West Coast Wrap-Up

So I just got back from a mah-ve-lous week in Portland and Seattle. I went to Portland for a conference and got to stay with an old friend from New Orleans who now lives there. It was great to see him and even better to have him cook me some of my New Orleans favorites, including gumbo with crab, shrimp and sausage, fried chicken, dirty rice and bread pudding with a butter-rum sauce. The gumbo was up in the highest echelon of gumbos I have ever tasted, bravo my dear!

We also went out to dinner one night at a restaurant called Mint. This retaurant was created by a woman named Lucy Brennan, a certified mixologist. This means that the drinks were fantastic and the food was inspired. I ordered, with a bit of trepidation, a cocktail with a local vodka, cilantro and lemon-lime juice. It was bright and refreshing, with just a hint of cilantro so that it didn't overpower the drink. We shared some Dungeness crabcakes with ginger-remoulade that was fantastic. I also had a mahi-mahi ceviche with apple and red onion. It was perfectly passable but was just kind of flat-tasting. A special that night that I sampled included grilled asparagus, dusted with parmigiano-reggiano, topped with a poached duck egg and garnished with edible flowers and grilled pork belly.



Isn't that pretty? It was nice, the pork belly was a fascinating study in texture and I really enjoyed it. The duck egg though? It was a chicken egg and a flavorless one at that. I think I've ranted here before on the topic of eggs with those horrible, anemic-looking yolks so I won't elaborate.

I headed up to Seattle on Thursday to see the love of my life, little Lucy Rose. She is really the most luminous, delightful child I have ever laid eyes on. She melted my heart when she held her arm up to me and said "Yaya?" (I can only interpret that as a 15 month old version of Laila). Lucy is a great eater, taking after long line of hearty epicures. Her repertoire mostly consists of bananas, avocados, garbanzo beans and yogurt but she is adventurous and appreciative of most everything she tries. My kind of girl! My sister and I mostly cooked at home during my visit and we made a lovely wild rice and barley salad, as well as a spinach salad with avocado and mango, both from the most recent issue of Cooking Light. We also went to a place called Tutta Bella. Apparently, restaurants can go through a rigorous training process and become certified as being an authentic vendor of Neopolitan-style pizza. I've never been to Naples but I have had pizza in Sicily and this was just as marvelous; the dough was airy and flavorful, the ingredients graced the pizza without weighing it down and the balance was just right. I had a pizza with prosciutto, arugula and thick shavings of Grano Padano that melded perfectly together. Eat it all at one sitting though, the leftovers don't hold up so well.

We wrapped up our weekend by taking a stroll through the Ballard farmers' market There were fresh ramps and wild morels, a crepe stand, assorted wild honeys and I had to stop at the vendor who had foraged mushrooms to pick up some porcini mushrooms. All in all, it was a very nice getaway except now I've got a big, gapin hole in my heart that can only be filled with more Lucy time.