Valentine’s Day is coming up and if you’re poor like me, homemade chocolate truffles are totally the way to go. Truffles make for a fantastic gift, a sweet finish to a romantic meal, or perhaps just a friendly distraction from an otherwise lonely holiday. Whatever your circumstance, truffles are a decadent treat and great way to enjoy all the deep flavors and dark nuances a quality chocolate has to offer.

Nowadays you can get a chocolate bar that’s been joined with all sorts of funky ingredients. Lavender, ginger, salt, or my personal favorite, bacon. Seattle organic chocolate company Theo, in my humble opinion, performs these marriages better than anyone. More...

If you’ve ever had hot toasted hazelnuts straight from the oven then you’ll understand how wonderful the unique taste and aroma can be.

While I love hazelnuts, I’m not really one for all the cakes, cookies, and other sweets they pop up in. I’m just not a sweet tooth, I guess. When it comes to dessert menus, I typically go for the cheese platter. So in an effort to recruit hazelnuts over to Team Savory, I began messing around and pairing them with cheese. I was reminded of this wonderful Spanish seafood dish I once had in a romesco sauce. Romesco is a garlicky puree of tomatoes, peppers and almonds. A traditional sauce of Barcelonan cuisine, it can be made with hazelnuts instead -- which is terribly convenient, seeing the Northwest (Oregon, particularly) produces nearly 99% of hazelnuts (or filberts) grown in the United States. Because local growers wait into the twilight of autumn, when hazelnuts fall on their own, what’s at the market today should be very fresh (and in the month of January, when few things are!). More...

This week, dear readers, I had the opportunity to journey to Scotland and spend a few days there.  I know that British cuisine is not exactly world-renowned for its succor, but that reputation is a bit ill deserved.  While traveling through Glasgow for a few days, I was able to not only dine quite well, but also to have one of the best meals of my life.

Though I may not be local, I can still eat locally.  While wandering down a lane with my friend Cassandra and my dear illustrator Mr. Groenink, we chanced upon a rather promising menu posted in the window.  Not only did the restaurant serve local food that was sustainably grown, they listed the actual farms certain ingredients were procured from.  Add to that the little business card quoting Virginia Woolf – “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well,” and we were decidedly intrigued enough to step inside. More...

Anytime I see Chanterelle mushrooms piled high into delicate heaps at the market, I immediately change the menu plan. Chanterelles posses a woody essence with apricot tones not unlike a fine glass of Chardonnay. These mushrooms play well with all sorts of preparations from slow braising in jus to sautéing in butter or simply steaming on their own. For this installment of Honest Eats, we’ll bring some Chinese flavor to Chanterelles and let their autumnal aromas come through uncompromised and make for an amazing dish. More...

The Dutch aren’t exactly revered for their food and cookery techniques.  The most popular dishes include variations on stamppotten – that is, mashed potatoes with different vegetables incorporated.  One of the most popular kinds of stamppot is a hutspot, which is mashed potatoes, carrots, and onions.  The dish is served all around town for free in Leiden to celebrate the end of the Spanish siege.  Other forms of stamppot include apples, sausage, bacon, or today’s star vegetable:  the humble kale, known as boerenkool in Dutch. More...

It’s easy to get too much of a good thing, especially if that good thing is food-related.  I know I’ve suffered severely from gluttony: becoming jittery after too much coffee or chocolate or sugar, feeling far too full after ice cream or pizza, burning my tongue on hot sauce…  However, I couldn’t resist 26 pounds of pears this weekend. More...

Honest Eats is our newest seasonal recipe blog by Eric Robertson of Souped Up Cafe.

Heirloom winter squash are to autumn what Rainier cherries are to summer. They are an emblem of October and we’re lucky here in Seattle to have access to so many varieties. Getting a hold of some locally grown pumpkins and cooking them up to highlight their natural, earthy sweetness will really bring a seasonal flair to your kitchen everyone can appreciate, not to mention a chance to show off your culinary prowess. More...

Greetings, dear readers, from the other side of the pond.  Three days into my one-month stay in Holland, I’ve had a fair bit of culture shock.  I’m not able to understand much of what I hear, I can’t ride a bike because every Dutch person is at least 6 feet tall, and traveling on the back of a bicycle so close to moving traffic can be somewhat unnerving.  Undoubtedly, however, one of the most exciting (and shocking) things about my trip has been the attention paid to Election Day here in the Low Countries. More...

Dear reader, this is my last green bite written States-side for the next month.  Starting now and through November I’ll be on a miniature tour of Europe, visiting Holland, France, Belgium, and Scotland.  Never fear, though -- I’ll stay in touch with plenty of recipes and lore from my travels.  For this week, though, my article will focus on preservation of American things, specifically fruits and vegetables. More...

Corn is the subject of quite a bit of controversy, of late.  Though we’ve long enjoyed this vegetable in a culinary sense, we’ve recently discovered we can make fuel from it, as well.  This is both a blessing and a curse to Zea mays. 

A staple in a number of diets, corn has been used to sustain Native American populations, been ground into flour for the ubiquitous Mexican tortilla, and been eaten off the cob by any  number of barbecuing Americans.  Unfortunately, in my opinion, we’ve started using this food crop to create ethanol fuel, making it more expensive to feed hungry mouths.  Some prominent researchers, most notably (at least to me, as I saw him lecture at my alma mater) David Pimentel, also claim that not only is ethanol not going to solve our fuel crisis, it’s going to exacerbate it. More...