Triumph! Last night we at outside again. It took a few extra layers, but the sunlight was delicious. Also delicious? Planked salmon, grilled asparagus and an oyster experiment. There’s no real recipe, but here’s a rundown:

Soak a cedar plank for a couple of hours
Drain a pint of local oysters
Toss with olive oil, grated garlic, lots of chives and a spoon of chili sauce (I used my new obsession yuzu kosho, which tastes like feisty sunshine). Let sit around while the grill heats up. Heat the plank up on the hot grill. Ten minutes later, lay those oysters out on the plank and cook till just firm, turning once. (about 7 minutes)

You can skewer the oysters and cook them directly on the well oiled grate. I tried this too, and it made pretty grill marks, but we preferred the moister planked oysters.

In light of the recent New England Journal of Medicine story, which concluded that the Mediterranean diet significantly cuts the risk of heart disease and stroke, Marcie Sillman and I had a great talk about the diet today on Weekday.  Of course there wasn’t enough time to exhaust the subject: I’m not sure I could ever tire of the pleasures of vegetables and olive oil and glorious beans.  If you’ve read about the recent studies of the diet, and want to explore how to pull it off in your own kitchen, here are a handful of essential cookbook writers to know:

Paula Wolfert is the doyenne of American Mediterranean experts, and her Morocco and the South of France is essential. The book that most opened my eyes to a new world of cooking, though was The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean, which introduced the foods of countries like Greece, Turkey, Georgia, and Syria to my kitchen.  One key component of the Mediterranean diet is lots of legumes and nuts: Paula’s recipe for White Bean Parsley and Onion Salad (with walnuts and pomegranate seeds) gives you both in one easy-to-make ahead salad.

Claudia Roden Born and raised in Egypt, Roden is the British counterpart to Wolfert, and her New Book of Middle Eastern Food gives you personal purchase on the lemon and garlic scented foods of the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean. Among the official Mediterranean Diet’s main prescriptions is to increase (greatly) the amount and variety of vegetables on your plate. Rodin is a great guide to lesser known vegetables, and also gives you full permission to be practical to use frozen artichokes in her incredible tagine of artichokes with preserved lemon and honey.  Not all veggies stand up well to freezing, but when they do, take advantage!

Yotam Ottolenghi I haven’t been able to hide my food-crush on the British-Israeli restaurateur because his cookbooks take the foods I love to cook and amplifies them: more lemon, more herbs, more textures, more color, more flavor! Jerusalem is both a cookbook and a wonderful study of the multicultural metropolis and the subcultures that swirl through it. One other aspect of the Mediterranean cuisine is the frequent use of sofrito, olive oil cooked onions and/or garlic then simmered with tomatoes. Try Ottolenghi’s tomato couscous for a simple, essential taste of just how good that can be.

If you want to marry the theory on the Mediterranean diet with the practice, pick up a copy of Nancy Harmon Jenkin’s Mediterranean Diet Cookbook. Married to a foreign journalist, Jenkins spent years living in Europe, observing the food culture up close, and while she writes with nutritional pragmatism, she also conveys the intense pleasures of the Mediterranean table.

And finally, don’t overlook the work of Diane Kochilas on Greek food; very frequent consumption of fish is one of the diet’s main components, and there’s no place like the crenellated shorelines of the Greek coast to develop seafood recipes. Her Glorious Foods of Greece is intensely regional, and it’s filled with seafood ideas, like  sardines, butterflied and grilled with olive oil and oregano, just like they do in Thessaloniki.

I think the redesign of Sunset magazine looks smashing, and this month’s food issue is packed with informative pieces on international herbs, shopping at Mexican grocery stores, and oh, look there’s one (by me!) on home-cooked recipes from Ba Bar/Monsoon owners Eric and Sophie Banh. The Banhs have really helped change the face of Vietnamese cooking in Seattle and the West at large. They push diners to dive deeper and deeper into traditional fare, and they also run Northwest ingredients through a Vietnamese filter, creating something that’s new, but still tied to their grandmother’s apron strings. I was sad that Sunset didn’t have room in the magazine to run the congee recipe Eric gave me, but here it is online. Try it!

I’m officially finished with Bon Appetit’s Food Lovers Cleanse for this year, but it was a tremendous success both personally and for a crew of dedicated readers who joined in the healthy cooking with me. I’m ready to keep some of those good habits with me for a while. Thank you all for the company! Best wishes for a happy and healthy new year, and keep me posted on new healthy food discoveries along the way.

Every year at this time, I embark on a two week home-cooking, healthy eating program with Bon Appetit called The Food Lover’s Cleanse. Back in the fall, I wrote recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks, and now, along with bonappetit.com readers, I’m cooking my way through them again, and writing about my experiences each day. I’d be thrilled if you’d join me for some or all of the program, which is  about finding great flavors from healthy foods, not deprivation.

One of the great pleasures of popping in on KUOW’s Weekday every
Thursday is that I get to recommend a cookbook every week. I love eating out,
but home cooking is still the heart of my diet, and I love to be inspired by
other cooks and chefs working the world over. For me, cookbooks remind me of
how little I still know about food, and how much fun it can be to chase more
knowledge.

Like fancy olive oils and chocolates, (hint!) cookbooks are an indulgence that we might not purchase for ourselves–the very best kind of present. And so here are several recommendations for cookbooks that might make great
gifts for your loved ones in these last few days of Chanukah or when Christmas
rolls along.  Enjoy my recommendations, but remember that browsing is the best way to discover an unexpected new cookbook:  get over to your favorite bookstore (I recommend both Book Larder and Elliott Bay) and get lost among the baking books and the chef memoirs.

For the young apartment dweller:

The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook

By Deb Perelman

Deb Perelman’s blog is a terrific source for recipes and
prose—her cooking is rooted in the real world (tiny apartment kitchen, husband,
kid) but doesn’t compromise for the dreary or the obvious. And her headnotes
and essays are funny too, filled with odd unshakable cravings for pie or
fritters as they are. Her recipes are very approachable, but worldly recipes,
with a big emphasis on vegetables, though by no means health food-y. Look for
things like roasted cumin chickpeas with tahini sauce, devilled eggs with crisp
jamon and crushed marcona almonds, mussels served with a clever twice cooked
method for oven fries.

For the world traveler.

Naomi Duguid

Burma: Rivers of Flavor

Burma is by Naomi Duguid, co-author of  Hot Sour Salty Sweet, is one of the greatest
practitioners of National Geographic-style of cookbook writing—lots of
photos, ethnographic info worthy of a scholarly book, maps, and just a little
adventure thrown in. Burma is a little smaller than the coffee-table sized books
she wrote with her ex-partner Jeffrey Alford, Burma opens us up to a world of cuisine just as a country is becoming more open again. Burma’s food is fascinating because of all the
cultures, indigenous and neighboring (eg China, India, Laos, Thailand) that
intersect in the kite-shaped country. Duguid’s incredible location photography
and intermittent essays bring the experience of Burma to life. As with Jerusalem
from Ottolenghi—this year’s essential cookbook, here’s a new way for
cookbooks to explore a place—beautiful pictures and prose, but not such a precious
book that you need to keep it out of the kitchen.  Burma has a great introduction to easy to make
pantry basics like fried shallots, and red chile oil, roasted chickpea flour. Recipes
include succulent grapefruit salad with fried shallots, lemongrass chicken soup
with lime leaves; sweet-tart pork belly stew, with hibiscus; and amazing noodle
dishes.

For the conscientious carnivore

Bruce Aidells
The Great Meat Cookbook

I get a lot of people asking me about how to cook meat, and
for them, I’d recommend Bruce Aidells’ Great Meat Cookbook. You’ll get photos
of cuts, basics on doneness for different kinds of meats, information on more
sustainable meat options like grass-finished beef.  And of course Aidell, whom you might
recognize from your sausage package, has wonderful recipes, some for cheap cuts
like pork butt, and some for more expensive celebrations. There’s no one I’d
trust more for information on how to roast a standing rib roast this season.

For the tinkerer

The Art of Fermentation
Sandor Katz

About a decade ago Sandor Katz unleashed a new wave of
do-it-yourself culture with his book Wild Fermentation, which encouraged people
to make their own sauerkraut, pickles, yogurt and miso and tempeh. Now his more
scholarly Wild Fermentation has filled in the gaps—a true reference book for
those interested in cultivating the microflora our civilzations have grown up
around.  The book is less full of recipes
than methods, encouraging people to explore the craft of fermentation creatively
and fearlessly. This is a book for someone with a garage or a basement, who’s
ready to set some jars a’ bubbling in the dark.

To promote Seattle Pride

Tom Douglas
The Dahlia Bakery Cookbook

Whenever you’re a
little jealous of the climate in Florida or the cultural pulse of New York, it’s
always good to remember just how well we eat here in Seattle, in part because
of the chefs and bakers who have passed through Tom Douglas’ kitchens around
the city. The Dahlia bakery is a particular gem, and this year, the cookbook to
celebrate its carbo-licious output has arrived.

One of my all time favorite cookies is the double chocolate
truffle cookie at the Dahlia bakery, and this  bookh as the recipe for it. Of course, the book is also filled with really well illustrated recipes for hand pies, eclairs and of course that coconut cream pie. But the truth is, I’m lazy enough to have the Dahlia bakers make most of those things for me; I can’t wait however to make, then gobble up the cookies, cakes and pies.

The best thing about a roast chicken is the leftovers, and Bon Appetit let me prove it with a little piece called 10 Things to do with a Rotisserie Chicken (note: feel free to do this with a home-cooked bird too!) Ideas include corn and tomatillo soup and chicken hash with fried egg and sriracha sauce. The whole thing looks amazing thanks to my friend and photographer Sarah Flotard!

Looking forward to Friday’s Omnivorous, the wonderful, very food-y celebration of and fundraiser for Capitol Hill Housing, which helps build sustainable urban communities by offering affordable housing to individuals and families throughout the city, and by connecting the dots between housing, transit, culture, and environmental awareness. Please join me and the folks from Anchovies & Olives, Café Presse, Fran’s Chocolates, Lark, Marjorie, Molly Moon’s, Monsoon, Oddfellows, Poppy, Poquito’s , Skillet, Spinasse/Artusi, Spinasse, Stumptown Coffee, Tango, Terra Plata, Zoe/Quinn’s and more.