Go vegan! (briefly)

Yesterday Iris and I had a great visit to Pike Place Market. Our main goal was to get some mussels for dinner and check out the new bun bakery, and we were successful. Mostly.

Usually we buy from Pure Food Fish, but I figured mussels are mussels, so we bought from Pike Place Fish, the fish-throwing guys. The guy bagged up our mussels with a little ice and then–I don’t know how I didn’t see this coming–shouted “bag of mussels!” and flung the bag to the guy behind the counter, who caught it with a loud crack. “They must do this dozens of times a day,” I thought. “They wouldn’t have just broken a bunch of my mussels.” Of course, when we got home, there was a stunning level of mussel breakage. Moral: stick with Pure Food Fish.

The new bun bakery is the second location of [Belle Epicurean](http://www.belleepicurean.com/), the sticky bun artisans who started out at the University Farmer’s Market a couple of years ago and have now colonized downtown. I wrote about them for the Seattle Times. Their new Pike Place location, called Belle’s Buns, sells sweet and savory buns and coffee. It’s near the donuts, across from Delaurenti. Iris and I got a green apple bun, and Howard, one of the owners, gave us their new citrus bun to try. Laurie ate the citrus for breakfast, so I can’t comment on that, but the apple bun was very tasty and topped with a paper-thin apple slice. I was going to warn that it’s extremely sticky, but I guess it is a sticky bun.

Iris and I ate the bun while standing in front of the donut machine, which was probably a little rude. Someday I want to conduct an experiment and see just how long Iris will watch the donut machine before she gets bored. When I try to drag her away from it, she says, “Just one more.” She says this at least sixteen times before we actually escape.

I was ready to head home, but Iris reminded me, “Get some tomatillos.” So we popped over to El Mercado Latino and bought some. In the summer we get incredible yellow and purplish tomatillos from Alvarez farm at the farmer’s market, but winter tomatillos are still pretty good. Unlike tomatoes, tomatillos transport and hold quite well. As long as the tomatillos you find are firm and unblemished, go ahead and buy them.

They also sell tomatillos at my local QFC, but the turnover is too low. If they’ve gotten a recent delivery, the quality is fine, but they often sit around for a week and get a little shriveled and moldy. If your supermarket has the same problem, try asking when they get tomatillo deliveries. The other day Iris and I were at QFC and they had lady apples, something I had heard of but never seen. They’re tiny green apples, the size of large cherries. I don’t know what you do with them, though they seem to be a Martha Stewart favorite. Anyway, I showed one to Iris and asked, “What’s that?”

“Tomatillo?” she asked.

We brought home our loot and I made *moules marinières* and fried potatoes for dinner, the ones from Fine Cooking with smoked paprika. This was Iris’s first experience with mussels, and she enjoyed pulling them out of the shells more than actually eating them, but she did eat a few. I neglected the cardinal rule of mussels, which is to get the bowls really hot before serving, so they were not as good as they could have been.

Probably you’ve forgotten the title of this post by now amid the mussels and buttery buns and lard-fried potatoes, but we’re almost there.

I use tomatillos a few different ways–I’ve made a sauce for salmon and some good pork chile verde, but my far my favorite thing to do with them is make a simple roasted tomatillo salsa. The recipe is from Rick Bayless. To say this is the best salsa I’ve ever made would be understating it: this is the best salsa I’ve ever eaten, by a huge margin. You have to like things spicy and sour, though.

Obviously I’m not shy about using various animal products in my cooking, but there’s no denying that a big bowl of this salsa and half a bag of tortilla chips makes a completely satisfying vegan meal. And vegan cooking is a diversion in the same way lipograms are. (Lipogramming is writing with arbitrary letters of the alphabet omitted, like trying to write without the letter E. Like vegan cooking, it’s an interesting idea that gets old fast.)

I know chips and salsa doesn’t sound like a meal, but trust me, it’s easy to eat a large amount of this salsa. If you have a vegan friend coming over, go out tomatillo shopping.

I have another favorite vegan meal: peperonata con bruschetta, toasted rustic bread with stewed bell peppers (omit the pancetta for the vegan version, obviously). And possibly others that I haven’t noticed are vegan yet.

**ROASTED TOMATILLO-SERRANO SALSA**
Adapted from Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen

*This salsa has a short shelf life. By the end of the day after you make it, it’s over. Luckily, it won’t make it that far. Iris likes to eat this by dipping a chip, licking the salsa off the chip, and redipping. She’s not the first kid I’ve seen do so; once at a 2nd birthday party, I saw two boys stand next to the salsa bowl for twenty minutes, making it through a total of maybe four chips.*

1 pound tomatillos, husked and rinsed
5 serrano chiles
2 large cloves garlic, unpeeled
4 ounces chopped yellow onion
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1 heaping teaspoon salt
sugar to taste

1. Adjust oven rack to top position and preheat broiler. Place tomatillos on a foil-lined baking sheet and broil 5 minutes, then flip each tomatillo and broil 5 minutes more. Set aside to cool.

2. Heat a cast-iron or stainless pan (not nonstick) over medium heat. Add the garlic and serranos. Toast, turning occasionally. The chiles will take about 10 minutes and the garlic about 15 minutes. Transfer to a plate, and when cool, stem the chiles and peel the garlic.

3. Puree chiles, garlic, and tomatillos in the food processor until well mixed but a little chunky. Rinse onions in a strainer, then stir into the salsa along with cilantro, salt, and sugar. Go very easy on the sugar at first; you may not actually need any and probably won’t need more than 1/2 teaspoon.

I created a monster

Last night I was off [tutoring](http://www.826seattle.org), and I left Laurie and Iris with plenty of carnitas. Laurie told Iris she was going to heat some up.

> **Iris:** And some brussels sprouts.

> **Laurie:** No, just pork and tortillas tonight.

> **Iris:** And brussels sprouts!

In a few years when Iris decides she’s unwilling to eat anything other than cheese pizza, I’m going to make her read this over and over.

Laurie made some peas instead, and Iris pronounced them “too buttery.” I’m off to the store for more brussels sprouts.

Now, about those carnitas. They’re incredibly simple to make, and worth doing so frequently. I learned to make them from Jaymes, an [eGullet](http://www.egullet.org/) regular from Texas. Here’s a thread where she discusses her carnita technique in detail.

I should note that by taco-truck standards, these are fake carnitas, and real carnitas are more like what would be called pork confit in a fancy restaurant: pork poached in lard. But these are way easier to make at home. Here’s how I make them:

**CARNITAS**

2 pounds pork shoulder
Vegetables (see below)
Flavorful liquid (see below)
Salt
Salsa
Shredded cabbage
Tortillas

1. Cut the pork into small cubes. I generally aim for half-inch. Place in a saucepan with the vegetables, flavorful liquid and a sprinkle of salt.

2. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally, for two hours. Your goal is to get the pork tender and have the liquid evaporate at the same time. Feel free to increase or reduce the heat, partially cover, or add more liquid, as necessary. It’s not an exact science, and it’s hard to screw up.

3. Once the liquid is nearly evaporated, raise the heat to medium. Cook, stirring frequently, until the bottom of the pan gets a little encrusted and the pork a little crispy. Add salt if necessary. Serve with salsa, shredded cabbage, and warm tortillas. And brussels sprouts, obviously.

**Notes**

**Flavorful liquid:** Good choices here are a combination of citrus juice, broth, and something alcoholic. I usually go for the juice of half a lime and half a lemon, a bit of chicken broth, and a slug of tequila, rum, or beer. You don’t need to immerse the pork completely in liquid, because it will release a lot of liquid as it starts cooking.

**Vegetables:** Definitely onions and garlic (one medium onion is good for two pounds of pork). A minced poblano, chipotle (canned) or both. Herbs, especially Mexican oregano and cilantro, will not hurt.

Try, try again

There’s an oft-repeated canard about feeding kids that says you may need to offer a child a new food five or ten or fifteen times before they like it. I’d dismissed this as untestable and, well, a canard, but maybe I was wrong.

As I’ve mentioned, Laurie and I love brussels sprouts, and we always keep a bag on hand in the freezer for a quick vegetable side. Last night I made carnitas (which I’ll write more about another day) and finished off a bag of sprouts–I just halved them, browned them in butter, added a little chicken broth, and braised until tender, about ten minutes.

Whenever I make sprouts, I put a few on Iris’s plate, but I don’t expect her to eat them. Iris likes broccoli, but she sides with most two-year-olds against the majority of other green vegetables, unless you consider Veggie Booty a green vegetable. Perhaps this is an evolutionary imperative, since green vegetables are bitter, and bitter is the flavor of poison. Or maybe Iris has just internalized a cultural bias against vegetables from watching too much Spongebob.

In any case, last night she threw off the shackles and went to town on the sprouts. She ate them with her hands. She speared them with her fork. *She ate more brussels sprouts than tortillas or pork.*

Oops, I’m inadvertently rapping again. But I think an occasion like this demands the dropping of a few rhymes, don’t you?

Goin’ down to Red Line

Today Laurie and I packed Iris off to the park with my dad and did our taxes. When we were done, I called to check in:

> **Iris:** Iris eating Dorothys. And macaroni!

“Dorothys” is what she calls Goldfish crackers, because Elmo’s fish is named Dorothy. The macaroni, it turned out, was from a Guy Savoy recipe, leftovers from a potluck last night. It was made with an immoderate amount of cave-aged Gruyere, I am told. While Iris was gorging on three-star macaroni and its traditional fishy accompaniment, Laurie and I had lunch at Red Line.

Red Line is one of our neighborhood’s great hangouts. It’s in a large, bright space on a weird corner where Olive crosses Denny. At least two restaurants have failed there since we’ve been here, including the Hamburger Mary’s where we had lunch the day in 1995 when we came up to Seattle to look for our first apartment. When Red Line first opened, in 2004, the owners posted a manifesto on the wall indicating that they had performed an exorcism to drive off restaurant-killing demons.

In short, Red Line serves sandwiches, soups, and salads. American lunch. But they do so with an unusual level of skill. They make much better sandwiches than I do, because they’re always on the lookout for the unexpected ingredient that will elevate the sandwich to another plane. The chicken torta, which is what I had for lunch today, has chicken, green chile spread, and a couple of different cheeses, including feta. I don’t like feta, and surely it’s not a traditional part of a Mexican sandwich, but I decided it give it a chance, and it gives the sandwich a faint echo of brine that keeps things interesting, bite after bite.

Similarly, the Texan (my favorite Red Line sandwich) is a grilled sandwich with roast beef, red onions, cheddar, and horseradish. I’m not saying horseradish on a roast beef sandwich is a groundbreaking move, but it’s not how I would have done it. Too bad for me. The Texan also comes with a side of chipotle au jus. (Is it acceptable to use “au jus” as a noun now?) Laurie got the Texan today. She also had a cup of the pozole, a seriously spicy hominy soup.

That Red Line tries harder in the sandwich department isn’t just my imagination. One time, the owners, Katy and Derrick, sat down at the table next to me for a business meeting, and I overheard them discussing plans for adding a grilled cheese to the menu. They had a spirited debate over what cheeses and breads would create a world-class sandwich. They did end up putting grilled cheese on the menu (I don’t remember what components they ended up with, other than fontina), and Iris loves it.

Red Line used to be open in the mornings for coffee and scones, but they cut back to 11am-11pm a few months ago. They were losing money in the morning, probably because of people like me, freeloaders who would come in early, spend hours on the free wi-fi, and occasionally glance up at the beautiful sandwich cook who looked like Hilary Swank. To my credit, I sometimes ordered the frittata.

They’ve also done some cool promotions. For a few weeks before election day in 2004, all coffee drinks were a dollar on Tuesdays. Last year they did an Aloha Week celebration in honor of co-owner Derrick, who is Hawaiian. I got this awesomely messy beef teriyaki sandwich.

Also, the cookies are 50 cents, even the one with chocolate on the outside and a peanut butter center.

At one point, Iris became so enamored of Red Line that it turned into her nightly bedtime song for literally months. It changed every night, but here’s one version, with annotations.

*Goin’ down to Red Line*
*Gonna get some almond*1
*Almond will be hot*
*Dada will cool it*
*Gonna see the fire*2
*Fire burned the sandwich*
*Gonna see Ben*
*Drinking some beer*3
*Goin’ down to Red Line*
*Gonna bring my Iris*

1. Steamed milk with almond.
2. They have one of those ovens with fire in it. It’s not actually wood-burning, but it looks like a wood-burning pizza oven. They would never let the fire actually burn a sandwich, but it makes a good lyric. *My sandwich fell into a burning ring of fire…* etc.
3. Ben is a friend of a friend who came along to Red Line one night and got a beer. I also got a beer, but for some reason Ben drinking the beer made a huge impression on Iris. Did I mention Red Line serves beer and wine?

**Red Line**
1525 E. Olive Way
(206) 328-9559
11am-11pm

**Update:** Apparently Derrick is no longer associated with Red Line. Too bad.

Bathtime snack

Iris has these dinosaur decals that stick to the sides of the tub. She was sticking the pterodactyl and the triceratops together.

> **Iris:** Iris making a sandwich.

She looks at it.

> **Iris:** That sandwich too sudsy to eat.