Nosh Pit

Fourth of July Recipes From Seattle Chefs

Eight pro dishes to help you please everyone at the picnic.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Jun 28, 2011 at 02:34PM 0 Comments

Fourth of July: A day when people grill a lot.

Photo: panama-guide.net

So you’ve got cookout plans for the Fourth of July, do you? And you’ve got to feed those huddled masses. Perhaps the chefs of Seattle can help. I’ve amassed here some of their most picnic-worthy recipes for hosts and guests alike—all tested by Seattle Met’s illustrious recipe tester, Jess Thomson.

I hope you enjoy them—I know your Fourth friends will.

Grill inspiration comes to us by way of Joe Conrad’s recipe for grilled pork ribs with corn and apricot salsa. The Ventana chef is also generous with barbecuing tips, for instance: “Whenever you use a fast-cooking technique like grilling to prepare red meats and pork, bring the protein to room temperature first. Chilled meat may not get hot enough during the cooking process.”

If you’re all caught up in the yakitori trend, you are going to get way into Harold Fields’ traditional Japanese chicken-on-a-stick sauce. He runs a yakitori catering company called Umami Kushi, that’s how into skewered meats that guy is.

Josh Henderson of Skillet takes a decidedly laid-back approach to grilling—doing the prep for his porchetta sandwich before the party, so he can actually enjoy the event (read: drink more beer). When cooking for vegetarians, serve his lemon-fennel aioli with roasted or grilled veggies.

When you’re going to a ‘cue and asked to bring a salad, Bastille’s salade verte with hazelnuts is a good call. And most fresh peas will work well in this halibut salad from chef Dalis Chea of Fresh Bistro. Since fresh chickpeas are in season through August, you should also seriously consider Poppy chef Jerry Traunfeld’s chickpea salad. (It works great with canned chickpeas too.) It’s one of those preparations that’s deceptively simple—bring it if you want everyone to wonder how you suddenly became so cunning in the kitchen. Also: it would be amazing with barbecued chicken prepared tandoori-style.

Molly Moon’s honey-orange sorbet, made with cardamom and fresh ginger, would be refreshing after a feast of grilled meats, and even vegans can dig it. Almost as simple are Macrina’s oatmeal, apricot, and pecan cookies. And if there’s one thing in the world that is true it’s this: cookies are never the wrong thing to bring to a picnic.

Happy Fourth of July.

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Tags: DIY cooking, Cooking, Recipes, Barbecue, Fourth of July, Seattle Chefs

The Cookbooks of Our Lives: Fourth of July Edition

Martha Stewart’s pants inspire an indecisive cook to recreate the mac and cheese of her youth.

Posted by: Ariana Donalds on Jul 01, 2010 at 07:48AM 0 Comments

Baked macaroni and cheese.

Not everybody cooks, but everybody has a cookbook: The one you hid from your mom so she wouldn’t make that dreaded carrotloaf for supper, the one your sister splattered with flapjack batter the first time she was old enough to babysit.

In this series, Seattle Met staff share the cookbooks that have shaped their lives. First Betty Crocker helped arts editor Laura Dannen keep her relationship balanced. Then style editor Laura Cassidy shared some rare finds and senior editor James Ross Gardner saw his future in a single saucepan. Last time, restaurant critic Kathryn Robinson paid tribute to her mother with an inedible lasagne.

This week, just in time for the Fourth of July, nostalgia sends managing editor Ariana Donalds into the kitchen for homemade macaroni and cheese.

My relationship with cooking and food is fraught with indecision; it can take me longer to decide what to eat than to make the dish. And so cooking from scratch is something I am only occasionally inspired to do.

Most recently, I was inspired by the from-scratch queen Martha Stewart, who attended Good Housekeeping magazine’s 125th anniversary celebration last spring in shimmery lamé pants as though giving the world a sneak preview of her “Dancing with the Stars” audition. Those pants brought me back to the days of disco, when Hearst came out with the 1973 edition of the Good Housekeeping cookbook. The tome was, and still is, touted as a resource for beginning cooks. On special occasions such as Fourth of July barbecues and Thanksgiving dinners, my older sister and I would break out GH to help our mother cook. Mac and cheese was ALWAYS on the menu on holidays. And that was what Martha’s magic pants inspired me to make.

This is no ordinary macaroni and cheese. There is no squeezing of creamy cheese product or flicking of cheese powder remnants from a foil packet onto these semolina elbows. This is your mom’s mac and cheese, which takes hours to prepare because you’re making the rich béchamel cheese sauce with, that’s right, real honest to goodness cheese.

The nostalgia of preparing the dish is a huge part of the satisfaction I feel when I revisit this recipe. As a small child, I was trusted to take the caps off all of the seasonings and hand them to my mother to be added to the sauce. When I got a little older, and more coordinated, I started shredding the cheddar. As a preteen, I could fill the pot and boil the pasta; I could melt butter and toast seasoned breadcrumbs in a saucepan for the crunchy topping. (Tip: We mixed in half of the breadcrumbs with the drained pasta to keep it from sticking to itself, so the béchamel could more uniformly penetrate every pasta elbow nook and cranny.)

By high school, I chopped onions and garlic and could be trusted to slooooowly add milk to the béchamel. I was strong enough to drain the pasta and pour the cheese sauce from the heavy six-quart stock pot into the largest Corningware dish from our pantry. And by the time I graduated college, I was making the dish on my own. Now that I’m gainfully employed, I make it maybe once a year—and with as much butter and delicious, delicious cheese as are contained in this delightful dish, that’s probably just as well.

We quadrupled (yes, quadrupled) the recipe to feed our extended family and to ensure leftovers, because, truth be told, this mac and cheese is even better on reheat.

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Tags: Cookbooks, Cooking, Fourth of July, The Cookbooks of Our LIves, Good Housekeeping

Herbfarm Fourth of July

(Pssst: there’s still room at the supper table)

Posted by: Kathryn Robinson on Jul 03, 2009 at 06:00AM 0 Comments

Backyard barbequeing for the Fourth of July is so 2008.

Leave it to the professionals at the Herbfarm to cook up a good old-fashioned summer picnic—(replace frozen whats-it hot dogs with Mangalitsa Heritage-Pork dogs; turn in your Costco patties for Kobe beef sliders)—and you’ll still get to enjoy the Eastside’s largest fireworks display just ten minutes away at Marymoor Park. They’ll even arrange a ride for you and send you off with homemade caramel popcorn.

The Reds, Whites, and Brews Dinner (a four-course luncheon is already sold out) starts at 5:30 for $119/person, including alcoholic beverages.

—Karen Quinn

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Tags: The Herbfarm, Fourth of July