Sunday, June 19, 2011

Gourmet Alaskan Seafood: Simon and Seafort's

This weekend, my husband and I were celebrating, so we went to dinner at Simon and Seafort’s.  This is a long time staple of ours for when we want to go out someplace nice. Two people can easily spend over $100 here, because there are delicious appetizers, soups, and salads, $25-$45 entrees, and great desserts. It’s located downtown on L Street, between 4th and 5th Avenue; it’s a little hard to spot, since it’s in the first floor of a very plain looking office building, but there’s a sign out front with two old-timey Gold Rush fellows to point you in the right direction. I recommend getting a reservation- you don’t have to make it more than a few days ahead, but it is nice not to have to wait. If you show up and can’t get a table, you can always try and find a spot in the bar, which has a couple dozen tables, but that’s been pretty busy lately, too. They will bring you both the dining room menu and the bar menu, so you won't miss anything. Whether you go to the dining room or bar, you get a bonus if you get a table by the picture windows that overlook the Knik Arm of Cook Inlet and Mount Susitna.
Simon and Seafort’s is very much a classic “steak and seafood” kind of restaurant, and they really do have fantastic Alaskan seafood. They always have some fresh seafood selections for entrees, and have several great things that stay on the menu because they are so good. They also have a good bar for mixed drinks. The selection is good for beer and wine, too, but not really amazing or unusual. They have great happy hour food and drink specials that are just served in the bar. The drinks they’re better known for are things like the scratch margarita and the mojito.
We always start with the hot Dungeness crab and artichoke dip, and if you have been here before, you know why. It’s a hot and gooey cheesy crab dip, and you have to get it if you go. Make sure you get extra of the warm sourdough bread that the waiter or waitress brings to your table, though, because the little bread slices they give you with the dip aren’t enough, and aren’t nearly as good as the sourdough. Other great appetizers I have had include the steamed clams and the calamari. I've never had the oysters, but they serve those as well.
Simon’s also has incredible salads and soups. They always have New England clam chowder and authentic French Onion soup. I think they must make their own stock for the French Onion, because the soup I've made at home isn't nearly as rich and dark as theirs. Their salads are also fantastic. They have a great Caesar salad, a Maytag bleu cheese salad with slivered almonds and hard boiled eggs, and a salad with egg-mustard dressing that is amazing. The latter always makes me think of my aunt, who got the recipe years ago and has been using the dressing on green salads and potato salads at family occasions for years. On this visit, my husband and I both ended up with the Maytag bleu cheese; I got the Caesar the last couple times I was here, so I thought I should have a different one.
For entrĂ©es, they have several choices. They have your basic steakhouse options: filet mignon, ribeye, and prime rib, as well as a burger, seafood linguine and a seafood etouffee. They also have a variable menu that depends on the availability of fresh seafood. This weekend, they had a few different preparations of fresh Alaskan sockeye salmon,  your basic king crab legs, and King salmon special. They also had a steak special that sounded great, which included bleu cheese and carmelized onions. As mouth-watering as the salmon specials sounded, I was torn between their two fresh Alaskan halibut selections, because they do such a great job with halibut. Their classic is the crab and macadamia stuffed halibut, which is well known around town, and has even gotten a special mention in the Anchorage Daily News - Simon's has won various "Best of Anchorage" awards for over ten years, including Best Fine Dining and Best Seafood, but this dish has also been specifically called out. As much as I love it, I went for something new, the pan seared halibut cheeks, made with fresh halibut from Kachemak Bay. They were really good, with a light coating of Panko bread crumbs, and were served in an asiago cheese and butter sauce, with creamy red skinned mashed potatoes and roasted vegetables. After the crab dip and salad and sourdough bread, I didn't get very far on the halibut, but that's okay, they'll pack up your leftovers for you. Simon's also gets extra points for using paper take out boxes instead of styrofoam. My husband got the prime rib, which he said was very tender and perfectly medium rare. He thought the au jus was a little salty, but we don't use much salt when we cook at home, so a lot of things taste salty to us. Even though he got the "small" steak, he also had a lot of it boxed up.

I also had a great wine to go with a great dinner. While their wine list isn't spectacular, they do have a decent selection of white wines to go with their seafood. They had just run out of the nightly Sauvignon blanc special, so I had a delicious Chateau la Fregnelle Sauvignon Semillon from Bordeaux that was just the perfect thing for the crab, salad, and halibut.

Now, shockingly, after everything I've just said, we decided to try and squeeze in a little dessert, because we knew how great they were. They also usually have New York cheesecake, creme brulee, and berry cobbler, but we got our two favorite things: the chocolate indulgence cake, and the key lime pie. As you know, I looooove chocolate, and this warm, gooey slice of cake is just great, served with vanilla ice cream and some warm chocolate sauce. Love of chocolate aside, the key lime pie is also fantastic, and a must-have if you bypass the chocolate cake- it's fresh and light and made with real key lime juice and garnished with fresh lime zest.

Okay, I know, that was a lot of food. We totally over-indulged, and shouldn't have gotten nearly as much as we did. But as you can tell, we love several things from every course they offer, so it is really hard to skip something, especially since we don't come here very often. Next time, we will probably have a lighter dinner at the bar, and I'll tell you all about it. 

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Navigating the Office Potluck

This week, I have an office potluck. That means I have spent the beginning of the week thinking about what I am going to bring. One of the most important things for a potluck is to know your office, so you know what other people are going to bring, and then you can make something that fits in perfectly to the overall spread.
Now, I have worked in places where the potluck consisted almost entirely of casseroles and desserts. Casseroles are easy, and it is always easy to throw together a batch of brownies or cookies, or pick up a cheesecake at the store. I make a fantastic brownie, but I hardly ever make them for this sort of thing because there are always too many desserts. I have also worked in offices where “potluck” was used loosely and almost everyone brought take out: from Safeway, from KFC, or from a chain pizza place. I don’t begrudge anyone the occasional Costco cheat at a potluck, because they make some great dips and cakes and things, but too many casseroles and take-out doesn’t make for a well balanced lunch, and by about 2:00 I’d usually crash from all the refined carbs and want to curl up in my cubicle and take a nap. So in that sort of office, I always ended up bringing a vegetable, like a green salad with real dressing (not just a bottle of ranch), just to make sure there was at least one.
My new office is much better at potlucks. The last one included several salads, a couple of entrees with moose in them (gotta love Alaska!), and a couple of homemade desserts, among other things. Particularly because I didn’t have too much advance notice about this lunch, I will be making something simple, which will not take too much time the evening before- hummus and vegetables. I usually serve carrots with hummus, but of course you can use celery or whatever other vegetables you want, or you can bring bread or crackers. Below is my recipe for hummus, and it is one of my standard potluck dishes. This is a traditional middle eastern hummus, not one of those new-fangled roasted red pepper or whatever dips they call hummus that you get in the store now. Sorry the measurements aren’t too specific, but it’s one of those things you should really just taste as you go and see how you like it, and feel free to change proportions as needed.
Hummus
(It has it all: Vegan! Dairy Free! Gluten free! Kosher!)

Ingredients:
1 can of garbanzo beans, try for low sodium or organic
Olive oil
Tahini
Chopped garlic
Cumin
Lemon juice

Drain the can of garbanzo beans, but reserve the water for later. You may want to rinse the beans to get rid of some of the salt if you didn’t get a low sodium brand. Depending on whether you want your hummus to be smooth or chunky, either puree the beans in a food processor, or mash them up with a potato masher or fork.
Add a couple cloves of finely chopped garlic.
Add roughly a quarter cup of tahini. I like roasted, but some people prefer raw. This is a Middle Eastern sesame seed paste, and you can find it next to the peanut butter and almond butter in most stores. Here in Anchorage, they have it at Fred Meyer, and I think at Carrs.
Add a few tablespoons to a quarter cup of olive oil, depending on your taste and how healthy you want this hummus to be.
Add a few pinches of cumin and the juice of at least half a lemon. Use all the juice in the lemon if you want.
Now, this is where you need to really taste what you have, and make adjustments.  Does it need more of anything? Does it need a little salt? Add more tahini, cumin, or olive oil if needed. Use the reserved water from the can, or plain water if you forgot to save some, and add to the hummus until it reaches the consistency you want. You generally want it to be a little too thin at this point, especially if you’re not serving it right away, because once you put it in the refrigerator it is going to thicken up considerably. If you keep it covered in the fridge it will last around a week to ten days.

Monday, June 13, 2011

The Perfect Saturday Morning? A Wine Tasting at the Farmer’s Market

And yes, I realize that the title of this post makes me sound like a total drunk. But hey, I love going to farmer’s markets, I love wine tasting, I love good food, and I love supporting good local causes, so basically, I had no choice. And don’t worry, my husband who doesn’t like wine drove me.

This great Saturday was courtesy of the South Anchorage Farmer’s Market, which runs from 9:00 am – 2:00 pm at Old Seward Highway and O’Malley Road, next to the Alaska Club South. This is a good market for seafood, including one of my all-time favorite foods, Alaskan side-stripe shrimp. They also occasionally host fundraisers like this wine tasting. The tasting was put on by WineStyles; the local branch of this franchise is one of my top two places to buy wine in Anchorage. But I digress- I’ll do a more in-depth post on that subject later. For $10, you got very generous tastes of three delicious wines, some tasty little appetizers, a coupon for 10% at the wine store, and a polycarbonate wine glass to take home (and use on camping trips later on in the summer).

The proceeds benefited the Alaska Farmland Trust, a great organization that supports Alaskan farmers by ensuring that suitable farmland is actually available for agriculture. Supporting Alaskan farmers is a really important subject. If you don’t live in Alaska you might think that farming in the Arctic is a futile task or even laughable, but because so much of our food is imported, however much we can eat locally has a huge impact: on the freshness of our food, on our health, on the environmental impact of not shipping so much food up here, and on the local economy. The Alaska Farmland Trust ensures that land is available for production, which is an issue because the most suitable farmland is also near the largest population centers in the state. I have lived in other states in which what little farmland there was was being bought up and turned into tract housing, so all over this country we need to make owning and working a small-scale farm a viable option.

As far as the tasting itself, you got to choose any three wines they had on offer. To start with the whites, they had a Blonde Bombshell white blend from Rutherford, CA (near Napa and Sonoma), and a Sextant Chardonnay from Paso Robles, California. I tried the chardonnay, which was great, especially because I was basically drinking it at lunch time- I generally think that a cold glass of a crisp white wine is the best choice if you actually go in for drinking at lunch. For the reds, they had several choices: Sensual Malbec from Mendoza, Argentina, a Chateau Faire le Pont red blend called Tre Amore from Washington state that blended cabernet, San Giovese, and Nebbiolo grapes, a Sextant Zinfandel from Paso Robles, and a Sea Glass Pinot Noir from Santa Barbara, California. I went to WineStyles later that afternoon to use my coupon, and all the wines they had at the tasting were under $25. The Tre Amore was $25, but the rest were under $20, generally around $15.

The wine was definitely reason enough to go, but they had a couple little appetizers, too, to eat with your wine. They had puff pastry with fruit in port wine and bleu cheese, and crackers with a carrot chili puree, pulled pork, and farmhouse cheddar. I definitely preferred the puff pastry one the best- the fruit and bleu cheese went very well together.

So, that is the story of how I got drunk on a Saturday morning in South Anchorage. I also paid an extra $20 and bought a Farmland Trust t-shirt made of organic fair trade pima cotton, so I can proclaim my support of Alaskan farmers every day.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Modern Dwellers Chocolate Lounge

Last week I went to Modern Dwellers Chocolate Lounge, one of my favorite places to get chocolate in Anchorage. They have some extremely innovative chocolatiers working there, and they have a wide range of chocolates to satisfy anyone, from those who like plain milk or dark chocolate, to those who would like their chocolate combined with some beer, salmon, or wasabi.

Modern Dwellers has two locations, a small one downtown on G Street between 4th and 5th Avenues, and in midtown on the Old Seward Highway and 36th, about two blocks south of the Moose’s Tooth. I go to both, but prefer the midtown location- it has a bigger selection of packaged chocolates and other gifts, more seating, and of course better parking than the heart of downtown.

One of my favorite things to get is the drinking chocolate. This is not hot chocolate, although you can get that. This is like melted chocolate. It is thick and dense and filling and served in a tiny ceramic cup with whipped cream, and is best sipped with the tiny spoon they give you. You might also want to ask them for a glass of water to accompany it. It is rich. This is nearer to what the colonial Spanish thought of as hot chocolate or drinking chocolate. There are two kinds of drinking chocolate to chose from – the silky dark and the spicy Mayan. The more traditional chocolate lover should probably pick the silky, but if you like Mexican chocolate or a kind with a little kick, try the spicy Mayan. They will also dilute either with steamed milk into a more traditional hot chocolate. They also have espresso drinks, but I’ve never tried them- why get a latte when you can get the drinking chocolate?

The other chocolate you shouldn’t miss are their truffles. These are gourmet, handmade truffles with fun names, and they are expensive, close to $3 each (a package of 6 is about $16). But they are soooooo good. Just remember these are not the kind of truffles that you eat a giant box of at a time, and you will be satisfied. One way you can tell they are handmade is that they vary a lot in size; you can watch this in action as they try to fill your truffle box. Modern Dwellers has some more traditional types of truffles, like dark chocolate, hazelnut, and espresso, which are all really delicious, and then they also have some that you initially think are strange, but then you taste them and the flavors really work  in an unexpected way. There is a goat cheese and chocolate truffle that is great – the goat cheese adds a nice tang to the chocolate. There is also a smoked salmon truffle- the deep smoked flavor adds a really rich note. Last week I got the bleu cheese, wasabi, mint julep, and beer truffles. I know, right? And these are all chocolate truffles, with these foods added to the chocolate ganache filling. It’s like what adding coffee or espresso adds to the chocolate flavor. I liked the mint julep truffle ("julep jive") a lot, but that's not surprising; both liquor and mint go very well with chocolate. The beer truffle (named the "midnight mambo" because the beer used is from the Midnight Sun Brewing Company) is one of their newest. The flavor was pretty subtle, and didn't really taste like beer. You got a little of the barley/grain flavor, but not much. The bleu cheese was good and tangy, like the goat cheese one, but I think the goat cheese works a little better with the chocolate. My favorite of the new ones I tried this week was the wasabi truffle ("tokyo tango"). It comes with a piece of seaweed and crystalized ginger on top. I'm telling you, wasabi flavored chocolate ganache is a spectacular thing. And don't worry, because it's not super spicy, although there is quite a kick.

Modern Dwellers, especially the midtown location, also has a wide variety of packaged chocolates. Most are from small companies, and are organic and/or fair trade. They range from plain or milk chocolate bars, to more interesting flavors like smoked sea salt. I tried a bar from Taza chocolate, which was 60% cacao, organic, and was made with "direct trade" chocolate from the Dominican Republic. There were two things that made this bar interesting. First, it is dairy free- so cacao, cocoa butter, sugar, and vanilla, and that's it. Second, it's "stone ground," so it isn't very smooth- it's actually kind of gritty. It's an interesting texture, but I'm not sure I'm a fan. I think it's that the grittiness makes the lack of milk or cream seems more pronounced, but I'm not sure. If you like experimenting with texture, though, give it a try. I also got a milk chocolate bar for my husband from Michael Mischer Chocolates out of Oakland. This was a traditional milk chocolate bar, and it was very rich and creamy. Definitely good if you want high quality, but traditional chocolate. I think they carried some other flavors, like toffee, from this company as well.

If you get the hot chocolate instead of the drinking chocolate, you might be able to handle a delicious, handmade baked dessert. They usually have at least one kind of biscotti, a chocolate chip, oatmeal, or shortbread cookie, and sometimes they have muffins. I’ve had a good pumpkin muffin in the past, and I really wanted to try the banana and cacao nib muffin on this last visit, but there are only so many things a girl can try at once.

Modern Dwellers also has other things to buy besides chocolate. They have a lot of art by local artists on the walls that is for sale, and they also have good cards and jewelry; some of the cards are by local artists, too. You can also sign up for their email newsletter, the “Chocolate News,” which tells you about new (beer truffle!) and seasonal (lavender flavored chocolate Easter eggs!) chocolates, and about new artists and First Friday art events.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

How to Make Cheese and Influence People

This week, I learned how to make my own cheese. The workshop was taught by Saskia Esslinger of Red Edge Design. She does workshops about how to raise chickens in Alaska (hint: insulation and electric bear fences) and how to get the most out of your Alaskan garden. She hosts lots of gardening workshops, and other activities like seed swaps, and she has a garden blog. Her husband works on sustainable buildings and does home energy audits, and they are generally working on the concept of the “urban homestead.” Saskia knows an amazing amount about living locally and sustainably, and is definitely working to make Alaska a better place. The book Saskia uses, and that I just bought, is "Home Cheese Making," by Ricki Carroll. It is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and apparently is occasionally seen in Title Wave Books, but they don't currently have any copies. The book is full of information about cheesemaking, including about the ingredients and the science involved, and is a good book to read if you are interested in food, even if you are not going to make your own cheese. And of course, it has recipes for everything from cheddar, cream cheese, and feta, to ghee and paneer.

In some ways, making cheese is simple. Generally, you heat milk, and add enzymes. In other ways, it is complicated. Lots of attending to pots so things don’t sit too long or get too hot or cold. You need thermometers, large stock pots, some sieves or colanders, and cheesecloth. These are all things that you can get at several stores in Anchorage, like Fred Meyer or Natural Pantry. Butter muslin, which is a fine cheesecloth that retains more of the milk, and is used for making soft cheese or butter might be harder to find at a regular store. If you want to make hard cheese, you need a cheese mold/press and cheese wax. Saskia had a homemade cheese press, so I’m sure if you don’t want to pay for this more expensive piece of cheese-making equipment (over $100), you can make one yourself for less than $20 if you are handy. You need non-chlorinated water for diluting the enzymes and bacteria, particularly the rennet, but if you don’t have a filter you can just leave a glass of water out overnight and most of the chlorine will evaporate. Some books say you need “cheese salt” for a lot of recipes, but basically you just need fine grained, non-iodized salt.

In Anchorage, you can get most of the specialized equipment and ingredients you need from Arctic Brewing Supply on Abbot near the New Seward Highway, and you can get some stuff from Alaska Mill and Feed. You can also order everything online from the New England Cheese Making Company. If you’re buying a lot, just order from there, because Arctic Brewing gets their stuff from them, too, so it will be cheaper to order direct. Arctic Brewing started as a supplier for home brewers, but have now expanded into all kinds of home food- and drink-making equipment. The New England Cheesemaking Company sells lots of equipment and ingredients, and also has a blog and tips for making cheese.

You also need various starter bacterias, enzymes, and rennet."Starter" bacteria convert the lactose in the milk to lactic acid, and are necessary to convert the milk to cheese. The rennet contains enzymes that coagulates the milk and separates it into curds and whey. Traditional rennet is from one of the stomachs of a calf or kid, but there are lots of plants that contain natural coagulants as well, like yarrow, nettles, and fig tree bark, so it’s totally easy to find vegetable rennet. Lipase powder is another enzyme that is needed for some cheeses, particularly Italian cheese.

And of course, you can’t make cheese without milk. Basically you can use any whole milk as long as it is not ultra-pasteurized, because that kills off everything and the enzymes and bacteria aren’t effective. Regular pasteurization is fine, because there are still enough enzymes and other "flora" left in the milk for the things you add to work on. And of course, better quality milk means better quality cheese. Saskia belongs to a co-op and so she gets fresh goat's milk. I’m all for fresh local milk, but the milk she gets is raw, not pasteurized. Now, the raw milk thing is a very contentious issue right now, so I will try not to get too much into it here; everyone needs to weigh the risks and benefits themselves. Marion Nestle, who knows an amazing amount about the American food system, including food safety and food politics, has some entries on her blog about raw milk here (I also have a link to her blog on the right). Bill Marler also discusses the statistics and scientific studies regarding raw milk safety at Real Raw Milk Facts. I will say that neither Nestle nor Marler are fans of raw milk, but there are plenty of advocates that say it is more nutritious than pasteurized, that it is good for allergies, etc. At any rate, there are options for both in Alaska. There is at least one co-op, as I mentioned, in which you buy a goat share and pay for its care, and are provided with milk. Matanuska Creamery is a farmer cooperative that makes all kinds of dairy products, including delicious sharp cheddar cheese, and sells pasteurized cow's milk in several Carrs stores and in both New Sagaya markets. This workshop piqued my interest in local milk, so I will be looking into this more, because I'm sure there are more farms and cooperatives that sell both goat's and cow's milk. The best bet regardless is to get to know your farmer, and take a look at the farm itself. Whether you want raw or pasteurized, goat or cow, you have options here in Alaska.

In the workshop, we learned how to make mozzarella cheese, chevre, lemon cheese, and ricotta cheese. The chevre and lemon cheese were the easiest and I will totally be attempting to make them both at home in the near future. The lemon cheese is the simplest, you heat your milk, add lemon juice, and after it starts to curdle, you put it in cheesecloth and hang it up to drain off the whey. The acids in the lemon juice do the work. It was really delicious, kind of like a ricotta in consistency. A lot of the lemon juice drains away in the whey, so it doesn't taste very lemony, just really fresh and bright, if that makes sense. The chevre is also pretty easy, you heat the milk, add starter bacteria (Saskia gave us some at the workshop), and let it set for about 12 hours, then drain it for about another 12 hours. I said easy, not quick. All cheese making requires heating milk slowly and to precise temperatures, and lots of draining, straining, and things like that. It also requires a lot of trial and error, and lots of paying attention, to what the milk is doing, to the texture, etc.

The mozzarella is more complicated, and the process is more like making a hard cheese. You heat half the milk slowly, add lipase powder, let it sit, add citric acid to the half of the milk you have chilled, combine the two, bring the temperature slowly back up, add the rennet, let it form curds, drain them, and then put some curds into a pot of warm water and stretch them and form them into mozzarella balls or knots. Again, the temperatures all need to be very precise in order for the chemistry to work properly. And then, once you have done this, you can use the whey you have leftover from the mozzarella to make ricotta. You heat the whey until it is foaming but not quite boiling, let it set, and then drain it, and voila, ricotta!

So, that is what I learned this week about making cheese. It takes a lot of milk to make cheese, and it takes a lot of work. Will I stop buying parmesan at the store? No. Will I look into buying local milk, and start wowing my friends and family at parties with homemade chevre? You bet!