Bricks of Port Townsend.

So the new job and early hour (I get up at 6:00 now!), have kept me from getting a new post together. But, I have a good feeling about tonight. In the meantime, here are some pictures of our meal at the Silverwater Cafe in Port Townsend.

Crab Shooter — crab leg meat, creamy crab bisque and sambuka-infused cream, all in a shot glass.

Lavender pepper crusted ahi tuna.

Post-dinner tea infusing.

Dahlia in the sun.

Edited to add, yay! It got there to Andrew at Spittoon Extra. It’s really cool to think that my art project from the basement last weekend is now in England!

I recently registered for What’s for Lunch Honey’s Blogger Postcards Around the World event. So fun. Buy or make a postcard for your secret postcard buddy, mail it off and receive another postcard from your own food blogging sender. I’ve received my recipient (not telling yet!), made my postcard this weekend, and it’s all ready to go in the mail Monday. Going to the post office and everything.

The one thing is as it’s a whole lot of acrylic paint and ink jet ink, I’ve decided to put the postcard in a vellum envelope, lest the receiver open their mailbox to a gloopy, wet mess if the postcard gets rained or snowed on en route.

I think I’m still honoring the spirit of the postcard as you can see the postcard clearly through the envelope, this way, it should just get there all intact. And cost a bit more in postage but no big deal.

The green smudgy thing is sort of the Hawthorne Bridge — eh, it’s expressionist!

The recipe on the back is for a quick pasta sauce that I make occasionally — it’s especially good with gnocchi. It’s also nice as you can add to it — feta, meatballs, sausage, more veggies, whatever you are in the mood for.

Spicy Valentine Tomato Sauce
1 tbsp olive oil
1/3 cup white onion, chopped
1/4 cup carrots, finely diced
Salt & pepper
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1 tbsp fresh basil, chopped
1/4 cup green or black olives, chopped
1 tsp fresh oregano
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper or red pepper flakes
1 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup red wine

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over high heat. Add the onions, a little salt and black pepper and sauté until the onions are translucent. Add the garlic, carrots, tomatoes, wine, olives, basil, oregano, and cayenne. Stir in the stock and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 20 minutes.

Remove from the heat and purée in a food processor or blender. Serve with pasta.

Thanks again to What’s for Lunch Honey for arranging this whole valentine postcard exchange. I hope my postcard gets to where it’s going safely and I’m also really looking forward to my postcard! Who will it be from??? Where will it be from???

Updated to add that my postcard is officially on its way! I even guessed correctly at the postage needed. Gave it to the mail man and everything. It should be there in about a week.

Stay tuned…

The theme for this Weekend Cookbook Challenge #9 was the opposite of last month’s Foreign food. This time it’s the food of your country/culture. I took this one set further by using the cookbook, Tastes of the Pacific Northwest and focused on the food of my region — namely salmon and hazelnuts, which are very Oregonish.

This is a very simple yet delicious thing to do with salmon. You basically just grill it with olive oil, salt and pepper and serve it with an herbed hazelnut butter. It was very good and the recipe yields leftover butter that you can do all kinds of decadent and crazy things with at a later date.

Grilled Salmon with Hazelnut-Lime Butter

For the Butter
1/4 pound unsalted butter, softened
1 tbsp fresh lime juice
small handful of fresh cilantro (6-7 sprigs), stemmed & chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
salt & pepper
1/4 cup minced and toasted hazelnuts (also known as filberts)

Combine butter, lime juice, cilantro, hazelnuts, garlic and a little salt & pepper and beat until silken in texture. Taste and adjust seasonings.

Allow flavors to meld for about an hour in the refrigerator before using. Save the leftovers in the fridge to use with chicken, potatoes, pasta or whatever else you can think of using this butter on (you will come up with a lot of ideas). If you don’t like cilantro, parsley, dill or even basil would probably work well too.

For the Salmon
1 lb salmon fillets (figure on using somewhere about 1/3 - 1/2 a pound fillet per person)
olive oil
salt & pepper

Heat up a grill pan or your outside grill. Rub fish with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

Grill about 3-4 minutes per side or until done to your liking. You should have nice and crusty grill marks on the top. Delicious! Serve the salmon with a dollop of the butter on top. I found that a mini ice cream scoop worked perfectly for this task. It’ll melt down onto the salmon and whatever else you have on the side.

Speaking of Sides…
With the salmon, we had some sautéed green beans, garlic and cherry tomatoes.

Simply trim and wash the green beans and sauté in some olive oil with salt, pepper and about 5 halved garlic cloves for about 7-8 minutes, over medium-high heat. Adjust the heat as needed — you want color but no burning. When the green beans are about a minute from being done, add a nice handful of halved cherry tomatoes.

This goes well with a Pinot Noir — from Oregon of course — and some rice pilaf or couscous on the side. Thanks again to Sara at Weekend Cookbook Challenge!

Let me start by saying that I think this is the juiciest chicken I have ever made. Wow. The flavor was excellent as well. This goes great with couscous, polenta or crusty bread. This recipe comes from the Tastes of the Pacific Northwest cookbook and I came across it as I was researching my WCC#9 recipe.

I found another dish from this cookbook that I will be posting about next Monday for that Weekend Cookbook Challenge but this chicken definitely deserves its own post! Plus, the bay leaf is from our backyard — that’s pretty damn regional!

Baked Chicken with Caramelized Sweet Onions
3-4 chicken breasts (skinless & boneless) you could also probably use a combination of 2 breasts and 2 thighs
flour for dredging (about a cup or so), seasoned with a little salt and pepper
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
2 large sweet onions (Walla Walla if you have them), halved and cut into 1/4 inch slices
1 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup chicken stock
4 cloves garlic, halved
12 cured black olives (I used about 15 little nicoise olives, as that’s what I had on hand)
1 tsp fresh thyme, minced
1 bay leaf
salt & pepper
2 lemons, cut into wedges
1/4 cup minced fresh parsley

Sprinkle a little salt and pepper on the chicken breasts first and then dredge them in the seasoned flour. Heat the olive oil and butter in a big frying-type pan over medium-high heat and brown the chicken on each side. Set aside on a plate or large bowl when browned. If your pan can not go into the oven, transfer the chicken to a baking dish instead of a plate or bowl.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Turn the burner heat down to medium and add the onions. Cook until a little brown and soft, about 15 minutes. Remove and add to the chicken plate and continue to set aside. Deglaze the skillet with the wine and stock. Boil and scrape up any brown bits and let simmer for about 5 minutes.

If you are using your pan in the oven, add the olives, bay leaf, garlic and thyme to the pan and then bring back the chicken and onions as well. Scatter the lemon wedges on top and put in the oven for about 30 minutes.

If you don’t have an oven-proof skillet, pour the wine/stock from your pan into the baking dish over the chicken and onions. Add the thyme, bay leaf, garlic and olives. Scatter with lemons and bake the same as above.

It will smell really amazing. When you remove the chicken from the oven, it will look delicious as well. Dig in because it’s exceptionally tasty to boot. And the crusty bread, if you choose tthat route, will definitely be useful with the chickeny-lemony-wine sauce. Not to mention the pieces of baked garlic!

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In Kitchen floor news, we are getting bids now and hopefully will have a contractor in the next week or so. Exciting! The contractor that I think we’ll be going with is booked until the end of October so I’m not going to give any details until we get on his schedule. Or who knows, we may end up with someone else completely.

This whole thing is becoming slightly epic (and more than a bit frustrating) — I’ll recount it all once it’s a done deal.