Sunday, October 25, 2009


Interesting article in the Inlander this week. It turns out that the current front runner on Top Chef, Kevin Gillespie, had a short and unsuccessful stint as head chef of Luna in 2007. According to the article, he left after two months because customers rebelled when their favorite dishes disappeared from the menu to be replaced with fare more in keeping with Gillespie's southern comfort food style. I believe the coconut curry prawns were a particular problem. The article quotes several local chefs to make the point that Spokane menus are -- and have to be in order to find a consistent clientele -- almost completely static. Chester Gerl, formerly of Fugazzi, has the following quotation: "I see the same things on people's menus that are ten years old." This is true, and this is sad.

There are some good, fine dining meals to be had in Spokane. I am partial to the food at Mizuna -- they do fine seafood, and their lamb is often spectacular -- and the service at Wild Sage almost always makes up for the rather astronomical price. Scratch I hate, but I need to preface my comments about Scratch with the disclaimer that I haven't been there in over a year. I went twice in their first six months, and both times my table was completely dropped. The menu was all over the place: three different steaks, stir fry, and game? Find an identity! And, I ordered the artichoke ravioli, and found on my plate two enormous, gummy pillows of flavorlessness. They may have worked out some of the kinks by now, but I may never know. Luna is not my favorite. It seems to me caught in between wanting to be casual fine dining and real fine dining, and taking the worst of both worlds. The prices are too high for the food offered, and the service and table settings too informal for the kind of food they want to serve. Sante started strong, but it remains to be seen if they can maintain their level of interest. Latah Bistro is often nice, especially once you get over the view of the supermarket parking lot.
While it is possible to have a good dinner out in Spokane, there really are no great fine dining restaurants. For me, to be great, a restaurant has to earn my trust. It's the difference between picking out what to order because I like the listed ingredients and I can imagine how they would go well together, and ordering something because I can't imagine what that would taste like and I can't wait to see how the chef pulls it off. It's the difference between ordering something because it seems well within the comfort zone of the restaurant and ordering something because I couldn't make it at home. It's the difference between eating as an experience and just paying for someone else to do the cooking and hosting for you. There's a need for both in this world. The problem is that we only have the latter.

The Inlander is right about one of the problems with Spokane fine dining when they talk about the fact menus don't change. Not only does that keep a chef from surprising you, and I imagine stifles their own growth, but it also means that the menus here are incredibly dated, and the ingredients being used are not necessarily fresh. Crab cakes are always on the menu at Luna, when the Dungeness season is from December through February. What does that suggest about the crab that they use?

But there are other problems. For one is the insidious over-pricing. One of the great things about Spokane is the low cost of living, but a top-tier meal here costs what it would cost in Seattle. While one can pay much more in California, it is only because their is a whole other tier of restaurant quality there. Of course one pays a premium for Fleur de Lis or The French Laundry! Another problem is the inability to understand service -- but on that topic I have already vented my bile.

And then there is the problem of restaurant and menu identity. Scratch is not alone in being unable to decide whether it is a steak house, an asian restaurant, or the kind of place where you can get rabbit. Moxie (and I will always love Moxie for the Moxie Mojito, one of the best cocktails ever) has a Japanese mural on the wall, puts olive oil and balsamic down for its bread, and has meatloaf on the menu. And even at Latah Bistro. . . the head chef there, David Blaine, makes a point in the Inlander article about the need for a chef to learn what Spokane diners want. Apparently, he decided what we want is pizza along with our filet and half priced bottles of wine and cocktails. I'm not complaining about the half-priced wine -- I have drunk many a bottle and gratefully -- or about the pizza, which isn't bad. But it is insulting and condescending that what he learned about us is that we need gimmicks and a stable of non-threatening items. Just acknowledge that that is the kind of place Latah is trying to be, and lose the pretentious line on your website about how often you change your menu. The wild mushroom ravioli has been on there for at least three years, and I don't think the filling ever changes, even though mushrooms are -- wait for it -- seasonal.

Trust must be mutual. I'm sure Spokane diners have let down good chefs. I'm sure Gerl couldn't have won a James Beard prize here, but Fugazzi failed for many reasons, and not all of them are our fault. Let's both do our part. Chefs, give us a restaurant that really is seasonal, where the specials are fresh and challenging and thoughtful. In turn, we diners will come, and we won't throw a fit if there are no coconut curry prawns from the nineties. We promise.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Agave

I have a new found appreciation for Mexican cuisine. Part of this can be attributed to Rick Bayless' win on Top Chef Masters. I have seen him on TV for years, and always found him pretentious and awkward, telling me to make recipes using ingredients I would never be able to find where I lived. I think Top Chef Masters is a much better medium for him than his own cooking show. I still found him pretentious, but in a thoughtful, academic way that was legitimately interesting, and rendered charming by his (at least appearance of) complete enthusiasm and sincerity. What major American chef admits on national TV that it took him twenty years to learn how to make one sauce? Charming. And, of course, my foray into Taco Truck cuisine in August contributed to my new appreciation. Fresh food with a beautiful complexity sounds like a recipe for yummy to me, and it is exactly what I learned good Mexican food should be.

So, I will admit that I went to Agave on Friday with a moderate expectation. It is, after all, a joint venture between the owner of Moxie, always a good standby for good pricey food, and the owner of DeLeon, whose name is legendary here on the Spokane food scene. Surely those two owners would be enough to overcome the odor of failure lingering from the previous tenants of the space, Blue Fish. I actually really liked Blue Fish for a couple of years, but the quality went down hill precipitously towards the end, and then they made things worse with that ill conceived asian bistro disaster.

I was wrong. Now, there is a lot to like at Agave. The service was prompt, professional, and friendly. Some of the food was outstanding; indeed, the smoked paprika grilled prawns rates as one of the best shrimp dishes I have ever had. Ever. It was spicy and smoky and grilled, the shrimp were tender but with a nice char, the salad underneath was fresh and well dressed, and it all came together in a harmonious, exciting dish. I ordered the mahi mahi tacos, where too the fish was perfectly cooked and wonderfully spiced. And my margarita a delight, with fresh citrus and clear tequila presence. Plus, it came in a glass the size of a chalice, which is not a bad thing.

So, what went wrong? Why was it that Jeremy and I both walked out feeling no desire to revisit Agave? Was it that the food wasn't consistently exiting? That was certainly the case. The rice was underseasoned and underflavored, as were the ranchero beans. Jeremy's wild boar chile verde was an awful lot of gammy funk with very little other flavor. The fresh fried chips were excellent, but the salsa bordered on having too much raw garlic. But the food wasn't really it. Even very good restaurants can have less successful dishes, and usually one dish as good as those prawns would be enough to bring me back.

I believe the entire problem with Agave is that they didn't de-Blue Fish enough. They didn't paint (I believe). They didn't remove, or apparently clean, the blue-lit fish tank in the entrance. They didn't rethink the awkward table floor plan. Blue Fish was a dated hipster doofus establishment when it opened, and the passing years have exacerbated the dated and the doofus part of the establishment, and Agave shouldn't be hipster anyway. Adding some Latin knickknacks and some of the ugliest curtains I have ever seen just isn't enough to give Agave it's own personality and vibe.

There's an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season four, when the misunderstood but psychotic Faith switches bodies with our hero Buffy. Badness ensues. That's what Agave feels like: like a good restaurant shoved into a completely different restaurant's body. It just isn't right. It's a shame, because I think Agave deserves better.

In the meantime, since the wild boar chile verde is a disappointment, here is a recipe for a Pork and Green Chile stew that, I think, makes up for it:

2-3 lbs trimmed pork butt or lean country style ribs, or some other fatty pork (you can do it with a lean pork, but the meat won't be as tender at the end), but into 1 to 2 inch chunks

6 poblano (also called pasillo) chiles, roasted, peeled, seeded and ribbed, and cut into 1 inch squares*

1 jalopeno, also roasted, peeled, seeded, ribbed, and chopped. *

6-10 tomatillos, roasted and chopped*

1 large onion, chopped

1 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes

3 large garlic cloves, chopped

1 tbls dried oregano

1 tbls cumin

about 3 cups chicken broth (canned is okay)

flour, salt, pepper, oil

1) coat the meat in flour, salt and pepper, and fry in a couple of tbls of oil until the meat is well browned on all sides. Do in batches so as not to crowd your pan.

2) in the same pan, add a little more oil if needed, and saute onions until they are soft and browned. Then add everything else, including the meat. It should be quite a loose soup at this point. Simmer uncovered for about two hours, adding more stock if it looks like it is drying out. You know it's done when the meat is really tender and the sauce is thick.

3) Serve -- I like some grated cheddar and a little sour cream, but any of the usual chili toppings would be fine.

*Preparing these roasted ingredients is a little time consuming, but not difficult. I have a grill built into my stove, and I can get a good char all over the peppers in about ten minutes, but your could do this on a conventional grill, under a broiler or in a heavy duty skillet, or even over a gas burner using tongs. The only trick is to get the entire surface of the peppers charred, and then stick them in a bag until they are cool enough to handle. The charred skin will just rub off, and the you can open up the peppers and rinse out the seeds without losing flavor. The tomatillos just need to be softened up and browned a little bit, then chopped up.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Green Tomatoes


Spokane is exceptionally lovely in the fall, and this fall has been exceptionally lovely, even by Spokane standards. The sky is crystal blue, the air is crisp, and the nights, alas, the nights are cold. As in frosty. Which is, as we all know, very bad for tomato plants. It held off for a good long time, long enough for a few more of my mammoth heirloom tomatoes to ripen to red, purple, and black deliciousness, but as always happens here in the land of the short growing season, frost has found many, many big tomatoes still green on the plant. This used to make me very sad, until I discovered how yummy green tomatoes are. Now I get excited when I get to go out and harvest a big bowl of fruit. Besides, look how beautiful they are!

Given my personal history, I have to start with fried green tomatoes (don't get the joke? Read the book!), although I have to admit that I didn't make these for ages because I wasn't sure if the tomatoes were green because they were unripe, or if it was a special recipe for green heirloom tomatoes. Sometimes a little pretentiousness can be a bad thing. Just to clarify, we are talking unripe tomatoes. Just slice the tomatoes fairly thick, coat in cornmeal or breadcrumbs, and fry in the oil of your choice. I think bacon grease is traditional (it is a southern recipe, after all), but I prefer olive oil. The only hint I have: don't fry them in too hot a pan. You want to give the tomatoes themselves a chance to cook and soften before the coating burns. Otherwise, you are just eating unripe tomatoes. Wild Sage often has a beautiful fried green tomato appetizer, served with crab, bacon, and remoulade (i.e. really good homemade tartar sauce. If if you are going to make tartar sauce at home, shouldn't you get to reward yourself with a fancy french name for it?) Another good reason to go to Wild Sage.

Last year, I had a bumper crop of green cherry tomatoes, so I pickled them. I got this idea from some local pickles I found up at Green Bluff, in the Walter's store. Mine were better -- eventually. Here's what I did: I packed small canning jars with green cherry tomatoes, fresh dill, dried red peppers, and chunks of garlic -- about half a medium sized clove per chunk. I put in a lot of the seasoning agents, since I like my pickles strong and spicy. Then I made up a batch of pickling brine, which involved boiling the following ingredients together for a few minutes:
2 cups white vinegar
1/2 cup water
3 tbls kosher salt
1/4 cup sugar
3 tbls pickling spice
1 tbls mustard seeds
1 tbls black peppercorns
Once this mixture cooled, I poured it over the tomatoes and then tightened the lids. You don't have to worry about sealing them, because nothing noxious can grow in that much acid. Then, I put them in the refrigerator until Christmas. I tried some earlier, but they weren't pickled yet. In fact, they seemed to reach their height of goodness around May.

The absolute best thing I know how to do with green tomatoes is green tomato curry. I adapted this recipe from my beloved Mangoes and Curry Leaves. It's rich and spicy and easy and so, so good. Really, I like this one a lot.

Ingredients:
2 tbls vegetable oil
1/2 an onion, chopped
2 green serrano peppers, seeded and chopped (unless you like heat, in which case, don't seed them)
6-8 fresh or frozen curry leaves (you can find these frozen at Bollywood on Sprague. They seem to keep eternally in the freezer, and are definitely worth the trip)
1/4 tsp fenugreek, powder or seed
pinch of turmeric
About 2 cups green or blushing tomatoes, coarsely chopped
2 tsp salt
1 can coconut milk (which may be high in saturated fats, but is apparently also very high in anti-oxidents, so this is even a healthy recipe!)

Heat the oil, and add onion, chilis, and curry leaves. Cook until onion is soft and the edges have browned. Add everything else but the coconut milk, and cook over medium heat for about fifteen minutes, until the tomatoes have broken down. Add the coconut milk (you might not want to add some of the watery stuff at the bottom of the can if your curry looks too thin). Cook about five minutes, uncovered, or until the curry is thick. It should be the consistency of applesauce, with some chunks still in it.

This stuff is great over rice. It's great next to roasted or grilled meat. It's great with a spoon. I heat up leftovers at work, and people start to stick their noses out of their offices.

A final word: unlike their ripe brethren, green tomatoes freeze. Just put them in ziplock bags, and you can have green tomato curry into the winter. Or, if you lack will power, until about next month.

Any other favorite green tomato recipes out there?