Warm-Your-Belly Drinks

Starbucks has the red cups out, people are wrapping themselves up in non-hipsterish scarves and we've finally had our first winter storm in the area. We're officially in snuggle season as we finish our reserves of Halloween candy, get out the down jackets, turn on the heaters and begin to nest. I like to stand about three inches directly in front of the fireplace during the autumn and winter. You can find me there toasting my butt most of the day when I'm at home rather than just wrapped in a blanket on the couch. In fact, I am there now.

As you are prepared to wrap yourselves in wool and shut yourselves in for the season, cozy up to a warm beverage that's different from your normal latte or Swiss Miss hot chocolate packet routine. Ditch the powder and drink something real that warms your belly. Here's a list of my picks along with simple recipes. The first few are sans alcohol and the rest of the recipes are cocktail-rific:

Spiced Cider
This is incredibly easy to make and your house will smell like autumn. Making it yourself on your stovetop is oodles and oodles more fabulous than those icky sugary spiced cider packets. Hit up a local farmer's market for fresh cider and you'll thank me.

Vietnamese Coffee
You can drink it iced during the summer and hot during the winter. It's perfect. It's how I started drinking coffee in the first place. This recipe is for a perfect, step-by-step fancy version; just simply skip adding ice. Otherwise, all you need to do is flavor your espresso with sweetened condensed milk.

Tea
I mean real tea. Loose leaf tea like the hippies drink. When's the last time you took a few minutes to heat water in a teapot and steep tea that doesn't come in little paper packets stapled to a cute little paper tag? Did you even know you're supposed to heat water to different temperatures for different teas? Buy some fine tea - like jasmine tea, some vanilla rooibos, or some really good earl grey like you're Captain Jean Luc Picard and make it correctly like it's a ritual. You'll relax and thank me later.

Mexican Hot Chocolate
Ever since we tried this chili, cinnamon, chocolate stuff, our hearts have gone pitter patter. The recipe I listed is pretty involved but if you want to cheat, I highly recommend the Theo chocolate drinking chocolate. The chili warms your tummy from the inside out.

Peanut Butter Hot Chocolate
WHAT? Yes, you can drink the equivalent of a Reese's peanut butter cup. No, you can't microwave a peanut butter cup with some milk for the same thing. However, you can be an extra fatty by topping a cup with some whipped cream and crumbled peanut butter cup. You're welcome.

Hot buttered rum (or lemonade)
Hot buttered rum is one of my favorite cold-weather drinks of all time. It's satisfyingly rich, not too sweet and warms your belly with rum! For a non alcoholic version, add some fresh lemon juice instead of rum and it's a hot buttered lemonade. But seriously, who doesn't want rum? Substitute brandy or whiskey if you're out of spiced rum. If you want the premade batter, Harvey's is the best and not because it has a demented-looking bunny on the package.

Mulled Wine

Black Walnut Manhattan

It's just winter's sangria, right? Bring some to a party instead of the usual obligatory bottle of wine and your friends will love you.

Tom and Jerry
This is not drinking a cartoon cat and mouse but if you happened to have a Tom & Jerry mug, you could be super hipsterish when you drink this fabulous cocktail.

Hot Toddy
A hot toddy is for folks who prefer whiskey and think a hot buttered rum is too rich and sweet. This warm drink is brighter and zippier than a hot buttered rum.

Black Walnut Manhattan
A Manhattan seems like a winter-appropriate cocktail but a dash of black walnut liqueur adds an autumn or winter earthiness improving upon the standard.


Winter is Coming
Nick's favorite drink of all time was enjoyed at Art of the Table in Wallingford for a SRW many moons ago. Tons of "Winter is Coming" drinks abound but this one takes the cake. We only have a dark, grainy photo of the description but it contains rye, Fernet, Cocchi Di Torino (a vermouth with a moscato base), lemon & chili bitters. Report back if you get the proportions right.

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Ultimate Noms: Cornflake Chocolate Chip Marshmallow Cookie

Delish.

COOKIE!!! Ahnomnomnomnom!

This cookie is courtesy of Momofuku Milk Bar. It has the same sort of sweet, crunchy, salty blend of flavors as the infamous Crack Pie. This is one of those cookies that will become your next obsession and they are even better when you microwave them for a few seconds to heat them up before noshing. This will be you, munching on the cookies:

 An important component of the cookie to make first is the cornflake crunch. Let me tell you, this stuff is like crack - or at least what I imagine the addictiveness of crack to be. It's a tasty salty/sugary/buttery snack unto itself. I've eaten so much of it on hand and had to stop myself for fear of not having enough to bake the cookies.


The recipe is here. Important recipe notes:

• Do make a ton of cornflake crunch in advance but beware its addictiveness. Mix lots and lots of this and have some on hand for extra snacking.

 

• Beating the egg and vanilla along with the butter and sugar for 7-8 minutes is an important step. You can even beat the butter and sugar for longer than that.
• Do not flatten the cookie dough rounds like the recipe says. You really do need to separate the cookies on the baking sheet by 2-3 inches or so. They might be nice flattened mounds when they go in the oven, but they spread generously while baking.
• It says to refrigerate the cookies on parchment sheets for at least an hour before baking. I highly recommend keeping them in the icebox for an hour or two or perhaps overnight. The very first batch we made spread like crazy and burned slightly after only baking in the oven for 10 minutes which is half the suggested baking time. If you're baking and swapping out cookie sheets in and out of the oven, put the sheets back in the fridge or freezer before you put the raw dough rounds on to bake. If you put the cookies on warm or still-hot cookie sheets, they will spread or burn.
• I find that using an 1/4 cup measure for the dough is a better cookie size than 1/3 cup. You get more cookies and can bake 9 cookies per sheet.
• After 7-8 minutes, keep the oven light on and keep your eye on the oven. I don't care what the recipe says; none of our cookie batches have taken 18-20 minutes to bake at 375 degrees. They are temperamental. They take between 10 to 14 minutes to bake if you use the 1/3 cup measure and 8-10 if you use the 1/4 cup measure. If you don't bake them enough, they will crumble and fall apart. Bake them too much and they will be a little too hard.

The dough itself is pretty irresistible as well.  

The cookies spread a lot while baking. This batch is probably a tad on the overdone side. This cookie is tough to bake correctly!

Wait... What Happened to Restaurant Week?

Pretty much what you're going to eat

It's Seattle Restaurant Week. So why haven't you seen tweets, photos and Facebook updates about Nick and I gorging ourselves on fancy bits and pieces? Why hadn't you received a giant Excel spreadsheet with spots and dates to sign up for a new restaurant you've been dying to try? WHYYYY?

Nick and I have been going to SRW and writing about it twice a year ever since we started dating (except when we ate our way through Vietnam). Each time, we had gone to at least four or five different spots, sometimes more. But we mutually decided to skip it this time around and instead explore some new restaurants the old-fashioned way - by paying the regular price. So why have we decided to eschew the popular event this time around?

1. Nothing new to see here. There weren't a lot of new restaurants to try on the list. Nick and I use SRW as an opportunity to try new places or revisit a spot we haven't been to in a while. Many of the new restaurants listed were from familiar chefs like Maria Hine's Italian spot, Agrodolce. We've already frequented Tilth and Golden Beetle. We've already reveled in the sake slushy from Tanakasan.
2. You're not even trying. With the exception of a few notable places like Poppy or Art of the Table, many of the restaurants sort of phone it in. A lot of the SRW menus are almost the same across the board and restaurants often feel forced to participate in this two-week event. So they offer a bisque, an apple fennel salad or a beet salad with pumpkin seeds or a roulade of some sort as a first course, usually a roast chicken or lamb, a seasonal pasta or risotto along with a seared cod or trout as course number two and pretty uninspired crème brulee, a chocolate cake, or a seasonal crisp and house-made gelato as the dessert. Remember our complaint about the spaghetti o's sauce from Cicchetti? It's banquet food for the most part. It may be executed well, but it's nothing to write home about. Guess what you're having to eat at our wedding? It's not like we can knock your socks off at that either.
3. Service sucks sometimes. Once you mention you are there for restaurant week, many times you get lackluster service because servers think you are not "real diners". Again, this isn't true across the board and we've enjoyed lovely service at some of the best places but many places are overbooked and understaffed so guess who's going to be a tad cranky or absent?
4. I could have bought two GTA V's with that money. It's not really that inexpensive. Plus, you are packing in the calories. Every time we go to restaurant week, we feel the need to eat like kings. We share bottles of wine or delicious cocktails with our friends and clean our plates. Multiply that by 4-7 times over two weeks and you realized you overindulged way too many times. When Nick and I go out for a nice dinner, we'll typically share an appetizer (if at all) and each have an entrée. We both tend not to drink during the week. That means (sans tax and tip), we'll have spent $8 + $16 + $18 = $42. If we happened to each have a glass of wine say me a glass of bubbles and Nick a house cab, then it's now $8 + 16 + $18 + $6 + $9 = $57. However, make it restaurant week and we go hog wild. Let's say I'm driving home so I'll have a fabulous cocktail. Nick will have two. We aren't having a rum and coke or an IPA because their seasonal cocktails are probably amazing, like Art of the Table's Winter is Coming which was Nick's favorite SRW cocktail of all time. This is now $28 +28 + $10 + $12 + $12 = $90. Let's talk tax and tip now. For a normal date night, we have 10% tax and a 20% tip which means $57 is now $74.1. For SRW, $90 becomes $117. That's nearly a $43 difference and is about a third more expensive than a typical night out when we both drink. It's twice as expensive as the nights out when we don't drink. Plus, I'm not a dieter or anything but it's a huge difference when you split an appetizer or a dessert with friends or another person than when you're eating all of the food by yourself.
5. We are lazy busy. It's a lot of work to do research, make a ton of reservations and wrangle a gaggle of pals. We have a wedding to plan and things to do this time around.

If you are going to Seattle Restaurant Week this autumn, let me suggest trying to get a table at some of our favorites who never let us down for SRW:

• Poppy
• Art of the Table
• Stumbling Goat

Or take an opportunity to go against the grain and try a new restaurant that isn't doing SRW. More on that later...

Mexican-Inspired Potsickers and Queso

I invented a monstrously delicious dumpling during cook club: the Mexican potsticker. It's like a more refined version of the Totino's cheesy taco pizza roll or a potsticker with a burrito/taco filling. As classy as I'd like to think I am, I've kept it real by dipping it queso. Sure, you can dip it in guacamole and salsa but the queso is a winner.

Here's how it went down:


Dumpling wrapper dough:

Feel free to use store-bought wonton or potsticker wrappers. No one will think less of you. If you are ambitious, make your own dough:

• 2 qt AP flour
• 1/2 cup cilantro and green onion puree (or anything you'd like to puree)
• 2 1/2 cup hot water
• 1 tbsp salt

To make a puree, you just need to throw in a bunch of stuff in a food processor with a little water. A bunch of cilantro and some chopped green onions should work fine in a food processor.
Mix all dry ingredients together first, then add water.

Knead until the dough is smooth and add flour as you roll out in long sheets with a pasta maker. You can cut it up into squares or use a biscuit or cookie cutter to cut rounds.

Dumpling Filling:

• 2 cups ground beef, pork or beef substitute
• Spices - chipotle powder, cayenne pepper, paprika, garlic powder or taco seasoning - all to taste
• 1 can refried black beans
• 1 small diced onion
• 4-5 diced radishes
• 1/2 cup crumbled cotija cheese
• Chopped cilantro to taste
• Diced green onion to taste

For veg people, using soyrizo is great. It's already spicy so you don't need to add very much additional spices.
Sautee the onion until soft, then cook the meat. Season it to your liking with Mexican spices and feel free to add your choice of hot sauce. If you have taco seasoning, you can use it as a shortcut.
Add the refried black beans and cook through.
Let the mixture cool or feel free to refrigerate until you want to complete your cooking. It's easy to prep the filling early.
Mix in the diced radishes, cotija cheese, cilantro and green onion. Some people dislike cilantro or a lot of green onion so taste the filling.

Fill the dumplings and pan sear to cook it. If your wrapper is thick or if your filling was really cold, pour a tablespoon of water into the pan and cover the pan with a lid after searing it on one side.

Queso:

Use whatever queso recipe makes you happy. I found this recipe for queso blanco but couldn't find white American cheese at the two stores I went to. I modified the recipe by using good old Velveeta along with white mild cheddar instead since the Velveeta melts and blends so well. I also dumped it into a crock pot which kept the queso melted and warm.

New Seattle Brunch Spots to Try

Brunch can be legend...wait-for-it...dary. There is something very American about going to brunch, stuffing your face early in the day and not eating again until the evening. Like Ted Mosby and Marshall Ericson, we adore brunch. Just don't go alone.

 

 

Unlike folks in Portland and San Francisco, we Seattleites are desperate for the first cup of coffee and loathe waiting in line for brunch. We've been hitting up new or not-new-but-different brunch spots in Seattle and here are some picks for spots you should try as an alternative to the standards or the long lines. Trust us. They are tasty.  

RockCreek

 



This spot boasts a gorgeous open space with plenty of natural light, reclaimed wood and Pacific Northwest-y nature photos; just the space alone makes you fall in love with the restaurant. The menu has a little something to please everyone including melt-in-your-mouth caramelized apple ricotta beignets with a vanilla anglaise, rich shrimp and grits, biscuits and gravy, wild mushroom scrambles and eggs benedict.

Stoneburner

If you want elegant portions and artful food to share, this is your jam. Assemble a table of small plates, tasty egg dishes, veggie sides and share with a group of your best pals over spicy bloody marys. And yes, the breakfast cocktails are delicious here.

Joule

Why have you not enjoyed Joule's awesome brunch dishes and even more amazing cold buffet yet? GO STUFF YOUR FACE THERE NOW! I'm salivating just thinking about the amazing Asian-inspired dishes starting with black sesame waffle and chicken fried steak reminiscent of chicken katsu and shrimp and grits with Chinese sausage. But they have an amazing themed buffet that includes an assortment of cheese, house-made crackers, seasonal salads, pickles, danishes and pound cakes. Bring your eating pants or wear a muumuu to hit this brunch hard.

TNT Taqueria

We don't have a Torchy's and it's sad. However, this place is perfectly acceptable when you're craving breakfast tacos heaped with delicious chorizo or papas dulces and kale or an assortment of yummy things smothered in any number of salsas - even an extra spicy habanero radish salsa. Bonus are the rich horchata lattes.

Mushrooms and eggs - yummy!

 

 

The Ramen Burger: The Closest You'll Get to Feeling like Jabba the Hutt

Whoa oh oh oh. Ahahahaha. Yes, that was the Jabba-esque chuckle I made when I sat down at the counter in front of a homemade ramen burger. It's the fad food monstrosity that's come into being in the wake of the cronut and other strange food mashups, birthed in none other than Brooklyn. Unlike the cronut, it's easy (albeit time-consuming) to make in your own kitchen and I just had to have one.

I was lazy. I didn't get out of my yoga pants all day long - a day which was devoted to watching Breaking Bad, some reruns of Top Chef and the Huskies beat down Arizona while a monsoon raged on outside. It was a perfect day to be gluttonous when all I needed to do was walk to the corner market for a few packets of Top Ramen and some burgers. I used Mashable's recipe as a guide and here's how I made this delicious gut bomb:

Ingredients (serves one)

• One packet of top ramen 
  
• A hamburger patty of your choice - painted hills beef for Nick and a veggie quinoa patty for me
• 1 egg
• Cooking oil
• Toppings of your choice. Here is what I used:
• Greens - Mashable used arugula but I used a baby swiss chard, spinach and baby kale mix
• Sliced green onions
• Shallots
• Ketchup
• Wasabi Mayo
• Sriracha
• Tomato
• Avocado
• Soy sauce

1. Cook the Top Ramen according to directions and drain the noodles. Rinse noodles in cool water and let it cool. I did NOT use the seasoning packet but in hindsight, I recommend either using the seasoning packet or seasoning the ramen with some salt and pepper when you form the buns. Otherwise, the ramen is slightly bland.

Don't overcook it. It's nice when it's al dente.

2. Beat the egg and mix throughly into the ramen. If you didn't season the noodles yet, now would be the time to do it.

I beat two eggs for two servings here.

 

The egg is a binder so the bun stays together.

3. Make the ramen buns. Find bowls with flat bottoms that are bun-sized. Oil the bottom of the bowls and add half of the noodle mixture to each of the bowls. Press the mixture gently into the bottoms of the bowl and cover with plastic wrap.

You can spray the bottom half of a bowl with cooking spray.

4. Ensure the noodles are pressed evenly and add a weight to the top of ramen like a heavy mug, ramekin or can. Refrigerate for half an hour. 

 

Don't let the noodles spill up from the weight too much - even it out.

5. After half an hour, heat about 1 tablespoon of oil in a nonstick pan over medium high heat. Remove the weight and plastic wrap and invert the bowl over the skillet to remove the ramen. Using a spatula, move any stray noodles back into place so it retains its circular shape.

The noodles don't absorb much oil - it's not too greasy.

6. Pan fry for 4-5 minutes until golden brown on one side. Flip and cook for 3-4 minutes longer until seared on the other side. Remove and place on a paper towel to absorb excess oil. If you're making a lot of buns, you can keep them warm in an oven at a low temperature while you finish cooking the rest.

Watch the temperature and turn it down if the noodles have burnt spots.

7. As a ramen bun is cooking, heat oil in another pan. Cook the shallots until translucent and add in the green onion. Saute until onions are softened and shallots are slightly browned. Set aside. 

8. Cook the hamburger patty. I added some soy sauce to season ours but season to your liking.

9. Assemble the burger. I put sriracha and ketchup to one of the buns and wasabi mayo to the other. I topped my burger with the green onion and shallots along with some sliced avocado, tomato and greens. However, the veggie burger has a thinner patty so you can add more toppings whereas Nick had to remove the tomato from his in order to bite in. The ramen bun is a bit dry so I do recommend condiments and textural contrast like avocado or sauteed mushrooms. I think a fried egg would have been awesome.

My veggie burger & toppings

10. Enjoy! Have some Tums or Pepcid handy.

The ramen burger is a crunchy, gluttonous and savory not-meant-in-nature combination that makes you a little ashamed to enjoy in public. Something about it feels slightly wrong and deliciously right. However, it was a complete gut bomb. I've been known to down an entire plate of Matador nachos by myself and I've indulged in Red Mill onion rings, double-fried kennebec frites and tatchos. However, the last few bites of burger were a bit difficult and I pretty much passed out a couple of hours later on the couch while trying to watch some more college football. I woke up with a food hangover the next day. I haven't eaten ramen or that much processed modified starch in years and it hit me like a crunchy truck. 

Beware the ramen burger. Eat with caution. Rub your belly and chuckle like Jabba.

 

If You Left Home, What Food Would You Miss?

Salmon with basil sauce, beets, blueberries and a baguette from Boat Street.

If fortunes took you away from your hometown, perhaps away from your geographical region (the US West Coast for me) or even away from your home country, what kinds of foods would you miss? What restaurants would you like to visit when you ventured back during a holiday?
A few of my friends' lives and careers have taken them abroad and the types of foods or specific restaurants that they crave have become very apparent. The overwhelming culinary request is for Mexican food when friends go abroad and come home to the US. For the majority of the US, Mexican food is fairly common and may have distinct regional variations. Texans will miss Tex Mex, SoCal natives will miss street tacos while Bay Area fans might miss sloppy mission-style burritos and so on. My friends will ask for Mexican food, even if it's a pile of chips and salsa or a mess of carne asada. Regardless, Mexican food has yet to make a giant culinary impact around the world in the way Italian food or pizza has. My friends in Europe crave it as their mouths water at the smells of tacos al pastor and my pals from Asia will lap up guacamole like it's water.

My friend Skye is happy with her Serious Pie.

Here are the top requests from friends who move abroad and miss the culinary delights Seattle has to offer:

Halibut tacos from La Carta de Oaxaca

1. Salmon. Let's face it, Atlantic salmon is just not the same. I don't care if Europeans love their Norwegian smoked salmon but proper Pacific Northwest salmon tastes different. Also, the easy access to Alaskan halibut, Dungeness crab, Puget Sound oysters and such help make the Pacific Northwest a seafood mecca. But feels like home more than a perfectly cooked and simple filet of salmon.
2. Mexican food. Unless my friends relocate to Latin America or elsewhere in the states, the resounding requests are always for good Mexican food. My pals are eager to hit up La Carta de Oaxaca or El Camion or even the Matador happy hour. My friends in Taiwan tell me that there are two Mexican joins in Taipei run by America expats and some friends in London say that efforts have been made to try to bring Mexican food to the UK. Nonetheless, there probably isn't going to be lengua, mole, posole or Tapatio outside of the western hemisphere.
3. Burgers. The kinds with American toppings, oozy cheese and tater tots or French fries on the side. I know what you're thinking... they have burgers everywhere! There are burgers in Europe, burgers in Asia and sometimes they come with excellent toppings like fried eggs or weird sauces and alternative buns. But Americans are attached to their burgers - whether it's a simple Dick's Deluxe or the Red Mill Val Verde burger dripping with jack cheese and spicy with roasted poblano if you are from Seattle.
4. American-style barbecue. Barbecue purists might be in shock, but any regional variation will do once you've been abroad. Don't get me wrong - ethnic barbecue may be one of the best things you can possibly experience while traveling such as Vietnamese barbecue, Korean barbecue, anything roasted on a spit in South America, etc. My friends still want a Texas-style brisket or rack of ribs with KC sauce when they are home.
5. Asian food unless you're in Asia or on the West Coast. Sweet and sour chicken and soggy noodles drenched in soy sauce is available just about anywhere. But access to a variety of Asian standards from very fresh and authentic sushi to Korean soondooboo spicy soup, northern pho is severely lacking when you're in the Midwestern US, smalltown Canada or most areas of Europe. My friends who have relocated to Asia pretty much avoid this cuisine like the plague when they visit since they can get cheaper fare overseas but friends who have spent too much time in the bowels of Europe make a beeline for pho when at home.
6. Northwest mash ups. Northwest-y food has its own flair that is hard to pinpoint. A lot of it is fusion cuisine or features use of local or unusual ingredients. Friends who hit up an Ethan Stowell or Tom Douglas joint know that there is a little added something that kicks those restaurants up a notch from being strictly authentic to Italian, Greek or Japanese food, depending on the spot. Revel and Joule impart Korean and Asian flavors and Northwest ingredients to refined dishes and Duke's features distinct chowders and seafood that differs from seafood anywhere else. It's comforting to Seattle natives.  

What would you miss if you left home?

Serious Pie is serious business