A really simple, clean dish this one, inspired by what was available at the Ballard farmers market today.
As usual I made my food list for the week. This normally includes a large slab of cooking on Sunday, and some fast meals through the week, for when we get back from work. Often, I try and do something a little different mid-week to warrant another blog post.
I should start by saying that I have contracted a rather nasty stomach virus from our little lad Drake. Hardly any food is sounding good at all, and the sight of most food is pretty horrible to me as I write this. Strangely however leeks are not one of them right now (the list seems to change hourly).
So before they start making me swear off vegetables for life, I figured I should get this post out.
I have recently got quite a few private emails asking about my photography setup. Whilst I am completely flattered, I should really tell everyone that I am quite the hack at it - and I have learnt pretty much everything I know from bugging other people!
I started taking photographs for work years ago, but these were photographs of architecture. That meant a wide angle lens. I started using the same lens for food photography, and ran into some problems. The distortion is too great, and things started to look un-natural.
So, like everyone else, I turned to the web for help.
Just for fun one night (haha) started to add up what we spend on food in a month. This included grocery shopping, and eating out. It was bloody ridiculous. I am not going to tell you the final amount, but my guess was so far off it wasn’t funny.
The crappy thing is that quite a bit of the cash went on rubbish lunches in the culinary wasteland of Bellevue. We work out that way (we work together.. how cute), and the options for lunch in Bellevue is pretty terrible, unless you have a decent amount of cash in your pocket. The best cheap place we have found is What the Pho, however that still comes out at nearly $20 for lunch if we don’t split. The pho tastes a touch salty too, so I know the sodium levels are crazy in it. If we were loaded with cash, we would eat at Flo’s (great sushi in Bellevue) every day. But we aren’t, so we can’t.
When Danika was pregnant with Drake, we did a whole bunch of thinking about what kind of parents we would be. We are both pretty happy, mellow people (Danika more than me, if I am being honest), so we figured we would be happy mellow parents, and we are. From all the deeper stuff like that, we started to think about the more obscure parts of being a parent.
We got onto thinking about those annoying new parents that proudly show off their kids artwork on their fridge. Nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is the parents that thing their child is next DaVinci, based purely on the scribble on teh fridge that is quite obviously (well duh) Mum.. or Dad. What is wrong is that they force you to look at the bloody scribbles every time you go into their kitchen. "We aren’t going to be that sad we said".
Opps
That was obviously a lie. Drake did his first painting a while back, and he did it at daycare. Danika and I both work as artists (day jobs), so we obviously figured that we would get Drake doing some art, but we didn’t think it would be that soon.. I think it was around 8 months when he did his first finger painting. Drake’s teacher was super happy with Drake’s artwork that day. She of course showed it to us, kept it for a bit on the wall, along with all the other kids artwork, then gave it to us a short while ago. Now, I am not going to say anything dumb like "Drake’s was the best of the class" (it was… opps), but we rather liked it.
We liked it so much, that we wanted to display it in the house. But a small picture on the fridge didn’t quite cut it for us. We liked it a lot. We had been looking for some abstract art for our stairway for a while, and hadn’t found anything. Until that day we got handed a Drake original.
So, what arrived in the post last week was a 4ft x 4ft stretched canvas copy of his lovely finger painting. Blimey, it was big. You measure things out, and you never quite know how big it is going to be. It was bloody perfect.
So yes, we are those parents that demand you see our son’s artwork every time you visit. We aren’t going to be tacky and drag you into the kitchen to see a crumpled up scribble on the fridge door. We are going to have it so that every time you open the front door, it is there, right in front of you, hanging in the stairway.
First off, I want to say that I don’t bake. I honestly don’t. I truly believe that you should focus on just a couple of things, and work to get really good at them - spread yourself too thin, and well, you become a jack of all trades, which I don’t want to be.
The fact that this came off edible is a complete miracle. The fact that it tasted bloody amazing is 10 years of miracles rolled into one banana bread.
I have a confession to make. I love pork fat. Yep, in this ridiculous day an age, I realize that isn’t a stylish thing to say among some, but er, screw that. People, go read Real Food.
I am particular about my pork fat. Not all fats are created equal, heck no. The fat has to come from properly pastured pigs, naturally raised and from a brilliant breed. I am being a food snob? I don’t care if I am. Taste the difference between properly raised decent breeds of pig, and the stuff you find at a supermarket, and I would be surprised if anyone didn’t agree with me.
Only in Seattle would you buy a large sunshade for your deck, only to use it to keep the rain off you whilst you BBQ. Honestly, we have never used the sunshade to shade you from the sun, not that I can remember anyhow.
With spring on its way (first day of spring is next week.. I should know that, it is my mothers birthday… - Hi Mum, I haven’t forgotten!!) I have been rather impatient to lighten up my food a touch. OK, doing skewers on the BBQ might be going way too far into summer, but I don’t care these tasted great.
I get impatient for new seasons. Spring is almost here (technically it starts next week), but if you ask me, we are in Spring. The weather has got a wee bit better, the days seem longer. Season changes are always exciting as a cook. Each visit to the farmers market yields new finds , and new ideas for recipes.
Of course, I want all of the great spring produce now, and that isn’t going to happen! I wanted to create something spring-like, but which still had winter undertones.
A lot of this actually just comes down to presentation. If the plating is a little more delicate then it hints towards the freshness of spring and summer.
Excuse me as I wipe the tear from eye for this one. Proud Dad time…..
Drake has been a rather tough little bloke to get eating regular table food. In fact, even since he was 6 months old he has been pretty hard to feed any kind of solid food to.. He had a major gag reflex that meant he puked whenever anything remotely solid entered his little cake-hole. He is now nearly 15 months, and it has still been quite a battle to feed him. He would eat small pieces of cheese, and would devour yogurt - but that was it.
But not today! The last couple of days he has got much better, and today, drum roll please…
Drake ate his first real meal!!!
Now, I can tell that you are obviously as excited, and as proud as I am. The next question on your lips almost certainly has to be “but Matt… Matt Matt Matt, what did he eat?
Get this…. Pan seared Petrale Sole with glazed carrots and parsley. Followed by a ton of kiwi.
Not bad for a first meal!
No photo’s I am afraid. I was too busy sitting in awe.
I wasn’t sure whether to post this one or not. I rather quickly decided to take photos, and didn’t have any kind of lighting setup, or any idea about a game-plan for photographing. Yep, it is true, now-a-days when I am going to photograph a recipe, I haul a light, bounce sheets, and sometimes my laptop into the kitchen, and make a few notes about what I want to shoot, and even do some rather bad drawings.
After a few weeks of cooking almost all seafood, I decided it was time for a nice chunk of meat. Now, as most of you readers know, my passion really is for seafood, however I do like to change it up a bit, and a great joint (roast to you Americans) of meat is a great way to do that. I had done a roast chicken recently and cooked a job lot of lamb chops (bbq with some rosemary, delicious!). And lets not forget the steaks that I did before that (not on the blog, sorry!) to show off the new infra-red broiler in this great Bluestar range. So, pork I thought. Well, I had considered rabbit actually, but that isn’t that easy to get around here.
I get a little bored of cooking pork chops all the time, so I fancied doing a pork loin roast. OK, I know once cut up it is a pork chop, but the preparation and cooking are completely different.
This certainly wasn’t the fastest dish I have ever made. It also wasn’t the slowest - check out the curry a few pages back for that one (yeah, we didn’t eat till 11pm). But blimey, it was worth waiting every second. It was all I could do to contain myself from constantly opening the oven door and checking the roast out, and just smelling the aromatic goodness that was filling the house.
I was wondering what to do with this cut of meat. It is pretty much the end of winter, so I wanted something that was a homage to one of my favorite seasons. I knew I wanted it rich in flavor, and just a really honest down to earth roast. Nothing poncy, flouncy, and “ohhhh look at me clever”. I know, I thought in a flash of inspiration, I will stuff it. Which of course led on to the next conundrum which was stuffing it with what.
My folks recently were going through some family photos, and we came across this one - a shot from the 1940s, back in England, of my Grandfathers old greengrocers (do Americans call them Farm shops?). Unfortunately stores like this are hard to come by these days back in England - the large chain supermarkets have undercut all of the smaller, local stores, so most are out of business. Thankfully farmers markets are still around and going strong! Anyhow, I thought people might get a giggle out of this shot of an old veg store. I can only imagine how much produce was inside, there is a storefull on the outside!
