VIVE LA FRANCE!

Le Vache de Chalais (purchased from Quality Cheese, $5-ish per serving, France) starts out looking like this: (Click for Image)

…and quickly ends up looking like this:

I demolished this cheese with loud proclamations of just how fantastic the French fucking are and anyone who says otherwise is running for something. I ate the entire wheel in a sitting on two freshly-toasted crumpets from The Crumpet Shop washed down with a really solid Dutch beer from Trader Joe’s. What a great way to start back up the Cheese of the Week.

The cheese was wrapped in slightly moldy chestnut leaves, which protected this fantastically runny and ripe (yet mild-smelling) cow’s milk treasure. Great balance of salt and Frenchy goodness. The good folks at Quality Cheese recommended the cheese after I said I was in the mood for something soft. Their recommendations have a Montero-like scoring record. GOOOOAAAAAALLLLL!

Then we had tea and chocolate truffles from Rose’s Chocolate Treasures:

Two dark chocolate caramels (for the wife) and four nut-filled truffles (including rosemary pine nut!) would impress even non-chocolate lovers. Rose has some pretty adventurous truffles (bacon!) which are a lot of fun for those of us tired of Ferrero Rocher. For the record, it takes a couple dozen in a sitting before I grow tired of Ferrero Rocher. And Rose’s truffles are $2 each, which is reasonable given the quality and presentation, but it can get expensive if you’re trying to fill a chocolate craving.

For dinner, I made corn tortillas from scratch and threw together flank steak fajitas. I think I’ll leave tortillas for their own post… I managed to break my new tortilla press on the second tortilla! Let’s see if Sur le Table will take it back.

I’m making slow-cooker lamb vindaloo this week (with a 5-lb boneless leg of lamb!) so leftovers are bountiful. Let’s hope the posts are equally so!

I’m going to tend to my food coma now,

-Phil

Funny thing. So I write a pike place market blog that gets a handful of hits each day since I haven’t updated it for a long time. Then I checked in on my page stats today to realize that yesterday I got more traffic than I have in the history of the blog. I guess someone added me to stumbleupon!

Well, I am inspired! I shall resurrect my cheese of the week posts and be more dilligent! If you came here from stumbleupon, please drop a comment and tell me what you think or what you want to hear about!

Stay tuned for:

• Pike Place Market in Winter
• Walking On Sidewalks is for Chumps and Tourists
• Dried Flowers Are Painted, Yet Awesome?

And someday, a map of the market with survival routes to avoid crowds.

Phil

How dare the Art Institute let their freely open Wifi connection go down? I have lots to post about, but whenever I’m inspired to write, my stupid internet connection is down. Should I just bite the bullet and pay for Comcast?

Inspired by Michael Pollen’s latest book, In Defense of Food, I went all out on dinner tonight. My good friends Elizabeth and Jenni came over, and the four of us chowed hard. We started with a fantastic recommendation by Cyndal at Quality Cheeses:

St Marcellin (purchased from Quality Cheese, 5.99 per serving, France) is a creamy brie-like cheese that comes in a deceiving ramekin. Mary had previously brought home some of this fine fromage last week, but I left it in the oven too long when trying to ripen the cheese and ended up with liquefied butter. This time, I had enough time to leave it out on the dining table with much better results. I put in on a plate with perfectly sweet green grapes from the market, a pear, and a loaf of complet from Le Panier. When buying this cheese, look out for too much of the mold that looks like white hair on the rind. A little is normal. Your grandma with a buzz cut is too much.

After that, we had market green beens with butter and panko bread crumbs; basmati rice pilaf with shallots, carrots, pine nuts, and way too much butter; and grilled zucchini and chicken breast marinated in soy sauce, Worcestershire, tequila, lime juice, and hot pepper sauce, topped with a salsa made from tomatoes, tomatillos, cilantro, and garlic, all from the market. We drank a dry Rosé by Vinavera (purchased from The Wine Outlet, $9.00, Napa Valley 2005) which paired nicely with the chicken. The guests used words to describe the wine like, “delicious”, “tasty”, and “spicy”, but Elizabeth calls every wine I give her “spicy”. Maybe I just like spicy wines.

We finished with glasses of sambuca, and now we’re all taking turns playing Wii Fit! Time to work off some dinner. Mary is so my in-house Wii Fit girl.

-Phil

Update: Here’s a cell phone photo of the plated cheese courtesy of Elizabeth.

Folks, we are talking RICH food here. If you don’t want to buy Beecher’s cookbook, you can reference the recipe from the Seattle PI. The cookbook is actually quite good, so it’s worth the $30. (Less if you buy it in the kit)

Beecher’s Flagship and Just Jack cheeses are ok on their own, but like many rindless American cheeses, they just don’t have the right flavors for me to crave them on their own. They are, however, fantastic for cooking. The ‘WORLD’S BEST’ MAC AND CHEESE recipe is actually two recipes: the mac and cheese, and the cheese sauce that is used for the mac and cheese. The cheese sauce was actually better by itself than with the mac, but this could be because I completely missed the note at the bottom of the PI page: “A single batch of sauce makes enough for a double recipe of macaroni and cheese.” So yeah, this recipe is already EXTREMELY cheesy, and I accidentally doubled the cheese. This was a mistake.

But the cheese sauce I will TOTALLY use again. It’d be a strong base for a cheese fondue, or a great topping to poached eggs for Sunday brunch. There’s also a recipe for Mariachi Mac and Cheese, which includes spicy peppers and veggies — sounds a little more my style.

Tessa at Beecher’s Pike Place Market store was extremely helpful. She told me they didn’t sell the kits in the store any longer, but she’d see what she could do. She came back a few minutes later with stickers and pasta, and reconstructed a kit before my very eyes. Tessa even checked to see if buying each ingredient separately would save money, which it didn’t. You actually save money by buying the $50 kit, since the cook book is so expensive. She even threw in an extra pack of pasta! I only used one package, wanting to be true to the kit, but I should have used both since the kit makes twice as much sauce as you need for one packet. C’est la vie.

In other news, here’s the promised picture of Hoss’ Landjäger hanger that I mentioned last post.

Apologies for the crappy cell phone picture… He decided to use a tie rack instead of custom building a hanger. This hangs right over his desk, which would never work for me since the sausage would be eaten well before coming of age. Please do not that sentence out of context when quoting this blog.

-Phil

What could this metaphor possibly mean? Do I find the market do be a busty bussom of plenty? Or perhaps the market is past its prime and has become a glitzy crowd pleaser who has lost its roots to Hollywood — but if you dig hard enough, you might still find an awesome recording of Jolene?

No, I mean the damn market only works 9 to 5. Maybe 8-6 if you’re lucky.

As something of a yuppie, the market’s schedule is perfectly incompatible with my daily routine. I’m speaking here about the market part of the market. The restaurants and cafes keep reasonable hours. (Le Panier opens at 7am for my morning brioche and cappuccino. For a real treat, show up on a weekend and buy a basket of six brioche in a wooden basket. Slice the brioche loaf length-wise and make french toast from it. Top it with sweetened mascarpone from DeLaurenti and fresh seasonal berries… HOLY SHIT.)

But say you want fresh vegetables. Your options are: 1. Go to work late. 2. Come home early. 3. Buy your vegetables on the weekend.

Ok, so say you wait until Sunday to try and make your produce last the week. Well by Friday, it isn’t really all that fresh, now is it? And really, many of the specialty shop owners love life too much to work Sundays.

This is especially true of the glorious women at Bavarian Meats. I went home early one day to pick up some Landjäger (~$9.50/lb, local) for my boss. According to Hoss, this stuff is best if you leave it hanging in a dry place (a feat in Seattle) for a month until the lining gets a little white on the edges. Intriguing. I’ll take a picture of the contraption that he’s building in his office to dry it. I will vouch that it’s Fucking Delicious™ from day one.

What’s worse, you’ll have to brave large crowds on the weekends.

Is it worth it? God yes. This blog will help you get in and out alive on a weekend… as soon as I figure out how myself. So far, I’ve learned it’s best to know where everything is so that you can avoid high-traffic areas in your search for chanterelles. I hope to create a “Phil’s Guide to the Market” map, updated regularly as the market evolves. Stay tuned.

Coming next: I’ve purchased a Beecher’s “World’s Best” Mac & Cheese Kit! Cheese of the week: Beecher’s Flagship cheese and Just Jack cheese. Also: Nancy at The Pike Place Market Creamery accepts cash, check, and IOUs? How awesome is that?

-Phil

I am half-way through my 1/4 lb of Le Bleu Des Basque (purchased from Quality Cheese, 24.99/lb, Basqueland). Mary took one “no-thank-you bite” and went off to read her book — the same book she was reading while I cooked dinner. Put down the book, Mary. Mary doesn’t like Bleu, although she admitted that this was better than any Bleu she had previously tolerated. I am quickly approaching 2/3 of the way thought this cheese.

A blogger’s first post is supposed to include some kind of mission statement — or perhaps a manifesto. I am a bit too busy eating this cheese to come up with one. My apathy is encouraged by a bottle of El Burro Kickass Garnacha 2006 (Pike & Western Wine Shop, $12.99, Spain). The proprietor suggested this bottle as a good accompaniment to the asian-marinated flank steak (Fero’s Meat Market, ~12/lb or so, local) that I intended to grill on the roof of my apartment building. On first opening, the bottle was all spice and no fruit. After sitting a bit, and pairing with the cheese, it’s all fruit. This wine is like a continuously-steeping pot of gun powder tea in reverse: each sip is good, but challenging in different ways as the steeping/breathing progresses.

I love this cheese. Bless Cyndal, the woman who suggested this cheese as my inaugural Cheese of the Week. Bless the bakers at Le Panier who made the yummy (lightly grilled) baguette that this cheese briefly sits upon. As you will soon learn, my taste vocabulary is lacking. I resort to words like, “Yummy” and “Fucking Delicious” when describing my food. This cheese is fucking delicious. You can almost taste the stateless-nationhood of the cheese. Ok, I’m stretching here. The jackass wine is talking.

This blog is here to explore what it is like to live a few blocks away from Pike Place Market. It is also an excuse for me to try a new cheese every week, among other things. This blog will be useful to others who shop regularly at the market, as well as the passing traveler interested in experiencing The Market beyond the guide book. I’ll share a recipe or two when I hit one out of the park.

Tonight, I did not hit one out of the park. It’s 85 degrees Fahrenheit in my top floor apartment. I didn’t let the grill warm up enough to properly Maillard a tasty crust. Luckily, Fero seasoned the crap out of this steak and it was still tasty, if a little over-marinated and falling apart. In the future, I’ll just buy one of their un-marinated flank steaks and marinate it myself.

I stocked up on dairy from Nancy, the extremely charming proprietress (with a refreshingly colorful vocabulary) at The Pike Place Market Creamery. Organics feed AA eegs, unpasteurized milk and whipping cream, European style butter — it’s like something out of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a book that partially inspired me to start this blog. But when you think about it, the majority of what I purchased doesn’t conform to the “Eat Local” mantra of Pollan’s book. My wine and (fucking delicious) cheese are from Europe. My sub-par, oversized brussel sprouts are from California. My Divina tapenade is from New York. I’m going to have to try harder if I really want to eat locally.

I have more to say, but this entry is already four times the length of what I expect will appear on this Blog going forward. Thank you for humoring my verbosity.

-Phil

P.S. Mary is my fiancée, not a child in my care as my post might have accidentally implied. She’s quite brilliant. I am madly in love with her.