Last week was a vacation week with lots of good food, time outside, and time with friends. I spent very little time on the internet, but read enough to feel sad and distressed about what is happening in the world. Sending care to everyone. Here are some notes on a week of food, and studio process, and a recipe to make focaccia.
Adam and I spent three sunny days biking and eating on Lopez Island. Ricotta fermented potato gnocchi with mushrooms, a panna cotta with strawberries, a plate of pickles at Ursa Minor. More pickles, plum shrub, and ramen at Setsunai. Tea in the morning on porch of the espresso place. We spent the afternoons picnic-ing and biking to beaches to read books.
We visited our friends Ishani and Jake in Bellingham, and they took us to Otherlands for beet reuben, latkes and pickle plate. (More pickles! It’s birthday month! I love fermented things!) We baked no-knead focaccia (recipe at the end of this) and sprinkled it with smashed garlic and herbs that Ishani had grown, and made three different soups. I wrote and had chai and eggy toast at Cafe Blue, and we went for mushroom and veggie tacos at Black Sheep.
From Bellingham, we went up to Vancouver for the day to hang out with our PCT friend Nick, before he heads back to Australia. Sat on the sidewalk patio for lunch at Liberty — zucchini potato soup with sourdough, a pear croissant with pastry cream, a savory croissant with pepita, delicata squash, cheese and maybe romanesco pepper spread. Mostly we walked around Granville Island, eating canelé and drinking chai, sitting outside watching the mini-ferries. By coincidence we ran into some other Australian thru-hikers that Nick knew, and swapped stories.
I’ve been wearing my PNW Fall uniform on repeat: a purple-brown cashmere sweater, a navy waffle knit cotton sweater, two pairs of high rise black jeans, a pair of blue jeans, several identical pairs of thick navy-grey smartwool socks, blundstones. Brown-purple baseball cap. It’s nice to have more than one outfit, as similar as they are. On the hike I pretty much wore the exact same thing each day, which was really weird for the sense of time passing. (And often sweaty and a bit smelly, the delight of clean clothes can’t be overstated… but also it’s not so bad?)
I’m really reveling in the things I missed most on the hike right now: spending time with friends, eating and cooking good food, making things, wearing clothes. Always a pleasure, but extra good when away from them for months. And my mind has moved to the how-to-cook cook-book project, so I’m really thinking of food and feeling extra inspired by eating. At the same time, I’m really missing thru hiking, being outside moving through the mountains all day.
We were away from the studio most of the week, but we still did a few things:
Cut the Long Calendars at CAM, getting an intro lesson from Robert on using the huge cutter which was SO FUN and so satisfying. While we were there, we also got to see Kelly Bjork’s show, Sketches.
Started writing up a draft of the plan for a Riso Zine Making with Spectrolite and Google Docs workshop we’ll be co-hosting with Secret Room on November 12th! It’s part of their November & December Pop Up at the Lloyd Center Mall in Portland. (More info & a signup link coming soon.)
Finished printing the covers for the RISO Pacific Northwest catalog — designing those stumped me for a while. Of course, adding pink was the answer.
The Short Run table map has arrived! Find ANEMONE at table A4, smack dab in the center of the ~~~SEA OF RISO~~~. With lots of friends, including Taxonomy Press (so excited to share a table with Rachel!), CAM, Zine Hug, Living Room Press, Snack Time, Issue Press, Secret Room, and many other people and presses we admire.
Elizabeth Case is coming to Seattle to hang out and table with us! Come get a copy of the zines we collaborated on: Climate Emergency Reading Recs or one of the last copies of Biome I nurture/melt — or just say hey.
Mark your calendars, Short Run is Saturday November 4th, 10am-6pm.
This week I recommend making your own focaccia (if you like to eat focaccia). Something about making bread always feels magic and restoring, and it’s also inexpensive and delicious. This recipe in particular is quite beginner friendly, so if you don’t consider yourself a “baker” don’t let that stop you. If you have some yeast, flour, honey and salt you can make this dough now in like ten minutes, stick it in the fridge, and bake focaccia tomorrow.
The overview: Day one, you mix the dough in a big bowl, cover it, and put it in the fridge overnight. Day two, take the dough out of the fridge, do a few folds, and plunk it down on a buttered, oily dish to rise again. After a few hours, stretch it out, poke it to make dimples, and bake 20-30 min. Focaccia!!
No Knead Focaccia
Recipe from Bon Appétit with my edits to the instructions
one ¼-oz. envelope active dry yeast (about 2¼ tsp.)
2 tsp. honey
5 cups (625 g) all-purpose flour
5 tsp. (14 g) Diamond Crystal or 1 Tbsp. Morton kosher salt
6 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil, divided, plus more for hands
Wake up the yeast: Whisk one envelope active dry yeast (about 2¼ tsp.), 2 tsp. honey, and 2½ cups (590 g) lukewarm water in a medium bowl and let sit 5 minutes. It should foam or at least get a little creamy; if it doesn’t your yeast is sadly not alive and you should start again with non-expired yeast.
Add 5 cups (625 g) all-purpose flour and 5 tsp. Diamond Crystal or 1 Tbsp. Morton kosher salt and mix with a rubber spatula until you have shaggy dough and you don’t see any dry bits of flour.
Pour 4 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil into a big bowl that will fit in your refrigerator. It’s going to double in size! Put dough in the bowl and roll it around to coat in oil. Cover with plastic wrap and chill in fridge at least 8 hours and up to 1 day. (NOTE: If you made the dough early in the day, you can also do this first rise at room temperature until doubled in size, 3–4 hours, and bake all in one day.) You want the dough to double in size, and look very bubbly and alive.
— Day 2 —
Generously butter a 13x9" baking pan, for thicker focaccia that’s perfect for sandwiches, or an 18x13" rimmed baking sheet, for focaccia that's thinner, crispier, and great for snacking.
Pour 1 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil into center of pan. Keeping the dough in the bowl and using a fork in each hand (or your fingers), gather up edges of dough farthest from you and lift up and over into center of bowl. Give the bowl a quarter turn and repeat process. Do this 2 more times; you are aiming to deflate dough and make it into a rough ball.
Transfer dough ball to prepared pan. Pour any oil left in bowl on top of the dough, and turn to coat it in oil. Let rise until doubled in size, at least 1½ hours and up to 4 hours — uncovered, in a warm spot. To see if the dough is ready, poke it with your finger. It should spring back slowly, leaving a small visible indentation. (If at this point the dough is ready to bake but you aren’t, you can chill it up to 1 hour in the fridge.) If it springs back quickly, the dough needs a bit more time.
— Bake after 2nd rise —
Preheat oven to 450° F (around 230° C) with a rack in the center. Lightly oil your hands. If using a rimmed baking sheet, gently stretch out dough to fill (you probably won't need to do this if using a baking pan). Dimple focaccia all over with your fingers, making very deep depressions in the dough (let the tips of your fingers go all the way to the bottom of the pan).
Drizzle with remaining 1 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil and sprinkle with flaky sea salt.
Bake focaccia until puffed and golden brown all over, 20–30 minutes.
More soon, thank you for reading,
Amelia