Splitting a Burger @ Quinn's Pub

Dan & I had plans to meet up with Ruth at Quinn's Pub for a bite before seeing 'Women In Peril' at Annex Theater. Ever since they inked the date on the calendar, we've been dreaming of a Quinn's burger.



Sadly, Ruth fell under the weather this week, and couldn't join us. But the play's director, our pal Jason, was able to come by and share a drink with us.



I enjoyed The Conquistador - a tequila/rum cocktail with honey and habanero - which had just enough heat to warm your throat, but no enough to make your lips burn. And the tequila/rum combo was surprisingly delicious, rather than overwhelmingly boozy. I guess I've been a sucker for a spicy cocktail lately. I figure, if a bloody mary can have tabasco and horseradish sauce, why not put some heat in a tequila drink?



Even though we'd both been dreaming of their burger, we did the sensible thing and split one.



We ordered it rare and for the first time in my life, the chef cooked the burger REALLY rare. It was borderline tartare in the middle - pink and delicious. We cut it in half and each devoured them, pausing only to shove some of their hand cut fries into our pie holes...



... or to scarf down some of the delicious grilled asparagus we ordered as a side.



The service and the food were impeccable, and even though Ruth couldn't join us, we had Jason as wonderful company. And Jason's show - a campy parody of all those 90's Lifetime movies starring folks like Judith Light and Meredith Baxter Birney (and often Aiden Quinn) - was a perfect end to the evening.

Tandoori Chicken

Dan & I picked up a whole frozen chicken from Tiny's Organics last week while at the Columbia City Farmers Market, and decided to give it the Tandoori treatment.



I only have a few Indian cookbooks, most of which focus on vegetarian fare, and none contained a recipe for Tandoori anything - so I did some searching around online. I ended up combining a few recipes into one - including the recipe for making your own Garam Masala I learned from the cooking class I took with Ruth a year ago - and making some divergent decisions from all the recipes I ran across. I couldn't see throwing away perfectly good chicken skin, so I opted not to remove it. I also decided to keep the bird whole, rather than break it down before cooking. Contrary to how I normally cook, I did add the red & yellow food coloring to try to give the chicken that distinctive red color - though you can see that even two teaspoons of coloring didn't do much.

I cooked the chicken with some potatoes and carrots, though they needed more than an hour of cooking for some reason, so I had to pull the bird out and put the veggies back in. We served it all with basmati rice, of course.



Tandoori Chicken
1 whole chicken
1 medium cinnamon stick, coarsely chopped
1 1/2 tspn whole cumin seeds
1 Tbspn coriander seeds
1/2 tspn cardamom pods
1/4 tspn whole cloves
1/2 tspn fennel seed
1/4 tspn grated nutmeg
1 tspn black peppercorn
1 1/2 cups plain yogurt
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 Tbpsn grated ginger root
1 tspn cayenne pepper
2 tspn salt
1 tspn yellow food coloring
1 tspn red food coloring





Dry roast the cinnamon, cumin, coriander seeds, cardamom, cloves, fennel, nutmet and peppercorn in a dry pan on a low flame, till you begin to smell their aroma. Remove from heat and allow to cool.



Slash the meat of the breasts, thighs and legs diagonally about 1/4 inch deep.



Grind the cooled roasted spices together in a coffee grinder to make a smooth powder.



Combine spice powder with yogurt, lemon juice, onion, garlic, ginger, cayenne, salt and food colorings to create a paste.



Coat the chicken (inside and out) with the paste. Cover and marinate for for at least 8 hours.

Place chicken in a roasting pan and bake uncovered in a 450 degree oven for 60 minutes.

Memento Meal - Royal Courts of the Middle Ages

Our sixth round of Memento took place tonight, hosted by Kristin - who selected the theme "The Food of the Royal Courts of the Middle Ages". The dinner took place at Gerald's new apartment up in Northgate.



David and Carolyn started us off with their tasty twist on a classic 'meat' pie - using Coho salmon with a variety of fruits, richly spiced, in a whole wheat crust, created in miniatures as a perfect 3 bite appetizer to get our taste buds warmed up. As you'll see, it was practically an amuse bouche - given a distinctive theme tonight.





In celebration of the royal courts of the Philippines, Gerald created their national dish - chicken adobo - the way it might've been enjoyed by medieval royalty: featuring chicken hearts, gizzards and livers in a vinegary sauce, with rice. This was Memento's first foray into offal - and nearly everyone cleaned their plates. I really enjoyed the chicken livers, and now want to explore other dishes that feature them. The hearts were a little dense (not tough, however) and it was definitely challenging to look down and see a whole heart on your plate - aortas and all.





Dan & I did a take on a medieval 'sallat', focusing on the preservation methods so integral to eating in the colder months in the days before refrigeration. We combined cured meats (salami & pancetta) with preserved fruits and veggies (kalamata and green olives, hearts of palm and capers), plus some fresh red onion and grapefruit - the latter representing the access to traded commodities that only the royalty of the era might've enjoyed. We topped it with some goat cheese and almonds that were toasted in pork fat and topped with sel gris (grey salt), and dressed it with a mixture of local honey, grapefruit juice, and white balsamic vinegar.





Anna & Jason presented a beautiful dish of perfectly roasted poussin (young chicken) on top of a medley of foraged mushrooms (including morel and king bolete) with house cured pig jowl (known as guanciale), a shallot infused potato crisp (cooked in pork fat, I believe), and a simple yet flavorful saute of carrots and foraged sea beans. True to the royal theme, they didn't do the foraging - they left that to the folks from Foraged & Found Edibles.





Our second entree (and second meat pie) was courtesy of our host, Kristin, who created a decadent layered pie of chicken, turkey and duck organ meats, dried fruits soaked in brandy, duck confit, nuts and cheeses, all thickened with trotter gear (aka pig feet gelatin). In the center of each pie was a large bone with breadsticks tucked inside for enjoying the amazing melted marrow.





And finishing us off with the closest thing to a meat pie one could reasonably pass off as dessert was Marcy & James 'Lombardi Custard' - a rich and lovely pie of dried fruits (figs, apricot and dates) with parsley and a secret ingredient that I saw James putting in the pie but still didn't recognize. While I was washing dishes, he was crumbling a bright pink pasty stuff on the pies, his hands covered in it. Never in a million years would I have realized it was bone marrow. Contrary to what you might think, it didn't lend a strong meaty flavor to the dessert - but certainly added some of the richness.

The Return of Breakfast Muffins

Dan & I strayed from our weekly routine of making muffins to take for breakfast, and have been relying on yogurt, granola and oatmeal (for the most part) instead.

Then last week, Dan & I made a batch of muffins using the last of the blueberries my Mom gave us from her garden last year, which Dan took to his work to share with his staff. That, plus the start of the Columbia City Farmers Market, seemed to be the catalysts we needed, because this week we dove back in and made Rhubarb Oat Muffins using some great rhubarb stalks we bought from Rockridge Orchards.

Since it's been awhile, I'll repost our tried & true, super flexible muffin recipe:

Honey Oat & Fruit Muffins
3 cups all purpose flour (you can replace up to half with whole wheat flour)
1 Tbspn baking powder
1 tspn salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tspn Flax Seed Powder*
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 cup milk
1/2 cup honey
2 eggs
2 cups fruits, berries and/or nuts, cut into small pieces if necessary
1/4 cup rolled oats

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Combine flour, baking powder, salt and flax powder in a bowl, mixing well using a whisk. Add 1/2 cup brown sugar and whisk again to blend until uniformly colored. Melt butter in a glass bowl or measuring cup, by microwaving for 30 seconds, then 20 seconds, then 10 seconds, until fully melted. (Don't try to hurry this step, or you'll end up with the butter exploding.) Add honey to melted butter and whisk well to combine. Whisk together milk and eggs. Add honey/butter to milk/egg mixture, whisking well. Stir wet mixture into dry mixture just until almost all the flour is moistened. Fold in fruit very lightly, until the fruit is distributed. Ladle batter into a well-greased muffin tin (each of the 12 depressions will be filled to just more than full). Sprinkle rolled oats over the top. Bake for 20 minutes. Makes a dozen muffins.

* If you can't find flax seed powder (which is in the recipe as a fat-free binder), just add an extra egg.

Pork Tenderloin, Plantains and Asparagus

Rosemary made it's way into all three parts of tonight's dinner. Sprigs of it were inserted into the pork tenderloin before it was drizzled with olive oil, seasoned with salt & pepper, seared in a hot pan and then popped in a 400 degree oven until done (maybe 20 minutes or so, give it was a small loin). A sprig was popped in with the asparagus (picked up from Alm Hill Gardens at the CC Farmers Market yesterday), along with some lemon wedges, while it steamed - though I can't say I noticed an impact from doing so. And I chopped rosemary and sliced garlic, which I tossed into the hot clarified butter in which I fried the sliced plantains.

Dan revealed he's been picking a variety of starches - quinoa, plantains, yams, potatoes, rice, etc - to mix things up. I've been enjoying finding different ways to make them. After dinner, I roasted a second batch of the plantains in the oven to include in our lunches tomorrow - to see if that's a viable alternative to frying.

The Garage Cafe

Although I hadn't planned to break my blogcation today, my coworkers and I have been planning to check out the cafe at the new Amazon.com campus down at South Lake Union - and today turned out to be the day.

The Garage Cafe is run by Bon Appetit Management, which provides catering and foodservice with a focus on sustainable, local, healthy food. The restaurant is cafeteria style, but far from your usual cafeteria fare. The options seem endless, and all looked fresh and delicious. The first thing to catch my eye was a little sign that said 'Olsen Farms Lamb' - and I was sold. I've bought Olsen Farms lamb right from the farmer, cooked it in my own kitchen, and know where it comes from, how it's raised and how great it tastes - so it seemed like the perfect option. It was served as a open-faced flatbread sandwich, with hummus, baby greens, pickled red onion/cucumber salad and lemon mint yogurt - kinda like a gyro. And it was amazingly good, and just $6.95 (pre-tax).



My dining companions opted for a Bento box, a mushroom woodfire pizza, and pot roast with macaroni & cheese - which all looked equally delicious (but I didn't want to bug everyone by taking pictures of their food, too).








As part of the commitment to sustainability, the place has a lot of features that reduce waste - by applying what I think of as common sense the foodservice industry has moved away from over the past 50 years. I noticed that by the soups, there were tasting spoons - REAL metal spoons - and a ceramic dish to put your used spoons in. And the silverware options are a choice between metal or compostable. They've also got three waste receptacles - one labeled "compost", one labeled "recycle", and one labeled "landfill", as a reminder of that third, dubious option. I did, however, notice that it wasn't clear which items were recyclable or compostable - I happened to know about the silverware from a conversation with the facilities coordinator, but wasn't as sure about the recyclability of the plastic cups my dining companions chose instead of the reusable ones also available. Some additional labeling of what goes where could drive the right behaviors and reduce waste.