Cooking of the Pacific Northwest

I love the food culture of the Pacific Northwest – fresh, local, sustainable and delicious! Needless to say, my friend Val and I jumped at the chance to take a Pacific Northwest cooking class.

The menu included:

• Butternut squash soup with apple-hazelnut phyllo triangles
• Dungeness crab salad with roasted shallots and pomegranate vinaigrette
• Fire-roasted oysters with wasabi-ginger butter

• Pan-roasted venison with cherry-port reduction

• Cedar planked salmon with maple-ginger glaze and cucumber-ginger vinaigrette

• Wild mushroom fricassee
• Roasted fingerling potatoes
• Oregon Pinot Noir and raspberry sorbet
• Nanaimo bars

Everything was delicious yet unexpected. And there was a LOT of butter (perhaps, the influence of a French chef!)

My favorite unexpected dish was the crab salad – it’s simple yet surprising so, I am sharing the recipe below. This recipe comes from Rover’s Restaurant in Seattle and Chef Thierry Rautureau.

You’ll need:

• 1 head garlic
• 2 shallots
• 3 T plus 4 t olive oil
• 8 slices baguette
• 1/4 cup plus 1 t pomegranate juice
• 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
• 6 oz Dungeness crabmeat
• 2 t minced chives
• handful chervil leaves
• 1 t extra virgin olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 375F. Trim a bit of the root end of the garlic, peel away some of the papery skin. Trim the root end from the shallots as well. Set the garlic and shallots in foil, drizzle with 2 t of olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Wrap up and roast until tender, about 1-1 1/4 hours.

2. Heat a large skillet over medium heat, add 4 t olive oil. Add the baguette slices and toast well on each side, about 3 minutes total. Set aside on a paper towel.

3. Combine 1/4 cup pomegranate juice and the vinegar in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and reduced to 2 T, 5 to 7 minutes. Take pan off heat and whisk in 3 T olive oil. Set aside.

4. Pick over the crabmeat to remove any shell or cartilage. Mix the crabmeat with the pomegranate vinaigrette and chives, and season to taste with salt and pepper (not too much). Toss well.

5. Squeeze roasted garlic and shallots from their skins and coarsely chop. Toss with the remaining t of pomegranate juice and season lightly.

6. To serve, spoon the garlic-shallot mixture onto the toasted baguette slices and top each with some of the crab salad. Top the crab with chervil dressed lighty with the extra virgin olive oil and a pinch of salt.