For everyone in the Seattle area, Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream shop is opening today.
I am making the toppings for sundaes and splits, including hot fudge, butterscotch, vanilla bean caramel, and a rotating seasonal fruit compote, currently a luscious orange rhubarb.
Molly has sourced everything as locally as possible, with the cream itself coming from Snoqualmie [...]

I once read that concerning haute cuisine, texture is the final frontier. The showiest developments in cuisine lately have certainly been textural. While many of the new textures are coming from knowledge of hydrocolloids, old (like corn starch) and new, we can still be attentive and creative with our textures without specialty ingredients.
My [...]

Top chef brings a parade of amazing guest judges each season. Most I know by name, many I know by sight, all make me nod with respect.
But last night I just about jumped when they brought out Johnny Iuzzini.
Iuzzini is on my team, the dessert team. He is the pastry chef at Jean [...]

A student of writing learns early on to avoid using the same word too many times in a paragraph. Thus when writing about food, we look for various words to describe taste.
For example, I could write, “The strawberries I picked yesterday at Berringer farm tasted exactly like I remember them.”
The second sentence would avoid saying, [...]

I like to troll Craigslist and other job posting sites for pastry jobs.
Why?
I like to know where other pastry chefs work and who hires a pastry staff.  I have always done this, no matter how happy or unfulfilled I am at a job.   I look at the listings in New York, Chicago, Portland, and the [...]

It is a fact that color has a drastic effect on your perception of flavor. The information received from our eyes will lead us to anticipate a flavor based on the color of a food or beverage, and that initial assumption can over ride the information we receive from our taste buds and olfactory system.
At [...]

It’s no secret to those around me, I am hooked on Top Chef.
This season I have been invited by Leslie Seaton a writer for Buddy TV to comment on each episode for their website.  It was particularly fun this week as Wylie was the guest judge.
“Once again, Dana Cree, pastry chef at Seattle’s Veil restaurant, [...]

I have been in the public eye long enough to have met my critics.  Those individuals for whom my work does not only displease, but offends.
My first year at Eva, my use of huckleberries in February sent a customer into a snit.  “These taste as if they had been frozen, and that’s disgusting in and [...]

I have a question I haven’t been able to answer.
Is there anyone out there making their own bubble gum?  I can’t find any.
The closer it is to Seattle the better.
Is there a mom and pop  candy store out there with home made bubble gum?
A small family run producer mixing batches?
A tiny taffy shop hidden in [...]

The New York Times food section featured an article today about a growing trend in dining that eliminates the service staff.  This is nothing new if you have sat at the counter at a small sushi restaurant.  However, this intimate scenario has become increasingly popular in newer restaurants, exemplifying the shifting trend in the diners [...]