Bite of Seattle 2012

As usual, the Bite of Seattle was a tasty, tasty blast!  The Bite of Seattle is always my favorite festival of the year.  There are plenty of food vendors to choose from, there's a comedy stage, and they even have cooking demonstrations! 

My favorite part of the event is always the Alley.  It's a program hosted by Tom Douglas, and it benefits Food Lifeline.  For $10, you get a plate with one featured sample from 7 local resterauteurs.  They do vary the menu day by day, and they had 15 total restaurants participating this year.  We always make sure to stop by Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  96% of the proceeds go straight to the mouths of those who need it the most here in Western Washington.  Last year, funds raised by The Alley allowed Food Lifeline to provide nearly 86,000 nutritious meals to hungry people.  That's a huge benefit!  This really is a great cause, so I strongly encourage everyone to participate again next year and beyond.  Beyond that, it's a tasty, tasty charitable event, and it's a great way to try out 7 local restaurants in one sitting!  If find yourself at the Bite of Seattle and can't figure out what to pick for lunch or dinner, keep it simple and just go with the Alley!  There are always clear "winners" (and sometimes "losers") on the plate, so you'll be able to find out which restaurants you want to visit later on.


The Bite Cooks (sponsored by Viking) was wonderful too.  Oh, how I want one of those stoves!  She will be mine.  Oh yes, she will be mine...  As usual, Thierry Rautureau did a fantastic job as the emcee.  If you want to learn more about cooking, this is a great opportunity to learn some tips in the kitchen.  Thierry and some of the local chefs provided some excellent cooking tips (including some I covered in my video).  This is also a great opportunity to get out and meet some of your talented local executive chefs, sommeliers, and mixologists.  They also do audience give-aways if you pay attention and answer some questions at the end, and we made off with a nice little bonus!

Speaking of Thierry, don't forget to watch Thierry on the Top Chef Masters, Wednesday night, July 25th (tomorrow!) on Bravo.  Good luck, Thierry!  We're rooting for you!  Thierry is a simply amazing chef!  This is going to sound like a very "mom" thing to say, but he's already a winner in my eyes!  We would go to the viewing party at Luc tomorrow night, but it would be very late for us.  Of course, Thierry already knows the outcome, but he's under contract to not tell anyone who won. 

I was kind of surprised to find out they didn't have a camera crew filming the Bite Cooks event this year, so I'm significantly less bummed about losing the competition :)  But hey, budget cuts happen!  Fortunately Festivals Inc gave all of the contestants $50 in Bite Bucks due to their flawed voting system.  Hopefully they will fix the voting system next year.  Even though I truly don't care about the money, I don't think I'll bother with it again next year since the payout just isn't worth the effort.  But who knows, maybe one of these days I will start including video demos here on my blog.  Instructional video blogging is a lot of work - especially when you don't have a camera crew!  I did get a chance to meet Bonnie, one of my fellow contestants, and she was super sweet!  She would have been a great presenter too!  Oh, and yes, I did make my video private.  If you ever want to see it, you will need to send me a private message or put a comment on this page. 

A few of the featured chefs at the Bite Cooks have items featured on the foodie 100 list!  The Stumbling Goat has the Anderson Valley lamb T-bone on the Foodie 100 list.  We spoke to the executive chef, Joshua Theilen, at Stumbling Goat about this dish since we haven't had the opportunity to try it just yet.  We found out they are sourcing their lamb T-bones from a different place than Anderson Valley.  Obviously it's still a lamb T-bone, so it still counts!  We will have to go check them out sometime this week.  Incidentally, Joshua won the Bite Cooks Cook-off competition on Saturday, and he won $200 for his favorite charity.  Congrats, Joshua! 

Thanks to the Bite Cooks, I also found out about a wonderful winery called Sozo.  Sozo is a winery that helps provide anywhere from 1-25 meals (per bottle) for orphans, widows and homeless who lack basic needs.  The name "Sozo" is a greek word that means "to save."  Each bottle has a number on the front part of the label, and that number tells you how many people will be fed with your purchase.  That's right, you can drink wine *and* save lives, people!  I'll totally toast to that!  I know what you're thinking: "A charity wine?  It probably tastes like swill!"  You're dead wrong.  They had some wine to sample at the wine garden, and I tried a bottle of the Pinot Noir.  That was a fantastic Pinot Noir!  Their goal is to sell only quality wines while saving lifes, and they have a very talented and well-renowned vintner working for them.  When they go to restaurants to sell their wines, they don't even lead with the "This wine saves lives" bit.   They have the sommeliers and restaurant owners try the wines, and then they tell them what they're all about.  The only downside is that you can't just go out to a grocery store and buy their wine.  You can find it on their website (link above) and at some local restaurants.  They also had some bottles for sale at the wine garden, so I picked up a bottle.  That's right, I saved 10 lives by adding a bottle to my wine fridge.  Everyone's happy!  If you want some great quality wines with an even better excuse to drink - check them out!

I couldn't help but notice there were significantly less vendors this year than there were last year.  Out of sheer curiosity, I looked up the booth prices.

$350 for a Hand-crafted or specialty food product booth (not too bad)
$1700 + 16% of sales for a 10x10 Restaurant Booth (16%?  ouch!)
$2975 + 16% of sales for a 20x10 Restaurant Booth (dang!)
$3175 + 16% of sales for a 20x20 Restaurant Booth (double dang!)

I get that the festival doesn't charge admission, so they have to make their money somewhere.  I was really astonished to find out how much they charge the food vendors!  Wow.  So get out there and support your local food vendors!

The Comedy Stage also had a few talented comedians ... and they had a few "eh" comedians in my opinion (but hey, I'll be nice and won't name names!).  Kermit Apio was a hoot!  With a little bit of self-deprecating humor combined with some very important life lessons for the gentlement out there, he had a great routine!  You should definitely check him out if he ever tours through your area.

All in all, it really was a great festival!  If you didn't get to check it out this year, you missed out!  There's always next year!  It will probably be July 19-21 2013, so mark your calendars!

Foodportunity - Summer 2012

Tonight was the Foodportunity event for summer 2012.  Of course, good eats were abundant!  Tom Douglas is the host of this event, and it was packed and sold out as usual.

This is the second time I've been to this event, though it was my first time as a blogger.  This is a great event to get out there to meet your fellow bloggers and food enthusiasts.  It's also a great opportunity to get to know some of your local chefs.

The chefs try to bring their A-game here.  We have so many great James Beard award winners in this city.  They know the crowd loves gourmet food, so they do try to impress!  If you aren't familiar with the James Beard award, well, basically it's the Oscar of the food world.

My first time visiting here, I was just a food enthusiast.  Now that I'm blogging more, I decided to plug it a little bit at the event.  I even got my first tchotchke as an official blogger: a little gift bag from Chocopolis for bloggers!  Aww :)

I had the foodportunity to meet the mother of local chef, Wayne Johnson.  Wayne participated in an Iron Chef competition, and was a former chef at Andaluca.  Now he is the Executive Chef at Ray's Boathouse.  I also learned that at the Iron Chef, they give you a list of food items the "secret ingredient" could possibly be in advance.  You truly only get one hour, but at least you get to have some brain-storming in advance.  I didn't know this about that competition!

As always, it was nice to see one of my favorite local chefs there, Thierry Rautureau.  He owns Luc and Rover's here in Seattle.  He's such a nice man, and an even more amazing chef!  If I were Oprah-rich, I'd try to steal him away as my private chef!  Alas, Thierry, don't get your hopes up.  There is only one Oprah out there, and I am not her!

I wish my camera phone was working.  I would post more photos from the event if it had been.

Who knows, maybe at the next Foodportunity event I will have my own teeny-tiny-small-time award to my name :)

Foodie 100 list - Tom Douglas' Triple Coconut Cream Pie

Long before I even knew of this Foodie 100 list's existence, the very first item I ever had from the Foodie 100 list was Tom Douglas' Triple Coconut Cream Pie.  My grandma used to make a coconut cream pie that was pretty good.  I'm sorry grandma, but Tom's got you trumped!

I first tried this back in September 2008 during my very first visit to Seattle.  Chance took me to the Dahlia Bakery, and he ordered 2 slices of the pie to go.  I'm very glad he ordered 2 because I probably would've stabbed him with my plastic fork to get the last few bites.  Since it was in the early part of our relationship, that could have made things awkward...  I licked that cardboard after I was done, and I wasn't even sorry!

I get that coconut is one of those polarizing foods - people either love it or hate it.  Most people who hate it hate it for the texture.  Up until the first time I came to Seattle, I had never even seen the wide coconut flakes.  They always just sold shredded coconut at the stores in Texas, so I guess I could understand why people wouldn't like the coconut shreds getting stuck in their teeth.  This pie uses mostly coconut flakes, and only some shreds in the actual filling, so that would negate most of the arguments against coconut.

In all seriousness, this triple coconut cream pie... it's just so.. so.. beautiful.  It's like Mary Poppins.  It's practically perfect in every way.  It has most definitely earned its spot on the Seattle Foodie 100 list!

They bake coconut shreds into the crust.  They top it with coconut flakes and white chocolate flakes.  It's a very high pie, and it's just delicious!  They sell it in little bites if you just want a little taste because you're diabetic or you hate coconut.  They sell it by the slice, a half-pie, and a full pie.  It is pretty expensive to buy the full pie, but it's SO delicious!

Even if you're not after this pie, you can still get other things in this bakery that will still give you that cooking show O-face (except this time it would be genuine).  If you see something that looks tasty and appealing to your senses, get it.  I'd almost guarantee that it will live up to every fan-tasty filled thought you would have about it.

Plus this bakery is 1/3 of the leg in the Bermseada triangle (get it?  Berm-SEA-da?) of my biggest weak points: gourmet pizza at Serious Pie, crab cakes and cocktails at Dahlia Lounge, and the triple coconut cream pie here.  Oh, Tom.  You complete me.

It's dangerous territory.  You've been warned.  Even so, it's worth the venture.  My significant other drove 4 hours to Seattle to buy me a whole pie for my birthday 2 years ago.  His sacrifice was greatly appreciated, and I did not let one single crumb of that pie go to waste.

Tom does publish his recipe, so if you're not in Seattle and want to give it a go: have fun!  Another food blogger put together a blog when she made Tom's recipe.  I've personally never tried it (though I've threatened to many times), so I really can't help you out if you have issues with it.  It does look a bit complicated.

Mary Cook's Blog - Tom Douglas Triple Coconut Cream Pie

I will say one thing: I see two ways to greatly increase the aesthetics and ease of making this pie.  There is a simple and cheap solution to forming pie crusts available on Amazon.  I seriously don't know how someone didn't come up with this idea years ago!

It's called a Pie Crust Bag.  Basically it's a clear round bag with a zipper along the side.  You just lightly flour it, close the zipper up, shake, toss your ball of crust dough in the center, zip, and roll it out until the dough fills up to the edges.  That's it!  They sell them in 11" and 14" sizes.  I have both, though I've only used the 11" one since I only have 9 inch pie dishes.  I don't know too many people who have 12" pie dishes (aside from Martha Stewart).  So if you're unsure of your pie dish size, go with the 11" one.  I have only found two down sides to these things:

1) Cleanup is kind of a pain since the butter, milk, and shortening in pie crust tend to get caked on the plastic.  Though it is much less of a pain than cleaning up after rolling out a crust the old-fashioned way!
2) Since the zipper doesn't fold on one side of the package, the edge of the crust will have a small line in it.  This isn't really a huge deal if you crimp my pie crust with a fork.

I also recommend getting a silicon pie crust shield to keep it from burning the edge of the crust.  The one I bought from Amazon worked really, really well.

Of course every pie-maker needs pie beads.  Sure, you can use pinto beans to hold down your pie.  Though really, if you're going to make lots of pies, just get the beads!  I put down a round circle of either parchment paper or aluminum foil on the bottom of the pie crust before putting the beads down.  I prefer using aluminum foil because I can press it on the bottom of the pie pan and form a nice round shape.  I then cut the foil around that circle, and voila!  When I'm done, I run the beads through a metal colander to cool them off before I put them back in a bag. 

I even included a handy little link for finding these items below. They're very affordable. If you mouse over the links, I included some helpful comments for each item. Enjoy!