UnRecipe/OMG a Recipe: Meat + Potatoes 4EVER

Despite the holiday being "so last week ago," you're probably sick to death of all the ooey-gooey annoying-ness that is Valentine's Day, even more annoying since the blasted month has an extra day! Curse you, Leap Year... and you're little dog too! But I have to say the best couple ever, more heart-worthy than Romeo + Juliet, Caesar + Cleopatra, Julia + Paul, even Brad + Angelina, is Meat + Potatoes. Why? Because you can celebrate their divine pairing even when it's not the most loving/annoying time of the year. No fat baby cherubs with bows n' arrows required.

When Potato Met Pork... a love story - Photo by Wasabi Prime

To be honest, we've been enjoying the joy of meat and potatoes all month, indulging in thick protein-y wedges of meat with starchy, creamy spud goodness. And real potatoes, not the sweet potatoes or yams we usually get, as they tend to be more healthy and less starchy. February has been our month to indulge, enjoying sweets given by friends or ones that came fresh-baked from our oven. It's hard not to give in to food cravings during the month that's all about eating rich treats, and watching the Food Network when they spend a whole day showing the 1001 ways you can eat chocolate certainly doesn't help. We were the very happy recipient of some Jonboy caramels, which are an absolute favorite -- they're handmade in Seattle, available throughout the city and as far as Oregon, produced in small batches and they come with a freshness date. A little box of those, plus some sweet Valentine cards from friends -- how can you not fall in love with Love? Or junk food, for that matter? 

Sweet Overload!! Valentine goodness everywhere - Photos by Wasabi Prime

And of course, once the sweet tooth gets going, everything just goes sideways, so I made some peanut butter cookies with peanut and bacon brittle I had sitting in the pantry. It's what any sane person would do, right? I originally bought the smoky bacon peanut brittle from Foodzie, and I noticed the freshness date wasn't looking so fresh, so instead of just sitting on the couch and snarfing it down in an act of Old Yeller food mercy, I thought putting it in cookies would be a better way to enjoy them in a slightly more civilized and prolonged manner. Woe to my rapidly widening thighs that I made this right before Valentine's Day, as we were already awash in sweets, ready to have more with our respective gifts to one another, and I still had other dessert plans, incuding an Epic Carrot Cake which is so epic, I'm saving it for another post (stay tuned...). Le Sigh. St. Valentine needs to change his moniker to be the Patron Saint of Muffin Tops, or very possibly Tooth Decay.

PB and B cookies - peanut butter and bacon brittle cookies! - Photo by Wasabi Prime 

For several meals, including Valentine's Day, I was trying out some recipes from John Howie's new cookbook, "Passion and Palate: Recipes for a Generous Table," a new book that came out late last year and gaining momentum in the rrrrowrrr-worthy Year of the Dragon. Aside from the fact he includes a recipe from one of my favorite things at his restaurant, the ahi-topped deviled eggs, it's a book to take note of in the fact that it's part of the growing trend of independent publishing. It's a real honest-to-goodness book, not an eBook -- you can flip through the pages and drool over the food photos like any of your other favorite cookbooks. It's a really lovely collection of recipes, very high production quality and the photos are beautiful -- it's part of the new wave of self-publishing that's kicking the reputation of indie books looking too homemade, right to the curb. If you live in the Washington area, you can get a peek at the book in John Howie's restaurants, available for purchase there, or online.

Valentine's Day, celebrating our love of creamy potato dishes - Photos by Wasabi Prime

The OMG a Recipe part is the fact that I put together meals based on recipes (which I won't list, as I do believe you should support cookbooks, but the recipes are all in there!), but the UnRecipe part is of course that I made some substitutions, so yes, shame on me. I did a variation of John Howie's pork chops and herbed cheese potatoes -- I didn't have a cedar plank to roast the pork, which I know would have made it extra flavorful, so I just seasoned accordingly and fnished it with a Marsala pan sauce. I roasted the potatoes minus the cedar plank, but with the listed seasonings and got some very tender, crispy starch-a-riffic goodness. I realize a signature element (cedar plank) was taken out of the mix, but the resulting dish was no less delicious, which I think is a nod to a cookbook's recipes being flexible and being able to handle swaps and substitutions with ease. I know, Boo to Wasabi for excluding such an important flavor element, but the resulting dish wasn't disappointing, and very doable on a weekday time budget, which this combination was perfect for, with the stove doing some of the work and the oven doing the lion's share.

I used the creamy potato lasagne recipe from Passion and Palate for Valentine's Day, to go with a seared flank steak crusted with blue cheese and breadcrumbs. The flank steak wasn't part of the book, I just wanted something basic so that I could focus on the potatoes. Layers of creamy potatoes with caramelized onions, to go with a meaty steak? That's heaven for Mr. Wasabi, who is a manly-man, and manly-men are fine with a simple meal of meat n' potatoes, so why mess with this logic? I admit, I modified the recipe -- I added crumbled bits of bacon on the finished potato dish. And I went heavy with the onion caramelization, but that's just my preference, as I love that super-sweetness of cooked onions. Regardless of what I pushed/pulled/substituted -- the result was so om-nom-nommy that it put me in a food coma that had me passed out on the couch by 10pm. The wine probably contributed a bit to that, as would a day spent prepping the meal and getting the house Valentine-Ready for when the Mister came home. But hey, it was worth it. Even if Indy felt a little left out of the festivities.

Dueling Valentines - whose is better? Correct - long live the Dark Side - Photos by Wasabi Prime

And yes, that is a bedazzled ultrasuede black heart-shaped box of chocolates with Darth's head on it. Ironically, it was filled with milk chocolates, not dark chocolates (Target, you should have been more clever!). That, some robots with hearts-themed socks and some really geeky Downton Abbey/Supernatural-themed Valentine cards is a recipe for True Freakin' Love. Brock, of course, went the traditional route and got me an amazing, beautiful box of hand-picked chocolates from Fran's. Because chicks dig it the most and he knows it's one of my favorite places to get special sweets. You can decide who wins the Dueling Valentine gift war, but I think it just goes to show that even a silly commercialized holiday can still bring out the best in people and remind you that no matter how weird you are, you know each other's hearts best.

FoodTrek: Edible Tour de Force at the Bravern

The fates shone kindly upon the Prime this week. While donning the fashionable alter-ego of The Jaunty Magpie, an art and style blog I write when I'm not getting splashed with cooking grease or being a cubicle monkey, I was lucky to get a preview tour of The Bravern, a retail/restaurant hive recently opened in the heart of downtown Bellevue. The Magpie part of me was distracted by the pretty shops, but the Wasabi part got all foodie-fangirl when given the opportunity to tour the new restaurants and meet the owners and chefs behind John Howie Steak, Artisanal Brasserie & Winebar/The Artisanal Table Pizzeria Enoteca, and visit the eagerly-anticipated sweet treat, Trophy Cupcakes.

I should preface the post by saying I'm not aiming to be a shill for The Bravern. I've read the editorials, heard the mixed local buzz about a high-end luxury center coming in to the Eastside, and I know there's strong opinions over it. There are pro's and con's to something like this opening during a recession, and I'm sure there's a lot of nervous people involved with banks, anxiously anticipating what all this means when the holiday season hits full swing. That doesn't really concern me in terms of what I write about. I'm a blogger with a day job who likes to cook, takes a few photos, enjoys cocktails with friends, and have been fortunate to meet some really kind people who have been cool enough to talk to someone like me with no official press credentials. And for that, I think it's worth being openly gracious about it, so that's why I make it a point to make mention of people and places, because I know everyone's just trying to get down with their bad selves in a murky economy, and I'm not ashamed of writing about what I like, including the foodie folks in this post.

That being said, I am sorry to report that there was no tasting of the restaurant fare, as they were dilligently prepping their spaces for test dinings and some upcoming pre-events, but Trophy was a dear, and provided the press tour with sweet treats. But let's be good, and have our meal before dessert!

John Howie Steak - GO MEAT! - Photos by Wasabi Prime

We were given a sensory sample of delicious fare that would be offered at John Howie Steak when we walked through their heavy wood double doors. It was almost a cruel thing to let the wafting smells of cooking delights greet us when we walked in -- oh the hunger pangs! But they made up for the stomach-taunting by letting us walk through their beautiful bar and dining area. Rich caramel-colored wood surrounded us as we entered the Eastside's new temple of meat-tropolis. Private wine chests lined the entryway, available for customers to rent and give their precious vino a climate-controlled home away from home. The lounge area was anchored by a striking creamy pink onyx bar, lit from within, casting a soft warm glow. What made the John Howie Steak interiors unique was after leaving the cozy comfort of the bar and walking through an intimate catwalk-like path lined with booths, you suddenly enter a wide, airy dining space with a wall of windows and light (well, it was daytime when we were there). A basket-weave texture of pecan wood sits against one wall and the space is filled with rows of high-backed banquette seating. It's an unusually open and warmly-lit dining area, as most people probably expect to be nestled in dark seating areas, with only dim candlelight to see what you're eating in most traditional steak restaurants.

We were given a tour by restaurant owner and chef, John Howie, a local favorite and longtime veteran of the food service industry, working in restaurants since his early teens. Having moved through the ranks, hopping from locations up and down the Puget Sound, he opened the elegant Seastar Restaurant & Raw Bar with locations in both Bellevue and Seattle, and family-friendly SPORT Restaurant & Bar, right by the Space Needle. His previous restaurant successes are a pretty damn good indicator that he deserves the opportunity to reach for the brass ring yet again and envision what a Pacific Northwest steak house should be.

Getting the rare opportunity of a walk-thru tour of the kitchen, Chef Howie described how their cooking method would be unique in its use of both mesquite coal and applewood to enhance the food's flavor. Taking advantage of seasonal seafood, prime steaks and chops, as well as offering the elite Japanese Wagyu beef, the menu would offer quality ingredients to provide diners with a truly special experience. I didn't have a chance to sample this menu's items, but I've visited Seastar enough times to trust that the good chef will do right by this place, and I look forward to returning to John Howie Steak when the meaty protein-machine is fully up and running.

Behold, the power of (Artisanal) cheese - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I have to admit, I got a bit giddy when our group headed towards Artisanal Brasserie & Winebar, located directly across from John Howie Steak. One could theorize that after having one's fill of meat, it would then be time for some cheese -- a worthy combination! Chef Terrance Brennan is a pretty amazing fellow with a commendable love of le fromage. Having worked in kitchens in France and served sous chef duty at the venerable Le Cirque, it's safe to say he knows a bit about French cooking, non? More importantly, I saw him featured on homeskillet Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations, showing off an ooey-gooey cheese tart from Picholine that made me light-headed. When I heard Chef Brennan would be coming to Bellevue and bringing his signature Bar du Fromage with him, I lept for joy and wept for the lactose-intolerant.

Stepping into Artisanal Brasserie, it's like a little corner of Parisian charm. Small black and white tiles cover the floor and a dark wood bar greets guests as they enter. The interior is open and airy, the dining area peppered with white tablecloth-covered tables that overlook the large windows allowing light to pour in. I would opt to stay around the bar, as I think it's a keen thing that its marble surface has a cooling element to keep the cheese at just the right serving temperature. On the way to the kitchen, I snuck a peek at the impressive wheels of cheese that were getting ready to be placed into the glass cabinets -- the selection is going to be c'est magnifique! Along with cheese, charcuterie platters would be offered. We were lucky (and giddy) to have Chef Brennan available to guide us through the restaurant and I asked if any local products like meats from Seattle's Salumi would be resourced. While no promises could be guaranteed, he said he hoped for it, but that other local ingredients would be incorporated where they could, helping to create such offerings like Columbia River sturgeon or the more exotic sauteed skate wing with blood orange grenobloise.

A mini tour of the neighboring Artisanal Table Pizzeria Enoteca revealed that it was the first of its kind among the family of Chef Brennan's restaurants, with Bellevue being the test market for this relaxed style of tapas dining. With an emphasis on simple Italian fare like Neapolitan-style pizzas and antipasti, this dining location off to the side of Artisanal Brasserie would offer itself up as an ideal weekday lunch or happy hour locale, as this smaller eatery is distinguished by no reservations-casual. Their signature dishes offered such indulgent items as a duck pizza with gizzard, confit, foie gras and egg, and a pappardelle featuring a lamb neck bolognese. Yum -- can I just put in an order ahead for both?

We were given a tour of the kitchen, where we were able to see the beating heart of Artisanal, set up in the traditional French style of separate stations, but with modern amenities like air conditioning and a large wall of windows in the prep area. One can never say that Pacific Northwesterners skimp on creature comforts, but Chef Brennan noted that for all those workspace pluses, it only encourages the staff to push harder and ensure they put their best foot forward in making both Artisanal's Brasserie and Table Pizzeria Enoteca a success. Vive la Fromage!

Time for dessert - at Trophy, the sweet tooth always wins! - Photos by Wasabi Prime

After much wandering and tempting food smells, it was a much-appreciated reward to see the chocolate brown-striped awning over the robin's egg blue door of Trophy Cupcakes. Owner Jennifer Shea was there to greet us and she was so good to remember me from the previous Grilling in the City event from weeks before (thanks again!). The interior of the shop looked complete, save for the final touches of adding their sugar-sprinkled goods to the cases and party ephemera and decor to the shelves. She assured us that the menu of flavors that have kept the other Trophy location customers happy would stay consistent with the new Eastside shop. As a gracious gesture of cupcake goodwill, presskit goody bags were given, including a gift card and their signature blueberry pie cupcake. Made with a flaky pie crust bottom and a fresh blueberry center, it was just too pretty to eat... at least right away.

A very grateful thanks goes out to the hard-working teams behind John Howie Steak, Terrance Brennan's Artisanal Brasserie & Winebar and Artisanal Table Pizzeria Enoteca, and Jennifer Shea's Trophy Cupcakes. I look forward to visiting again as just a regular customer, once The Bravern officially opens its doors to the public.

Extra super-duper thanks to John Howie for Tweeting up the Prime and this article, as well as Artisanal Brasserie for putting this article up on their site's press page!