rave recommendations on this dish, recommendations that were heartily deserved.  Because while it sounded like an odd combination, it was perfectly sweet and salty, with a nice touch of umami from the anchovies.

They offer half price bottles of wine on Wednesday nights, a great happy hour menu, and a highly regarded Sunday Supper series.  This, along with the intimate, dimly lit atmosphere, had us planning a return visit before we even left.

I always like to dig around the web and find a few recipes from the restaurant chefs who wow me.  For Chef Melissa Nyffeler, I found one recipe for broccoli rabe pesto toast and a recipe for corn fritters from the cookbook you get if you join this very cool non-profit program called Celebrated Chefs.  Just by signing up and registering the credit card that you use to dine out, participating restaurants  donate 5% of your bill to the participating charity of your choice.  Such an easy and amazing way to give a little back just by eating at your favorite restaurants.  Not only is Dinette one of the participating restaurants, but other recent favorites of mine Poppy and Cafe Juanita also take part, as do How to Cook a Wolf, Lark, Nell’s, and The Walrus and the Carpenter, which are all high on my ‘must try’ list.  I’m so happy I discovered this before I tried them all.

This is a snack I rely on whenever I need a salty sweet fix, which is more often than I care to admit.  It’s great because it calls for so few ingredients — prosciutto, dates, basil, and goat cheese — all of which are easy to keep on hand.  I love that they take no time and all, and you can make as few or as many as you want.  I have been to parties where a variation of this idea is served, but with bacon in place of the prosciutto.  I have to say I find bacon to be too thick, that it doesn’t get all wonderfully crispy like the prosciutto does.  Only caveat with the prosciutto is that you need to keep an eagle eye on them in the oven, to ensure they don’t burn.  The addition of the basil really sets this recipe apart as well, giving it a nice fresh note.

I got this brilliant snack from an Adeena Sussman recipe on epicurious.com, which instructs you to serve these puppies on toothpicks, and considers them party food.  I myself prefer to gobble them down with my fingers, and consider them any-time-of-the-day-or-night food.

But that was Fate’s way of telling her to hold tight, to stay in Kirkland, because a Very Important Person would be moving there in the next few years who desperately needed to taste her dishes.  I’m so incredibly thankful that she’s still here, rather than in New York, cooking on tv.  Because her meal made my year, just ten days into it.  The salad was perfectly dressed and topped with toasted breadcrumbs rather than croutons, the octopus had the most amazing texture, the steak was perfectly cooked, and oh my god the rabbit.  I had never had rabbit, but I’m so glad I ordered it.  This is my tip of the day:  If you have never had something that slightly or severely makes you nervous about trying, order it at the best restaurant ever.  Don’t try oysters or foie gras or rabbit for the first time at a mediocre restaurant.  Try it somewhere that receives James Beard awards, or at least crazy high accolades from yelp or chowhound.  If you, like me, decide to try rabbit for the first time at Cafe Juanita, you won’t know what hit you.  You’ll eat the most succulant, dark meat of your life.  Juicy beyond belief.  And stuffed with a duxelle of mushrooms that soak up all those divine juices.

It really got me thinking how the chef (and equally so the Sous Chef, Lauren Thompson, who we spotted cooking in the open kitchen as we were leaving) made my birthday one that I will never forget.  I think it’s amazing that a stranger can have that much influence over your life, simply by the product they produce.  And it turned my thoughts to my wedding photography, because that’s what I strive for; to craft a product (my images) for a stranger’s special day that is so wonderful that it will stay with them for years and years, just like this birthday meal will stay with me.  So as odd as it sounds, this amazing meal motivates me more than ever to keep improving upon my photography, so I am sure to create something brilliant that will make a lasting impression.  Who knew a braised rabbit would have that effect?

The recipes that accompanied the 2007 Gourmet Magazine story on Chef Holly Smith can be found here.

For anyone who hasn’t had it, let me tell you all about it. Bibimbop is a signature Korean dish piled high with sautéed vegetables, either steak or tofu, and a sunny side up fried egg. The idea is that you mix that hot runny egg through the veggies, meat and rice and create a nice mixed up dish, adjuting it to your liking and heat tolerance with the fiery red sauce they bring in small dishes to the table. Thankfully I was with my foodie friends (one of whom is a food writer for the Boston Globe) who urged us all to get the bibimbop variation dolsot bibimbop. Oh am I so glad that I did. This variation is served in a hot stone bowl that comes to the table sizzling with heat and delicious aromas. It was this stone bowl that stole my heart, because as I mixed up and ate my meal, it sizzled away at the rice at the bottom of the bowl, giving me the most amazing crispy treat to end my meal.

Since getting back to Seattle I haven’t had a chance to seek out some amazing bibimop here, but it’s at the top of my list. Here are some photos from our delicious bibimbop meal at Buk Kyung in Somerville, MA.  I highly recommend trying this dish the next time you come across a Korean restaurant.

When I got home the first thing I did was hit up amazon to see if chef Jerry Traunfeld has a cookbook.  Fortunately he does, for his other restaurant The Herbfarm. And I dug around the web and found a handful of online recipes by Traunfeld, like these from Food & Wine and these from Epicurious, which will be gracing my dinner table in 2012.  And maybe yours?

Happy New Year, and Happy Eating everyone!

It would have been an entirely ordinary stay, except I asked the motel owner about his accent (Polish) and what brought him to Arizona, of all places.   All he said at first was that he bought the motel on the internet, sight unseen, and it ruined his life.  He told me he lost his wife, his kids, everything.  He gestured to his dog, and said that he was all he had left.

It was a sad little glimpse into this man’s life.  I wanted to know more, but felt strange asking, so I just said that I was sorry and went back to my room.  The next morning I pulled out my camera and asked him if I could shoot some portraits of him and Sebastian, his giant German Shepard.  He agreed and as I was shooting away all morning and as our dogs ran around together, he told me more.  He told me how much he loves New Jersey, how he used to live there and wishes he could go back.  He showed me a snapshot of his kids, and pointed to his beautiful, blond daughter and told me that he bought her a motorcycle for her birthday.  Then he told me that she died on that same motorcycle.  He told me that soon after he bought the motel and moved out to the desert, expecting his wife to soon follow, he received divorce papers in the mail.  He told me the motel was like a prison for him.  He again said that his dog and his chickens, which he keeps in a coop out in front of the motel, were all he had.

When he saw how delighted I was by his chicken coop, he begged me to wait longer for them to lay eggs that morning so I could take some with me.  So I delayed heading to LA for a good 2 hours, taking pictures and listening to stories, waiting on his chickens to lay eggs.  Once they finally were ready to wander the grounds, pecking at brush and bugs, he let them out and crawled into the coop himself.  I asked him a question as he was crawling in, and he stopped and turned and had a full conversation with me, there on his hands and knees in this coop.   He was beyond disappointed that there was only one egg for him to give me.  But I took it and gently nestled it in an empty mini pringles can, padded with some plastic dog bags I had in my purse.

It was a great morning, the kind of connection and experience I was looking for on this drive cross country.  And even though he thanked me profusely as I was leaving, telling me that most visitors don’t give him the time of day, I don’t think that’s entirely true.  As I was leaving, another guest got out of his car and greeted him warmly, and they started talking about their respective tooth aches, a subject they had breached the day before.   It made me realize that some people are just wired to connect to others, and I left hoping that I am one of those people.