by Edward Lee
The pancakes have settled my hangover, and I go for a walk. It is a rare sunny day in Seattle, and people are out in droves. I’m curious about a shop called the Old Ballard Liquor Co., which sells locally made aquavit. It is a small distillery and café housed in a warehouse building on the docks of the Lake Washington Ship Canal. This is an industrial part of the city. A business nearby sells drinking tours on a bicycle trolley. People get on sober and come back exhausted and drunk.
When I arrive at the distillery, I find a sign on the door saying that party bicycle customers are not welcome. I immediately like this place. Inside, there is a small table that seats eight and a bar the size of a broom closet. You can see the entire distilling operation here. It’s made up mostly of storage bins, a small distiller, and a rudimentary pump system to fill the bottles. There’s a small kitchen in which an unsmiling woman in her thirties is preparing cured meats. Her name is Lexi. She is the owner, distiller, chef, and tour guide. She’s hurrying back and forth from the bottling duties to slicing charcuterie to answering questions from the other four people in the place. I see Magnus Nilsson’s The Nordic Cookbook on her shelf.
“We have what I call the Ikea Rule,” Lexi explains to me rather quickly as I peruse her menu. “If it’s served at Ikea, we won’t serve it here. Not because I dislike Ikea, but there’s no reason to limit yourself to the same five stereotypical dishes over and over. We want to encourage people to think outside of the stereotypes.”
She introduces me to Jane, which is her name for the twenty-seven-gallon immersion-heated still. “I couldn’t do this without her,” Lexi says. She bought the still from a family in Barlow, Kentucky. “I figured that a family of moonshiners who’d never stopped making stills, Prohibition be damned, would know more about it than just about anybody.”
I tell her I’m from Kentucky. “I know,” she says. She has watched every season of The Mind of a Chef, I learn. The food community is still a small world. I was able to walk and dance anonymously through a huge crowd at the Swedish Club, but here, Lexi and I are part of a much smaller club.
I ask her to show me how to make aquavit. She points out a custom spice basket she built. It has a mesh bottom that fits directly over the still kettle. She fills the basket with caraway seeds or fresh dill or rhubarb. As the flavorless alcohol boils off, the steam passes through the spices on its way to the condensing arm and picks up the oils and flavors of whatever is in the basket. What comes out is a clear, flavored, distilled aquavit, or what Lexi calls a taffel.
“We can dilute the taffel to eighty proof and bottle it as is, or we can infuse more spices and fruits into it for a richer set of flavors. At that point, it stops being a taffel and just becomes aquavit, and is how we make most of our products. Think of the word taffel like white dog, and aquavit like whiskey.”
I taste all five of her aquavit selections from small wineglasses. The flavors are clean and aromatic. The dill aquavit is like a walk through a green pasture in spring. I can feel the aquavit bringing life back to my chest cavity.
I ask Lexi what I should eat, and she recommends her sill board: pickled herring prepared five different ways and presented on a wooden board, simple and measured. It looks less like Scandinavian food and more like a sashimi plate. Lexi explains the iterations to me: classic pickled herring with onion, coriander cream herring, tarragon herring with flake salt, smoked herring in a lemon-chive cream, and strawberry pickled herring.
“If you visit a restaurant in Scandinavia that advertises pickled herring and they don’t have at least ten flavors, people won’t eat there,” she tells me.
There is a lull in the store, and Lexi sits with me. She is young, but carries the intellectual burden of someone much older. She tells me she lived in Sweden for six years and just recently returned to the States. She is serious when she talks. I ask her why her food is so vastly different from the pancakes I had earlier today.
“We have a large number of Scandinavian-born expats who were raised on post–World War II processed foods and are now in their seventies and eighties. Much of this community prefers frozen meatballs and packaged gravies and familiar, consistent flavors. There’s also a healthy dose of nostalgia there; we humans tend to spend more and more time thinking about the past as we get older, and these sort of familiar, nostalgic foods are real touchstones for many folks.”
Lexi is not Swedish by birth, but she’s upholding a tradition she imported from present-day Scandinavia. Her knowledge of Scandinavian foodways is vast and cerebral. It is unyielding, too. To some, her attitude may come off as arrogant. Somewhere between the old immigrant culture of Ballard and the new Nordic culture that is influencing food culture globally, there is an obvious chasm. Lexi is not descended from that generation of immigrants who settled in Ballard. She does not feel the need to uphold their traditions. In fact, she’s upending them. She runs the only Scandinavian restaurant in Seattle, yet the people I was with at the Swedish Club rarely, if ever, come visit her.
Even though Lexi and the Swedish Club represent the same cuisine, they do not serve the same food. Generational changes are far more impactful than the bonds of a national cuisine. The foods of the Swedish Club are about nostalgia; Lexi’s food is about a passion for a lost art of technique. In some ways, both are reaching back. They just point to a different time. Lexi speaks of centuries-old traditions, and the folks at the Scandinavian Specialties store speak of their childhood. I don’t think one is more correct than the other. Lexi’s food tastes better, but that’s just my opinion. Culture expands at such a rapid rate in these modern times, I can understand why a generation of people would want to retreat to something familiar and comforting, such as a plate of flabby pancakes and sweet jam. I look down at my table: there are a dozen empty glasses in front of me. I devour a cured meat board and a slice of sweet, aromatic cardamom cake.
I love what Lexi is doing at the Old Ballard Liquor Co. It is unexpected and rebellious. It takes a courageous person to follow a road that contradicts the food of her childhood. Lexi doesn’t want to do the familiar immigrant food she ate as a child, but neither does she want to make the food of Noma, the dizzyingly progressive Nordic cuisine of René Redzepi that has taken the world by storm. She wants to bring the familiar flavors of Scandinavia but with a technique and precision seldom seen in Seattle or America. She has taken Scandinavian food out of the predictable framework of the immigrant’s struggle. It is not a cuisine of frugality or necessity. It is an uncompromising dedication to technique.
The irony of all this is that Lexi’s business is struggling. She has a small shop in a neighborhood without much foot traffic, and her only neighbors are drunk kids who get off a party bicycle looking for a place to pee. It is a hard life, but one she chose for herself. She tells me she grew up poor on a farm outside the city. I’m sure her parents weren’t thrilled at her decision to make aquavit for a living. Her choices in life may seem frivolous to a generation that had to work long hours and sacrifice life’s earthly pleasures for a can of pickled fish, but that doesn’t make her struggle any less real. Indeed, in a world where it is easy to sell real estate and buy a home in the suburbs, it is a sublime act of conviction to willingly choose this challenging a life.
The aquavit has made me light-headed, and I get emotional when I’m tipsy. I ask Lexi for some recipes, and we hug. Right before I leave, she tells me, “Morality plays a big part in cultural cuisine. Scandinavian culture disapproved of food for a long time. It was sustenance, not something to be enjoyed. Not something to luxuriate in.”
I have to blink several times when she says this. She could be talking about the Korean culture of my dad’s generation. If my dad were Swedish, all he would want would be a bowl of dry meatballs with sweet lingonberry sauce.
I walk across the bridge over the canal. I think about my father again. I will probably always think about him when I’m in Seattle, but I won’t do it with sadness. I don’t kno
w if there was anything in his life that moved him to tears. He had a hard life, and he was tough on his children. Still, I forgave him everything in that New Jersey hospital room. I wish he could have had something that made him as happy as I am now. A few glasses of aquavit and some pickled herring are enough for me. I will always remember him as a strong, complex person who never found the peace he needed until the very end.
I can’t help thinking about Shawn Kemp, the basketball player. Shawn had all the raw talent to be the best in the NBA. He had a good run, but he just couldn’t avoid the drugs, and they eventually ended his career. He could have been so much better. I used to get angry at him every time the story of another cocaine arrest came out. I realize now that it’s not my place to judge. He did with his life the best he could, with the tools he had. As a kid, I had a poster of him over my bed. He is dunking a ball with the Seattle skyline in the background. Maybe his career ended in disappointment, but I still believe that for a few brief, shining moments, he was the best there ever was.
Budae Jjigae with Fried Bologna
Budae jjigae was my dad’s favorite thing to eat. He used to have it with Spam and hot dogs, but I make it with fried bologna. I use American cheese, because there is no real substitute for it. This is a good soup, and I think its ingenuity is still relevant. It represents a utilitarian kind of cuisine that I don’t want to forget. Not everything has to be glossy and precious. Sometimes food is just a no-frills gustatory experience. This is also one of the best hangover meals.
Serves 4 as a main course
sauce
2 tablespoons mirin
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons gochugaru (Korean chile powder) or other ground chile powder
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1½ teaspoons sugar
1½ teaspoons gochujang (Korean chile paste)
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
budae jjigae
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
8 ounces sliced bologna
1 cup large-diced onion
1 cup bite-size pieces kimchi, with its juices
2 scallions, sliced into 2-inch lengths
6 ounces enoki mushrooms
3 ounces shiitake mushroom caps, thinly sliced
9 ounces tofu, sliced ½ inch thick
4 to 5 ounces (2 packages) instant ramen noodles
4 cups chicken stock
4 large eggs
4 slices American cheese
To make the sauce: In a small bowl, mix together the mirin, soy sauce, gochugaru, garlic, sugar, gochujang, and black pepper. Set aside.
To make the budae jjigae: Heat a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add the oil, and when it’s hot, add a couple of slices of the bologna in a single layer and fry, turning once, for 2 minutes on each side. Transfer to a plate and cook the remaining bologna. Slice the bologna into finger-sized batons and set aside.
Assemble the jjigae in a medium rondeau or other low-sided pot. Scatter the onion evenly over the bottom of the pot. Add the kimchi and scallions and pour over the reserved sauce. Add the mushrooms, followed by the tofu. Arrange the fried bologna on top. Scatter the ramen noodles over it and pour in the chicken stock.
Place the pot over high heat and bring the jjigae to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 8 to 10 minutes, until the noodles are almost cooked. Crack the eggs into the simmering broth and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until the noodles are tender and the eggs are cooked to your liking.
Ladle the soup into four serving bowls, top each with a slice of cheese, and serve.
Pickled Salmon
Lexi’s recipe for pickled herring was the inspiration for this dish. It’s hard to find fresh herring outside of the Pacific Northwest, so I swapped in salmon. Try to get a fatty wild salmon like king or coho. The pickled salmon is great for a variety of snacks and appetizers. You can simply serve it with good dark bread and sour cream. It is also lovely as a topping for salads, or served as an open-faced sandwich with lots of fresh lettuce. For an elegant first course for a party, see the recipe for Pickled Salmon with Strawberries, Dill, and Horseradish Cream on Pancakes.
The salmon takes a week to cure, so plan accordingly. It is well worth the effort. I like to make it in a large quantity, but you can cut this recipe in half if you prefer. Once the salmon is pickled, you can wrap it tightly and keep it for a few weeks in the fridge.
Serves 8 to 10 as a first course
salt brine
4 cups water
1 cup sea salt
One 2-pound skin-on salmon fillet, cleaned of scales and pin bones
pickling brine
2 cups sugar
2 cups distilled white vinegar
1 cup water
2 tablespoons allspice berries
4 bay leaves, crumbled
1 whole clove
1 small onion, thinly sliced
1 small bunch dill
To make the salt brine: In a medium saucepan, combine the water and salt and bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the salt. Transfer to a bowl and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled, at least an hour.
Put the salmon in a nonreactive container, such as a shallow baking dish, and pour the salt brine over it. Cover and brine in the refrigerator for 3 days.
Remove the salmon from the salt brine, transfer to another container, and cover with fresh cold water. Soak the salmon in the refrigerator for 1 hour, then change the water and soak the salmon for another hour.
Meanwhile, to make the pickling brine: In a medium saucepan, combine the sugar, vinegar, water, allspice berries, bay leaves, and clove and bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Turn off the heat and steep for 30 minutes, then pour into a bowl and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled, at least 1 hour.
Remove the salmon from the freshwater soak and put it in another nonreactive container. Cover with the pickling brine and refrigerate for another 3 days.
Remove the salmon from the pickling brine and pat dry. Remove the skin and the gray fat layer underneath the skin.
Place half the sliced onion and dill on a large sheet of plastic wrap, arranging them in a rectangle about the size of the salmon fillet. Put the salmon on top and cover with the remaining onion and dill. Wrap tightly in the plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 day before serving.
Discard the onion and dill. Slice the salmon thinly on a diagonal and serve. If keeping the salmon longer, remove the onion and dill and rewrap.
Pickled Salmon with Strawberries, Dill, and Horseradish Cream on Savory Pancakes
Pickled salmon has a complex set of flavors, so I love to use it as part of an elevated first course. The dill and horseradish—flavors of Scandinavia—marry perfectly with the oily notes of the salmon.
Serves 8 to 10 as a first course
horseradish cream
1 cup sour cream
¼ cup cold water
2 tablespoons grated fresh horseradish
Pinch of sugar
Pinch of sea salt
Pinch of freshly ground black pepper
pancakes
¼ cup warm water (about 112°F)
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 cup whole milk
¾ cup sour cream
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted, plus more for the pan
2 large eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
12 ounces Pickled Salmon, thinly sliced
6 strawberries, hulled and thinly sliced
Pinch of sea salt
Small dill sprigs
To make the horseradish cream: In a small bowl, whisk together the sour cream, water, horseradish, sugar, sea salt, a
nd pepper. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.
To make the pancakes: In a small bowl, combine the warm water and yeast and let stand for 10 minutes, or until foamy.
In a small saucepan, combine the milk, sour cream, and butter and heat over low heat, stirring gently, just until the butter is melted and the mixture is smooth; do not allow to boil.
Lightly beat the eggs in a medium bowl. Slowly drizzle in the milk mixture, whisking gently, then whisk in the yeast mixture.
In a large bowl, whisk together both flours, the salt, and the lemon zest. Add the wet ingredients, mixing until a loose batter forms.
Heat a medium skillet over medium heat and add 1 tablespoon butter. Heat until the butter starts to foam, then ladle in ¼ cup of the batter, tilting the pan to spread the batter. Let cook for 3 minutes, then flip the pancake and cook for another minute, until golden brown. Transfer to a paper towel–lined plate or baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining batter, adding butter as needed. You should get 10 to 12 pancakes.
To assemble the dish: Lay a warm pancake on a serving plate. Layer some slices of the pickled salmon over the pancake. Arrange some sliced strawberries over the salmon. Sprinkle a pinch of sea salt over the strawberries, drizzle a little horseradish cream over the strawberries, and finish with a scattering of dill sprigs. Repeat with the remaining pancakes and enjoy right away.
Chapter 11
Trawling for Shrimp
Crossing from Seabrook into Kemah, for a moment I get the feeling I’m floating on air—the highway elevates so swiftly over the piers. To my left is a clear view of the rich blue waters that stretch into Galveston Bay. The color mirrors the Texas sky. I am on my way to Galveston to secure a shipment of Gulf shrimp for my restaurant. It is something I have to have on my menu. Shrimp crosses all culinary borders. From the pages of Nathalie Dupree’s Shrimp and Grits Cookbook to the melamine plates of Vietnamese crepes stuffed with shrimp and pork to chilled martini glasses of shrimp cocktail served at every steak house in America, shrimp are adored everywhere. I’ve tried to avoid shrimp on my menus, but the demand is just too high. Americans consume about 1.3 billion pounds of shrimp annually. So here I am in shrimp country, to see with my own eyes an industry that has been much maligned. If I’m going to cook with shrimp, I need to find a source I can trust.
