Brown Season
We often joke that, in the Pacific Northwest, there are only three seasons for cooking: green, red, and brown. Green season ushers in all the plucky, verdant vegetables and extends until midsummer. Red season is a panoply of gold and crimson. It brings tomatoes, peppers, corn, and stone fruit. Now we’re in for the long dark dance of brown season.
“But when else are you going to listen to Elliott Smith and make soup?” Though Mac’s enthusiasm for drizzly mornings can be a bit infuriating (Tacoma native), he’s not wrong.
And it’s not all dreary. Some of our favorite ingredients are at their peak: apples, winter squash, radicchio, wild mushrooms, and shellfish.
Dig into the pantry and root cellar: storage crops, ferments, cured meat, tinned fish, preserves. Eating a fresh cucumber is magical. So is opening a jar of dill pickles midwinter. A nectarine bursting with summer sweetness is the peak of seasonal eating, but one imported from across the world will leave you disappointed. Look for a juicy local Hosui pear instead.
Embrace the comfort of warm and soft foods. They vibe with fireplaces, blankets, and sad folk music. For me that means braises and stews. I love the deep power of dried chiles (even the milder anchos and guajillos have a slow intensity). I use them for pozole rojo and Thai curries.
This week we’re making sweet potato gnocchi with wilted spinach, vadouvan, and lemon brown butter. Recipe drops on Friday. (We’ll dive deeper into gnocchi and other members of the global dumpling community in a few weeks.)
The spinach in this recipe is a great example of how one fresh ingredient can enliven a very wintry dish. Brown season in the PNW is mild enough that you can almost always find at least one fresh green ingredient. The second spinach harvest extends into early winter. Radicchio usually makes it to February.
A final note on winter cooking: braises, dumplings, and stews are perfect for large batches and freezing. Cooking in large batches is perfect for recruiting friends and family to help. If supplies run low, my partner calls for a dumpling party where we make cartloads of gyoza and watch a cheesy movie. Get cozy and cook together.
We’re glad you’re cooking with us.
Cheers,
Sten and Mac
Chef Snacks
Purveyor Spotlight
Collins Family Orchards. A fourth generation family farm here in Washington that grows some of our favorite tree fruits. They offer a diverse variety of apples and pears in the fall and stone fruit in the summer. Find them at farmers markets or get their fruit delivered through their winter fruit CSA.
A note on pear ripeness
Bartlett pears have an unforgiving ripeness window. Cut into an underripe pear, and it’s drywall. Wait too long, and it’s mealy mush. Our solution is to purchase pears that are underripe and let them ripen on the counter. Wait until they’re light yellow, have a tiny bit of give when squeezed, and smell fragrant. You won’t time every pear perfectly, but such is life.
