Home Grown: A celebration of local culinary enterprise

Jim Drohman: Prince of chicken livers

Le Pichet, the French café on First Avenue, owes a lot of its charm to the neighborhood bistros of Paris, but perhaps even more to the informal bouchons of Lyon, where workmen gather noon and night to eat hearty plates of pork sausage, pike quenelles, and beef tripe in side-street storefronts that once housed stables and made themselves known by hanging a bundle of brush--known locally as a bouche--over the door. Hence bouchon, which means cork in Bordeaux and Burgundy; no corks at a bouchon, however; the wine comes straight from the cask. Chicken livers are also on the menu, not as a mousse or pâté, but puréed and baked and served with tomato sauce. Paul Bocuse, the towering Lyon chef who reinvented French gastronomy, has a highly-refined version, gâteau de foies blonds de volaille de Bresse, sauce écrevisse that's served warm, with a delicate sauce of crayfish.

Jumpcut to Seattle and a restive Jim Drohman, UW grad, aeronautical engineer at Boeing, who chucks it all, moves to Paris, and spends 18 months learning to cook professionally at the École Supérieure de Cuisine. Back in Seattle, he begins to work as a line cook, eventually becoming exec chef at Campagne. His wife's uncle is Joe McDonald, who owns a private supper club, The Ruins, where he meets his business partner, Joanne Heron. Together they open Le Pichet and Drohman decides to adapt the Bocuse recipe for his new place.

The chicken livers (free range chickens, naturally) come from Corfini Gourmet, a classy restaurant supply house. Poached, then emulsified and blended with cream, eggs and a madeira reduction. Seasoned with orange peel, thyme, clove and allspice, the whole thing strained through a fine sieve to remove the fibrous bits. Then it's baked, like a terrine, in a bain-marie, unmolded, and served chilled: a thick, four and a half-ounce slice for $7, topped with a line of gros sel that provides crunch as much as saltiness. At Le Pichet, the garnish is cornichons and two kinds of mustard; at Café Presse on Capitol Hill, it's served with a cherry compote.

"We take modest products and turn them into tasty food," Drohman says. Food that pleases Drohman himself. You can't get a Caesar salad at Le Pichet, certainly no caviar. It's not an "I want" restaurant for fussy diners, it's a "show me" place for 32 eaters at a time, lucky enough to eat whatever Drohman and his kitchen turn out. Fortunately, the gâteau au foie de volaille is on the "anytime" Casse-Croûte menu.

Unctuous seems the right word for the gâteau, a mouthfeel much smoother in texture than traditional chopped liver, with richer flavors than a foam-like mousse, and lighter than traditional pâté. Spread it thickly on the crusty slices of Grand Central baguette that they serve alongside it, add a petite salade drizzled with hazelnut oil and wash it down with a glass or two of Beaujolais, and you will be happy.

What's next: At Café Presse, a wine promotion called VinExPresse. Low-cost wines-to-go or to drink on the premises. Details and weekly recipes at JimDrohman.com, the most entertaining chef's blog in town. And Drohman once again participated in Cooking with Class on September 10 (photo above from a previous Cooking with Class session).

Kathleen Flinn: Teacher

It's been six years now since Kathleen Flinn's first book came out. A journalist and Seattle native, she was working in London as an editor for an Internet publisher (starts with an M, as I recall) when she got laid off; she decided to use her severance to pay for tuition at Le Cordon Bleu, the prestigious culinary school in Paris. Her boyfriend (now husband) Mike Klozar joined her, and they had a great time learning how to cook. In The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry, we watched Kat fillet a sea bass, dispatch a live lobster, rip the tendons from a guinea fowl. We shared her cold Chablis in an apartment overlooking Paris streets; we sat beside her as she sipped Champagne at three-star Ledoyen. Living, Kat points out, requires that you taste, taste, taste.

So she was stunned, at the QFC on Broadway, one day in 2008, to watch a woman with a shopping cart full of boxed industrial cans and cartons ("edible, food-like substances") like Hamburger Helper, bottled gravy and Dino Bites, complain about the price of chicken breasts. Trying to be helpful, Flinn pointed out that whole chickens were on sale for 99 cents a pound. "But I wouldn't know what to do with a whole chicken," the woman said.

From that moment of epiphany, that most housewives really have very little idea how to actually cook, Flinn embarked on her project, chronicled in The Kitchen Counter Cooking School. First she recruited nine women (the lone man to volunteer dropped out), and, in the privacy of their own kitchens, gave them ten weeks of cooking lessons...and a lifetime of confidence in their own abilities.

The universe doesn't need another chef, Flinn believes, so much as it needs people who can teach others how to cook. "Cooking on TV is like a magic show," she says; Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential doesn't inspire confidence in the kitchen. And one by one the good women experience their own epiphanies. "That stuff in a box?" one exclaims, "You can make that!"

One revelation for Flinn herself: "Season to taste" as a recipe instruction is useless, since most of her students have no idea what the dish was supposed to taste like in the first place, and didn't trust themselves to know. So the back of her book includes a helpful "cheat sheet" of flavor profiles: French is "butter, shallots, onions, celery..." Italian is "garlic, onions, basil, prosciutto, parmesan..." Tex-Mex is "cumin, chili powder..." North African is "mint, lemon, saffron, turmeric..."

Flinn's advice to Seattle's busy, bustling, often self-absorbed "foodie" community: spend less time oohing and aahing over perfect peaches and fresh ramps, and more time in the center aisles of supermarkets. "Every grocery cart tells a story," Flinn reminds us. And the center aisle is where real people shop for dinner. Hamburger Helper sales are way, way up this year.

What's next: Flinn's third book, "a memoir with recipes," comes out later this year. It's called Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good, and it tells the story of Flinn's culinary lineage. "Food writing does an often unappreciated job of articulating so much about shifting culture, and the timeline focused on this book--from 1955 to 1981--represents a watershed of change in how America viewed food and eating."

Ronald Holden is a Seattle-based journalist who specializes in food, wine and travel. He has worked for KING TV, Seattle Weekly, and Chateau Ste. Michelle; his blog is www.Cornichon.org

September 2013

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