FODMAP Friendly Salmon Chowder

This salmon chowder recipe is missing some surprising ingredients! Onions and garlic are two of the most challenging foods to eliminate for the FODMAP diet, and two of the most critical! Enter Asafoetida, the perfect spice to add flavors of onion and garlic without using the vegetables themselves. This intensely pungent spice fills the gap nicely when you have to eliminate these essential ingredients. It infuses loads of flavor into this chowder alongside Herbes de Provence and Urfa Biber. You won't believe we've left out the onion and garlic.Baking the sweet potato and roasting the vegetables before adding them to the soup intensifies their flavor, and we've added a sprinkle of spice to each step to really spread the flavors around.

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Southwest Pumpkin Soup

This southwest pumpkin soup is a delicious fall treat, perfectly spiced with warm heat from our Chorizo Bomb. Sultry smoke from our perennial favorite, smoked paprika, rounds out the taste. Cooking your own pumpkin for this recipe is really easy, but the canned pureé works fine as well. Serve it up with crusty bread and a nice porter or stout and you’ve got an instant Oktoberfest!

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Heavenly Béchamel and More Fun with Mace Blades

Of the five classic French "mother sauces," béchamel gives us some of the most rich "small sauces". Although béchamel may be the most simple to prepare, that doesn't mean it can't also show off some pretty complex flavors. Taking the time to create layers of flavor in the building blocks of a recipe ensures that the sauces and dishes created from those blocks will build palaces of flavor. As the recipe below demonstrates, there are not many ingredients in the basic béchamel sauce; just milk, roux, and the onion cloute. An onion cloute is an onion studded with cloves and a bay leaf, and although I've seen some recipes call the cloute optional, it is not. The onion cloute is essential, as it is the only flavor added to the milk besides butter. An Italian chef I once worked for insisted that a béchamel was never complete without a bit of nutmeg, an ingredient that was conspicuously absent from béchamel recipes in my traditional French culinary education. Once I tasted his version, I never again made my béchamel without a dusting of freshly ground nutmeg to finish it. Never, that is, until a few weeks ago when we were lucky enough to get the first shipment of mace blades we've been able to secure in years. I had always used a mixture of mace powder as well as a little extra freshly grated nutmeg when making creamed spinach from a béchamel base, but I had been reluctant to to try including mace powder in every batch of my béchamel for fear of the flavor being overpowering. This is a perfect application for mace blades! By adding a nice mace blade or two to my onion cloute, I could get the subtle mace flavor I was looking for without overshadowing other flavors. Béchamel itself is used in many recipes for lasagna, croque madames, or soups, but there are quite a few other sauces that can be derived from a basic béchamel, often by adding just a few ingredients. The French call these "small sauces" and some of my favorites are: Cheddar cheese - add some shredded cheddar cheese, Mustard Powder, and Worcestershire sauce or Worcestershire powder. Mustard sauce - add some prepared mustard. Crème Sauce - just whisk in some heavy cream (I also like to add a heavy pinch of Piment d'Espelette.)

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Rooster Grilled Artichokes with Spicy Garlic Mayonnaise

Seattle's local farmers have been showcasing artichokes for a few weeks now, so what better produce to highlight one of our favorite blends, Rooster Spice!! Inspired by everyone's favorite Vietnamese hot sauce, Rooster Spice packs a wallop of heat, but boasts a delicious complexity that will keep you coming back. It's the perfect accompaniment to these artichokes, or really anything else your market basket can throw at it.

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Pacific Seafood Halibut Escabeche

The first of the season Alaskan halibut has arrived, and we are thrilled! Considered the world’s premium whitefish, first of the season halibut are the best quality because the fat content of the fish is at its absolute peak. To celebrate the arrival of this delicacy from the icy north, we created an escabeche using our Pacific Seafood. What is escabeche? It's the name for a number of dishes Latin American cuisines where the fish or veggies are cooked or pickled in a vinegar-based sauce, and may also include citrus, paprika and other spices. This simple, but delicious, preparation is a luscious showcase of some of Spring's first fresh flavors.

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Corned Beef and Caraway Cabbage

Spring is in the air! This is my favorite time of year: Spring training baseball is on the radio, Mother Nature is providing us with some gorgeous sunny days between all the rain, and one of the most fun celebrations on the calendar is right around the corner.That's right, St. Patrick's Day is almost here, and whether your entire family is from the Emerald Isle or you're just Irish at heart, St. Patrick's Day is a great excuse to have some friends over to enjoy a pint or two of Irish stout and some corned beef and cabbage. For our recipe, be sure to brine it for as long as recommended. The salt in the brine carries the flavor of our pickling spices used through the whole piece of meat, and the extra spices reserved for the cooking liquid lend it a great burst of flavor on the surface. This St. Patrick's Day be safe, enjoy some delicious corned beef and remember: "May the lilt of Irish laughter lighten every load. May the mist of Irish magic shorten every road... And may all your friends remember all the favors you are owed!"

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Roasted Quail Feast for Valentine's Day

Exotic. Aromatic. Romantic. We prepared this intimate feast with a table for two in mind. Succulent quail are perfectly roasted with our Moroccan blend, Ras El Hanout, hinting at rose petals. The finishing touch, a warm coriander infused honey glaze. Our Wild Rice Pilaf features the bold flavor of cassia cinnamon while Paradise Pistachio Relish combines grains of paradise and Aleppo pepper to bring everything together for a memorable Valentine's Day Feast. We will leave the dessert up to you!

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Piment d'Espelette Fish Stew

This hearty stew hits it on all notes, the high acid of the tomatoes and wine play against the sweetness of the deeply caramelized onion and fennel, the brine-y olives render the seafood right at home, and the Piment d'Espelette... oh, the Espelette! The perfect balance of heat and complexity that clarifies this bounty of flavor, and unites it all in delicious harmony. If my fish-monger has them, I'll often throw in a few oily little fish, too, like fresh anchovies or sardines... Just sear them whole, skins and all, in a bit of olive oil and add to the serving dishes.

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Caribbean Curry Carrot Soup

A word of advice from a novice gardener: Carrots are much bigger than carrot seeds. Somehow, fifty-odd square feet of garden space doesn't seem like that much when it's being planted, but it can produce a surprising haul, most especially in the carrot department. Praise be that carrots are delicious, so their being excessively plentiful is a problem I'm thankful to have! This soup is hearty and delicious, made velvety by the soft puree of carrots, and the sunny flavors of Caribbean Curry. We've dressed it up a little with the prawns, but this soup can easily be made vegan by omitting them and using red miso paste in favor of the Worcestershire powder.

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