UnRecipe: Brock's Burgers and a Valentine's Day Redux

I know, it's not Valentine's Day. It's not even February anymore! But I don't care, I felt the need to share a post that perfectly illustrates how food and daily life are perfectly entwined, and that the date shouldn't matter -- we shouldn't require excuses to have special meals. What we eat isn't just fuel, it's a way of expressing our appreciation for others when we dine on something special or make someone their favorite dish -- it's a personal way to celebrate a loved one. Ironic that it's a priority on one of the most impersonal/faux-emotion day of the year: Valentine's Day.

Babe, this burger's for you - from the wonderfully amusing series, Bob's Burgers (no, not Brock's Burgers)

Mixed Plate: Getting In the Season of Ingredients With a New Cookbook

Blame it on the Spring, but the excitement of seasonal cooking is most definitely in the air. Social media feeds are being filled with blooming tulips and gardening photos of early herbs and awakening greens. It was fitting that I received a copy of acclaimed Seattle chef Greg Atkinson's new book, In Season (Sasquatch Books), right as our own garden started to come back to life.

Sous vide Halibut with Rhubarb Ginger Butter Sauce, from Greg Atkinson's In Season - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Mixed Plate: Breaking Up is Hard to Do (with cake)

The parenthetical (with cake) seemed a requirement in today's title because, really, everyone knows Facebook is the place to post devastatingly personal milestones in small, graphical icon tags. And so it was, a softly-lit, slow-dance crescendo moment of The Way We Were... an intense, short-lived romance destined to be as memorable as it was tearful. Star-crossed lovers in a whirlwind romance... Me and Milk Chocolate Cake...and then it all went wrong. (roll sad music and end credits)

The Cake-Up - Photo by Wasabi Prime

UnRecipe: The Mango is to Blame

I don't have anything against tropical fruit, I assure you. It's just interesting to see how some meals come about, which leads us to this sunny little post: The days of better weather are finally sinking in, and I was in need of some sunny, bright food after so many months of slow cooker stewing. You know what I'm saying. So let's sit out in the sun and have some fish tacos, shall we?

I found Nemo, and he was crispy-delicious - Photo by Wasabi Prime

It's rare that I do a seafood post. I think I can count on one hand how many times I've written about seafood I've cooked. I like eating it, I'm just not big on preparing it. It's so much about how we're raised -- my mother never cooked fish because my dad is not a seafood eater, the end. There was the odd tuna salad sandwich now and then, but that was it. I grew up with an baseless dislike of seafood, assuming it was gross or icky or something irrational like that. Common sense kicked in at some point and I got over it, but I never became really good at preparing the creatures of the sea. I'm always worried I'll overcook it or season it improperly. And quite frankly, this post is no exception -- I totally cheated with these fish tacos, the filets were frozen! Boooooooo, I know. I didn't want to fuss with hot oil on a warm day, so I picked up some frozen beer-battered fish filets from the store. There you have it -- haul me off to Sandra Lee's Semi-Homemade Jail. 

My plea to the jury: blame it on The Mango. Not all mangoes. Not all tropical fruit. Just this one mango we had delivered amongst our CSA box of mystery goodies. I had some time to consider what to do with a single mango while it ripened, staring back at me from the fruit bowl. Stir fry? Nah... been there, done that. Bread? Mom said most good mango breads really need two mangoes. What about a mango relish? Now there's an idear.

Steps towards relishing a mango relish - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I love cutting a mango, scoring the fruit and flipping it inside-out to get a freaky turtle-shell/cleaning sponge-looking thing. I don't like using the knife to blindly identify the ridiculously large pit in the center of a mango, that's always hit or miss. I swear these fruits are just as much seed as fruit. Yet another reason why it's challenging to do something with just one mango. But making it into a relish-salsa concoction was a good way to showcase its mango-riffic attributes. This was an UnRecipe mango relish, to be sure. I used what was left of some pickled red onion in a jar that was done months ago for the We Can Portlandia That pickle-themed post. I also finely minced some of the preserved lemon peel. It feels weird talking about ingredients that were prepared months earlier, but that's the joys of pickling and preserving. The fresh mango mixed with the spicy-sweet-sourness of the onions and lemons made for a nice overall flavor. Refreshing, tart and with enough punch to stand out against a lot of strong flavors.

I had a false start on using the mango relish on dinner -- I added it as a topping on a pork and zucchini stir fry. Food Fail. The flavors of the stir fry were fine on its own, the relish was just adding too strong of a flavor and drowned out everything else. I thought it would maybe compliment, like when you have pickled vegetables with a meal. No, it was like a Battle of the Bands with Pantera vs GWAR, just a big mess of dirty noise. But hey, you live and learn. I enjoyed the rest of the stir fry with a veggie-heavy mapo tofu, sans mango relish, for the rest of the week, no harm done.

Colorful, but not a flavor-win, adding the relish on top of stir fry - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I still had a bowl of mango relish seeking its Special Purpose. In a flash of inspiration and hunger, I had a specific food-image in my head: the citrus bite and freshness of the relish going nicely with a beer-battered fish taco, all looking like the color of a sunny day. Done. I had some small corn tortillas in the freezer and just needed to find Nemo in the friendly neighborhood frozen seafood aisle. It was a shortcut, but worth it when I could prepare a few quick tacos with the help of a toaster oven to crisp up the fish, and to help warm the tortillas. I made these very simply and UnRecipe-like -- a smear of mayonnaise for richness, a crispy filet of fish, then the mango topping. Roll and eat. Repeat as necessary. Served with a side salad, they were a super-easy way to make a lunch or dinner in a matter of minutes.

While I wouldn't normally say, "get thee to the prepared frozen foods aisle," I'm never going to say no to a shortcut. And even if you're still shaking a finger at me for hitting the "lazy" button, I cast my gaze to a tropical fruit and insist that The Mango is to Blame.

Say what you will about frozen food shortcuts - they can still be tasty! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

FoodTrek: Enjoying a Slice o' Heaven in Steveston...and Wanting Seconds

You hear stories from people describing the riches and plentiful nature that is north of the Border. Streets of gold, milk and honey, the whole ball of wax. Oh, what -- you think I'm talking about people making a run for the US Border? Heck no -- I'm talking about the real El Norte, Canada, and more specifically the seaside village of Steveston within the city of Richmond in BC. Picturesque waterfront, a rich seafaring history and all the comfort foods of home (including tasty Poutine). Welcome your new emigre-to-be, Steveston, the Prime wants to make a run for the border and settle on your shores!

Welcome... to Jurassic BBQ Park, at Hog Shack in Steveston - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Is it scary that I'm letting a giant platter of meat be the opener to this post? Well, take a breath, count to three, and think of warm fuzzy puppies to calm your meat anxiety/excitement. Of all the delightfully delicious discoveries one can make in Canada, a good barbecue joint is probably the last thing you'd think of stumbling across. The Hog Shack Cook House is right near Fisherman's Wharf in Steveston, serving up farm critters over ocean dwellers -- pork and beef ribs, beef brisket, chicken, all smoked in-house and done in the Kansas City-style of BBQ, with a slow-cooked smoke flavor, a tomato-molasses based sauce, and generally a little more evenly balanced between sweet and spice. It wouldn't be fair to say there's no seafood on the menu -- they do offer calamari and local prawns, but come on, you're here for BBQ. Invertebrates have nothing on mammals -- Darwinian deliciousness rules. The beef rib "Dino Bones" are epic caveman food, named aptly because they look like someone took the Flinstones' pet, Dino, out for a long walk into a smoker and doused him in BBQ sauce. The real secret treat are the burnt ends from their smoked brisket. It's pretty much that -- the carbon-encrusted nuggets of flavor that usually flavor side dishes like baked beans, but Hog Shack periodically Tweets that the burnt ends are available to order and the thundering hooves you hear is the crowd of people converging on this place to get a plateful of the off-the-menu treat. They're very adventurous souls, putting whatever temps their curiosity into the smoker -- you can get smoked cubes of Spam, which will pretty much rock your world. Another off-the-menu carnivorous delight are the pulled pork pancakes. Shreds of soft pork, soaked in the house BBQ sauce, covering a stack of sweet, fluffy pancakes. Kaboom. Congrats, Hog Shack, you just blew my mind.

Eat, drink, be merry. Repeat. - Photos by Wasabi Prime

They're also big beer nerds, which I can appreciate. They have the benefit of being right in the heart of Pacific Northwest craft brew Beertopia, with the lion's share of good beers to offer, but they know how to pick beers that go well with intensely-flavored meals, so they offer interesting things like the Hitachino Nest White Beer, a Japanese beer done in the Belgian Wit style, a lightly citrus-flavored brew with a little spice of cardamom, and it probably has one of the cutest beer labels I've seen in a while. Owls make things better. This is just a simple fact that you're going to have to accept. You don't see Harry Potter walking around with a cormorant, do you? Owls = Better.

Rocanini rocks my coffee socks - Photos by Wasabi Prime

You need a breather after all that protein. And very likely a nap, but if you take on the Rambo attitude of eating with all-American gusto, you'll sleep when you're dead, soldier, so find the quickest way to get a kickstart of caffeine to keep the food momentum going. I have to say, I was glad there was not a Starbucks on every corner of Steveston and Richmond. Maybe every other-other corner, but not like how it is here in Washington, where the wily and agile Starbucks roam free and multiply in their native territory, a jittery wild herd of half-caf/double-foam cappuccinos. I'm pleased to say there's a charming and lovely specialty coffee shop that would bring a tear to the eye of any coffee nerd, Rocanini Coffee Roasters. Their roasting facility is in Vancouver, but their beautiful, brightly-lit cafe is in Steveston. It reminds me of many places in Seattle, with the smart minimalist interiors, decorated with a mix of modern and vintage pieces.

Cold brew coffee - where even the caffeine needs a chance to chill out for a bit - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I had my usual latte, along with a wonderful buttery almond croissant, but Rocanini gets extra coffee nerd cred for having a cold brew setup, which is this complicated-looking tower of glass and wood on their counter that looks like how Steampunk geeks would want their coffee before jumping on their recumbent unicycle. Cold brew is just another way to extract the flavor from the grounds, but using cold water to slowly absorb the richness of the coffee with less of the acid or bite that heated brewing methods tend to develop. Having a tall tower that lets gravity do a lot of the work to draw the water through the grounds helps speed up the process a little, and let's face it, the equipment just looks wicked cool. While this method takes more time, it yields a more smooth cup of coffee that's all the more enjoyable as an iced drink.

A glass of wine and bountiful treasures of the sea at Tapenade Bistro - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I've been going through all these creature comforts as a reason to leave the States behind, and I could say another reason is seafood, but that would be a little silly as we can get plenty of seafaring meals around here. But not all of them can prepare the food as delightfully as Tapenade Bistro. The menu is Mediterranean-styled, but that's just a quicker way of saying fresh flavors, simply-prepared and being respectful of the local ingredients with a nod towards sustainability. It's very close to the way a lot of Seattle area restaurants treat their food, especially seafood, which benefits so often from a light hand for seasonings and sauces. At the time of this visit, the spot prawns were in season, so it was prawn-a-palooza celebration everywhere, with all the local restaurants offering it on their menus. But Tapenade knew to give the little creatures their due, and served them up steamed with piles of fresh herbs, potatoes, sausage and fresh lemon. A bit like a crawfish boil, but in an elegant way, even if it's not the most elegant way to eat them -- which is to say, dig in like there's no tomorrow. Paired with the prawn feast was a really clean, light crab salad over a crab cake, which, like a Double Rainbow, is Double-Crustacean-OMG good. Everything just felt wonderfully garden-fresh, like no aspect of this celebration of land and sea edibles was overlooked. I was pretty much ready to rip up my passport and say, home is where my full and happy stomach is.

When cupcake mania strikes! - Photos by Wasabi Prime

So all the savory delights of Steveston seemed well-investigated, but what about the sweet? Surely one cannot live on smoked Spam and buttery spot prawns alone... although it would be pretty nice, wouldn't it? Cupcake mania hasn't just stayed local to the US -- the frosted mini-cake craze has jumped the border and invaded Canada with a sugar high as well. Sure, the Seattle area has its share of cupcakeries, but walking through Steveston, there was a moment of comfort to see the sign for Bell's Bake Shop, and its lemony walls with sprinkle-hued polka dots. Maybe it was the wall color that reminded me of my old childhood bedroom, or the vintage chairs that were like the chairs in my grandparents' kitchen, but the place had a worn-in feeling of home. No fussy princess-themed, sparkly maribou-feather wonderland. You didn't feel like Tinkerbell up and exploded the way some cupcakeries doll up their shops. Bell's was like a nostalgic afterschool treat in someone's kitchen, and the seasonal rhubarb cupcake I had sure would have gone well with a tall glass of milk.

I thought about staying. I let my brain stray into the danger zone of, "You don't need a pesky ol' visa -- no one will even know you left the US and never came back...right?" But the drive back across the border to US-terra-firma was a reminder that Richmond, and more specifically Steveston, is not that far away. Its seaside village charm and ample restaurant choices make me think it's a place ripe for invasion by Cher or P. Diddy, so head up there while it's still pristine and untouched by annoying celebrities looking for the next great city to ruin. Hurry. Pack your bags right now. I hear the Diddy is a wily one. And if you want to let fate or luck guide your hand, you can still enter to win a food trip to Richmond -- just head over to Richmond's Ultimate Food Experience to enter for a chance to party and eat like a rockstar.