It seems like Brittany over at The Pie Lady has awarded me with another Meme. I should say that she runs one of my favorite food blogs out there. She is pastry chef at one of my favorite Seattle restaurants - Crow, and pastry chef at Crow’s sister, Betty. If that wasn’t enough to seal her blog into my hall of fame, he writing style is brilliant - witty and down to earth. Oh, and she has as bad a potty mouth as myself. And finally, her baking is awesome. To me, she is one of Seattle’s top pastry chefs, and very humble about it too.

So, this Meme is a little different. It has nothing to do with food. I apparently have to list 7 songs I am listening to at the moment. That is pretty interesting I thought, and it got me thinking. I have a really wide range in music tastes - I listen to a lot of old blues and jazz, modern trance (dance) music, and have a real passion for obscure lyrical indie too.

So here is what I am listening to at the moment (with amazon links if I can find them)

“Leave” by Glen Hansard - this is from the soundtrack to Once. I haven’t seen the movie, but just absolutely adore this soundtrack. Glen is just an awesome singer songwriter. Very simple, completely down to earth, heart-strung lyrics. To me, this is the best song on the album. Just him a guitar. He really gets into it.

“From the Ritz to the Rubble” - from a British band called Arctic Monkeys. These guys are brilliant. Some very catchy, slightly popish songs - but great humor in their songs. If anyone was a kid growing up in England, what they sing about might well hit home. Especially if you were a wee lad that snuck into pubs way before they should have done.

“Since I Told you It’s Over“ - from the bloody incredible Brit band Stereophonics. I just cannot stop listening to this album, even though I have had it for years now. I first really got into it when renovating our old house to sell, a couple of years ago. It is great working music. Really great music to cook to as well.

“Metaphorique (Ferry Tayle Neverending Story Mix)“ - some really great Trance music here. Very progressive, and simply incredible to listen to when doing laborious tasks (podding fava beans..). When working late at my day job, this one gets cranked to silly volume levels. Working at my old film job got me into a lot of electronic music. One guy I worked with loved the stuff, and when working weekends we would blast it. We actually had one guy knock on the door of the office (which was in the middle of a town) and ask if the building was a club..

“Windows” by BRMC - a great indy band with great musical arangement. I heard this on the only good radio station in Seattle (90.3 KEXP) and was instantly hooked. This gets a lot of play at the moment.

“I Spy” by Pulp. Pulp were a great British band headed by the brilliant Jarvis Cocker. Most will remember Jarvis from making a complete fool of wacko Jacko when the child molester singer came up on stage, surrounded by white light, and little boys bowing at his feet. I guess this all pissed Jarvis off, and he ran up on stage as a protest.. I am sure that is You-Tubed somewhere! Anyhow, this guy is the king of lyrics, as well as musical arrangement. The songs really strike home, are humorous, and perfectly scored. This is driving/singing/cooking music at its best. You cannot, absolutely cannot sing loud enough to this song - and if you are Danika, you cannot stop doing the arm movements either.

“High Shelf Booze” by Eilen Jewell. Another great singer songwritter. Great songs, catchy music.  This one is my top pick of the album Letters from Sinners and Strangers. (crappy YouTube version, sorry!)

So there you go.. That is what I am listening to these days. Thanks again to The Pie Lady for picking me for the Meme.

OK, I am crazy busy right now with my day job, but just wanted to say how much I am completely in love with summer in Seattle this year. The fresh local produce available at the markets right now is outstanding… outstanding!!!!

Take this for example. It has been done a million times. Tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and basil – and not forgetting lashings, yes lashings of the most awesome French sea salt you can find. Oh, and topping it off with the equally most awesome olive oil.

It doesn’t get better than this. It can’t. Oh, wait, yes it can. The perfect summer pork belly post I have to write (that I cooked this weekend) when I get a free second. I love pork belly. Mmmmmm. I have always struggled to make pork belly light enough for summer though.. This little concoction that I speak of however well and truly kept the pork belly light and crisp. Yay! perfect for pork belly every week!!!

But until then, cheers to the awesome farmers and producers that make farmers markets as great as they are. And of course also to everyone that has decided they want the best produce and want to support local farmers. It’s inspirational, it really is.

For some reason I had been thinking about seaweed a bit of late. I have absolutely no idea why to be honest. I haven’t eaten any in ages, however one day sitting at work I decided I wanted to make a nice tasty and fast seaweed salad.

And that really got me thinking about flavors with seaweed. I have had some really awesome seaweed dishes at some great local Japanese restaurants, but I couldn’t remember for the life of me what also went in the salad. Which, leads me on to my next point. To me, seaweed doesn’t have a ton of flavor. It tastes of the sea, and I love that, but it is far more a textural thing than a taste – in my books anyhow. So, the really memorable flavors in a seaweed salad have to come from elsewhere.

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Blimey, scallops again you say. Well, yes. I am on a bit of a scallop fix lately. When the weather is hot, they just seem like the perfect seafood bite. They also cook in a snap, and are bloody tasty. That could be closer to the truth actually….

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What the hell you say… Matt has done more baking?? Don’t worry, I haven’t suddenly found a love for cooking up all things sweet. A love of eating baked stuff, certainly, but certainly not making it!

The only hand I had in this one was in the photography, and I am happy to say, the eating. Dearie did the rest.

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OK – after the last post, I am going to get through this one without a single exclamation mark. Lets see how I do…..

So this dish very nearly didn’t make it. I was meant to be cooking for my parents, Danika’s parents and us, at our house. Somehow it then got all screwed up, and I was then cooking at Danika’s parents house. Bastards. I am going to seem like a real high-maintenance bloke here, but I am not. Just don’t ask Danika that though!

So, I hate Danika’s parents kitchen. Their stove is rubbish. A match gives out more heat. They also don’t cook much, so the layout of the thing is pretty rubbish too, along with lots of stuff covering the counters, which makes it hard to work. The only work space is really on the bar, which is full of people, and snacks for said people.

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I swear the blogging world is messed up. I entered my post on the Halibut, saffron-mussel liquor velouté, fava beans, watercress and fresh peas into this month’s “Does my blog look good in this” competition, hosted by the brilliant Tartelette.

There was some completely amazing food, and food photography, and I honestly thought I was going to get no where with it.

Turns out I was awarded Overall winner for the month!!! And I didn’t even try bribing anyone, which I am sure wouldn’t have worked anyhow, but hey.

I just wanted to say how completely stoked I am. I know everyone says this, but I honestly thought I didn’t stand a chance. I think over 100 people entered, and in my mind there was some far better food, and food photography in the competition. I am glad the judges picked me though

So what did I do to celebrate? Bought some scales (I have never owned any..), and went out to dinner at Harvest Vine in Seattle, which was sodding spectacular – more on that later…… OK, both of those things we had planned for today anyhow, but I took them over as a celebration for me I am nothing if not high maintenance! haha

Everyone should go check out the other entries – some really fantastic food, and food photography:

DMBLGIT June 2008 – hosted by Tartelette

Thanks again to everyone that entered, and the great judges this month. You have made my month!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! wait that isn’t enough exclamation marks, I am far happier than that.. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! that’s better

So I have decided that every now and again, when something springs to mind, I would share some of the stuff I have learnt about seafood – whether it is purchasing, cooking or presenting. I have received quite a few emails about cooking fish, so why not share some of my responses with everyone, rather than just a single person!

Anyone that reads this blog knows that I am pretty nutty about fish. Lets face it, it’s fantastic. I can think of no other protein that has so many different flavors and textures, and can be presented in so many different ways.

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Something crazy happened when I walked into Mutual Fish at the weekend. I went there with Copper River Salmon money. Yep, that stuff ain’t the cheapest fish in the store. But, and this is a big but, I walked straight past it. It looked amazing, but at this point no where near as good as some of the most beautiful white fish I have ever seen. Striped Bass.

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“oohhh, I am so looking forward to your Fathers Day dinner” said Danika, with a rather cheeky smile on her face. Yep, that is right folks, I cooked my own Fathers Day dinner, and was bloody happy about it. Not that Danika isn’t a good cook – far from it, she is awesome, but it is just me and cooking. I obviously love it (who the heck would have a food blog if they didn’t!!!). Cooking, above anything else relaxes me. If I have had a tough day at work, I am, it has been said, not that fun to be around until I get into the kitchen.

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OK.. so it isn’t like I don’t have a thousand other bloody things to do, but… I really wanted to put together a website that just had some of my better food photography on it – no odd stories or anything. Without further ado

Behold… drum roll…..

http://www.mattikaarts.com/photography

NOTE: I cannot code HTML to save my life.. Apparently this looked like junk in Firefox.. Who uses firefox anyhow?? Oh, turns out lots of people. A good friend of mine took pity on me, and recoded the thing in CSS, so it should look fine for everyone now. Even you Mac users.. LOL.

Bastards. Complete bastards. I have had to do some baking. Sounds odd I know - a cook that doesn’t much like to bake. Well, that is me! Baking always seems like a black art, sometimes it goes great, other times I am left swearing at a rock cake that was never meant to be a rock cake.

So. PEPs was at our house this weekend, on Fathers Day none the less. I had to bake on Fathers Day. Evil Bastards. We had managed to not host the meetings for a while, mainly due to the kitchen renovation, but it was now our turn - well and truly our turn.

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Nuff said really! This blog is now one year old.

The last year has been awesome. Lots of changes, lots of developments. I reckon the food on here as got a lot better, along with the photography. Thanks to everyone that leaves comments (both good and bad), this wouldn’t be the same without all of you.

"Dearie? Who the heck is Dearie?" you ask….. The answer, my Mum. Yep, we call her Dearie. That isn’t her name, it isn’t even remotely close. Somehow, somewhere in my childhood we got to calling her Dearie. It just stuck. It now seems really odd in fact to call her Mum. Dearie she is. It rather suits her actually, as anyone that knows her would say.

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Maybe I should be happy with this, because it must mean I get more visits to my blog, but just of late I have been getting a ton of spam posts. A couple of hundred a day.  This is all pretty new to me to be honest, and I really don’t have much of an idea about how to handle it.

I know there are some spam blockers out there for Wordpress based sites, but it looks like a lot give false negatives. I don’t want someone’s hard written comment to get labeled as spam, and I miss it.. nor do I want to have to troll through a spam folder to make sure there isn’t anything that it might have screwed up..

It looks like most spam I get is on older posts.. I was wondering if there was just a way to turn off commenting on older posts - no one seems to comment on stuff more than two weeks old anyhow.

I would love to hear from people about how they deal with the rediculous amount of blog based spam, yet still manage to process the genuine comments effectively. Either comment to this post, or email me at matt(at)mattikaarts(dot)com

Thanks everyone for making this blog a complete giggle to write!

I was wondering this weekend what to cook for a blog post. We normally trot off to a farmers market, get something special, and I work a decent(ish) dish out of it for a nice, lovely blog post. This weekend I was stumped. I normally muse over things a bit through the week, so that I have an idea of what I want to do at the weekend. I didn’t this week. Work has been crazy, and I haven’t thought about much else.

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This dish really came about from a walk around the Ballard farmers market on Sunday. A lot of stands were just bursting with vibrant greens, the most awesome spring garlic that I have ever seen. The star, the complete star is the miners lettuce. I have never used this before, and think it is the darn coolest green I have come across. Visually it is stunning, you get this nice round leaf with this awesome little "flower" (if that is what it is) in the middle. You look at it and think that the leaves might be a little chewy. You pick a leaf off and eat it, and it is nothing but soft, subtle and gentle. Just amazing.

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A little while ago now we stopped on the way home from work at Cafe Lago, in Seattle. The place is just down the road from us, so we often end up there. Most Seattlites I am sure will know the place - pretty decent pizza and pasta, and ridiculously high prices for what they serve. The problem there is competition - there isn’t any.. unless you talk of Vios Cafe - another place that does great food, but you pay through the nose for it. Anyhow, I digress.. I had a special there which was a pea ravioli. They had it served smothered in a heavy marinara sauce, which completely overpowered the delicate nature of the ravioli themselves, which actually were little stars.

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I have a confession to make. When the people at Kona Blue sent me a fish to play with a month ago, they wanted me to try cooking it a few different ways. I didn’t. We ate almost all of it as the Kampachi Tartare. There was enough left over to cook it, but certainly not enough to try it with a few different methods.

So, I bought some more. Crazy birthday parties out of the way, this weekend I had some time to get to know this fish a bit better, but this time cooked instead of raw. I wasn’t a huge fan of it cooked when I cooked it as skewers, a few posts ago. I found the meat overly fishy in flavor (and I normally really like a good strong fish taste, but this just tasted old), and lacking in texture.

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Some may have noticed that this funky Englishman hasn’t been posting that much recently. There is a reason for it, Danika and I were planning a surprise Birthday party for her dad. Well, it was honestly more her than I for most of it - but I did do my bit for food of course!

I wanted to post something earlier - asking people for advice about what to cook, however I didn’t want to screw anything up, because apparently he does check this blog out every now and again.

So I have never cooked for 60 people. I think 16 is the most, and that was more a dinner party thing. I can honestly say that I don’t entirely recommend trying to crank out food for 60 people in a small kitchen with only 3 people making the food. When we were planning it I should have realized it was a bloody stupid idea, however we just got caught up in things.

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I have been thinking of sauces somewhat of late. I used to cook a lot more with a French influence, mainly thanks to the simply incredible book French Provincial Cooking, by Elizabeth David. This book is a complete classic. No pictures, and it can be a nightmare to cook from, especially if you are a new cook. Saying that however, this is the book that I really started cooking from. She is so descriptive with her prose that there is honestly no picture that could do the recipes in here justice. She seems like a colorful character, extremely blunt and to the point, with a huge passion and love of French cooking, history, and the people of such an amazing country. This is honestly a cookbook that everyone should have. We aren’t talking haute cuisine here at all - this is basic French food, with tons of character. Everything however is about technique. It was this book that really made me focus on getting things perfect, and not ever sitting back - always pushing forwards, experimenting, and trying to perfect a dish.

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Ahhhh Kampachi. If you look rather attentively through my latest posts, that fish crops up a little bit ago. A couple of weeks ago I made a few skewers, and one of them held some wonderful Kona Kampachi fish.

Well, god knows why, I decided to send a link to the photos and blog entry to Kona Blue, the people that raise the Kampachi fish, in Hawaii. The delightful bunch of people there decided that they wanted to send me a Kampachi to try a variety of preparations with - mostly cooked.

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Danika and I have been thinking a lot about food costs of late. We all know that food costs are on the rise - mainly due to the cost of petrol these days (just another reason to eat local).

To try and cut our food bills down, which are pretty high, we decided to do some completely un-scientific research into where is the cheapest place to buy decent quality, local (when possible) organic produce.

We made notes at a range of grocery stores here in Seattle - PCC, Whole Foods, Trader Joes and Central Market (Shoreline) to be exact. We even thought about doing the same for farmers markets - but then realized that was pointless - the price difference between stalls would have completely thrown the results.

So, trying to be organized I put all this into a spreadsheet, so we could clearly see where works out cheaper. Out of those grocery stores listed, if you can find it at Trader Joes, it is cheaper there. By far. Problem is, the produce at TJs can be pretty sucky to say to least, and they don’t carry Organic Valley milk which we like (its organic, grass fed milk, at an OK price). In the battle of the "organic" grocery stores - PCC comes out tops.

I thought I would share the spreadsheet - some local folks might find it interesting. This has saved us gas miles too - we used to drive up to Central Market, thinking it was cheaper. It ain’t. So, here it is - it only covers the stuff we by most of, but hopefully someone will find it useful.

Seattle Organics cost spreadsheet (Excel)

More food posts to be coming shortly - Been a really hectic couple of weeks. Some great dishes on the way. I promise!

This was a quite a surprise I have to tell you. Last Saturday we had a "clear out the fridge" dinner. Anything that was left over from the week of shopping got cooked up. Well, pretty much everything.

I had some small carrots left over, and a big old bunch of radishes, that I hadn’t even used. I have a hard time with r