Persians & Pilgrims Party Rice

My husband, Dara, is of Persian descent, and we've been married a dozen years now. In the course of our marriage, I have learned to make Persian rice -- no easy feat, especially for a German-Irish-English-Dutch-mutt cook being scrutinized at each step by a clinical pathologist mother-in-law. Talk about detail-oriented!

To Persians, properly prepared rice is nearly holy, at least the way Dara and his family talk about it. Cooking it makes the whole house smell like popcorn, and it comes with a crunchy, buttery, salty, saffron-scented layer at the bottom called tadik (pronounced tad-eek).

Here is a dish that I made from leftover Thanksgiving turkey, dried cranberries, carrots, peas, pistachios, caramelized onions, Indian spices and Persian rice. I broke up the tadik and mixed it in for crunch. I like to call this Persian & Pilgrims Party Rice because it's colorful, with a little glitz and glamour just like a Persian wedding, but it's also kind of dowdy, like some Pilgrims showed up and crashed it.

To make the Perisan rice, you start with high-quality, long-grain basmati rice from India. You rinse it four or five times to get rid of debris and starch, and then you add it to rapidly boiling, salted water and boil it for a few minutes, until it's slightly tender. Then you drain it, return it to the pot and stir in a touch of vegetable oil, butter and salt. Use a mortar and pestle to crunch a few pinches of saffron, and fill the mortar with water. Drizzle this water over the rice. Put a clean tea towel over the pot to absorb excess moisture, and then seal it with a lid. Steam the rice on low heat for an hour or so, until a crunchy layer has formed at the bottom.

The rice on top should be fluffy and white, laced with saffron yellow here and there, with each grain separate and distinct. Use a gentle hand -- like you're measuring flour -- to scoop this onto a platter. The crunchy layer on the bottom -- the tadik -- should be golden brown. Use a spatula to scrape the tadik onto its own platter, keeping it intact as much as you can.

I'll type out a full recipe as soon as I can. In the meantime, party on, Persians and Pilgrims!

Chicken & Dumplings



Mmm. What a comforting end to a crisp, fall day. My mom used to make something like this, and I realized I had never made it myself. I seldom hear about chicken and dumplings. It's a dish that's old-fashioned, modest and homey...actually, kind of farmy. The last time I ate it, I think I was at Bob Evan's on a road trip, hung over.

Before making it I was trying to explain to Dara what the dumplings are like, and I had trouble. Kind of like biscuits, but not. They're laid on top of rich chicken stew and steamed, and you want them fluffy, with lots of holes. So don't work the dough too much. In any case, this version (my own adaptation of the Joy recipe) was a smash hit, and we're adding it to the Sahebjami household's fall/winter menu. Come on over!

CHICKEN & DUMPLINGS
Serves 4-6

Dumplings:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup milk
1/4-1/3 cup minced fresh parsley

Stew:
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 bone-in chicken breasts
Salt and pepper
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
4 cups chicken stock
1 cup water
3 medium carrots, peeled and diced
3 medium celery stalks, diced
1 teaspoon fresh thyme
1 teaspoon minced fresh parsley
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 heavy cream

First, make the dumplings: Stir together flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Bring butter and milk to a simmer in a saucepan. Add butter-milk mixture and parsley to the dry mixture. Use a fork to stir until a dough comes together. Knead the dough just 2-3 times to smooth it out, but don't worry that it's not completely smooth. Cut the dough into 18 portions. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside.

Next, make the stew: Heat butter in a large, heavy pot on medium heat. Season chicken breasts with salt and pepper and add them to the butter. Cover and cook, turning occasionally, until chicken is browned on all sides. Remove chicken and set aside.

Add onion to butter and cover pot; let onion sweat for a minute or two, then remove lid. Saute onion until golden. Stir in flour and saute for 1 minute. Add broth and water. Turn heat to high and whisk until the broth bubbles; it should be smooth and have some body, almost like a sauce. Add carrots, celery, thyme, parsley, salt and pepper. Return chicken to the pot as well. Cover and simmer on low heat until the chicken is almost fully cooked, about 15 minutes.

Use tongs to remove the chicken and place it on a cutting board. Cut it off the bones and into shredded, bite-sized pieces. Return these pieces to the stew. Stir in the cream, taste the stew, and adjust seasoning as needed. Lay the reserved dumplings on top of the stew, cover pot, and simmer for 10 minutes. Serve.

Pumpkin Pecan Crunch Cookies

Have you noticed that it's hard to find a good cookie these days? Sometimes after lunch, or in the afternoon with my tea, or after dinner, I just want a sweet, flavorful bite of yummy. Not a trendy cupcake or mini pie. Not a scone, brownie or muffin. Not a cookie the size of my head. Just a good little cookie. Preferably in a flavor other than chocolate chip, oatmeal or peanut butter. And that's surprisingly hard to find.

Sometimes to get my fix, I resort to baking. And this here, this is a good cookie, especially with Halloween and Thanksgiving around the corner. I started with a food.com recipe, but decided it wasn't quite awesome enough, so I played with it.

It's pumpkin-flavored. Crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. (That comes from proper baking time and temperature.) It has a dab of salty, cinnamon caramel frosting. And it's topped with crunchy candied pecans. Overall, the whole thing isn't too sweet, and it's got some complexity in flavor and texture. Hooray!

PUMPKIN PECAN CRUNCH COOKIES

Makes about 4 dozen

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons Saigon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

Cinnamon Caramel Icing (recipe below)

Pecan Brittle (recipe below)

Preheat oven to 350 F. Cream together butter, sugar and brown sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer. Add pumpkin, egg and vanilla, and beat until light and fluffy. Stir together flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt in a separate bowl. Add flour mixture to butter mixture, and beat just until combined. Drop tablespoons of dough 3 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets. Bake 6 minutes, then rotate baking sheets and bake 6-7 minutes more, until cookies just begin to brown around the edges. Remove from oven and cool slightly, then use a spatula to transfer to wire racks to cool completely. Use a small offset spatula to ice cookies with Cinnamon Caramel Icing, and sprinkle with chopped Pecan Brittle.

CINNAMON CARAMEL ICING

Makes about 2 cups

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar (light brown sugar will work, too, but won't be as rich)

1/4 cup milk

1  1/2 cups sifted confectioners sugar

1/2 teaspoon Saigon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

Pinch ground cloves

Place butter and brown sugar in a saucepan, and bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally until brown sugar dissolves. Let cool, and whisk in remaining ingredients.

PECAN BRITTLE

Makes enough for chopping and sprinkling on the cookies, plus a little extra

1  1/2 cups roughly chopped pecans
1/2 cup sugar

2 tablespoons water

2-3 drops lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350 F. Place a silicone baking liner or a sheet of buttered parchment paper next to the stove. Place chopped pecans on a baking sheet and toast 6-7 minutes, until fragrant. Meanwhile, stir together sugar, water and lemon juice in a clean saucepan. Turn heat on high, and let cook until medium brown; your goal is to get the color as deep as possible without burning it. Stir in the hot, toasted pecans. Spread this mixture as flat as possible onto the silicone baking liner and let it cool completely. (To clean the sticky saucepan, fill it with some water and simmer it for awhile, until the caramel dissolves.)

Photo: Dara Sahebjami

San Juan Apples

Last week Dara, Calvin the baby, Chloe the dog and I boarded the ferry to visit Hawk and Suzy Pingree at San Juan Island Distillery. We stayed for a couple of days, learning about how they make their products and helping pick cider apples. (Calvin, to be honest, wasn't a very productive worker.) We met these retired agricultural academics through their rockin' daughter Haley, who's our friend, neighbor, and my former colleague.

In a spare, red-trimmed building just around the corner from tony Roche Harbor, the Pingrees work with their partner Richard Anderson to make Westcott Bay Cider, a tasty hard cider made from Richard's proprietary mix of apples grown just down the hill. Then they distill some of the cider to create an aromatic, award-winning apple eau de vie. And then, they age some of the eau de vie in oak barrels; the vision is that someday they'll produce a smooth, Calvados-like apple brandy that's worthy of Washington's apple reputation.

While they're at it, they make use of their gorgeous 200-liter copper still from Germany to create several other distillations, most prominently their Spy Hop brand gin, which has a delicious and unique botanical taste that comes not only from the more traditional juniper, lemon, star anise, cardamom and orris root, but also from some San Juan Island inhabitants like blackberries, wild roses, lavender and madrone bark. They make some brandies and liqueurs, too. My favorite is the old-fashioned lavender and wild rose liqueur...something about it makes me feel like a lacy flapper partying on a local lumber baron's yacht.

When we were there, Hawk and Suzy were experimenting with a Golden Delicious apple mash they got off the island. The still produced not only "heads," "hearts" and "tails" -- terms for the different components to discard or keep -- but also cozy warmth and an unmistakeable fall aroma. That was nice.

Did I mention that Suzy shakes up a mean cocktail? Yeah, this is a pretty cool couple to hang out with! Here are a couple of recipes she gave us:


RED SKY AT NIGHT
2 parts Spy Hop Gin
1/2 part lemon juice
1/2 part Lavender & Wild Rose Liqueur
1/2 part maraschino liqueur

SAN JUAN ISLAND 48
2 parts Spy Hop Harvest Select Gin
1 part lemon juice
1/2 part cider syrup (simple syrup made from hard cider instead of water -- clever, right?)
Top-up of Westcott Bay Cider

Photos: Dara Sahebjami

Saveur's Maultaschensuppe: Don't Try It at Home

I just about died when I saw a feature in the November issue of Saveur about Central European soups. Are you kidding me? Give me a rich broth with some dumplings and sausage, and I'll follow you just about anywhere.

Of all the deeply comforting options, I set out to replicate Maultaschensuppe, which contains meaty dumplings that are a specialty of Swabia in southern Germany. They looked like puffy little pillows in the picture.

With my Saveur recipe in hand, I pestered the butcher at Ballard Market to wrap me 3 ounces each of ground beef, pork, veal and bacon. We're off to a good start, right?

I mixed together the dumpling dough and rolled it 1/16 inch thick, so it was satiny and translucent. I've made ravioli several times, and this was similar. So far so good.

To make the dumpling filling, I combined the four types of raw ground meat in a bowl with fried onion, cream, cooked spinach and eggs. I wondered briefly why I wasn't required to brown the meat to develop its flavor. Wouldn't that make it a little tastier than just steaming it inside the dumpling filling? Then again, I thought, this is a common practice for Asian dumplings. And if it's a flavorful filling overall, I'm sure it will turn out fine.

I also wondered why I had been asked to cook the chopped spinach before including it in the filling; was that really necessary? Wouldn't it just wilt when it steams inside the dumplings?

The real questions came when I was required to season the raw dumpling filling. "Add salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste."

So here I am, trying to follow this recipe to a tee because I'm completely unfamiliar with this soup, and they can't just tell me how much to season the raw meat mixture? I'm supposed to taste the raw meat several times not only for salt and pepper, but also for nutmeg? How do I know how much they want it to taste like nutmeg? At this point I'm sensing I've just invested a few hours of my life in a lazy, untested recipe.

I formed the dumplings and boiled them. To serve the soup, I added them to chicken broth containing diced carrot, celery and parsley. Never mind that the recipe description and photo featured chives, while the recipe listed parsley -- the broth was a total snooze. No roux to make it a little richer and more flavorful? No extra seasoning? How embarrassing.

The really sad thing about this recipe fail was that the issue's editor's letter was all about the feature on Central European soups -- how they've been working on it for an entire year, collecting recipes and photos from soup experts all over the region.

I guess it goes to show that recipe development and testing take a lot of time and attention to detail...and when you don't do it properly, you waste people's time and money. I thoroughly test any recipe before I list it here on Seasonal Seattle, so if you try one and it doesn't work for you, please please let me know. I don't want you to feel how I did tonight!

Tomato Sauce, 3 Ways

We didn't grow tomatoes this year, and still we ended up with a wide variety from family and neighbors -- enough to make three small batches of tomato sauce. Despite the cold summer and their late debut, the fruit turned out juicy and flavorful, always reminding me of being a child in my grandparents' dense August gardens, making my way along aromatic gravel paths with a basket or a wagon for collection. With many years of eating tomatoes in many places, this is the memory that always returns.

For the first batch, I gently roasted a mixture of varieties, just dousing them with olive oil and adding a foil packet of garden-grown garlic. Once roasted for an hour at 400 F, I blended the tomatoes and garlic in the food processor for a basic and versatile sauce. For the next batch, I picked out some medium-sized, deep red orbs for deep roasting -- 400 F for several hours, like 4 or 5, until they were well-wrinkled and caramelized. Some of these were blended into a concentrated tomato paste, while others remained solid for smooshing onto turkey sandwiches. And for the third batch, I made a simple pasta sauce, with olive oil and butter, onion, garlic, tomatoes, Parmesan, basil, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. For someone who seems to plan two dinners ahead, maximum, it felt good to be all stocked up.

Peachy

The soil and sun of Eastern Washington create the best peaches in the country, hands down. At the risk of sounding like that friend of Forrest Gump who goes on about shrimp, I've made a few peach cobblers, an open-faced peach pie with a vanilla bean custard base, peach milkshakes, and a fun salad that was inspired by a citrus version served at Tilth:

Slice a perfectly ripe peach; no need to peel. Spread it attractively in a line on a white plate. Use sugar and a blow torch to caramelize the peaches. Accompany this bruleed sweetness with a little pile of dressed arugula from the farmers market (real arugula -- not that baby stuff from the supermarket), sheeps milk cheese and toasted pistachios. Proscuitto is optional. 

Creamy Morel Bucatini

When our friends Brett and Bobby visited, we all got busy and made a gorgeous dinner to go with the gorgeous wines they brought. Our typical "nice filet of salmon" on the grill, a zucchini gratin, a morel pasta dish, and Rainier cherry ice cream. I was in charge of the pasta. I used fresh, chubby bucatini, and made a sauce as follows:

Sweat some finely chopped Walla Walla sweets or other sweet onions in a pan with equal parts butter and olive oil. Add minced garlic and saute until the onions begin to caramelize. Remove onions and garlic from the pan and set aside. Heat more olive oil and butter; add morels and brown them, working in batches as necessary. Once they're all browned, remove them from the pan and set aside. Deglaze the pan with some marsala, and then add some more. Let the alcohol cook off, and turn the heat down to low. Whisk in some half and half to make a creamy sauce. Add sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste. Return the onions, garlic and morels to the pan, along with some minced fresh thyme, marjoram and parsley. Whisk in some grated Parmesan cheese to thicken the sauce. Stir in the cooked bucatini and a bit of the pasta water. Eat a forkfull from the pan and exclaim, "Ain't nothing wrong with that!" Serve with a dusty, leathery, awesome Pinot Noir.
  

Cherry-Lavender Soda

So dreary outside! But it's a sunny party in our kitchen with these sodas, made with fresh and local cherries. I also wanted an excuse to use these pink and white paper straws -- aren't they cute?

First, at least a day before you want to make the soda, make some lavender syrup. This is handy to have around for cocktails and lemonade, too. Bring 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup water to a boil, stirring until sugar dissolves. Transfer this to a charming glass jar and add a bunch of backyard French lavender blossoms -- as many as possible. Seal the jar and let those fragrant flowers infuse the syrup.

Pit and puree the cherries, and simmer the puree on the stove until it reduces by half. Let it cool. Into a tall glass goes about 1/4 cup cherry reduction. Top with club soda, and add strained lavender syrup to taste. Then a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream for that nostaglic, creamy, bubbly A&W/Dairy Queen-style sensation.   

Picnic in Discovery Park

Early Sunday evening we took a picnic to Discovery Park. Dara the husband, Calvin the baby, Chloe the dog and I hiked out to the big meadow, where we smooshed down some long grass with a blanket and watched the sun set over Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains. We packed a hearty salad of fresh vegetables from the farmers market -- shaved asparagus and radishes, and little shelled peas, dressed in lemon Parmesan vinaigrette. On the side, some crusty bread and sliced yellow tomatoes.

Then we assembled strawberry shortcakes -- with local berries, warm buttermilk biscuits and vanilla ice cream topped with crispy bacon and maple syrup. It finally started to feel like summer. Especially when I started sneezing uncontrollably and my eyes swelled shut! The secret ingredient for next time is Claritin. It was still a romantic picnic, though, :-)

Last of the Fiddleheads

Fiddlehead ferns were another fun find this week at the Ballard farmers market. They must have a later season here in the Northwest, or perhaps it's cold this year...I feel like they were an early May item back in Chicago. I first tasted them as part of a New Zealand wine dinner and associate them with the other super-springy items served that night, like roasted wild boar with a savory rhubarb and ramp sauce.

Tightly coiled and tasting a bit like asparagus and okra, fiddleheads are lovely paired with brown butter and a citrusy Chenin Blanc. In this case, I sauteed some Campagne-style sausage from Sea Breeze Farm on Vashon Island...it's a pork sausage with flavors of cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, mace and maple. Then I sauteed the fiddleheads in the same pan, tossing them with some chicken stock, fettuccine and shaved Parmesan. Yummy Monday night dinner.

Weird But Good: Grilled, Bacon-Wrapped Beef Spleen with Steamed Sea Beans

 

Ah, the adventures we have at the Ballard farmers market...as evidenced by this meal. First we came across foraged sea beans, also known as samphires or sea pickles, which we remembered from the "Top Chef" episode in which contestant Richard Blais paired them with corn puree and seared bone marrow. Sea beans grow along the coast and are tender and crisp like green beans, but salty like the ocean. I steamed them just for a few minutes to brighten their color and flavor, and tossed them with some olive oil...no need for salt. And the perfect pairing? A beef spleen, which we bought as an amusing experiment, thinking that for $3, we could feed it to Chloe the dog if it was terrible. Turns out it tastes like liver but has a firmer texture. I happen to like the flavor of liver but not the mushy texture. I unfurled the spleen and laid strips of bacon on it, then rolled it back up like a cinnamon roll, pierced it with a metal skewer, and grilled it for quite a long time, like a half hour, until it had a good seared crust and both it and the bacon were cooked through. A local IPA, some crusty bread and coarse mustard were the finishing touches for a rustic early summer meal.     

May Menu from Beast

Reporting back from Dara's and my fancy 12th anniversary dinner at Beast in Portland, here was the menu on Saturday, May 14, and an account of the moments of inspiration we experienced.

One major "a-ha" area was the wine pairings...mostly white, and all beautiful, aromatic and perfectly springlike. They were so food-friendly, it was almost as if each dish were created for its wine.

• New Potato & Leek Soup with Chive Blossoms and Chive Oil. (Birgit Eichinger Hasel Gruner Veltliner 2008, Kampal, Austria.) A fairly simple soup, this reminded me to use our garden's own pink-purple chive blossoms as a lightly spicy and herbaceous garnish not only for soups, but also for salads, fish, potatoes and other savory dishes. I wish this soup had been served in a more elegant fashion -- rather than swishing messily as it landed in front of me -- so that was a reminder to myself to prepare individual portions of cold summer soups by arranging the solid ingredients in shallow soup bowls, and then pouring the liquid tableside from a pretty teapot or pitcher. 
• Charcuterie Plate: Foie-Gras Bon-Bon with Sauternes Gelee; Chicken Liver Mousse on a homemade cracker; Steak Tartare & Quail Egg Toast; Olympic Provisions Salami; Pork Pate with Fennel, Chili Flake & Coriander. (Weingut Salomon Riesling Kogl Trocken 2008, Kamptal, Austria.) This was lots of fun. I love a good progression of rich flavors, and loved ending with the super super smooth, creamy bon-bon. And I love eating courses that would take me two or three days to make at home!
• Kookolan Farm's Chicken, Maple-Glazed Easter Egg Radish, Goat Butter & Demi-Glace. (Henry Fessy Moulin-a-Vent 2009, Beaujolais.) The chicken thighs were braised in duck fat and covered in the demi-glace, so they were crispy and of course highly flavorful. I loved the sweet earthiness and crunch of the roasted radishes underneath, along with their greens, and the finishing pat of earthy goat butter swirled into the sauce was perfect with the wine. This course was a good reminder that roasted radishes are a summery, garden-fresh alternative to heavier roasted root vegetables -- particularly when you're serving a heavy, rich protein.
• Little Gem Lettuces with Creamy Preserved Lemon Vinaigrette, Smoked Sturgeon, Spring Herbs & Crispy Proscuitto. (Giles Buisson St. Romain Blanc Sous-la-Velle 2006, Burgundy.) These gentle, tender little lettuces got such a punch from all the layers of strong flavor here -- concentrated doses of lemon, fish, herbs and pig. Like the chicken course, this was an instance in which the wine picked up on all the elements and rounded out so well on the tongue. The inspiration for Dara and me: We want to make more flavorful summer dinner salads of local vegetables punched up with herbs, meats, cheeses and pantry ingredients -- layering those flavors of salty, sweet, bitter, sour and unami in creative ways. 
• Selection of Cheese; Anise & Fleur de Sel Shortbread; Bittersweet Farms Honey; Poached Apricot & Candied Hazelnuts. (C. Schleret Pinot Gris Herrenweg 2005; Alsace.) I didn't take notes on the cheeses, but this was another fun progression course, and I liked that the accompaniments were decidedly feminine. Overall, in fact, this menu demonstrated a delicate and playful quality that made it clear a woman was behind the counter...you know how sometimes, somehow, you can just tell? Although it contained a sweet shortbread, this course reminded me of some recipes I have for savory shortbread, and how fun it is to serve with cheese or charcuterie. I forsee that showing up at one of our summer get-togethers.
• Strawberry Cream Layer Cake with White Chocolate Ganache & Fresh Mint Ice Cream. (Domaine Bottex Bugey de Cerdon "La Cuielle" NV, Savoie.) Maybe it was because I have pastry experience, but this course was disappointing...just messy and amatuer. The strawberry jam filling was nice -- I'm guessing local berries from last year -- and the fresh mint ice cream was creamy and refreshing rather than cloying, but basically this was just a layered white sheet cake cut into squares and plopped on a plate with ice cream on the side. It would have been so much nicer to bake individual cakes, or cut circles in the sheet cake, or decontruct the dessert to lend it some elegance. As it was, it seemed to convey the chefs were tired, ready to be done with their last seating of the night, and not very comfortable with dessert. I did love the sparkling rose wine, though -- that ended the night on a sweet note.

Bieler Pere et Fils 2010

It's been a warm, summer-like day here in Seattle, and baby Calvin is down for the night, and I'm enjoying the best rose (with an accent on the "e," which I can't remember how to do), which is noted in the title above. Go buy it! Now! It's awesome! Though I may be biased as I haven't drunk a whole lot of wine late.y I mean lately. (Hiccup.)

So, baby Calvin Kian Sahebjami was born on February 9. He was 7 pounds and 20 inches of pure smiley joy. We've been getting to know each other, and he just turned 3 (months). My life has consisted mostly of breastfeeding every three hours, though nights have gotten better. For example, tonight he went down at 10:00 or so, and likely won't wake up until 4:00 or 5:00. Believe it or not, that is considered great! I could go on and on about the topics of breastfeeding and sleep, but I will resist for the purpose of this blog and confine those comments to my mommy listservs.

Dara has been a champ at making dinner and keeping me nourished. I haven't eaten necessarily seasonally; rather, I've been trying to eat a high-protein, low-saturated fat diet to lose my pregnancy pounds and trim down down for summer. Tonight, for example, we had grilled wild salmon, accompanied by zucchini, yellow summer squash, red bell pepper and fresh oregano sauteed in olive oil. Last night, we ate grilled chicken and a spinach salad. And on Sunday morning, we shared Mother's Day brunch with neighbors: omelets, fresh fruit and whole wheat sourdough toast.

So you see, there's nothing much to brag about, culinarily speaking, but this weekend we're going to reward ourselves by eating at Beast, the Portland restaurant whose young female chef is kicking a*# on Bravo's "Top Chef Masters." We are so excited to have a Saturday night date (it's also our 12th wedding anniversary) and to have Gramps and Nana take care of Cal.

I'm hoping this dinner will serve as a source of inspiration, and after that, I'll expect to go to neighborhood farmers markets and come up with new things to make and share with you. Little Cal's food source is limited, but that doesn't mean ours has to be. So, stay tuned, lovelies -- Seasonal Seattle is back.

Growing a Beanie Blue Cake Baby

Well, hey there. It's been awhile. Sorry about that. Poor Dad says he still checks the blog every day for that Mini Apple Pie recipe I promised on November 4. Someday, Dad...someday.

The holidays have come and gone, and here we are in late January. I'm 38 weeks pregnant, and Dara's and my baby-boy-to-be is apparently complete. I could go into labor tonight or four weeks from now. Freelance work projects have come to an end, and now it's time simply to rest, nest and be prepared.

So, per the topic of this blog, how have we been eating seasonally in Seattle? People love to joke that pregnant women are eating for two, and that they crave pickles and ice cream at 2 am. In my case I haven't had specific cravings necessarily, but have been hungry many times throughout the day. I try to make nutritious choices, but it doesn't always work.

Virtuous winter cooking highlight: The slow cooker is a magic device into which many variations on soaked beans, onions, broth and herbs and spices can be simmered into harmony with mere minutes of morning prep. For pennies! The other day, for example, I combined a dry chili bean mixture with a sliced yellow onion, broth, water and two sliced chicken sausage links. We topped each bowl of the resulting chili with plain yogurt, shredded cheddar and chopped cilantro. Tomorrow I'll try an Indian variation on the theme, with dry black lentils, onion, carrots, peas, broth and curry spices, to serve on basmati rice. Healthy baby, healthy me!

Trashy winter cooking lowlight: Last week I craved a yellow cake so much. I bought a cake mix and a can of white frosting. I baked the cake in a tube pan, dyed the frosting blue, frosted the cake and piped on white dots. It could have been cute, but it had that untidy, desperate, late night look. Suffice to say, no photograph is available, as there was no time to linger over the camera. Oh, the shame -- fat baby, fat me!

Now that I'm a huge heiffer with an aching back who can't even run around the block, I'm inspired to get this baby out and lose the weight as fast as I can with exercise and a nutritious diet. The season seems to agree. There's a freshness in the air, and spring buds are poking their own heads out of the fertile earth. Come on, Baby Sahebjami, let's do this.