Trip to Seattle’s Salumi

This past weekend I was in Seattle, visiting my sister and her family. My nephews and I tried making the pumpkin pie out of the “Best of Everything” cookbook. It was a really good pumpkin pie, but it took a lot of work: partially pre-baking the shell, cooking the filling on top of the stove before pouring it in the shell to finish cooking in the oven. Kind of a pain. But, as I said, good taste and texture. My sister didn’t have the brown sugar the recipe called for, so I used a combination of white sugar and molasses and it worked very well.

On Tuesday my sister and I agree to try one more time to visit Salumi. Salumi is a deli owned and run by Mario Batali’s father as a fun retirement thing. They make all their own deli meats, and they are only open some 20 hours a week. They ship a lot of their product, we heard, to Mario Batali’s New York restaurants. We have tried to visit there several times and always found it closed, so this was our final attempt. Let me tell you, it was so worth the effort.

The lineup outside attested to the popularity of the place (they open at 11.00 am, and we took this picture at 11.30). There was a couple from California in the line ahead of us, who told us that they come to Salumi every time they are in Seattle, that you need to come early, because they can run out of food, and that we should double the amount we planned to order.

It’s this very narrow shop front, and as the line shuffles forward, it takes you past a case of their meats on display and a tiny photocopy of their menu on blue paper. I know, it would gross out any vegetarian to have to stare at this display case, but we were very excited to eat some of it.

We shared two sandwiches: one of cotta with hot pickled peppers, and another of stewed and brined pork, with onions, peppers, and pickled carrots. The bread was spread with oil, herbs, and garlic. It was the best pork sandwich I have ever had.

We also ordered a sliced meat platter to go, a chunk of hot sopresseta salami for me to take back to my dad in Canada, and two meatball sandwiches for my brother in law and nephews to have, back at home.

I’m concerned that these photos might not look very appetizing, so can I just say that this was so good? The kind of good where the food is dripping with fat and flavour and you are happy and greedy all at once and you don’t care that you are eating until your stomach hurts? (The sandwiches are really big).

So, very high recommendations for Salumi, and I plan on going there again my next trip down to Seattle. For the pie project this weekend it looks like I will be doing a repeat of the banana cream pie I did two weeks ago– everyone’s craving another slice.

Banana Cream Pie

We’ve had a couple of scorching hot days here on Vancouver Island– well, scorching hot for us, what would amount to a mild summer day for people in Texas and Arizona. I’m happy to tell you that the dogwoods are out in blossom. I love how their pale yellow flowers make the dogwood trees look like they are lit up, like candles, glowing against the green trees beside them.

There haven’t been any posts for the past couple of weeks, what with spending some vacation time, being in someone else’s kitchen, and my sudden case of coyness about my blog. I feel inhibited about photographing my food in front of other people. And, to add to my conflicted feelings, I have been wanting pie, even though no one else sounded enthusiastic about it. So yesterday afternoon, when I was left alone in the house, I gave into my yearnings and made a pie, and photographed it all, which I have missed doing. Who knew this pie project would result in a love for making pies? And in a weird need to document them with photographs?

I made a banana cream pie, trying a recipe from Nick Malghieri’s “How to Bake”. This recipe, unlike the one I tried a few months ago from Dorie Greenspan, gave me a classic banana custard flavour. It also had a slightly looser texture, the taste of banana was a delicate perfume throughout, and it didn’t call for 6 egg yolks and cream, so it was a lot cheaper.

To make Nick Malghieri’s banana cream pie, take a baked 9″ pie shell. Make the custard:

2 1/2 cups milk

2/3 cup sugar

pinch of salt

1/3 cup cornstarch

3 large eggs

2 tsp vanilla

4 tablespoons softened butter

2 large bananas

Combine two cups of milk with the sugar and salt in a large saucepan, whisk once and set on low heat to come to the boil.

In a small bowl combine the 1/2 cup of milk with the cornstarch, and then add the eggs, whisking to combine. Return the milk and sugar mixture to the boil over low heat, then whisk about a third of it into the egg mixture. Return the remaining milk and sugar mixture to the boil and whisk in the egg mixture, whisking continually until the filling thickens and comes to the boil. Allow to boil, whisking continuously, for about 30 seconds. Remove from the heat, whisk in the butter and vanilla; pour into a bowl. Press clingfilm to the top, and refrigerate until it reaches 75F (approximately).

Once it reaches that temperature, slice in the two bananas, mix them into the filling, and then spread the filling in the room-temperature pastry shell. Top with whipped cream.

If you let the pie sit for an hour or two in the fridge before topping it with the whipped cream it will give the banana time to perfume the custard, and for the custard to set. I want to say again, too, that store bought pseudo-pastry, loaded with preservatives and chemicals, will seriously detract from this pie– you really need to make homemade pastry.

Catching Up: Pear Pie and More

Well, the past week has been hectic, to say the least, but I have now moved back to Vancouver Island and am starting to recover and I’m thinking about finishing the unpacking of my car. This week will be really busy too, with a couple trips to Vancouver scheduled.  Just in case there is anyone out there who doesn’t know, my thesis has been successfully defended and has gone to the publisher/printers for binding.

So, pie project update: last weekend I made a pear and cinnamon pie for Ash and Kristin (and two year old Mason, who refers to me as “my ‘Annon”, which guarantees him presents and indulgence) to go with a bit of pouring custard. I tried to give Kristin some pointers on pie making but I’m not sure if any of it will be all that helpful since she refused to actually touch the dough.

My mum came out to Edmonton to drive back with me and keep me company. She wanted palm sugar to make a pad thai and since Victoria is a bit short on ethnic groceries, I said we should stop at Lucky 97 on the way out of town and get some, since I hadn’t managed to buy some before she came. Saturday morning I was fuming as we waited forever to get through some United Way run. This will sound hateful, I know, but I get so fed up with these marathons/charity runs/bicycle races. We have multiple ones in front of my parent’s house every summer here and it gets to be beyond aggravating, especially when they are not properly managed. It makes me want to go to those bicyclists/runners’ houses and run back and forth in front of their driveways and block their access to the roads, so they can see what it feels like.

Anyway, we struggle through that to get to Lucky 97, and when we get there my mum thinks it looks so scary and ‘off’ she won’t get out of the car to go in, and so we cruise through the parking lot and head up to the highway. I told you guys it takes some courage to shop there.

We had a good drive but had horrible food. Word to the wise to everyone, if you stay in Kamloops, don’t stay at “The Thompson” hotel and conference centre. Total rip off, and I don’t just mean the food. We did have some decent food in Hope, though, at a restaurant that is part of a mini-chain in places like Salmon Arm, called “Home Cooking” (if I remember correctly). It wasn’t the best–I could do better– but it was edible and the pie case was impressive. Here’s a picture from the front of the restaurant in Hope. The town has the most beautiful setting, but I don’t know how much of it you can appreciate from this picture. It’s one of a string of small towns as you drive over the Rockies from Alberta to BC on Highway 5, but to me it always marks the first moment when, coming from Alberta, I think “Ahhhh, I am back in beautiful BC!”

When I got home my mum had a bag of jelly babies on my bedside table ready for me. For you Americans, jelly babies are a soft chewy candy that are shaped to look like little babies and come in various colours. I’m putting in a picture so you can see what they look like. As I write this, it occurs to me that it might seem a little weird to be eating candies that look like babies. Maybe it’s one of those things you have to grow up eating to appreciate. Anyway, every time I eat one of these now I flash back to a Sunday at church several years ago. Since I became an aunt, I make it a policy to always have candy in my purse (it’s one of those little, thoughtful things that make me the favored aunt/uncle). One particular Sunday I was sitting with my three year old nephew Grant.

I hand him a green jelly baby. Now, if you are a typical child, you might bite the head off first with callous glee. Since I am abnormally sensitive, even as a child I would quickly pop the whole baby in my mouth so as not to maim it (weird, I know). Grant took the jelly baby, eviscerated its stomach, and went in for the soft centre, leaving the outer, harder shell til last. By the end of the Sunday service he had green sugar spread over his hands, over his face up to his hairline, and green sticky patches on his shirt. I still wonder how that tiny candy was able to spread in such a thin layer over such a distance, and yet get in his mouth as well. The moral of it was taken to heart, though, and I now have a non-sticky purse candy policy.

I’ve been reading though “660 Curries” and getting very hungry for Indian food. I am going to try and make idlis with a vegetable curry for lunch on Wednesday for me and my dad. Tomorrow I will try to make the sambhar masala, if I can locate all the ingredients.