Trust Me!

I did not go to cooking school on purpose. But that’s a story I’ll save for another day. When people find out that I have a diploma from Le Cordon Bleu Paris, they always ooh and aah and comment about what a great cook I must be. For a long time I’d always answer with an apology and try to explain that I went to Paris to learn to bake bread and make pastries, and that although I did graduate and I do have a diploma, it is for pastry, not for cooking. I’d go on and on trying to explain the difference and the poor soul who was just making conversation would make a mental note to never do that again.

When I came home from Paris, I outfitted my kitchen with every baking utensil and gadget I could afford. My cooking utensils, on the other hand, left much to be desired. Most of them were hand-me-downs from my parents. I salvaged battered pots and plastic utensils with strange melted bits hanging off them on their way to Goodwill. But I was working in a fine restaurant (The Occidental Grill, if you must know), and all my friends were either chefs or friends from college who didn’t cook at all. So most of my meals were eaten at the restaurant during service, at restaurants where my chef friends had friends, or at restaurants convenient to the homes and workplaces of my college friends. Somehow I managed to cook nothing at home other than pancakes for at least a year after graduating from cooking school.

Then one day I got brave, and I invited some friends (not chefs!) to dinner. I found a recipe in a food magazine (probably Bon Appetit) for Country Captain Chicken. I followed the instructions to the letter, and the meal was remarkably good. So good that I could hardly believe I’d made it (even though I spent my days making fancy desserts in a professional kitchen). Everyone loved it and told me what an excellent cook I was and all I could think was that I really wasn’t an excellent cook, I was just really, really good at following directions.

Once I realized just how good I was at following directions, I got really brave. Today I’ll make anything. And rarely the same thing twice. And along the way I really did learn to cook. I learned to trust recipes, but also to trust my instincts, and rely on my experience when something seems to be going wrong. Often, at the end of a long day, when the kids need bathing, and the laundry needs folding, and there’s a deadline looming, I don’t feel all that motivated to get creative. Fortunately there are so many amazing chefs out there making superb food, and sharing the recipes, that all I have to do is follow the directions. Life is short, and I really hate a bad meal, particularly one I’ve spent my own time making.

Which is a long-winded way of saying – you can trust the recipes in Washington Food Artisans. They are delicious, they come from creative and brilliant chefs, and they’ve been tested many times.

Washington Food Artisans advance copy has arrived!

My editor brought me my advance copy of Washington Food Artisans today. It’s absolutely beautiful, if I don’t say so myself. It’s hardcover, with no dust jacket, so the cover is printed on the actual book. The paper inside is beautiful – thick and smooth, and it even smells wonderful! The photos are vivid, and the layout is gorgeous. Oh, and my name is on the front cover! And on the spine!

When it goes on sale on April 24, it will have been 2 ½ years since I started the project. And what a difference those years make. My kids have grown and matured, and they need me for very different reasons these days. I’ve met so many interesting people, and learned so much both from them, and from a whole lot of old-fashioned research.

I’ve always loved to do my shopping at the farmers market, and that hasn’t changed. But working on the book has changed the way I cook, and not at all in the way I thought it would, and I’m sure you can’t guess either.

You’d think that after all that recipe-testing I’d be feeling very confident in the kitchen, and just throw things together and produce fabulous food. In actual fact, I do feel confident in the kitchen, but I cook almost entirely from recipes that I follow to a fault.

I am a cookbook fanatic, and have been for more than 20 years. At this point I probably own about 400 of them. Now that I know exactly how much effort was put into each one of them, I’m even more motivated to try the recipes exactly as they were written. My food is more flavorful as a result, and almost every meal feels a bit like a celebration. No matter how long and complicated a recipe, I’m not afraid to try it. I’ve learned to prep my ingredients in the morning, after I’ve dropped the kids at school, so that the actual cooking process is as quick as I can make it.

I figure I’ve got a few hundred years’ worth of recipes on my bookshelves, so I try to avoid searching for recipes on the web. A friend told me about a website called Eat Your Books, which I adore, and use often. You enter the names of your cookbooks, and then when you want a recipe, rather than search the web, you search your own books.

Obviously, after all this cooking, I don’t need to follow a recipe, but I love to. I love to try new combinations of ingredients and new techniques. Most often, I read a recipe and it sounds delicious and I want to eat it, and so I make it. I only make something more than once if I absolutely loved it, because the list of recipes I want to make is very, very long. But I already have more than a handful of favorites from Washington Food Artisans. When I opened the book today, my first thought was remarkably pedestrian. I thought, “how convenient, to have all these wonderful recipes printed and bound together in one place. Now I can recycle all those dog-eared food-splattered printouts I’ve been keeping in a pile on my kitchen shelf.“ And then I remembered to go nuts because it was finally, really, magnificently, an actual book, in my hands!

Jerry's back!

Today was the perfect Northwest summer day - particularly exciting and surprising because they don't often happen before the 4th of July. It was 70 degrees, sunny, dry and clear. On days like today I can't imagine why anyone would want to live anywhere else. Mt. Rainier hovered to the south, the Olympic mountains were crystal clear, and the Cascades shimmered to the east.

We started our day like we do most Saturdays, with a trip to the University District farmer's market. We shopped our way along the line, picking up more ground beef from Olsen Farms because it seems we can't get enough of it (so juicy and flavorful - we only eat burgers at home!), honey from Tahuya River apiaries, a half flat of strawberries from McPhail berry farm (and we ate them all after dinner), and cherries from Martin Family Orchards. But it wasn't until we spied Jerry Pipitone in his custom apricot shirt that I felt sure that summer is finally here. It feels like ages since we last saw him. We bought a couple of pounds of firm rosy-hued Pipcots, and most of them were gone before we even got to the car. We drove home sticky with apricot juice and the windows wide open. It's summer in Seattle!

jonboy

When I'm chomping at the bit waiting for summer to arrive and there are all sorts of stalls at the farmer's market selling things that did not grow, it tends to make me grouchy. It's May already, and still gray, and still cold, and still wet, and July is feeling VERY far off. But last week I stopped for a sample at a stall called "jonboy caramels," and all I can say is thank goodness there was space for them. I tried their absinthe & black salt caramels, and didn't even hesitate before handing over $9 for an itty bitty box - I thought they'd make a nice gift for my father, who loves licorice. They're soft and buttery and packed with flavor, and they have black salt crystals embedded in them - just enough for the occasional crunch and a bit of a pucker.

Of course I got home and noticed that they are "best by" June 3, and I won't see my parents before that, so what could I possibly do except eat them myself and make a note to get a box closer to their next visit? If you live in Seattle, hunt these down: http://jonboycaramels.com/.

Manuscript has been SUBMITTED!

Well, I haven't had much time for blogging because I've been writing the book, and believe it or not, I've finished the manuscript and have submitted it. Feels a bit surreal, actually. I thought I'd jump up and down with joy, but mostly I feel relieved that I did it. I absolutely adore the stories in it - every single solitary person I met was fabulous, and I am so glad to have the opportunity to spread the word about just how fabulous they really are. The recipes are also terrific, and selfishly, I'm glad they'll be neatly printed up in one place so that I can make them again and again.

And now I promise to try (see how I did that? I didn't promise, I promised to try) to blog. I'll be seeing the book in various forms over the next few months, and I've committed to some other smaller writing projects, but blogging has actually made it onto my list of things to do. That said, this post is simply to announce, with much pride and much relief, that the manuscript is officially on its way. And you can pick up a copy a year from now, in Spring 2012. Hurray!

Fireside Reading

I don't actually have a fireplace, but if I did, these would be the days I'd try to spend in front of it. We've already had more snow than we did all last winter, and today the rain is so cold all I want to drink is warm Ovaltine out of my biggest mug.

It's been awhile since I last posted, and the rain made me think of reading by a fire, which reminded me that I've yet to post a reading list of the best books (and movies) I've come across while working on this project.

-- Right now I'm reading Plenty by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon. It's the true story of a Vancouver couple and the year they spent eating on the 100-mile diet. They're both journalists and the book is filled with a wealth of information, but I can hardly put it down because the story is so good, so honest, and so funny. And every chapter starts with a quote - each one of which is so well chosen, it carries the weight of 1000 words. One of my favorites is by Carl E. Sagan, "If you wish to make an apple pie truly from scratch, you must first invent the universe." And a Vietnamese proverb they found reminds me that there is nothing revolutionary about knowing where your food comes from: "When eating fruit, remember who planted the tree; when drinking clear water, remember who dug the well."

-- Jerry Pipitone, a stone fruit grower just outside Wenatchee, was the first of the farmers I interviewed to tell me what a huge impact Rachel Carson's Silent Spring had on him. First published in 1962, the waiting list at the library was so long I eventually requested the large print edition to cut my wait time. Credited with launching the environmental movement, this book resonates now as much as it did 50 years ago.

-- A number of the farmers I interviewed star in a movie called Good Food. www.goodfoodthemovie.com. It's a documentary about family farms in the Pacific Northwest and how so many of them are raising crops and animals organically and sustainably, and what that means to us as a community. Inspiring AND entertaining.

-- Recipe For America by Jill Richardson is a fact-filled but still gripping argument for sustainable agriculture.

More later. I promise.

Oh, Honey!

A quick drive up to Edmonds this morning to catch the Kingston ferry. A short but lovely crossing, and then a beautiful drive across the Hood Canal Bridge and along the top of the Olympic Peninsula to Port Angeles. There I met Roy Nettlebeck, the beekeeper behind Tahuya River Apiaries. He was remarkably generous with both his time and his knowledge, and I can't wait to sit down and write about this charming, happy, intelligent man. His concern for the health of our planet dictates the way he cares for his bees, and we get to eat the rewards! This is a photo of me, in a suit of armor (sort of). When I look at it, I can still hear the sound of the bees buzzing in numbers that would normally send me tearing off into the woods. Don't I look brave?

After the bee safari we chewed chunks of honeycomb dripping with pale, warm fireweed honey fresh from the hive. Not bad for a day's work.