Exploring Bothell

Several weeks ago, we continued our exploration of potential neighborhoods to settle down in. As I started working, we've realized that we need to live closer to the city to alleviate our arduous commute. Several co-workers live in the Bothell area and really enjoy it. It's still north of Seattle but not as far north as we are and a bit to the east.

What's surprising about Bothell was the emphasis on the city's history. It may have been a coincidence that we happened to pick out places that were a blast from the past.

We set out for lunch on Main Street and found it cute and not crowded. It looks like the city will be doing a two-phase revitalization project on Main Street to make it more bustling. That would be fantastic as we're always looking for a parking- and pedestrian-friendly area to walk around on the weekend.

Cute mural advertising Woodland Park Zoo (not in Bothell but in north Seattle)

There were a couple restaurants to choose from, but since we haven't had Thai food since moving here, we settled on Pen Thai. The food was pretty decent but not a restaurant I would go out of my way for.

Pad See Ew with Beef

Sweet and Sour Chicken

Before leaving Main Street, we walked down to the bakery to pick up some sweets for an afternoon treat at home.

Hillcrest Bakery on Main Street 

Since it was a rare non-rainy day, we headed to the Park at Bothell Landing. This park is really cool as there's a trail that runs along the Sammamish River, and it has a few historic buildings that you can tour, including the first schoolhouse in Bothell built in 1885!

Trail along the Sammamish River

Sleeping ducks

Bridge over Sammamish River

1893 William Hannan House and 1895 School House

After a nice walk in the park, we checked out antiques at the Country Village. It's a themed outdoor shopping center filled with antique shops, boutiques, and chickens running amok!

We bought a couple packets of loose leaf tea from a boutique and had our own afternoon tea back at home to finish up our day!

Treats from Hillcrest Bakery

We enjoyed Bothell and think that the neighborhood is really livable! It's definitely on our list of options!

Constantly in Starbucks's Shadow

Love it or hate it, Starbucks has become an international force dominating the coffee and now tea scene. Mike and I aim to try out different cafes here as Seattle is known for great coffee that isn't tied to Starbucks, but we'll make an exception when Starbucks-addicted friends and family visit. Our first visitor was my sister-in-law who happens to be the biggest Starbucks fan I know. The first thing we did when she landed was head to the Starbucks Reserve Roastery for lunch. This isn't the original Starbucks, which is located at 1912 Pike St, but it is where they roast rare beans in small batches, test out new beverages that have not yet been rolled out to regular Starbucks stores, and chat with customers about the different ways to brew coffee and the different flavor notes of each Starbucks Reserve bean.

This place is beautiful.

The grand entrance

Serious Pie inside of the Starbucks Reserve

Roasted Brussel Sprouts, Pear, Hazelnuts, and Black Trumpet Aioli

Soft Eggs, Prosciutto, and Arugula Pizza

Starbucks Reserve Beans 

Siphon flight in progress ($22 for 2)

Beans that get refilled through the pipes

The downstairs tasting room

Bags that don't meet the weight standards are pushed into the barrel

After a delicious lunch at Serious Pie, we walked around, took in the rich smell around us, and tucked into our comfy chairs with our smoked butterscotch latte with milk produced by Serious Pie. Yes, it's over-the-top. I felt so special drinking this test-run latte, but it debuted this week at all locations! However, I doubt that your latte contains milk that is specially made by Serious Pie, ha! It's actually the least sweet latte I've had at Starbucks. The smokiness is very pronounced. 

Smoked Butterscotch Lattes

Being a wide-eye tourist, I talked myself into buying some of these much hyped about "rare" beans. We got into a detailed conversation with a barista about the beans that have the least acidity and still taste awesome. The Guatemala from Monte David is the least acidic of the reserve roasts that will be rolled out en masse soon, but the Tanzania Mt. Meru has some acidity and is the most exclusive roast that will never be mass produced. I had to take home a small bag of each, and they're indeed delicious and true to the flavors described by the barista.

Low acidity roasts

As unique as this particular Starbucks is, Seattleites can't feel special for long. Apparently, they plan to open more Reserve locations throughout the U.S. soon - Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. :-/

Weeks after our first visit to the Reserve, I got a job in the SoDo area (south of downtown), and my office just happens to be right behind the Starbucks corporate headquarters. 

View of Starbucks Corporate HQ from my office

What to do but to celebrate at the Reserve again with a mole mocha!

Mole Mocha - espresso with milk, smoked chocolate sauce, sesame, and chiles

Crispy Skin Salmon and Experimenting with Beets

Continuing on with the whole salmon I purchased from the previous post, I wanted to use one of the fillets to try to achieve a true crispy skinned salmon. All my past oven-roasting attempts failed to crisp the skin. This time I cooked the salmon in a pan skin-side down for 80% of the cooking time, and achieved the perfect crunch!

For the side, I forced myself to experiment with the golden beets (roots, stems, and leaves) I got at the market. Beets have always been intimidating to me because of the color and the raw earthy taste. I couldn't resist buying the golden beets because they were so pretty and the leaves looked really fresh. I chopped the beets into half moon pieces and roasted them in the oven with sliced onions. I chopped the beet stems and leaves into quarter inch pieces and sauteed them with sliced garlic, cooking the stems first then the leaves. The beet stems and leaves are surprisingly tender! I actually prefer it over spinach because it doesn't leave an irony after taste.

To bring the dish together, I made a blackberry reduction with fresh blackberries, white wine, blackberry jam, salt, and pepper.

Crispy Skin Salmon with Blackberry Reduction, Oven-Roasted Beets, and Sauteed Beet Greens

Dinner was sublime! I was able to use the leftover salmon and sauce for a salad the next day. The blackberry reduction served as a delicious dressing!

Crispy Skin Salmon with Blackberry Reduction

Ingredients

Salmon fillets (4 oz pieces)

1/2 cup fresh blackberries

1/2 cup white wine

1 Tbs blackberry jam

Blackberry Reduction

Put the blackberries, white wine, and jam in a small sauce pan on low heat. Let the sauce cook uncovered while you cook the fish. Season the sauce with salt and pepper once it has reduced.

Crispy Skin Salmon

Sprinkle salt on the skin side of the salmon and let the fish sit for 5 minutes. The salt will draw out moisture. Pat the skin dry with a paper towel. Heat up 1 Tbs of vegetable oil in a medium sized pan. Cook the fish one or two at a time so you don't crowd the pan, which will steam the skin rather than fry it. When the oil is shimmering, place a piece of salmon in the pan, skin side down. Sprinkle salt and pepper on the flesh side of the fish in the pan. When the fish starts to looked cook halfway up, flip the fish over flesh side down. It should only take a minute or two at this point. 

Oven-roasted Golden Beets and Sauteed Beet Greens

Ingredients

Beet stems and leaves, cut into 1/4 inch

3 cloves of garlic, sliced

Golden beets, cut into half moon 1/4 inch thick pieces

1/4 onion, sliced

Beets all prepped!

When you prep the beets, make sure to separate the stems from the leaves because you'll want to cook the stems first before the leaves to soften it enough without making the leaves mushy.

Beets ready for the oven

Place the half moon beet pieces in a rimmed baking sheet with sliced onions and toss with olive oil and salt. Make sure all the pieces are arranged in a single layer and bake at 375 F. Bake for 20 - 25 minutes.

Sauteed Beet Greens

Heat a pan with 1/2 Tbs of olive oil. Saute the garlic until fragrant then add the stems. Cook the stems until the stems are shiny then add the leaves. Season with salt and pepper.

When you plate the dish, make sure to put the reduction at the bottom of the plate to keep the salmon skin crispy!

One of my favorite meals!

What To Do with Salmon Bones

I'm really enjoying cooking lavish meals on a reasonable budget recently. First off, it helps that we live close to several great grocery stores with deals on organic meats and produce and wild caught seafood. Thanks, Trader Joe's, Fred Meyer, and Central Market (not the same Central Market chain as the one in Texas)!

Fred Meyer had another sale on wild caught whole sockeye salmon at $3.99/lb. I purchased a $15 salmon and they filleted, scaled, and saved the bones in a bag for me! The service was fantastic! I didn't even have to ask them to save the bones for me! Last time I bought a whole salmon, I opted not to have the fish monger fillet the fish for me because I wanted to try cooking it whole. The problem was that Mike struggled with the bones, and it took me a long time to take out the bones on the remainder of the cooked fish for the fish cakes. Unless my mom, the fish queen, visits, I'm going to stick to filleted salmon.

Salmon Broth

Ingredients

Salmon bones

4-5 Slices of ginger

1 Cup of white wine

A handful of dried seaweed

A medium pot of water

The first thing I did with the fish when I got home was freeze one of the fillets and boil the fish bones with a couple slices of ginger in a pot of water with about a cup of white wine to make fish stock. Once the stock started to boil, I remembered the bag of purple seaweed (dulse) that my mom gave me from her trip to Nova Scotia. I added a chunk of the dried seaweed to the stock to bring in the natural saltiness of the sea. I lowered the heat and allowed the broth to simmer for 30 more minutes and strained the broth. After the bones cooled, I carefully separated the salmon scraps from the bones so I can add the meat to a breakfast omelette or mix it into cream cheese for a bagel spread later.

Salmon Broth

I love making broths because they make a delicious base for so many dishes! After the salmon broth cooled, I used 2 ladles of it for a bowl of chawanmushi and froze the remainder. Chawanmushi is a super simple savory Japanese egg custard dish that's usually filled with some seafood ingredients and a ginkgo seed. We recently had it at Miyabi 45th, and I was eager to see if the homemade salmon broth makes my version even better.

Chawanmushi with Salmon Broth

Ingredients

2 ladles of homemade salmon broth (or 1 cup of chicken broth)

3 eggs, beaten

Any bite-size ingredients you want to put in the custard cooked or raw

A pinch of salt

I put several pieces of frozen shrimp, rehydrated shiitake mushrooms, and broccoli stems in a large bowl inside the rice cooker. Then I whisked the eggs with the salmon broth and strained the mixture into the bowl of ingredients. I should have steamed the custard for 10 minutes, but I overcooked the custard because I had to run an errand in the middle of steaming. You can tell it's overcooked because of the craters on the surface of the custard. Regardless, it's deliciously sweet because of the salmon broth and shrimp! This pairs really well with steamed rice.

Shrimp, broccoli stems, and shiitake

Straining the egg and broth mixture into the bowl

Finished Chawanmushi

Miyabi 45th: Our First and Sadly Last Time Tasting Chef Mutsuko Soma's Soba

We had a fantastic date night trying out Miyabi 45th for the first time thanks to the great omakase dinner for two deal on Groupon (normally $60 Groupon but I purchased it for $46)! I had read about chef Mutsuko Soma's handmade soba since before arriving in Seattle through a plethora of articles on her journey learning the craft and on the sheer deliciousness of her food at Miyabi 45th (Food & Wine; Seattle Times; Serious Eats). Seeing how we're trying to explore Seattle frugally, it would've been difficult trying out an omakase meal here without the help of Groupon, so a big thank you to Miyabi 45th and Groupon for making this deal available for folks like us!

 Right before writing this post, I spotted the happy and sad news (Seattle Eater) that chef Mutsuko Soma will be taking maternity leave starting February 13th and changes will be in place after the restaurant reopens under the helm of their current sushi chef Masa Ishikura. Handmade soba will likely not be on the menu after the transition. It's such a tease that we got to taste these delicious artisan noodles for the first time only to have it be our last time. But of course, all the best to chef Soma with the beautiful news of a baby girl, and best of luck to chef Ishikura!

Chef Mutsuko Soma

Now on to the recap of the 5 course omakase experience!

Amuse Bouche + Five Course Omakase

It was really thoughtful that the restaurant provided a matrix of want/don't want dinner items for you to check or cross off to customize your 5 course meal. Everything else is left up to the chef's discretion. I would normally welcome raw dishes at a Japanese restaurant but it was an especially chilly evening so we opted to check off on "adventurous" but crossed off "raw".

Omakase Customization

The meal started off with shots of puréed butternut squash in a dashi broth. This amuse bouche was warm and creamy - a cozy welcome on a cold day!

Amuse Bouche - Butternut Squash Soup

Next came the foie gras "tofu" with red grapes and an adorable pyramid of wasabi in a dashi broth. The foie gras was blended and formed to take on the appearance and texture of silken tofu. It was absolutely luscious, but Mike noted that this would go nicely with some crackers, rice, or crusty bread to cut the richness. I was very impressed by my non-foodie husband's astute observation! He may have to take over some posts on my blog!

Foie Gras "Tofu"

The next dish was grilled salmon kama (collar) with a refreshing salad. I was hoping that we would have some kind of kama dish because it has always been a favorite hot dish of mine at Japanese restaurants. The kama was smokey and buttery, which paired nicely with the crunchy chilled salad.

Salmon Kama

That was followed by chawanmushi (savory egg custard) with snow crab, fish cake, ginko seed, and matsutake mushrooms. This is another classic hot Japanese dish that I adored as a kid before I developed a palate for raw fish. It's really fun to eat because it's like digging for treasures. The matsutake was very juicy and was the best surprise in the pool of silky egg.

Chawanmushi

The most impressive dish was new to me - braised pork belly and toasted daikon (Asian radish) mochi. I've had many amazing Chinese braised pork dishes before, but I've never had one that's paired with daikon mochi! I've never even heard of daikon mochi before! The mochi texture mimicked the chewy gelatinous texture of the pork belly fat so when you eat it with a bite of just the pork belly meat, it's as if you're eating a healthier version of the whole pork belly! Some people like eating the fat and the meat, but that's too rich for me, so substituting the fat with the mochi was genius! I wish I had more mochi to sop up the addictive sauce!

Braised Pork Belly with Toasted Daikon Mochi

The final dish was the obligatory handmade soba. It's what made this restaurant famous and successful within just three years. The bowl of hot soba had the strong fragrance of buckwheat and the texture of the noodles withstood the heat of the broth. Dried manufactured soba noodles tend to loose its buckwheat aroma and go limp  under sustained heat. As we enjoyed our bowls of chef Soma's hard work, we both realized how much we love our new city. A city that gives us the opportunity to enjoy the diverse talents and innovation of others.

Ebi Ten Soba

As irreplaceable as the handmade soba noodles are, all of the dishes leading up to this final one is a testament to how talented the entire culinary team at Miyabi 45th is. Something tells me that the restaurant can still be successful even with the possible absence of soba in the future.

Philly Cheesesteak Two Ways

In an attempt to save money without compromising on eating well, I've been cooking a lot in my new tiny galley kitchen. I miss our custom kitchen in Madison for its size and the many beautiful memories we made in our first home. But it's somewhat amusing/frustrating figuring out how to make the most of my now limited work space. At least it's bigger than my Paris kitchenette!

Galley Kitchen in Seattle

Our Kitchen in Madison, WI

My Paris Kitchenette

Some of the challenges I face in the kitchen now are the inability to spread out ingredients as I prep, the lack of dish drying space (and it takes a long time for dishes to air dry because of the humidity), and the inevitable exiling of Mike from the kitchen when he offers to help because he ends up being a literal road block (love you, honey!). I've learned to extend my kitchen space by using our dinner table as an additional counter space. Another cool trick in a small kitchen is to cook dishes that have only a few ingredients, and the leftovers can be converted into another dish with just a few more additional ingredients!

I recently purchased a stack of old Cook's Illustrated magazines from Half Price Books and found a simple Philly Cheese Steak recipe that I knew we would appreciate. Cook's Illustrated and America's Test Kitchen tend to offer extremely efficient recipes with a limited list of ingredients that taste like the best version of whatever you're making. That's perfect for us!

The recipe is so simple that you can easily give it your own spin without compromising the integrity of the dish. Instead of the traditional sub roll, I used a brioche bun and Swiss cheese instead of white American cheese. I made one more addition to the recipe by sautéing some sliced onions and half a bag of Trader Joe's frozen green chiles in a separate pan.

Green Chile Philly Cheesesteak

(adapted from Cook's Illustrated)

Philly Cheesesteak on a Toasted Brioche Bun with Green Chiles and Swiss Cheese

Ingredients (Serves 4)

2 pounds skirt or flank steak, trimmed and sliced with grain into 3-inch wide strips

4 Buns, sliced

2 Tbsp vegetable oil

1/2 tsp salt

1/8 tsp pepper

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

4 slices Swiss cheese

1/2 bag of Trader Joe's green chiles, defrosted

1/2 white onion, sliced

Place steak pieces on a large plate lined with saran wrap and freeze until firm. Carefully shave the steak pieces against the grain with a sharp knife.

Sauté onions in a lightly greased pan. Once the onions are translucent, add the green chiles and season salt and pepper. Set aside.

Heat 1 Tbsp of oil in a separate skillet and cook the meat in separate portions to avoid overcrowding the pan. Transfer cooked meat to a colander set in a bowl to remove juices. Repeat until all meat is cooked, then return all the meat into the pan and season with salt and pepper. Reduce heat and add the grated Parmesan cheese.

Toast buns in the oven. For dinner, I put a slice of Swiss cheese on each pair of buns before putting them in the oven so that the cheese would be crusty rather than melty, but for lunch the next day, I added it when assembling the hot sandwich so it would be melty. Either way is delicious!

Seeing how I cooked twice as much flank steak as specified in the recipe, I saved the remainder of the cooked beef strips and sautéed onions and green chiles for our Sunday brunch omelet! Voila! Philly Cheesesteaks two ways with only half the effort!

Philly Cheese Steak Open-faced Omelet