Adriana Janovich: Favorite stories of 2015
French macarons and madeleines, a crown roast of pork, nettle pesto and soup, cattail risotto, cochinita pibil, banana pancakes, a fig frangipane tart, chocolate-bourbon cake, beer popsicles.
These are just a few of the dishes and desserts I made or ate – or made and ate – and wrote about this year. They were all fun, but some were more fun – or more meaningful to me – than others.
Here, in chronological order, are a few of my own favorite food stories from 2015.
1. Mac ‘n’ Cheese, Please: Local chefs put a gourmet spin on comfort classic you loved as a kid
Most recipes start with a basic roux - butter and flour - to which milk or cream is added for béchamel. Mixing in cheese makes a mornay sauce.
Mom skipped these steps. She didn’t bake her macaroni and cheese nor top it with bread crumbs. She just boiled pasta on the stovetop, then stirred shredded cheddar into the warm shells or elbows until it melted, then called it good.
Even though it was elementary, it never, ever came out of a box. Boxed macaroni and cheese was a discovery made during early teenage baby-sitting jobs.
Macaroni-and-cheese is a staple of an American childhood, and Mom made the dish with exactly two ingredients. When I was older, I learned there are other ways. Many. Other. Ways.
Local chefs shared recipes for this story, which ran in winter when we crave hearty, belly-warming dishes. One of the best parts of reporting it: trying a bite – or two – of each of them.
It sounds counterintuitive: ice cream in winter. Coming in from the cold to consume something colder. Adding more frozen to the already freezing.
At a time when there’s snow on the ground - or, at least in the mountains near town - and most are trying to warm up with hearty soups and hot cocoa, going out for ice cream seems almost unnatural.
“It’s like you’re breaking the rules,” said Tom Purdum, owner of Brain Freeze Creamery.
After all, the creamy, cold treat and its relations - frozen yogurt, sorbet, sherbet, gelato - are synonymous with summer.
But Purdum and other local ice cream shop owners like him want to remind ice cream lovers: “We’re here. We’re open.”
So, “Why not?”
Seasonal flavors draw in some customers, but ice cream shops are pretty quiet places when temperatures drop below freezing, or – like this week – into the teens. Might just be a perfect time to pay a visit. Proprietors will probably be very happy to see you. Maybe they’ll even have some kind of winter special.
Drinking and discussing go on as long as they have to - usually long enough to sample 1- or 1.5-ounce pours from three or four bottles. But there’s another rule, and it’s perhaps the most important: don’t get drunk. This isn’t because there’s a Spokane police officer in the club, but because inebriation isn’t the point. … The mission is sophisticated but not stuffy: try whiskeys in the company of other enthusiasts - and enjoy both. Whiskey club is as much about the camaraderie as it is about the distilled spirit.
I learned of Spokane Whiskey Club by accident. For some job-related reason, I was Googling “whiskey” and “Spokane,” and the club’s website appeared. Within minutes I sent an email.
I don’t remember if I invited myself or if I waited for an invite, but I ended up spending two evenings with the group: one for a monthly club meeting and another for a tasting that was open to non-members. I love writing about community – where people find it or how they create their own – and nothing brings people together quite like food and drink – in this case, whiskey with a side of bread and butter.
At some point, I was declared – or maybe I declared myself – an honorary member of the club, which doesn’t charge dues but does cap membership at eight. I haven’t been back since (uh, guys?), but was inspired to help start a local Women Who Drink Whiskey group. We’re much more informal. In fact, I’m not sure we have any rules at all.
4.Kitchen Disasters: Catastrophes readers lived to tell about
Whether it ended with a trip to the emergency room, flames or merely a close call, most cooks have experienced some sort of disaster.
Many are the result of human error: falling asleep, forgetting about the pan on the stove or the roast on the counter, getting distracted by a favorite video on MTV. Funny or frustrating or both, they’re likely experiences you want to forget but very well might remember forever.
This story was inspired by the time I tried to make French onion soup by simply boiling onions and the Easter ham I glazed with honey and cooked with pineapple – right along with the vacuum-sealed plastic wrap I had failed to remove. It was also inspired by several bags of giblets I couldn’t find on several Thanksgivings until after the turkeys had been basted with bourbon, roasted and carved as well as the horrid, opaque pink “sauce” I made from flour, pan drippings and, for some reason, raspberry balsamic vinegar.
I went to journalism school twice – first for undergrad, and then for graduate school. But I’ve never been to culinary school. Like many readers of The Spokesman-Review Food section, I’m a home cook. Most of what I’ve learned in the kitchen has come from experimenting. I love cooking and trying new things in the kitchen.
But I’ve had a few mishaps, which – as embarrassing as they are – I shared. And, for this project, I invited readers to share their kitchen disasters, too. The response was phenomenal. I received too many emails and handwritten letters to print. I’m hoping for a similar response in 2016, when I’ll be asking readers to share their most romantic meals, just in time for Valentine’s Day.
5. Greek Strategies: Tradition, repetition are key components behind annual festival
Backs bending, hands kneading, pins rolling. They’re getting into the groove, repeating the same movements until the flour is gone and the last bit of dough is folded and fried.
These are the same motions that many of their mothers made - and their mothers before that - across an ocean, several decades and a couple of continents.
Three weeks before their famed Greek Dinner Festival, the women of Spokane’s Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church - and a few of the parish’s men - make the same beloved pastry that they or their forebears have been making for the last 80 years. … This one, for diples, is deep-fried, honey-drizzled, cinnamon-sprinkled and nut-covered.
Prep for the annual Greek Dinner Festival starts in summer, and I dropped by the church basement a couple of times to watch volunteers at work, assembly line-style, making dozens upon dozens of diples. The fried, honey-coated pastries are a favorite at the fest, and it’s easy to taste why.
But it might have been even more fun to talk with old-timers about the recipes and event, its history and the immigrant families who founded the parish. Marina Plastino was 10 when the dinner started. A highlight of our interview was seeing photos of Marina dancing at her 90th birthday party.
She was popular and trusted, a confidant for Inland Northwest brides and housewives to turn to when they needed help.
With holiday dinners, drinks and decorations. With menus and games for children’s birthday parties. With any kind of domestic dilemma in the era before microwaves, America’s Test Kitchen, iPads and the Internet’s instantly searchable recipes.
Dorothy Dean was reliable and reachable, practical and economical, an expert who seemed more like a surrogate mom or grandmother than a series of newspaper editors.
Women who headed The Spokesman-Review’s Dorothy Dean Homemakers Service used the alliterative pseudonym for nearly 50 years.
Many readers believed she was real, and decades later, they still miss her. They call the newsroom, looking for replacement recipe leaflets. They continue to treasure her recipes, bound in worn, forest green, three-ring binders that are often taped together to keep the Christmas goose, sherried Cornish game hens or Patio Lickin’ Chicken from falling out.
For this collaboration, I asked readers to submit old favorite Dorothy Dean dishes in need of a modern make-over. Local chefs volunteered to do the updates, putting personal and modern twists on the recipes, some of which were more than 50 years old. It was so fun and interesting to see their creativity in the finished products. Clover even put its contribution on the menu as a special.
7. Just Don’t Ask ‘Y’: Local lunch club, still reserved only for Lindas, celebrates 10 years
No can do, Chloe. Claire, you can’t come, either.
If you’re an Olivia, Sophia, Sasha, Malia or Mia, you are not on the list. It’s a very short list.
This is a very exclusive social club. The rules are simple but strictly enforced: Only Lindas allowed.
That’s L-I-N-D-A Linda - not L-Y-N-D-A Lynda.
There are no special circumstances for Melinda or Belinda, Rosalinda, Lindalee, Lindalou - or any other name with the Linda lettering in it.
Linda Shane will be polite but firm. She won’t let them attend Linda Lunch.
Normally, I wouldn’t be invited to Linda Lunch. My name isn’t Linda, and that basically breaks the club’s only rule. There was no time for lunch for me anyway. I was too busy meeting so many Lindas who were so proud of their names and their group, founded 10 years ago by Linda Shane in North Idaho. Maybe I’ll get to go back in another decade for the 20-year anniversary follow-up?
8. A Polish Treat And Tradition: It isn’t Christmas without Grandma’s angel wings Babcia’s Chrusty
The powdered sugar melts in your mouth as you bite into the blistered, fried pastry dough.
Slightly sweet with a satisfying crunch, chrusty are typically served at Christmastime, Easter, weddings, birthdays, other special occasions and, sometimes, just coffee.
Grandma made dozens at a time, storing the cookies in 3-pound, metal coffee cans. At Christmas, she put them in cardboard Quaker oats containers, which she covered with wrapping paper and gave away as gifts - mostly to in-laws and granddaughters’ boyfriends.
They never did last long. (The cookies, that is.)
My Polish grandmother is nearly 87 and doesn’t bake or cook like she used to. Problem is no one else in my family does either. So I’ve been trying to replicate her recipes while she’s still here to give me tips and advice about how to make them like she did.
Most of her recipes aren’t written down, which was particularly difficult when trying to figure out her pierogi. These chrusty weren’t as hard and didn’t take as long.
Next year, I’m trying her rogaliki. Also on the list: golabki, kolduny, kluski and babka.
But, I think I’m going to skip the flaczki.