Back in October I went out to interview the Jensen family at Golden Glen Creamery for the Nov/Dec issue of Grow Northwest magazine. You can read the original article here, but I thought it would be fun to post some of the other photos I took.

The Jensens don’t actually own the creamery any more, but the family is still very much involved in running the place. All the folks I talked to were exceedingly proud of their milk, the quality of their cheese, and their rather snazzy cheese room. When Vic opened the door and let me peek in, a vast waft of garlic hit me in the face from the fresh wheels of dill-garlic cheese resting on the racks. If you’ve ever had that stuff as fresh cheese curds, you may agree with me that it’s one of the more addictive dairy products out there. I also got a glimpse of the aging room, which happened to be a trailer parked behind the farm store.

I did not get to meet any cows. I was informed that they were off being milked (something they spend quite a bit of their day at). No cheese samples, either. But  I got to have a large dog lean against my legs while I took notes, and the view from the farm was nice.

I used my trip out to the dairy as an excuse to drive around on the Skagit flats at dawn and take pictures of the autumn fields in the morning mist.

(There are, by the way, calendars of my photographs for sale over at Qoop. Just thought I’d mention it.)

This week has been crazy busy, but we did make time to get down to opening day of our local farmer’s market. It was a classic Pacific Northwest Memorial Day weekend, which is to say it rained every. single. day.

Fortunately there were plenty of vendors and customers, and the hardy Prozac Mountain Boys managed to keep the music playing without floating away.

We bought leeks, fingerling potatoes, asparagus, hothouse peppers, and butter, which seemed like a pretty good haul for the season (thank goodness for Hedlin Farms’ greenhouses). Then we checked out Gothberg Farms’ stand. A local goat dairy, they’re newcomers to the Mount Vernon market, and we’re really excited to have them here. I expect we’ll be eating a lot of their cheese in the months to come, but for now we limited ourselves to a tub of fresh ricotta and a block of Queso Blanco.

The ricotta blew us away. I mixed it with a little sugar and a drop of vanilla, and we rolled it up in warm eggy crepes with hot blackberry sauce. Incredible stuff, so fresh and milky and with a delightful springy texture. I am so buying this again.

The Queso Blanco was awesome, too. It’s very fresh and milky as well, with a firm texture rather like panir. I hear it’s excellent fried, but we ate it on garlicky chicken tacos with roasted bell peppers and cilantro and it was lovely. I tried marinating a little in a bowl with olive oil, salt and pepper, rather like mozzarella balls, and that was delicious. We also tucked some into quesadillas the next morning with hot sauce and scrambled eggs. The queso didn’t melt so much as warm and soften, but I thought it was a perfect breakfast cheese.

As it happens, Gothberg Farms is having an awesome-sounding farm day and BBQ this Sunday. We can’t be there (I have a pie class to attend), but I strongly urge everyone to go out there and support this place. They do amazing work!

Stuffing cheese into a chicken thigh doesn’t necessarily sound like a wise idea, but when the cheese in question is panir, a dry non-melting Indian cheese, all is well. We found this dish in a recently acquired cookbook, Modern Spice (on clearance at Village Books!), which is full of wonderful recipes that fuse Indian flavors with the American pantry. In this case bone-in chicken parts are stuffed with Indian herbs and spices mixed with Indian cheese, but baked in the oven instead of being simmered in liquid on the stovetop, as with so much Indian cookery. The chicken gets crispy on top, and the stuffing takes on the flavor of the bird as well as that lovely cheesy toastiness and a kick of chile heat.

Panir is crucial to this recipe, since no other cheese behaves quite like it (maybe halloumi?), but if you can’t find panir you could still make all the other ingredients into a rub for roasted chicken parts. What’s not to like about butter, chiles, ginger, garlic and cilantro?

A fusiony sort of dish like this didn’t seem to need a traditional Indian accompaniment, so we recreated a salad we invented on our Paris vacation, caramelizing finely diced fennel in a skillet and stirring in chopped ripe tomatoes. Pure essence of summer, it played beautifully off the spicy cheese and chicken. With a bright Sangiovese rosé, this was a very successful summer-to-autumn transitional dinner.

Panir-stuffed Chicken Thighs

adapted from Modern Spice by Monica Bhide

• 4 bone-in skin-on chicken thighs
• 1 garlic clove, pressed
• piece of ginger, grated
• 1 Tbsp melted butter
• 1 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1 cup finely grated panir
• 2 serrano chiles, red or green, minced
• 2 Tbsp cilantro, minced
• 1/4 tsp ground turmeric
• 1 tsp red chile flakes (our serranos were so hot we left these out)

Preheat the oven to 375°.

Combine the butter, 1 tsp salt, ginger and garlic. Loosen the skin on the thighs, then rub the paste all over the chicken.

Combine the panir, chiles, cilantro, turmeric, chile flakes and the remaining 1/4 tsp salt. Stuff this mixture under the skin of each thigh. Place the chicken in a roasting pan, skin side up.

Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until cooked through and the skin is crispy on top. You can either baste the thighs halfway through, or use my technique of just turning them in their juices with tongs.

A number of years ago, my husband and I took a trip to France for our anniversary. We hiked across the Vaucluse wine country in ninety-degree weather, got sunburned and exhausted, and developed plenty of blisters. We also ate splendidly. I fell in love with the Provence countryside at the same time as I was discovering dry rose, salad with a poached egg on top, hot milk for coffee, and fresh soft cheese. Oh, the cheese!

The French waiters always looked at me funny for this, but when they would come around with the cheese tray and offer me several wedges, all I ever wanted was a spoonful of the freshest goat cheese, more like ricotta than regular chevre. The flavor was fresh and milky, the texture slightly grainy. I had never had cheese like it, and after we came back to the States I never had it again. Until…

At the conference I went to last month, there were many fine cheesemakers represented. Most I had encountered before, such as Mt. Townsend Creamery and Estrella. Willapa Hills Farmstead Cheese, however, was new to me, and their cheese was so delightful I loaded up on samples and completely neglected the (also wonderful) Mt. Townsend. And as I was collecting my bits of cheese, the man at the counter asked, hopefully, if I wanted to try the fresh sheep cheese. Apparently the last several people didn’t even want to taste it! Naturally, I took some.

The cheese was all excellent. Mostly it was blue, which isn’t my favorite, but I still liked it. The fresh cheese, however, was exactly what I’ve been looking for all these years. Bright, milky and grassy, with a slight silky cream-cheese texture, and just a touch of sheep, it was very, very close to the goat’s milk cheese I had fallen in love with in Provence. I took a card from the cheesemaker and vowed to find a source.

And last week at my local co-op, I was glancing over the cheese shelves just in case, and there it was. A single round of Willapa Hills cheese, and it was the Willapa White fresh sheep cheese! I did a little happy dance and whisked the cheese home with me, to eat with fresh fava beans and crackers. At last!

A couple of months ago we had a nice splurge at Barbara-Jo’s Books to Cooks. One of our more exciting acquisitions was a copy of Greg Malouf’s Turquoise, a gorgeous production that immediately made me want to go to Turkey (not something that had ever happened to me before). Despite its beauty, I had completely failed to make anything out of it until this week, when I was suddenly feeling adventurous.

We decided to try two new side dishes during the week: a salad of grated celery root, peppers and mint, and a dish of baked mushrooms and chiles in a paprika sauce. I thought they both sounded interesting, and used vegetables that are at least somewhat in season.

The salad came first, alongside a straightforward roast chicken. It was easy to pull together, especially using a food processor to grate the celery root. It also had red onion, red hot pepper, yellow bell pepper, fresh mint, and fresh parsley, all of which I sliced by hand. It  was dressed with olive oil, garlic and white wine vinegar, then tossed with a bit of crumbled feta cheese. The end result? Not bad, like a refined coleslaw with a hint of spiciness.

It held up pretty well. Two days later I improvised a lunch by combining some of the salad with some of the shredded chicken and a spoonful of mayonnaise, piling it on a whole wheat English muffin. Not bad at all.

The mushroom thing was a bit more of a production, but still not difficult. I cooked some chopped red onion in olive oil, stirred in cumin, sweet paprika and hot paprika, then arranged whole button mushrooms, halved and seeded red and green chile peppers, and tomato wedges on top. This was all sprinkled with thyme and salt, then I added a bit of water to the pan and baked it for about half an hour. Once the mushrooms finally began to soften (I spooned some of the pan liquid over them to speed it up) I took the pan out and put it over high heat to boil down the sauce.

The finished dish was interesting. The mushrooms were firm and meaty, but the tomatoes and peppers had gotten very soft, and the sauce was extremely perky (the chiles were perfectly edible, having leached their heat into everything else). We served it as suggested, with some rare steak laid in slices over the top of the vegetables, and I found that I was desperately craving mashed potatoes to soak up the sauce. I liked it better several days later, when I took some to work for lunch along with a small container of crumbled feta. The flavors had mellowed, and the feta provided a much-needed counterpoint to the sauce.

My current feeling is that this cookbook might be more for eye candy than for recipes, but both of these dishes were simple to make and nice enough to eat. I’ll definitely try some others. Does anyone else have a copy of Turquoise? Have you tried any recipes that turned out really great?

We were able to have dinner outside again last weekend, only by dint of rubbing ourselves with mosquito repellent wipes and setting citronella candles all around the perimeter of the patio. Even so, I got three bites on my feet and one on my hand. Blech.

Still, it was nice to sit out in the yard and drink splendid rosé and eat halloumi, hot off the grill. If that’s not what summer’s all about, then I don’t know what is.

Halloumi (for those who might be wondering) is a firm Greek cheese, a little salty, which crisps up without melting when grilled or sauteed. It must be eaten hot, and there’s nothing quite like it fresh off the grill. I first found mention of it in Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer, and could immediately tell that it was something I would go for. Crispy cheese? I’m all over it. Amazingly, we’ve been able to buy halloumi from our regular grocery store, as well as the local co-op.

Halloumi, I think, is best when it’s eaten with some sort of acid vegetable to cut the salt and dairy. Tapenade, caponata or pickled peppers would be good, but so is a simple pile of fresh chopped tomatoes. This was a mix of regular red tomatoes from Hedlin Farm, enhanced by our first “Stupice” tomato and a little yellow pear tomato from our deck. I added a splash of good olive oil and some fresh chopped basil and it was lovely on the cheese.

The mosquitoes did eventually drive us indoors, but it was fun while it lasted. We followed up the cheese with grilled lamb rubbed with cumin, very minty tabouli, and a batch of homemade coffee ice cream. Bliss!

It seems like this has become such a hackneyed combination of late – in the past year it seemed like every restaurant we’ve visited has had a beet/goat cheese salad on their menu. But you know what? That’s because the flavors are PERFECT together.

Oddly enough, though, I don’t think I had ever combined them at home. We eat beets fairly frequently, since I discovered the glory of roasting them in olive oil until they get soft and caramelized, but we usually just eat them straight and blazingly hot, or mix them with other roasted vegetables. I also once made a beet salad from the The Zuni Cafe Cookbook where they were marinated in black currant vinegar and mixed gently with walnuts and watercress, but somehow beet salad never made it into the regular home repertoire.

A few days ago, though, I was shopping for something to go with a steak from our freezer, and I noticed bunches of baby beets from one of the local farms. As I was picking out a bunch, I suddenly remembered the half-round of Bucherondin chevre lurking in our fridge – we had eaten some of it along with good bread and the shrimp gratin earlier in the week, but then run out of bread – and it’s much too good of a cheese to allow to spoil. So I picked up a head of redleaf lettuce as well, hauled my goodies up the hill and plopped the beets into a pan of water to simmer. Once they were fork-tender, I ran cold water over them and slipped the skins off, cut up the beets into thick slices and drizzled a little walnut oil over them. The chevre I cut into small chunks, which went into the bowl with the beets. Then I tossed the lettuce with a dressing of olive oil, Dijon mustard and red wine vinegar, and took it all to the table so we could compose our own salads.

It was a thing of beauty alongside the steak, with an Oregon Bordeaux-style wine (Cana’s Feast Bricco Two Rivers – delicious) and a good pan sauce. Why don’t I do this more often?

I may have mentioned my deep and abiding love for the book Flatbreads & Flavors by Toronto-based husband-and-wife team Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. It introduced us to cooking all sorts of ethnic cuisines that we might not have attempted, by making the recipes simple yet authentic. Each chapter has a limited number of recipes, but they fit together perfectly – there might be two different breads, a beef dish, a chicken dish, a vegetable and a condiment. So just from this one cookbook, you could make a feast from Georgia, the Middle East, India or Italy!

I had fallen in love with Ethiopian food from the first time I had it, at a restaurant in Minneapolis, of all places. It never occurred to me that you could make it at home – then I got this cookbook. When I made the chicken stew from it, with its simple combination of chicken, butter, cardamom, berbere paste and red wine, it was like an Ethiopian restaurant had opened in our kitchen. We’ve also made injera at home (with mixed success, frankly) and tibs wett. But our favorite go-to dish is definitely the partially-cooked beef tartare, kitfo lebleb. It’s fast, rich, and very very spicy.           

For this dish J defrosted a sirloin steak and chopped it very finely. You could certainly use ground meat but we’ve always preferred the texture of chopped. The original recipe calls for onions, but we usually leave them out. Adding mint is great if you have it, but I don’t think dried mint is a good substitute – leave it out if you don’t have fresh.

Ethiopian Beef Tartare (kitfo lebleb)

adapted from Flatbreads and Flavors by Alford and Duguid

• 1 pound finely chopped sirloin or other lean beef
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tsp ground cardamom
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp grated or chopped fresh ginger
• 1 tsp chopped fresh mint or basil
• 2 Tbsp unsalted butter
• 4 to 6 chopped serrano chiles

Blend the pepper, cardamom, salt, ginger and fresh herb (if using) in a small bowl.

Melt the butter in a heavy skillet. When it’s hot, add the spice mixture and stir, then add the meat and chiles. Stir to combine, and cook just long enough to lightly brown the meat. We like it very rare, but you can cook it longer if you like. Serve hot or at room temperature.

We always serve this tartare with the next recipe in the book, Spiced Curds. It’s very simple: a carton of cottage cheese seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic, fresh ginger and a grated serrano chile. It’s both fiery and cooling all at once, and is wonderful piled into a flour tortilla or a pita bread (or injera if you have it) with a scoop of the tartare. We had asparagus on the side, just because we had some left over, but I especially like cooked greens to go with this dish, either spinach, chard or kale. A plain vegetable or legume side is a good idea to cool the mouth down! Beer or sweet tea would be a good drink to go with, although I admit that we always have it with a fruity red wine, like zinfandel, or something with a bit of smoke or funk like a pinotage.

I was on my own for dinner last night, a rather unusual event. I like cooking for myself, although I tend to gravitate towards things like noodles or sandwiches, or interestingly reconstituted leftovers. This time I decided to purposely keep things simple and cook myself an omelet for dinner, something I almost never do when we’re both home.

On the way home from work I talked myself into stopping at the co-op to get a small piece of cheese and a baguette to flesh things out, and when I got home I opened a bottle of white wine, a verdejo from the Spanish wine tasting last week. It was lovely with the faint sourdough taste of the bread.

I broke three eggs into a bowl, salted them and whisked them up. Most of a bag of salad mix (from Dunbar, of course) went into our old wooden salad bowl, and I shook up a dressing of olive oil, home-grown garlic, red wine vinegar and salt & pepper.

I got out my trusty small nonstick pan, tossed in probably too much butter and let it foam, then added the egg and pulled in the edges as it cooked. As the liquid egg on top began to set, I turned off the heat and flipped half the omelet over onto itself, then slid it onto a plate.

It was a lovely solitary dinner – the omelet went perfectly with the sour bread and the bitter salad greens, with a bite of cheese here or there.