For these recipe, head on over to Design Sponge. And for even more summery herby recipes, check out Summer Fest!

After a morning of planning to find all of the taco trucks online that I could, and organizing a set of directions to most efficiently get us from spot to spot, we picked our targets and headed out. Of the 27 trucks I plotted, we’d try to go to 8 or 9 of them, ordering one carne asada and one al pastor taco at each, and splitting each of them. We were allowed sides but given the number of stops we had ahead of us, we were just going to stick to the two taco rule, at least until the end of the day.

The first stop was our closest truck, Rancho Bravo, in Wallingford. This truck is set up in a Winchell’s doughnut shop parking lot so you can always grab a doughnut if the craving strikes you after your tacos. At $2 each, these were the most expensive tacos we tried (which isn’t surprising given the neighborhood), but they were also some of the biggest. The corn tortillas are full size (but seem store bought), and well filled. The tacos have sliced, fresh radishes in addition to cilantro, onion and lime, and the salsa they have on the table are quite good. I like the salsa verte which has a bit of a kick.

Next, it was over to El Asadero, which seems to be a Seattle favorite. First off, there is something about having tacos sitting on the little stools inside this old school taco bus that really completes the taco eating experience. They also have great pickled carrots and peppers. The tacos ($1.20 plus tax each) are good. They are the usual small, double tortilla shells which seem to be housemade. The meat is good and juicy, with lots of flavor. Cam thought they were a bit heavy on the onion.

We kept heading down Rainier, hoping to find Taqueria Dos Hermanos, but it wasn’t around, so may have either moved or gone out of business. A few blocks further south, we found Los Potrillos, a small truck parked in a gas station parking lot. These tacos ($1.10 each) were drippy juicy with lots of diced meat and salsa. I wished for a bit more cilantro, but the onion balance was nice.

Next up was perhaps my favorite stop of the day, Costa Alegre. This old metro bus (complete with the old Priority Seating window stickers) is decked out with bright red, rodeo-inspired curtains, tables and chairs. It’s red overload, but quite comfortable and feels very homey. The folks that run it are lovely. You even get to eat on real plates! Our tacos ($1.25 each) were super hot and fresh, with a good balance of cilantro (ie: lots), onion and meat with good red and green salsa to add yourself. They also had some sort of non-alcoholic sangria, but we passed on that.

We’re not really sure what the next taco truck was called. The menus all said Tacos Maria, but the truck itself said Tacos Patzcuaro. This truck, parked on someone’s front lawn on MLK Blvd, is going to get swamped when the light rail system is in right across the street. For now, it kept a stead pace of taco eaters happy with its small taco shells heavily loaded with meat and a pile of caramelized onions on the side ($1.25 each). The salsa verde here is a bit on the sweet side and the red is quite hot. It was about this time that I was starting to get pretty worried about how I was going to finish this crazy taco eating extravaganza. We were on truck #5, with 3 more planned to go. The radishes were no longer going to be eaten.

We had made it through all the Rainier trucks we had planned, so then it was off to South Park for a couple of well known stops. El Rincon (which has several different trucks around) on 14th was first. This truck had a line the whole time we were there waiting for it’s super juicy $1.10 tacos. The pork bordered on greasy, but in a lick your fingers clean kind of way. These had just the right balance of cilantro and onion to meat. They came with pickled carrots in addition to radishes and lime, but I was not a fan of them. And, oh god, there are still 2 more stops to go….

Further up the street in South Park is Muy Macho, which used to be a taco truck, but now has a permanent restaurant. Despite lots of seating, we decided to get ours to go to keep with the taco truck theme, so we ate them in the car. Muy Macho probably has the most interesting and best salsa of any of our stops, but on our visit, both the pork and the beef were too dry and kind of unpleasant. They were the cheapest of the day though, coming in at a very odd $1.095 each (how they charge a half-cent we couldn’t quite figure out).

We had one more stop to go. A mystery truck that was supposed to be located in the parking lot of the 76 gas station in Georgetown. At that point, I thought I was going to explode and I was seriously not looking forward to trying yet another taco. I had definitely hit my limit. Seven tacos is too many tacos. As we pulled into the 76, and looked around, I think I gave a little scream of delight. The mystery truck was nowhere to be seen. We were done. Whew.

Instead, we stopped into All City Coffee for a late afternoon mocha as a digestive and shared a cupcake Cam had made earlier in the day at the Edible Seattle event at Metropolitan Market. As we reviewed our carefully taken notes from the day, and I whined about too many tacos, we mulled over who would win the Seattle’s best taco award. The end result? It’s whatever taco truck happens to be closest to you. I won’t go so far to say that they are all the same. But, they are all good enough when the taco craving strikes.

Of course, we still have that whole north Seattle taco loop to do, and haven’t even touched the eastside or the deep south yet. Once I can actually think about tacos again, I’m sure we’ll find another sunshiney day and head out…

A few Seattle taco truck resources:

L’s Taco Truck Google map
Married with Dinner’s Seattle Taco Crawl
NWSource’s Taco Truck Guide
Yelp’s taco truck picks
Los Taco Trucks Seattle
Seattle Taco
Chowhound Seattle Taco Truck thread
Seattle Weekly Taco Truck investigation

La Spiga was a tiny little, rustic in a kitschy sort of way, place tucked into the corner of shops along the south end of Broadway just before the “pill hill” where almost all of the hospitals in Seattle are situated. Service was always a little hit or miss, but the food, traditional Emilia-Romagna fare, was stunning. Handmade pastas with the perfect tenderness to make me swoon, slow-cooked meats which were fall off the bone tender, an affatatti misti plate with whisper thin proscuitto and other delights. But the one thing that drew me back over and over was the flat bread. Piadina is like a thick, tender flour tortilla, but with more flavor and bite. The little cut triangles of the warm bread are a perfect match for the prosciutto or cheese, or, even better, stuffed with goodies like fresh mozzarella, basil, wild mushrooms and truffle oil, and called a Crescione which in my mind translates to “food of the gods.” I could eat the flat bread, just plain and simple, piece after piece after piece if no one were around to stop me.

A couple of years ago, La Spiga moved from its funky and charming location to a new space that is about as different as is possible. Where the old location was always quite cramped, the new restaurant soars with double height ceilings and huge wooden beams, and at least 5 times the seating. The old place had a faux old world feel, while the new is warmly modern. The old location usually had one waitress or waiter for the whole room, where the new location seems to have staff winding their way around tables everywhere you look. It’s just as crowded as ever, but now there are pleasant places to wait instead of having to loom over the other diners. It’s truly a beautiful work of architecture.

The one thing, luckily, that hasn’t changed is the food. The menu may have grown along with the space, but my taglietelle ragu is as good as ever and I’d be hard pressed to find anyone that didn’t coo over the Filetto al Tartufo, butter knife tender filet drizzled with truffle oil. And then, there is the piadina. Yes, it’s still there and as good as ever.

These days though, when asked what my favorite restaurant in Seattle is, I hesitate. I still love La Spiga. I love the new space, the prompter service and the gorgeous food. But, still, I miss the old spot. I loved how its funky space and slowish service made you step back, slow down and stop worrying about what you were going to do next. You were going to sit there and eat your meal whenever it happened to arrive. And, with food like that, that was always enough. Especially when you could always ask for “a little more piadina please”.

All of that is a very long way of saying that after years and years, I finally got around to making piadina at home. Traditionally, piadina is made with lard, and as you know, I just happen to have a whole lot of lard right now. I’m sure you could substitute vegetable shortening, but I think you’d miss out on some of the flavor and tenderness of the flat bread. I’ve also seen recipes that substitute olive oil, although this would likely make a bigger change in the texture of the dough.

I ended up using a recipe from Food & Wine which was exceedingly simple to make. So simple, in fact, that I have been kicking myself for not making it sooner. The F&W recipe called for baking soda, although many of the recipes I’ve seen don’t add any type of levening. Next time around, I plan on either leaving it out, substituting baking powder or just using less, because I thought that the flatbread had a tiny bit of a bitter after-taste from the soda.

Regardless, the dough, after sitting, takes on this wonderfully smooth texture that is soft and easy to roll out to a nice thin round. Piadina should really be cooked on something like a pizza stone, but I don’t have one. A stove top griddle, however, works too, although getting the temperature right can be a little tricky. Near the end, my griddle was a little too hot in spots and I quickly scorched a few breads. Luckily, I still had plenty already cooked up for a nice lunch and nibble throughout the day.

Piadina
recipe from Food & Wine

Tradition has it that you must not make piadina when the south-westerly wind blows… the warm, damp wind makes the dough too soft. So, best to save your piadina making days for the dry season.

Makes 6 rounds

3 1/2 c all-purpose flour
1/2 t baking soda
Kosher salt
4 oz lard or vegetable shortening, at room temperature
3/4 c water
1 T olive oil, plus more for brushing

Combine the flour, baking soda and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer (or in a large bowl if you want to knead it by hand) and mix together with a fork. Cut the lard into 1 inch pieces and using a pastry knife cut the lard into the flour. You can just use the mixer for this, but I found it didn’t do a great job of mixing in the lard and the pastry knife was just easier.

Next, start to add the water, just a little bit at a time, and mix on the stand mixer with a dough hook on lowish speed until the dough starts to form into a ball. Increase the speed to medium, and let it knead until smooth, about 5 minutes.

Remove the bowl from the mixer and cover with a damp towel. Let the dough sit for 30 minutes at room temperature.

Preheat the oven to 225F. Heat the griddle on medium-high to quite hot.

Divide the dough into 6 pieces, and roll each piece out to 10 inch rounds. The discs should be about 1/8 inch thick. Lightly brush the bread on both sides with olive oil.

Place one or two rounds on the griddle (depending on the size of your griddle) and cook for about 2 minutes on each side, or until you see the little brown spots that mark when it’s done. Wrap in foil and place in the oven while the next round goes into the griddle. The piadina are best eaten warm, the day they are cooked.

]]> http://www.laraferroni.com/2008/02/21/more-piadina-please/feed/ 0 http://www.laraferroni.com/2007/11/13/rovers-and-a-rare-treat/ http://www.laraferroni.com/2007/11/13/rovers-and-a-rare-treat/#comments Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:00:00 +0000 L http://cookandeat.com/2007/11/13/rovers-and-a-rare-treat/ When is the last time I posted about a restaurant on this site? It’s been ages. Not that I haven’t been eating out. On the contrary, I think I’ve probably started eating out more since the whole food photography thing started taking off this year. But, my eating out these days tends to be at my usual spots, eating my usual dishes. It’s comfort food, delicious but not requiring a lot of effort. Nothing wrong with that, right?

However, last week, I got to indulge in an epic meal. One of those meals that don’t come along all that often. One that I consider myself stupidly lucky to have been able to enjoy because of some nutty coincidences of time and place, of what I do and an email I happened to answer some 8 months ago. It was about then that I received an email from the PR folks at a little restaurant in Seattle called Rover’s. It’s one of the finest French restaurants in Seattle, and its chef/owner, Thierry Rautureau aka The Chef in the Hat, is one of the most highly regarded in the city. He has a cookbook (of course), has been featured in countless publications, and has even been invited to the White House. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why they would be emailing me.

As it turns out, Thierry (and his PR guy), was starting to get interested in blogging and wanted to know more about the blogging community in Seattle. While I don’t have the biggest readership or haven’t been around as much as some of the other Seattle bloggers, they liked my blog because it was a bit less intimidating, and well, had lots of pretty pictures. I sat and chatted with Nathan, the PR guy, over coffee at Fuel, and talked about blogging from my perspective and some of the trends that I saw going on. It was a fun conversation, and I really appreciated the opportunity I was given… that the folks at Rover’s weren’t going to just jump into to a reactionary debate over bloggers versus reviewers versus chefs… that they were interested enough to dig in an actually talk to someone. Nathan and I had talked about maybe setting up something to let me (and possibly other bloggers) get some time with Thierry, but time moved on, we both got busy and the idea kind of fell away.

Until about a month ago. I got the call. I was going to the big show… getting a behind the scenes look at Rover’s with… get this… dinner included. Not just any dinner, but their Grand Tasting menu, an eight course extravaganza of food. I could bring along the camera, and take shots in the kitchen, shots of the food, shots of the chef. Because I knew if I had a camera, I’d be lame at asking any questions, I brought along Ethan of Urbanspoon who happily chatted away with Thierry about politics, food and his upcoming new baby. And we feasted… course after course of beautifully prepared, seasonal French-inspired Northwest cuisine (or is it, Northwest-inspired French cuisine? I can never get that right).

My meal was created around the new beef menu that is going on through November. Beef is an unusual meat at Rover’s. They don’t do it. No beef, chicken, or pork as the primary ingredient. Meats at Rover’s skew toward the lesser used… oxtail, duck, venison. As Adam Hoffman, Rover’s Chef de Cuisine, notes, “You can get a steak anywhere. Rover’s isn’t that kind of restaurant.” So as a rare treat, this month, they are featuring beef.

Rover’s beef menu is different. To start with, all the beef used is Oregon-raised Wagyu, free from any antibiotics. And, even after eating 5 course of beef, you don’t feel overwhelmingly heavy. Some courses are prepared with a delicate touch, while others are rich and hearty, and unless you knew better, you’d swear that you weren’t eating the same meats.

Rather than describing each course, I thought I’d just share some of the photos with you. Mainly because after about the 4th course with the wine pairings, things start to blur a bit, but also because the photos do a much better job than I could at showing how luscious the food is. I will say I’m amazed that the photos by dessert weren’t a complete blurry mess! But, before I do that, I do have to call out a few of my favorite things… first, the steak tartare with the little perched quail egg was unbelievably delicious. The scrambled eggs with caviar and lime creme fraiche, beautifully served in back in the shell. The Burgundy truffles on the black cod? Heaven on a plate. The escargot with the bacon that is smoked and cured in Adam’s smoker in his backyard… man, that is some good bacon. And, but the most amazing thing on the menu might surprise you… the braised short rib pot au feu with Moroccan sea salt, so tender you could eat it with a spoon.

An amuse of Landjager Salami, Gugeres with Beef Sausage and Romano Beef Consome (left) and Scrambled Eggs with Lime Creme Fraiche and White Sturgeon Caviar (right)

Ethan’s Caviar & Lobster (left) and Rover’s Charcuterie, including house cured salmon, pickled mackerel among other delicious little nibbles (right)

Oxtail Terrine (left) and Beef Tenderloin Tartare (right)

Pacific Black Cod with Celeriac Puree, Burgundy Truffle and Dry Vermouth Sauce (left) and Braised Short Rib Pot au Feu with Fall Vegetables and Moroccan Sea Salt (right)

Did I mention lots of wine?

Escargot with Bacon, Artichoke and Spinach in a Citrus Nage (left) and Filet of beef with Chard Gratin and Potato Galette with Béarnaise and Red Wine Peppercorn Sauce (right)

Persimmon Puree with Lemon Curd (left) and Bittersweet Chocolate Soufflé (right)

Start to finish, the meal took us about 5 hours. We oohed and ahhed over each course, knowing that what we were getting was an experience not many people would get. You can certainly get the same food and incredible service at Rover’s… I’ve eaten here before when no one knew who I was and everything was just as luxurious… but you don’t usually have the chef sit down with you for two hours over dessert, or get to take a whole private room to yourself (all the better for setting up the tripod).

I’d like to offer a big thanks to Nathan, Adam, Thierry and the Rover’s wonderful staff for giving me this amazing evening. I’d also like to thank my understanding husband who had to miss the meal and deal with me babbling about it for two days straight.

PS: For those of you interested in the behind the scenes of the photography for this post, there wasn’t really much to it other than a tripod and really long exposures. The lighting was just standard, fairly dim restaurant lighting. I shot at 100 ISO, which I could only do because of my tripod… something hard to do in most restaurant scenarios. The lighting obviously isn’t great, with fairly out of control shadows and some less than pleasant color casts. But, the food is so lovely, I think that shines through.

Technorati Tags: Food, Photography, Restaurant, Seattle

Now, for a little backstory. Maybe you’ve been wondering where I’ve been. Certainly, I have not come close to living up to my tag-line, “My Food, Almost Daily.” June has simply been a whirlwind… after Boston, there was an assignment out in Yakima for a local publication on the fruit orchards currently oh-so-ripe with fresh cherries, a weekend in San Francisco where I got to meet Heidi (!!!!!) while shooting and touring the Marin County Farmers Market, and then back home where I’ve been busily on assignment for a certain Tom of Crab Cake fame. Each of these little trips and assignments has been leading me up to this cake.

A bag of tree-fresh cherries of course came home from Eastern Washington…

…a trip to Tartine Bakery in SF, where Heidi patiently waited with me in a line down the block just so I could try one of the to die-for croissants. Of course, the visit had me itching to make something from that cookbook once again…

…and Dahlia Bakery is where I picked up the gorgeous red cake plate. It has been sitting there, staring at me, waiting to be used.

The choice to make a Génoise as the base for this cake might seem a bit strange, but I had such success with the Chiffon recipe that I decided to give it a go. I had read all sorts of things about how hard it is to make the Génoise be both light and not too dry all at the same time. I suppose it was a bit risky, but I really wanted a lighter cake to let the cherries be the focus, and the Génoise worked great for that despite the extra complications of making a foam based cake.

As I typically do, I made a half recipe of the cake, and used a 5 x 4 inch rectangular ceramic baking pan, so if you are making this recipe in a normal 9 or 10 inch spring form pan, increase the cherries, etc. Since I didn’t change the cake recipe at all, I’m not going to reprint its recipe… trust me, the Tartine book is worth it.

PS: Sorry if you’ve come to the site and it has lost all of its graphical goodness. There is some weird bug with WordPress that resets the site to the default theme. I’m working on figuring out what the problem is, so just bear with me until then…

Cherry Upside Down Cake
makes one 5 inch cake

2 cups fresh cherries, pitted
1 t dried orange zest
1 t sugar
a sprinkling of cardamom
Génoise cake batter, 1/2 recipe
powdered sugar to dust, if desired

Preheat oven to 350F.

Line a 5 inch round or 5 x 4 inch rectangular baking pan with the pitted cherries. Sprinkle with the orange zest, sugar and cardamom. Set aside.

Prepare the cake batter. Once folded all together, pour about 1 cup over the cherries, and give them a little stir to prevent air pockets from forming. Top with the remaining batter.

Bake for 30 minutes, or until the cake bounces back when lightly touched. Let it cool on a wire rack.

Use a knife to cut around the edge of the cake to release it from the pan. You may need to use a flexible spatula to loosen the bottom some to help remove it. Place the serving plate on top of the baking pan, and then flip the whole thing over.

To improve this cakes appearance for serving, trim off the edges of the cake, exposing the golden-yellow sponge and the piece of cherry. Dust with the powdered sugar if desired.

Technorati Tags: Cookbook, Dessert, eatlocal, Farms, Food Styling, Photography, produce, recipe, Restaurant, Seattle, Travel

There will be plenty of free coffee at the Grand Opening celebration that starts at 10am with a ribbon cutting ceremony, a special guest at noon, and live jazz music from 1 to 5pm. And, excuse a little shameless self-promotion, but the cafe will be showing several of my coffee photos.

PS: If you are interested in more on coffee tastings, pick up a copy of the June Seattle Magazine, which features my (yeah!) article on a cupping I did at Browns Coffee.com.

Technorati Tags: Cafe, espresso, Food, Latte, Photography, Restaurant, Seattle, tasting

Also, as an added bonus and a surprise to me, Cook & Eat (along with a bunch of other fantastic Seattle food blogs) got quite a nice mention!

Technorati Tags: About Me, food magazine, Photography, Seattle

I haven’t decided whether I like the trend. On one hand, there are more sumptuous photos for me to drool over or be inspired by. I never could figure out why advertising photos always were so cold and uninviting, or even just down right ugly in the past. I certainly welcome the softer editorial style focused on making the food look beautiful and delicious, particularly since this is pretty much the business that I’m entering. On the other hand, it’s advertising. And I feel a bit tricked as I start digging in to what looks like a fascinating article on Arizona or arugala, that turns out to just be a bunch of marketing spiel with pretty pictures. Maybe I’d feel better about it if the quality of the product lived up to the glory of the photo. So often, you know it just won’t.

I recently found myself caught up in one last month that took me a few looks before I realized that it was too was a recipomercial. I had even dog-eared the page to come back and make it at a later date. Even after I realized it was an ad, I decided to go ahead and give it a try, mainly because the ad was for Bramley apples and that seemed a bit less slick than many of the other ads-in-disguise. Plus, Sam had given the apples such high praise last fall, I figured they had to be good. The recipe, which I stumbled upon in the UK version of Delicious, was for a hearty looking apple bread. The photo showed a gorgeous chunk removed, so you could see the little piece of apple poking through the chewy crumb, sitting atop a perfectly distressed chopping board with a little sampling of cheese and fruit softly resting in the background. I couldn’t help but want to reach out for a hunk of my own.

Of course, it’s not Bramley apple season, so ironically, while the ad actually made me get excited and cook the bread, I used locally grown Washington apples (winesap to be exact). I also wasn’t sure what “strong wheat flour” was, but given that all I had was whole wheat pastry flour, I decided to rustic-it-up a bit by adding sunflower seeds and oat bran to the mix, and go a bit easier on the white flour, and both were good additions.

I cooked the loaves as directed, and the crust and crumb were both well developed… although I think next time I’ll take a page from the no-knead bread baking style and cook the loaves in a covered pot on higher heat. As it is though, it makes fantastic toast, or, something I’m a bit more excited about, grilled blue cheese sandwiches.

I’m sure grilled blue cheese on a hearty bread has been done many times before, but my first experience, being still fairly new to the loves-blue-cheese world, was last Sunday as part of the cheese course at dinner at The Herbfarm just outside of Seattle. The Herbfarm is one of those legendary Seattle restaurants. The meal is over 4 hours of course after course (9 to be exact) of a set seasonal menu that changes monthly and revolves around a theme… next month, for example, is all about beef. My meal was was root-vegetable inspired. The individual courses are small enough that you don’t leave stuffed at the end of the night, and each dish is exquisitely prepared. I quite enjoyed my entire meal, but the one course that I found myself pining for was the cheese course of a knock your socks off Oregon Blue Cheese oozing from perfectly grilled whole grain bread. Between the bites of the almost smokey cheesy goo, were little nibbles of a tart cherry to round out the palate. So simple and good.

So, without a doubt, I knew what I’d be making with the apple bread. I wasn’t disappointed. As the buttered bread grilled, the sugars from the apples caramelized just a touch more to bring out just a little edge of sweetness, and the nuttiness of the seeds was warmed and deepened. The Rogue Creamery Oregon Blue I used was strong, but not overwhelming. For the contrasting flavor, I made a little tangy rhubarb puree which I might even have liked better than the tart cherry compote, because I could dip the corder of the sandwich in to all the flavors in one bite.

I have a feeling, there will be more grilled cheese sandwiches coming into my life over the next little while. There are so many other cheese that will be tempting me… goat cheese, feta, manchego, not to mention the rest of the blue cheese spectrum.

Technorati Tags: eatlocal, Food, food magazine, Food Styling, Photography, recipe, Restaurant, Seattle

Well, I think that I’ll let Brenda’s heartfelt words do the talking:

If you have even been to Queen City Grill, you have probably talked to or met Moses. He has worked there for 13 years! He emigrated to Seattle from Mexico and I believe this was the first place he ever worked. He started as a bus boy and has done a little bit of everything. In the years I’ve been stopping by he’s been bus boy, bar back, sometimes bartender and sometimes the host who greets and seats you at the door. No matter what he was doing there was always a smile and a hug and at least a little conversation to get caught up.

Moses has spent his days helping people and I hope that you can spend one evening helping him!

If you are in the Seattle area, I hope you can join the event. Tickets are available through Ticketmaster.

If you have items you’d like to donate or have other questions you can contact the organizers at: WeLoveMoses @ gmail.com