Lunch at Lowells

What would a Pike Place blog be without posts about Pike Place? When M and I went to the market to pick up ingredients for this week's recipes we decided to stop by Lowells and have lunch. For those who haven't been there in a while, Lowells is located in the upper floor of the market and is generally a place you either work hard to get into or simply are pushed into. The near-constant stream of humanity shuffling along the main market corridor will either block your entrance or shove you right in. Once inside you'll notice a cafeteria-style counter oddly bereft of food in front of booths sporting first class views of Elliot Bay. Signs will tell you to order first at the counter and then have a seat after which servers will magically find you and deliver your food.
What is really interesting about Lowells is that a steep staircase runs along one side of the restaurant and provides access to the second and third floors of the restaurant. Even if you walk up to an upper floor the servers will come, they will find you, they will serve your food.

The second floor is where the magic happens and is my favorite. It is dark and atmospheric, featuring dark wood tones and high booths around the outside. Also, a bar sits squarely in the middle of it all taking up about a third of the total floor. Oh yeah, it also has great views of the water.

M and I dodged the wait and snagged two stools at the bar. We struck up a conversation with a vendor from Constantino’s Produce. He told us about his 14 years of working the market while he cheered on the Huskys as they played USC on the bar tv. It seems that over the years he tried many times to find work outside the market but failed. I'm still not sure if it speaks of the positive power of the market or the evil side, like The Firm or something. Either way he finished up his PBR and hustled off to face the "cattle herd" of tourists who visit his booth.

The bartender revealed that he was a huge football fan and even coached at Whidbey Island High School. He winced at the tv as the dawgs took their knocks and then took the opportunity to tease two WSU fans who unwisely wore their crimson and gray into the bar.

Lunch was served and was absolutely fabulous. I had the seafood plate with grilled salmon, prawns, and a crab cake and broccoli and rice for sides. The salmon was delicious with subtle seasoning allowing the salmon's flavor to come through, same for the prawns. For me the rice and crabcake were the stars of the plate however. The crab was very fresh and the cake was not overly oily. A house cocktail sauce added a fair amount of heat. The rice appeared unassuming but was buttery and spicy. I washed it down with a glass of Georgetown Brewery's Mannys.

There's sweets in the house.

Recipe 3 - Breads - Strawberry-Nut Bread

The best part of this project is that I usually don't have sweets in the house - sweet breads or otherwise - so it is quite unusual to have Strawberry-Nut Bread around. I'm particularly looking forward to the cakes and other treats in the Desserts chapter. Yum smack.

The Strawberry-Nut Bread did not disappoint. I did make a substitution that is noteworthy. The recipe calls for 1.25 cups vegetable oil and I just couldn't bring myself to use that much oil. I am not under any delusion that the recipes in this book are low fat but I wouldn't be able to actually consume any of the bread knowing that there was that much oil. A quick and easy substitution that lowers the fat but still preserves the moistness is to substitute applesauce for the oil. I, of course, accidentally picked up sweetened apple sauce and then forgot to reduce the amount of sugar that I added. Woops. It actually was fortuitous forgetfulness, though, because it worked out to have the appropriate level of sweetness.

J and I will actually head down to Pike Place Market this weekend for some ingredient shopping and hunting around for the stores and restaurants that we've cooked from so far. On the list are the Biringer Farm Store (existed as of 1992), LoPriore Bros. Pasta Bar & Eatery, and more!

Mushroomy

Recipe 2 - Sauces, Relishes, and Dips - Marinara Vegetable Sauce

This is a great vegetarian sauce that I put over pasta that got the reaction, "mushroomy." Indeed, it does include a pound of mushrooms, which is perhaps more mushroom than I would ordinarily use. Seafood can also be added for a more sophisticated version, but I was feeling veg so excluded sea creatures this time around.

There is an abundance of leftovers -- recipe makes 8 cups of sauce -- so both J and I will be having pasta time in our cubes tomorrow. For the effort and investment, though, this is a tasty and economical dish that I would make again.

Starting out with a tough one.

Recipe 1 - Beverages - The Perfect Cup of Coffee

Usually when I brew coffee, I'm bleary eyed, unhappy to be awake, and even more unhappy about heading off to work, which is where I'm usually headed. All this sleepiness and unhappiness doesn't provide a lot of motivation for measuring, a key ingredient to the perfect cup of coffee. In fact, I tend to pour some water into the coffee maker until it looks right, in other words how many cups I'll need to make it through the day in a coherent manner. The next step is to pour ground coffee into the filter until it also looks right. According to the trusty Guide, though, this is not the way to end up with a consistent and tasty cuppa joe.

And it's true, sometimes it doesn't end up tasty. Sometimes, it ends up so thick that I have to chew and other times it ends up so thin it doesn't do the job. Yet, on special mornings, the planets align and my guesstimation results in the perfect blend, which is all the more meaningful because it occurs as if by chance and as a result of my wherewithal. Those are the days that I know will be great.

This morning, though, I measured. I gave away my daily magic eight ball out of dedication to this project. For those also new to this whole measuring thing, the ideal ratio is 1 tablespoon ground coffee per 6 oz. water. A perfect and consistent brew every time. Maybe overrated, maybe less interesting than rolling the dice, but tasty reliability nonetheless.

The project begins.

So, I'm not going to lie. J and I went to see the movie Julie & Julia last evening and this is one of many derivative blogs that are going to try -- and fail -- to duplicate the magic. With that said, it's still good incentive to work one's way through an entire cookbook -- something I've never done before -- and learn something along the way. Plus, cooking and eating is something that, try hard as one might not to do so or to do less of, has to be done on a daily basis. This seems like fair fodder for a project and a way to make things a bit more interesting.

After much debating, we have decided to select a book out of our small cookbook library to use as the basis of this project: Pike Place Market Cookbook, 1992, Sasquatch Books. There are many reasons to select this book: (1) Pike Place Market is a top destination and a place that I enjoy going to even after living in Seattle nearly a decade and despite the dense population of tourists most of the year, (2) it is a treasure trove of fun and interesting ingredients and restaurants to which we have easy, year-round access, (3) we already own this book thanks to a wedding gift from a wonderful couple several years ago, and (4) we've only cooked a few recipes out of the book so most of the recipes will be new to us.

There are 154 recipes in the book, breaking out into the following categories:

Appetizers = 10
Soups & Salads = 15
Vegetarian Entrees & Side Dishes = 24
Entrees = 23
Seafood Entrees = 13
Local Chefs Cook at the Market = 6
Desserts = 27
Breads = 9
Sauces, Relishes, & Dips = 15
Beverages = 12

This is a reasonable number of recipes but still a big project, all said and done. J and I will trade back and forth writing about where we go in Pike's Place Market, how the time in the kitchen goes, and of course how it all turns out.