04/25/09 - Bell Street Bakery

Our friends, based in Sequim, report that their root vegetable bread is great, and it uses root vegetables from Nash Huber's farm. We have to get out there and see what else is available, but so far, things look promising. The whole area is undergoing a bakery renaissance. Ever since Bonny's closed we've had to bring in fresh bread from elsewhere, but now Bell Street Bakery is open, Good To Go in Port Angeles has gotten the go ahead to fire up their oven, and there may be one or two other bakeries opening in Sequim in the near future. We live in exciting times.

04/08/09 - Sweetmeats for Passover

We made four different treats:

• Dates stuffed with almonds
• Prunes stuffed with hazelnuts
• Candied orange peel
• Figs stuffed with candied orange peel

Peel the outer skin off of an orange or two using a vegetable peeler. You don't want the pithy part, just the orange outer layer. Boil a pot of water and dump in the peel for about five or six minutes. In a pot, dissolve about a half cup of sugar in with a quarter cup (or less) of water. Bring it to a boil. Put in the orange peel. If you have a candy thermometer, you want to cook the peel to about 230F. If you don't have a thermometer, let it cook down until the liquid is thick syrup. Lay out a sheet of wax paper, cover it with a quarter cup of sugar. Remove the orange slices from the pot and spread them out on the sugar. Put some more sugar on top. When they are cool enough, toss them around in the sugar.

TIP: Save some of the orange sugar. It can be used to coat dried fruits for making other sweetmeats.

We use calimyrna figs, not the darker mission figs, but you can probably use any kind of fig you want. Cut off the hard nib of the fig. Cut a slit in the fig. Stuff in some candied orange rind and squeeze shut. Roll the fig around in some of the extra orange sugar.

Unless you have a peculiary tough type of prune and need to use a knife, just shove a hazelnut or two into each prune. Sprinkle a few grains of sea salt or other coarse salt onto them for a nice tang.

04/01/09 - Unusual Potato

03/27/09 - Gabriel's Rabbit Pates

03/02/09 - Good To Go

02/21/09 - The Little Oven - An Update

Dear Friends:

Thanks to everyone for the friendship this last year. We're changing our email to goodtogogrocery -at- gmail.com . I don't know if that tells you anything about our status, but at the risk of redundancy I'll elucidate here.

The paperwork is not finalized yet, but we're going to be the new owners of the Good To Go Grocery on Lauridsen (technically 1105 S. Eunice). We are planning on keeping the grocery, expanding on the selection to include dairy items and eggs, as well as some meats, including sandwiches made with same. We'll also be doing the bakery in that location, much the same as before, and continuing with the bread oven plan. Please note, however, that these changes will not be immediately enacted. The bakery, especially, is going to take a little time as we'll have to modify the kitchen to meet city/county requirements for using an oven.

Anyway, we're looking forward to seeing everyone.

Sincerely Yours,
Erich and Liz and Julie

12/28/08 - Turkey With Three Sauces

12/03/08 - Cardamom Cookies

Bake a batch of these cookies, with or without cookie molds. You might even want to make them a bit thick. These are wonderful shortbread cookies. Shortbread cookies are what Lorna Doones are supposed to be but aren't. Your whole house will be scented with butter and cardamom, and if you like the baking scent of cinnamon, you will be ecstatic with the scent of cardamom. They are perfect for Christmas baking which is when all these old fashioned spices come out of the back of the cupboard and into the oven where they belong.

• 1 cup butter (2 sticks)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 tbsp heavy cream
• 2 tbsp orange zest (or more)
• 1 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 1/2 cups flour

Divide the dough into four parts and press them into flat rectangles. Let them rest in the refrigerator for 15 to 30 minutes or so. (We actually skip this step which is why our cookies aren't much to look at, but they taste just as good as better rested cookies.) Roll the cookie dough out to about 1/8 inch (or as much as 1/4 inch) on a floured work surface. If you have a speculatius cookie mold, you can use this, otherwise just cut the cookies into 2 inch by 3 inch squares and put them on a baking sheet. Bake for about 8-10 minutes at 350F. (We use a convection oven and special baking sheets, so we get quicker results.) Bake until the edges are brown.

10/10/08 - Duck Confit

09/21/08 - Last Paella of the Summer

09/09/08 - Padron Peppers

Padron peppers were originally Galician, named after the town of Padron where the cultivar was developed. You can read more about them at Wikipedia. We aren't sure if ours were grown in Spain or more locally, but according to the guy at the store, they were best simply prepared, fried in olive oil and served with salt.

08/24/08 - Uni Toast

• 320 grams (four flats) sea urchin roe
• 2 tbsp butter
• 6-8 scallions, cut into little slices
• 1/2 cup fresh coriander, chopped
• salt and pepper to taste
• lemon juice to taste (perhaps half a lemon)

We recommend serving this dish with either good sourdough toast or Jasper White's breadsticks.

07/06/08 - Bones Diablo

This is a distinctly unfashionable dish. It is based on prime rib bones. It contains butter and more butter. It makes a Carnegie Deli pastrami sandwich look like a dietary treat. A small portion has enough fat to clog nearly 623,451 aortas. We love it. For safety reasons, you probably can't find a recipe for it in any modern cookbook. In fact, searching Google for "bones diablo" recipe gets you nothing.

We have an old James Beard party cookbook, so we're all good to go. We toasted up the bread crumbs, melted the butter, boiled the tarragon vinegar, roasted the bones and cooked down the veal stock. (Yeah, we have veal stock just sitting around). It didn't take all that long to make. We spiced up the sauce with mustard, worcester sauce, tabasco and lemon juice, and we were soon dining on breaded beef bones.

We are now in a fat induced stupor which will probably last for several weeks, or at least until we get hungry again which may be sooner. Bones Diablo is what beef is meant to be: rich, fatty, and flavorsome. The only known antidote is red wine. For reasons of public safety, we won't include the recipe here, but we may be persuaded to answer discreet inquiries.

06/09/08 - Turkey Tetrazzini

We wound up adding some shitake mushrooms and heavy cream along with some wonderful garlic scallions, also from the Farmers' Market. These weren't scapes, they were full grown scallions, and they tasted a lot like green onions with an extra garlic note. We put it all together with the turkey, then we cooked the peas by putting them in the colander we used to strain the pasta. The hot pasta water steamed them perfectly.

We'll admit that the picture doesn't really do this dish justice, but take our word for it. This is the right way to make turkey tetrazzini.

04/06/08 - Smoked Steelhead

We started with a half a fish, filleted. That weighed about five or six pounds before we removed the skin. We marinated it overnight in a pyrex dish with one cup of light brown sugar, a tablespoon of peppercorns, two tablespoons of kosher salt and three tablespoons of whole coriander seeds. We rubbed the fish with the mixture and let it sit in the refrigerator overnight.

In the morning, the pyrex dish was full of a thick brown liquid, a mixture of the rub and the water drawn from the fish by the salt. We set up a fire in our trusty Weber grill. We use hardwood charcoal from Hasty Bake. It has a cleaner flavor than briquets. We also throw in a chunk of apple wood from an old stump to give it a little fruit wood flavor.

When the fire is hot with perhaps half the coals turning white, we toss in the apple wood and set up for smoking. That means putting the fish on the grill, but not over the hot coals, and closing the bucket with the vents wide open. In a few minutes, the steelhead is smoking with a white cloud pouring out of the little vent on the grill lid.

We have learned, from a sadly overcooked batch of fish, that we need to keep an eye on the grill. If the fire is too hot, we close the vent a bit more. If the fire has gotten too cool, we have to open the grill for a bit, and sometimes add a bit more charcoal. It isn't like cooking on a stove or in an oven.

Sometimes, the fish is ready in as little as half an hour. That is, if it is thinly cut. Usually, it takes about 45 minutes, or even an hour. Done, of course, is a matter of taste. Once the fish is cooked through, you can smoke it down to leather. We like it a bit more tender, and we find that the flavor ripens after the fish is removed from the grill and let sit.

That's the Kaleberg Labs recipe, and that's some of the fish on the right. We used a real fast shutter to take that snap. You know how long food lasts here Chez Kaleberg.

02/18/08 - Home Made Penne For Macaroni and Cheese

For starters, we make our own macaroni, or rather, penne, using our hand cranked tube pasta extrusion machine. We stuff the pasta dough in the top, turn the crank and every inch or two cut off four nicely formed penne. The pasta dough is basically flour, eggs, salt and water, and we tend to make the dough a touch damp so it is a bit softer.

So, where is the cheese? We put the cheese on the top. Our favorite is a good aged gruyere, but some folks use Swiss cheese instead. We spread a cup or so of grated gruyere on top and pop the whole dish into the broiler. (It helps if you make the bechamel in a sauce pan that can go in the oven). When the cheese is molten, the dish is ready. Comfort is at hand.

02/07/08 - Marrow Bones

Marrow bones are more or less inedible, unless perhaps you are a dog with very strong jaws. The marrow inside, however, is delicious. The taste is somewhere between beef and butter, or perhaps between butter and beef, or perhaps beefy butter. In any event, it is very rich. This is not diet food.

Marrow bones are easy to make. Just put them in a pyrex pan with some white wine, enough to fill the pan to a quarter inch or so. Bake them at 450F for about 45 minutes. The marrow will be oozing and bubbling. You can check it with a meat thermometer if you like, but we'll go with oozing and bubbling. When in doubt, let it cook a bit longer. You don't want to eat raw marrow.

While the marrow roasts, toast up some good bread in the oven. We had some pain levain which was great. Chop up some garlic and rub it on the toast. Sprinkle lightly with a little fleur de sel, or other good coarse salt. (Yes, this garlic toast is pretty good on its own, but it's even better with marrow). When the marrow is ready, poke it out with a fork, a spoon, a chopstick, a crochet hook, or whatever you have handy. Professionals may use a marrow spoon, but we Kalebergs are strictly amateurs. Cover the toast with a nice layer of molten marrow and take a bite. Smile.