Choice Morsel

  • Choice Morsel: International Doughnut Culture, Part 7

    March 11, 2010 at 10:10 AM | Tracy Schneider

    Sometimes the doughnut you’re looking for is just a drive-thru away.

    When I returned from my first trip to Madrid, I searched high and low for churros con chocolate, to no avail. I had become addicted to that combo, and although I am not a morning person, I took to rising early on my vacation in Spain to seek out the country’s thick, pudding-like hot chocolate accompanied by its national doughnut, the churro.

    Churros are long, thin, deep-fried doughnuts, chewy on the inside and extra crunchy on the outside, thanks to the ridges formed when the pastry batter is pushed through a cookie-press-like gadget for churros, a churrera. The crisped edges make churros a perfect dipping food, but like traditional doughnuts in the U.S., they’re also perfect for stuffing, and that’s just how they’re sold in South America, filled with dulce de leche, chocolate or vanilla pastry cream.

    These days you can find churros in Seattle, thankfully, with chocolate, either drizzled with Valrhona as they do at Brasa or served with a cup of hot chocolate as they do at Barrio. But locating the stuffed version seemed out of the question until I was given a tip from a friend and discovered that filled churros were, in fact, right under my nose. They’re right under your nose too, no doubt, because Jack in the Box has more than one hundred outlets in Washington State, and they sell cinnamon sugar filled mini churros hot from the fryer. They’re not just conveniently located. They’re also finger lickin’ good.

    Above (from left): Churros drizzled with Valrhona chocolate sauce and served with whipped cream at Brasa, cinnamon and sugar filled mini churros from Jack in the Box, and churros accompanied by cup of Xocalati chocolate at Barrio. Photos by Tracy Schneider

     

    For more finger lickin’ good doughnuts from around the world, try French beignets, Polish paczki, Portuguese malasadas, Chinese saa jung and Greek loukoumades and Italian zeppole.

    Join us next week for the final installment of our international doughnut series, when Choice Morsel samples Filipino karioka.


     

  • Choice Morsel: International Doughnut Culture, Part 6

    March 4, 2010 at 1:01 PM | City Arts Online

    bomboline

    Italian doughnuts (top): Cantinetta’s bombolini with citrus confit; Tavolata’s zeppole with chocolate sauce,;
    (bottom) bomboloni from La Spiga; and Cicchetti’s ricotta zeppole filled with huckleberry sauce.

    Move over gelato, zeppole and bomboloni are crashing your party!

    written by Tracy Schneider

    When I was a student in Bologna, I’d walk to the post office almost every Saturday afternoon and use the international phones there to call my family in the U.S. On the way home, I’d go right past the gelato shop and make a beeline for BomboCrep, a local hangout that specialized in crepes and bomboloni. The Italian version of a filled doughnut, bomboloni are made from rolled yeast dough, deep-fried and then filled with delectable chocolate or vanilla cream.

    There’s no BomboCrep in Seattle, but you can still enjoy bomboloni, now that Cantinetta has added them to their dessert menu for the month of March. Cantinetta serves miniature bomboloni, called bombolini, made to order and stuffed with a mascarpone pastry cream. Warm and oozing on the inside with that decadent rich cream, these bombolini are also perfectly crisped on the outside and make a satisfying crunch when you take that first bite.

    la spiga's bomboloni

    If you find yourself in the unfortunate position of reading this in April, and Cantinetta has changed its menu, you’re not quite out of luck. Over the summer, La Spiga celebrates Ferragosto, an Italian holiday that takes place on August 15 with trays of bomboloni (above). And if you can’t wait until August, you can call the restaurant forty-eight hours in advance, whatever the month, and pastry chef Betsy Balog will make them just for you.

    While bomboloni are typical in northern Italy, zeppole are the doughnuts of choice in the South. Typically considered street food and traditionally eaten on March 19 for La Festa di San Giuseppe (Saint Joseph's Day), in Seattle you can eat zeppole — a ricotta version stuffed with huckleberry sauce at Cicchetti and an unfilled version served with chocolate sauce at Tavolata — everyday, but why not make reservations for March 19 anyway and celebrate like an Italian?   

    Our doughnuts of the world series continues next week, as we scour Seattle for Spanish churros.

     

    For more doughnuts from around the globe, try French beignets, Polish paczki, Portuguese malasadas, Chinese saa jung and Greek loukoumades.

    Photography by Tracy Schneider and Van Schilperoort


  • Choice Morsel: International Doughnut Culture, Part 5

    February 25, 2010 at 10:45 AM | City Arts Online

    Doughnuts and honey go hand-in-hand.

    written by Tracy Schneider

    Typical American doughnuts appear to have pledged themselves to maple syrup, either by way of the classic maple bar, or, more recently, through the ultra-hip maple bacon doughnut. But try doughnuts and honey together in one of these three ways, and you may be converted permanently:

  • Choice Morsel: International Doughnut Culture, Part 4

    February 18, 2010 at 9:00 AM | City Arts Online

    The beginning of the 15-day Chinese New Year festival was on Valentine's Day. Continue the celebration with a Chinese doughnut...or four...

    I didn't know Chinese cuisine included bread until I traveled through China in 1984 and discovered bao. In fact, doughy fried treats are not unknown to China, and even better, you can sample many of them here in Seattle.

    A medley of Chinese doughnuts
    (top) youtiao at Canton Wonton House; Wild Ginger Bellevue's     deep-fried steamed buns;
    (bottom) jin deui at Jade Garden; and saa jung from Mon Hei Bakery.

    (More after the jump.)

  • Choice Morsel: International Doughnut Culture, Part 3

    February 11, 2010 at 12:20 PM | City Arts Online

    Portuguese malasadas are a Hawaiian staple and a Mardi Gras tradition.

    text and photos by Tracy Schneider

    If you’re wondering just how a Portuguese doughnut became a Hawaiian specialty, you’re not alone. The explanation goes something like this:

    In the late 1800s, Portuguese workers from the Azores came to Hawaii to work in the sugarcane and pineapple fields. The children of these contract workers went into other fields (so to speak). One of them, Leonard Rego, worked in a large bakery in Honolulu before opening up his own small bakery, which he named Leonard’s.

    The bakery sold traditional American fare — cookies, cakes and pies — but shortly before Lent one year, Leonard’s mother persuaded him to make the Portuguese doughnuts called malasadas, a Fat Tuesday tradition much like Polish paczki. Needless to say, Leonard’s malasadas became a big hit, and the bakery, now a Hawaii institution, has been serving them for more than fifty years.


    Malasadas by North Shore Hawaiian BBQ

    Fortunately, you don’t need a ticket to Hawaii to enjoy these deep-fried puffs of dough tossed with sugar and served hot. In Seattle, North Shore Hawaiian Barbeque makes wonderfully crunchy malasadas from an old family recipe. They're available every weekend at brunch. But don’t be late! By noon the malasadas almost always run out.


    Malasadas by Kauai

    They’re gone by noon at the Kauai Family Restaurant in Georgetown also, where they serve malasadas on Saturdays. But even if you arrive too late for hot malasadas, you won’t have to leave empty handed. You can purchase a tub of the restaurant’s own batter, made with potato yeast, and make malasadas at home.

    We’ll be talking Chinese doughnuts next week. Didn’t know there were Chinese doughnuts? I’ve got four to share with you!

    Want more doughnuts now? Read all about beignets and the power of paczki. Or listen — Choice Morsel was recently featured on KUOW.

     

    Tracy Schneider, a “foodie” long before the term was coined, scours farmers markets, specialty food shops and out-of-the-way eateries for the choice morsel. She has eaten her way across Europe and Asia and now forages in and around the Pacific Northwest. Follow her weekly on the CAB and daily on Twitter.


  • Choice Morsel: International Doughnut Culture, Part 2

    February 3, 2010 at 1:03 PM | City Arts Online

    Discover the power of the paczki — available only two weeks out of the year.

    text and photography by Tracy Schneider

     
    William Leaman, owner of West Seattle’s Bakery Nouveau, bakes paczki.    

    If you popped into Metropolitan Market yesterday morning, you may have noticed a new selection of perfectly round, glazed and filled doughnuts, neatly arranged in the bakery case. If you passed them up only to return later to pick up a few, as I did, you’d have been disappointed. They had sold out hours earlier.

    Such is the power of paczki.

    Paczki (pronounced “pooch-key”) are Polish glazed and filled doughnuts that date back to the Middle Ages. Traditionally, they created a way for households to use up the sugar and fat in their cupboards before Lent, explains William Leaman, head baker and owner of West Seattle’s Bakery Nouveau. They also offered a way for bakeries to use up their candied fruits left over from Christmas baking. Chef Leaman’s recipe was passed down to him from a chef who made paczki from a family recipe that dated back to the 1930s.

    Paczki dough is much richer than a typical doughnut, and Bakery Nouveau’s version contains more egg yolks, more sugar, plus lots of candied orange peel. Each paczki is filled with the Bakery’s own luscious crémeux custard, be it chocolate or lemon, strawberry or raspberry, and then thickly glazed or covered in powdered sugar.

    While paczki are well known in the Midwest, where people buy dozens at a time to share, they only arrived in Seattle last year. Find them now at Bakery Nouveau and Metropolitan Market, but don’t tarry. They sell out in a flash, and they’re here for a limited time only.

     

    Tracy Schneider, a “foodie” long before the term was coined, scours farmers markets, specialty food shops and out-of-the-way eateries for the choice morsel. She has eaten her way across Europe and Asia and now forages in and around the Pacific Northwest. Follow her weekly on the CAB and daily on Twitter.

     

  • Choice Morsel: The recipe for Spring Hill Beignets

    February 2, 2010 at 8:46 AM | Bond H

    In last week's Choice Morsel, Tracy Schneider spotlighted six local beignets. This week, she scouts out the recipe for one so you can craft your own.


    Spring Hill beignets | photo by Tracy Schneider

    The Northwest beignets Mark Fuller created for the brunch menu at his West Seattle restaurant, Spring Hill, were inspired by the Portuguese malasadas popular in Hawaii, where he grew up. Chef Fuller has graciously agreed to share his recipe with us, which has been adapted for the home cook. —Tracy Schneider

    Spring Hill Apple Beignets

    Ingredients:

    2 cups all-purpose flour
    1 tablespoon sugar
    1 tablespoon baking powder

    1 teaspoon kosher salt
    2 cups milk
    2 egg yolks (from medium or large eggs)

    1 cup granulated sugar
    1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
    1 pinch salt

    3 Granny Smith apples

    Vegetable oil

    Directions:

    1. Mix the flour, 1 tablespoon sugar, baking powder, and 1 teaspoon kosher salt together in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Combine the milk and egg yolks in small mixing bowl. Stir wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Batter should be as thick as pancake batter — smooth, not lumpy.

    2. In a small bowl, mix together 1 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon cinnamon and a pinch of salt.

    3. Peel, then core the apples and slice out rings. Do this as quickly as possible so the apples don’t oxidize and turn brown.

    4. In a fryer or deep pan heat the oil to 325 degrees F. Dip the apples in the batter and fry until golden brown. Beignets will sink or float depending on the density of the apples. Be sure to fry them long enough to cook the batter all the way through.

    5. Remove from fryer and toss with cinnamon sugar mixture. Serve hot with vanilla crème anglaise.

     

    Check back weekly for more tasty discoveries from Tracy Schneider's Choice Morsel column.

     

  • Choice Morsel on International Doughnut Culture

    January 28, 2010 at 11:08 AM | City Arts Online

    A new weekly column that scours the Sound for the treats you crave (even if you don't know it yet)

    text and photography by Tracy Schneider


    French and Louisiana-style beignets have found their way onto menus in and around Seattle.
    (top, from left) Artisanal Brasserie, Spring Hill, Toulouse Petit; (bottom, from left) Pearl, Café Flora, Monsoon East.

    Ever since Jane and Michael Stern gave the nod to Seattle’s Top Pot Doughnuts, back in 2006, we’ve become known as a doughnut town, of sorts. It’s no surprise really. Vegans have been flocking to Mighty-O’s for egg and dairy-free doughnuts since early 2000, and Pike Place Market’s Daily Dozen Donut Co. has been a market destination all its own since 1989.

    But Seattle’s doughnut culture reaches well beyond the traditional American doughnut. Malasadas, loukoumades, karioka, churros — you can take a round-the-world tour without leaving the Puget Sound, and that’s just what I intend to do over the next few weeks. Won’t you join me (after the jump) for beignets?

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