Desert Island Five
For the rest of your life, you get only five ingredients to cook with. What are they?
A few years ago, our friend Michael filled in at the restaurant. He posed this question to the kitchen, an icebreaker of sorts.
He was quick to caveat: everyone gets water. Water is one of only two ingredients everyone quite literally has to pick. Sometimes we joke that all we do in the kitchen is take water out of things and put it back in.
Michael’s selections were salt, olive oil, wheat, raspberries, and broccoli. There’s a lot to unpack there. For comparison, here are mine: salt, olive oil, rice, apples, and cabbage.
Salt follows water. It’s not really a choice. Salt is the basis of all food preservation. No salt? Then no pickles, no cured meats, no soy sauce. No life, really.
Now it gets tricky. Do we have to choose a fat? It’s a macro nutrient. And without fat, your taste buds languish in a soul-crushing void. Olive oil is the flavor standard. I asked Michael if a hog counted as a single ingredient (pork fat and meat), but he said it violated the spirit of the game.
A grain, a fruit, a vegetable. I still waffle on wheat versus rice. Pasta, naturally-leavened bread, even dumpling wrappers versus, well, I just love rice (and rice noodles). Glutenous magic ensures there’s no substitute for the versatility of wheat flour. Should local access be a factor? In the PNW we have Skagit Valley wheat and rye right in our backyard.
With fruit we get sugar, which gives us alcohol and vinegar. Apples are an obvious choice in the north, but raspberries are so delicious! And what can we make with broccoli? With cabbage?
Hopefully we never have to choose. But it’s a useful exercise in stripping away the inessential and remembering how essential the essentials really are. At the very least, it’s a great way to think about the foundation of your pantry. What do we really need?
We’re glad you’re cooking with us.
Cheers,
Sten and Mac
Chef Snacks
Cooking Tip
Save your bacon fat. There’s so much of it. Whenever you cook bacon, pour the drippings into a heatproof container. I like to use an old bean can. It’s infused with salt, so it will last almost indefinitely in the fridge. Use a spoonful to sauté the aromatics in your next soup. Or make bacon fat croutons.
Purveyor Spotlight
Cairnspring Mills. Though I can’t abandon a certain fealty to Gold Medal Flour (Minneapolis), Skagit Valley’s very own Cairnspring Mills is fantastic. Either way, inputs matter. That doesn’t mean we can’t turn cheaper options into fantastic food. It just means that the better the building blocks, the easier the chef’s job.
Around the Sound
Tickets are on sale for our summer Solstice Dinner at A&K Alder Farm. Want to spend the longest day of the year eating a multicourse meal in a beautiful orchard? Email us for more details!
