1. I ate nothing but chinese food growing up. In fact, of my 18 years at home with my family, probably less than 10% were eaten with a fork and knife - most were eaten with chopsticks and accompanied with a bowl of rice.  Very rarely do I actually FEEL like eating chinese food (except in Toronto where the food is awesome), much less cooking it. I'm pretty chinese fooded out even so many years later.
2. There isn't a lot of challenge to chinese food cooking to me - I'm very familiar with the ingredients - whereas things like parsnips, fennel, pumpkins, celery root - these are all things I've never cooked with before and I'm totally fascinated with how to prepare them, what goes well with them, etc.
3. High standards coupled with laziness - truthfully the dishes I would want to eat/make are WAY too labour intensive for it to be worth my time (sharksfin soup for example) that I'd rather just go out to order it (though I'm a snob and think Seattle chinese food blows) - or better yet, go home to Toronto to eat it or have my mom make it :)
4. I hate chinese vegetables. Not that it should stop me from cooking chinese food, but I think bok choy, choy sum and pretty much every other chinese green is totally nasty.

So there you have it, can cook chinese food but probably won't.

Bon Appetit's November issue is full of thanksgiving goodness - I want to roast a turkey every day! Anyway, since I'm unsure of who is going to be doing the cooking at T's fam's place for thanksgiving, I didn't want to lose out on trying out some of the recipes.

I love fennel, though I usually use it raw in salads and I've never actually 'cooked' it before, so I tried this - Roasted fennel with olives and garlic - and seriously, its awesome... if you're looking for a good (and easy to make) side for thanksgiving, this is totally worth it. Finding fennel sometimes can be a pain the ass, since the only place I've consistently found fennel is at Whole foods and its so much more expensive there than if you can find it at Safeway and Trader Joes (though they only sporadically carry it so its good to have WF as your backup).

I really wanted to try the Brussels Sprout Hash with Carmelized Shallots but I couldn't stomach the idea of the entire apartment smelling like stinky gym shoes all evening while they cooked (plus, not everyone likes brussel sprouts) or the Butternut Squash Gratin with Goat Cheese and Hazelnuts too but T isn't as crazy about butternut squash as I am. The fennel went over well with all so I'm happy. I'll have to try those other ones another time.

Until only last year had I ever ate pumpkin - it always struck me as being kinda gross - probably because the only time I really ever saw pumpkins was when I was a kid carving them at school and I can't imagine eating anything that had been molested by dirty kid hands.

Anyway, last week T was in San Francisco for work and called me one night so I could keep him company while he ate his dinner. He described this fantastic pumpkin soup that he was drinking and it sounded interesting to try to duplicate.

I ended up using this recipe on Epicurious (which btw, is where I get most of my recipes, that site is the awesomest ever) and it turned out great. Based on the comments I had modified the recipe slightly using more chicken broth than water to make sure it wasn't bland, as well as more carrots and onions. Highly recommend this recipe, its great for fall.

I've made this chicken recipe before but cheated since it was last minute and I only had chicken breasts and not a whole chicken.  This time I actually followed the recipe exactly - it was a lot less daunting than I expected since I got the butcher to do all the work of cutting the backbone off the chicken for me so that it could easily be cooked flat.

I thought the squash with lime would be a nice switch up, since usually I make squash candied instead of savory. I also had a potato leek soup, but since I didn't have any milk or cream the texture was pretty pitiful...oh well, can't win them all.

Anyway, dinner was great, it went over well with my fellow 'my significant other is in another city more interesting than Seattle' friends who got together to eat and drink.

[For those who aren't familiar with the bar scene around seattle, back in the day Del Rey used to have $1 happy hour pulled pork sliders which were fantastic to start off an evening of drinking or end off an evening of drinking. Anyway, they changed their menu to mexican and don't have them anymore.  Since then I've been mourning the loss of the slider - Belltown bistro and cascadia both do mini burgers but they just aren't the same]

The recipe is really easy and straight forward and I would definitely make it again for my next party. It was a bit challenging finding the right size buns and in the end I opted for a small roll that was a bit bigger than the recipe called for (and subsequently made the meatballs slightly larger as well to keep everything in proportion) but they still turned out fine, and when you have a big group of folks getting ready to ride the bull, its the perfect fix.

I didn't have a whole chicken but chicken breasts work well too. This was supposed to be a 'fast' recipe but its a bit of a pain to have a bunch of pans on the stove at the same time.

anyway, T really liked this and I'd consider making it again, this time actually measuring ingredients too. maybe.

Recipe is here: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/233973

Hi Karen, I'm the cook behind Caché and wanted to apologize that you were unhappy about your experience. Spanish Night, IIRC, was our third event so we were still pretty new to the whole thing. I agree about the ventilation and we won't be deep-frying in our space in the near future. After some guests from our first and second event left over-stuffed but happy, we decided to scale back on the portions/richness of the food for Spanish Night and I may have been overzealous in that regard if you left unsatisfied. If I had known, I would have been more than happy to offer you another plate as we had plenty of leftovers! As with all restaurants, I think we learned a lot in the last 2.5 months that we've been open, and the feedback about the food, especially in the last month and a half, have been overwhelmingly positive. We're getting private bookings from guests who came and enjoyed themselves so much that they now want to host small dinner parties here for their friends. I'd like to offer you a free meal at our most popular event if you're interested for Sunday, May 6th (foie gras custard, braised pork belly wrapped in bacon, duck confit pot pie, dessert, and wine pairings). Please email me at info@cacheseattle.com if you're available and interested in coming again.

I went to check out Steelhead last night in the market - as far as new restaurants go, Tavolata is still my favorite new place - I could eat at Tavolata every night.

Anyway, I think Steelhead pulled off the diner decor well and I like that it overlooks the market - it probably would have been even nicer had I gotten there before the sun went down. The staff there is super friendly and super eager about the menu, and they've got a great wine list and knowledgeable staff. I'm curious to see how well it does as I've heard the previous restaurant that occupied that space totally tanked - after dark there isn't a whole lot of foot traffic so it'll be word of mouth and reputation to draw people to the restaurant.

I *could* go back to Steelhead but its not my first choice.

Seattle-based DRY Soda Co. offers the first culinary soda, a line of all-natural, lightly sweet beverages designed for those wanting a sophisticated non-alcoholic option to accompany a great meal or simply a night out with friends. DRY combines the subtle essence of nature and the kitchen in its four cuisine inspired flavors: kumquat, rhubarb, lemongrass and lavender.

 

In a fashion similar to fine wines, DRY was developed to be paired with great foods, and when poured, each flavor teases the senses with an effervescent mix of fragrance and flavor. DRY is all-natural, non-caffeinated, flavored with fruit and herb extracts, and sweetened with a small amount of pure cane sugar. In addition, each bottle of DRY Soda contains only 50-70 calories — far fewer than conventional sodas

 

This was super yummy and easy to make: Sake Steamed Sea Bass with Ginger and Green Onions @ epicurious.com

• Taste:
• Ease of preparation: (the whole meal took less than 20 minutes including prep AND cooking) 
• Actual resemblance to picture:  

(damn spaces for not offering the thumbs up emoticon by default! i had to cut and paste this ghetto non-transparent gif!)

 Umm, like hello, i love pound cake and this cake looks SOOOO tasty. Here's the recipe.

It's funny - when I was a kid my mom used to make pound cake and for whatever reason I didn't like pound cake at all. Slowly as a I got older I guess I started to appreciate that not every dessert needs to be covered in a. icing b. ice cream c. sprinkles and started to really like pound cake. I think they call that process maturity. Or the fear of diabetes.

Anyway, looking at this picture is making me hungry!

I know what I'm going to be making this weekend after I go hunt down the special pan it calls for.