Jakob's Bowl

A Long Lost Tater

When I first saw these gnarly little potatoes in the Boistfort Valley Farm booth at the Ballard Farmers’ Market last fall, I actually thought they were some variety of Jerusalem Artichoke. The sign indicated "Ozette potatoes," and even though I still wasn’t sure about them I bought some two weeks running. They were some of the starchiest potatoes I’ve ever tasted, giving russets a run for their money. They weren’t good for mashing, but they were great for oven roasting – I mainly quarter them lengthwise, toss them in olive oil salt and pepper, put them on a rack and roast at 450-degrees. I think they would also be great for French frying.

This year Nature’s Last Stand brought some early Ozettes to the market a few weeks back, and the farmer gave me the low down. Apparently, they are classified as "fingerlings" - although by whom I do not know - and that they were placed on the Slow Food Ark of Taste a few years back. I’ve been buying them from him every week now. They are so very tasty, with a bit more flavor than most starchy potatoes I’ve eaten. All potatoes originated in South America and were take to Europe by the Spanish explorers, and eventually brought to North America. The Ozette was never taken to Europe, but was brought to the Pacific Northwest directly by the Spanish Explorers. When they abandoned their northern-most outpost, the Makah Indian tribe continued to cultivate the potatoes they left behind, and had been doing so for over 200 years. They were catalogued/discovered by outsiders in the late 1980s. Small scale farming of these buried gems has been building here in the Pacific Northwest, mainly through the efforts of Slow Food. Ask you local potato farmers to investigate the Makah Ozette.

Zebra & Tiger Galette Anyone?

I’ve long been on record about the decade-long infatuation over heirloom tomatoes – just because farmers can grow them, doesn’t mean they should grow them, especially if the soil and climate aren’t right to produce tasty tomatoes, or the farmer(s) aren’t prepared to wait until they’ve ripened to pick them. There is also the decade-long misunderstanding that if a tomato has a ‘name’ it must be an heirloom - this is not the case. And finally, there is the misunderstanding that all heirlooms are superior to all hybrids - remember, the “heirloom” designation is merely a convention, and most heirlooms started out as hybrids; indeed, there are many delicious, hybrid tomatoes out there that have been created over the last four or five decades. The Puget Sound is not the best place to grow tomatoes, given the variability of the weather, even during the best of summers, so I tend to stick with a few farms that are located in microclimates more suitable for tomatoes and whose farmers have a good feel for what to plant and when to pick.

Given all that, this has been a pretty good summer for tomatoes despite the atrocious weather up until early August here in Seattle. This past weekend there seemed to be a cornucopia of striped tomatoes in the Farmers’ Markets, and that’s where I got the inspiration for some Striped Tomato Galettes. I bought some Green Zebras and Red Zebras (hybrids), and some Striped Red Plum Tomatoes (aka, Tiger Striped Plum Tomatoes), and the even more rare Striped Yellow Plum Tomato (heirlooms). I used my favorite Cornmeal & Sour Cream Dough - with Ayers Creek Farm’s Roy’s Calais Flint coarse cornmeal. I also grated Black Sheep Creamery Pecorino on the dough before laying down the tomato slices, and then grated some Sardinian Pecorino on top after the galette came out of the oven. It made a marvelous starter for six.

Thrice Cooked Sardines

After getting my head coiffed yesterday evening, I took Kazmer for a casual stroll around Ballard Avenue with the thought of checking out the current menu at Staple and Fancy, a small plate restaurant that opened at the end of last summer. As we walked by the building in an area of old Ballard that was previously just warehouses and workshops, I noticed another sign hanging over a separate doorway "The Walrus And The Carpenter." A glass door opened to a long, well lit hall that seemed to go nowhere. With that name, I wondered what the business could be, and made a mental note to do some research.

Today at lunch, I just happened to pick up one of the local weeklies, and there in the restaurant section was a review for “The Walrus And The Carpenter.” It opened within a few weeks of Staple and Fancy, and it specializes in oysters and small plates. I took this serendipitous event as a good omen and decided to stop by late this afternoon - it opens at 4 PM.

Francois Chidaine sparkling MontLouis Sur Loire, and grilled sardines - wherever I am on the West Coast at this time of year, if grilled sardines are on the menu I order them. The place was bustling and my mouth was salivating for those sardines - there is nothing like freshly caught sardines that have been grilled and drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice.

After about ten minutes, a plate was set down before me and I was stunned. This is fresh sardine season on the West Coast, and not only are they offered by many restaurants, but they can also be easily found in fish markets, ethnic groceries, and even supermarkets – as a matter of fact, I had them grilled three weeks ago in San Francisco and two weekends ago in Portland. As I picked up my fork, I still couldn’t believe that I was being served tinned sardines that had then been grilled and topped with a mixture of herbs, olive oil and walnuts. They were large 'Portuguese' sardines, which means they were most likely caught off the coast of Morocco and frozen before being shipped to a processing plant in Europe where they were thawed, cleaned and cooked twice in the can.

The topping was mediocre at best, and most importantly there is no real skill involved with reheating a fish that has already been cooked. As expected, they were very dry. I paid my check wondering what Lewis Carroll would have thought about being served tinned sardines during fresh sardine season, but as I reached my car my thoughts turned to the trick played on those poor oysters.

Goose Head Soup

It sure been a cold, cold winter
My feet been draggin' 'cross the ground
And the fields has all been brown and fallow
And the springtime take a long way around

Winter, 1972
M. Jagger/K. Richards

A few weeks ago I got an email about scheduling my holiday goose from Cindy Krepky at Dog Mountain Farm. I had already had one of their delicious Embden geese before Thanksgiving, so I knew the email didn’t apply to me. However, the email ended with a query about giblets, necks, heads and feet, which were optional. After my impromptu experience making a stock from my goose giblets and neck ended so well that I thought this would be a way to get some rich stock from pasture-raised poultry at a pretty low price. I suspected that a significant number of people would pass on the goose odds and ends, and emailed Cindy with my request. I picked up my five-plus pound package of frozen Embden goose parts this morning at the Dog Mountain Farm Booth, and it included a couple of necks, some hearts and gizzards, five pairs of feet and four goose heads. I used the appropriate aromatic vegetables, herbs and spices, and the result was a heavenly aroma throughout my apartment for a couple of hours, about a gallon of tasty goose stock, and some tasty things to nibble on.

Placki Meets Rösti

I grew up in a neighborhood that was predominantly Polish by ethnic heritage, and as a result I consumed a lot of pierogi and potato pancakes, or Placki (Pla-ch-ki) as they are known in Polish (aka, Latkes in Yiddish). My mother, and everyone else for that matter, made them by finely grating peeled potatoes and adding grated onion, and small amounts of egg and flour to bind the mixture and then pan frying them to a brown crispiness in oil. I’ve tasted many a different potato pancake in the intervening years, from many culinary traditions; the best tasting have been those made with just enough egg and flour to hold the potato together while it fries, and the worst have been those that have had too much flour and egg, that is, potato flavored pancakes. The Swiss the simplest potato pancakes, Rösti, by shredding the potatoes and excluding the flour and egg all together.

I stopped peeling my potatoes for potato pancakes years ago. I grated the potatoes more coarsely at first, and I also began adding chopped green onion to the mixture. About four years ago, I came to the conclusion that the French Fingerling potato made damn good pancakes. The next change came after I bought my $20 plastic Japanese mandolin; instead of grating the potatoes, I finely shredded them and the results were great - sort of a Placki/Rösti hybrid. This week I experimented with a matchstick cut of potato with a rectangular cross section. I grated the white part of the green onion and shredded the green part. Grated onion, grated garlic, egg, flour, salt and pepper completed the mixture. The results - served with Vermont Creamery Crème Fraî che and my own Russeted Apple Butter - were delicious, crispy on the outside, soft and aromatic on the inside. (Just remember, a thorough rinsing and draining of the cut potatoes is essential in making any potato pancake.)

My Pasture Raised Goose Was Cooked

My Embden Goose from Dog Mountain Farm turned out better than I expected. I stuffed the goose, and set it on a rack, and filled the bottom of the roaster with a simmering mixture of goose stock, the liquid I used to re-hydrate the dried cranberries and a bit more Madeira. I sealed the roaster with foil and popped it in the 325-degree oven for a bit over two hours, opening it up to baste the bird every half hour. The internal temperature of the bird was about 150 degrees when I pulled off the top foil. I raised the oven temperature to 425 degrees and let the bird roast for 20 more minutes to crisp up the skin. After de-fatting the pan juices, I had a delicious jus and enough goose fat for several future pounds of oven roasted potatoes. While the bird was resting, I coated a combination of Cheddar Cauliflower and Romanesco Broccoli with olive oil, salt and Urfa Biber and popped it in a 350 degree oven, and I mashed some French Fingerlings. The goose was some of the most flavorful poultry I’ve ever eaten. All of the sides, the stuffing, the vegetables, and potatoes, went well with the juicy meat, and everything was washed down with a bone-dry sparkling cider, Sidra de Asturias region of Spain, Poma Aurea…what a meal!