The review of Paseo in today’s Seattle Times is my last.

I’ve been reviewing for the Times since 2001. It’s been a treat, and I would say that even if it weren’t required by the restaurant critic code of conduct, which says that you can never complain about being a restaurant critic. If your friend was dating a supermodel, would you have time to listen to them complain about the supermodel’s bad habits? You see my point.

I’m quitting to spend more time writing about home cooking and related topics, and because ever since Iris came along, being home for dinner has taken on greater importance. My byline won’t be disappearing from the Times, by any means. For several years I’ve been writing for the paper’s Sunday magazine, Pacific Northwest, but now I’ll be appearing there close to once a month.

Because I am a geek, I made a spreadsheet of all my reviews and calculated a few statistics. The majority of my reviews were “Dining Deals,” where I assigned a rating of Recommended or Not Recommended. But for the purposes of geeking out more fully, I went back through and reclassified a few as Raves.

**MAMSTER’S INDEX**

Total number of reviews: **95**

Raves: **13** (14%)
Recommended: **71** (75%)
Not Recommended: **11** (12%)

Places that I know to be out of business: **26** (27%)
Number of times I reviewed a restaurant that replaced another restaurant I reviewed: **4**

Raves given to Asian restaurants: **10**
Raves given to non-Asian restaurants: **3** (two American, one Cuban)

Those rave reviews went to:

* Ezo (closed)
* China Village
* Dahlia Bakery
* Mandalay Cafe (closed)
* Blue Willow Tea Room (closed)
* Akasaka
* May
* Maekawa Bar
* Dinette
* Green Leaf
* Salima
* Jack’s Tapas
* Paseo

Number one favorite: **Dinette**
Runners-up: **Green Leaf, Ezo, May**

Finally, now that I’m no longer a restaurant critic, I’m allowed to have my likeness appear in the media.

(photo by [Lara Ferroni](http://www.cookbook411.com))

You know, when you think about it, the word “nectarine” probably sounded pretty stupid when the fruit was first introduced.

A couple of years ago I gave up on fava beans. Don’t get me wrong, I love the things, even without the usual accompaniments (cue _Silence of the Lambs_ joke), and I will eagerly order them from a restaurant menu.

But the shelling, my god, the shelling. First you take the beans out of the pods. (Once, while doing this, I opened a pod and found no beans but a huge green caterpillar. This probably contributed to my inclination to leave fava beans to the experts.) Then you blanch the beans and peel each individual bean. Then you cook them again and hope that you got good ones, rather than bland, overgrown ones. It’s not a bean, it’s a psych experiment. I failed.

After my breakup with favas, I took up with a new bean. It’s called the cranberry bean, or sometimes just a shelling or shell bean. It’s extremely easy to shell–just zip the shell off and there’s nothing else to peel. The beans inside are lovely and speckled, although the color fades to gray when you cook them.

The taste is nothing like favas–it’s like pinto beans, but more so. And they’re done in twenty or thirty minutes instead of two hours. You can boil them up and dress them with olive oil, salt, and pepper and you’re set, or use them however you’d use cooked dried beans.

And they’re only available at farmers markets. Sorry if I sound like an ad for the farmers market junta lately; it’s a seasonal ailment that wears off around November, at which point I start pining for the return of the farmers market.

I gave Iris the leftover crispy duck leg (which I recrisped in a pan before serving), and Laurie and I went out to dinner at Eva, a neighborhood restaurant in the Tangletown neighborhood. I was after the Market Menu, a three-course prix fixe featuring many ingredients from the U District Farmers Market.

For me, It’s always a special treat not to have to choose from the menu, which is why I pushed the regular menu aside without even looking at it. This is part of the appeal of the underground restaurant, I think–aside from the illegal aspect, which is an undeniably delicious sauce, there’s no opportunity to think wistfully about what you could have ordered. I understand waiters at Lutèce used to take advantage of this as well: they’d say, “Tonight, the chef would like to make you…” as if André Soltner had personally psychoanalyzed you and found you to be a turbot kind of person.

With Sunday’s market menu I hit the jackpot. Corn chowder with Nueske’s bacon. Roast duck with fresh shelling beans, broccolini and carrots. Poached peaches with buttermilk panna cotta. I really *am* that sort of person.

Yes, Iris was pleased to hear that I also had crispy duck leg for dinner. The market menu is served on weekends for at least a few more weeks. Check it out.

**Eva Restaurant & Wine Bar**
2227 N 56th St
Seattle, WA 98103
(206) 633-3538

Last year I wrote an article about duck legs. Here it is. In the article I pointed out that duck legs are economical, relatively easy to buy, and delicious. In conclusion, I said, you should eat them often, like my family does. Iris, who was about 11 months old at the time I was writing, was particularly fond of them.

While testing recipes and otherwise researching this article, you could often find a dozen duck legs in my freezer. Naturally, by the time this article was published, we were sick of duck legs and didn’t eat them again for a year. I assume this is often true when you read an article on a particular topic. Like, after Pitchfork puts together their annual best-of list, they probably spend January listening to nothing but Bob Seger and the Three Tenors. And it’s easier to burn out on duck legs than the Arcade Fire.

Anyway, yesterday I was at the U District farmers market and loaded up on green beans, peaches, Alden Farm potatoes, huckleberries, and other stuff that I can’t remember because I already ate it. Walking back to the bus I thought, hmm, potatoes…green beans…DUCK LEGS. So I stopped at University Seafood and Poultry for four duck legs. There should be some hip drug slang for requesting four duck legs, like a “quad” or a “fo-pack”.

I took the duck legs home and prepared them according to Mark Bittman’s “crisp-braised” method. If you make this recipe, and I recommend it, don’t bother with the vegetables, which are too braised out to eat by the end and do very little for the flavor of the duck. Use some good broth or a broth and wine combo, serve vegetables on the side, and consider making a sauce. I made potatoes fried in duck fat and green beans blanched and marinated in lemon juice and olive oil.

Oh, there was another inspiration for this dinner. The other day at the park Iris grabbed one of those climbing structure steering wheels and announced that she was driving to Lark, which is a great Seattle restaurant. (She’s never been there.) I said, “Here we are at Lark! Try the crispy duck leg,” which is indeed something Laurie and I have eaten at Lark. Iris became mildly obsessed with the idea of crispy duck leg.

So rather than shred the duck meat for Iris, as I would normally do, I just gave her a whole drumstick to chew on. She needed a little help, but she ate the entire thing. Then her friend Sam rolled by in his stroller, as he often does during dinner, and she waved her drumstick at him.

The moral of the story is, eat duck legs while listening to the Arcade Fire, and watch out for those tenors.