THE S P I R I T O F T H E H E R B FA R M R E S TAU R A N T xix Foreword The Spirit of the Herbfarm Restaurant is Ron Zimmerman’s life in recipes, an ode to herbs and regional, seasonal cuisine, and the history of a famous restaurant. It is the tale of a brilliant and adventuresome man in the form of his stories and recipes. Ron and I met in early 1980s while he and Carrie were frequent visitors to the Sooke Harbor House, a seaside inn and restaurant located in Sooke, British Columbia, which my wife, Frederique, and I owned and ran. Ron was a very charming, likeable person with a shy chuckle and a soft sense of humor. He was wildly imaginative, enquiring, creative, and analytical. We had more in common than most people I know. We both focused our interest on local, wild, native foods. We both loved the mystique, history, and traditions around the world of wine. We were both researchers always striving for deeper knowledge and understanding of food history and culture while also striving to re-create or maintain native traditions. We spent many an evening in front of the fireplace, sipping our way through philosophical discussions of ingredients, cooking techniques, and restaurants until the wee hours of the morning. Much to our wives’ chagrin! We were great friends and dined together often over the years, even with Julia Child the year that The Herbfarm served its first meal in a garage in Fall City, Washington. According to this book, my restaurant had a big influence on Ron and similarly, The Herbfarm had a substantial influence on mine. I was a scuba diver and would procure shellfish for our dining room. Ron, also a fisherman, would trap crayfish for his restaurant. He was trapping crayfish during the last year of his life for the photograph and recipe on page 126 of Asparagus Soup and Crayfish with Nodding Onion. The Spirit of The Herbfarm Restaurant also serves as an introduction to many of the best wild foods of the Pacific Northwest because Ron, like me, liked to forage for a variety of wild ingredients from berries to miner’s lettuce, from Salicornia to edible mushrooms. Mushrooms! Yes! From the days of our first meeting, I learned that Ron had an abiding affinity for mushrooms. Ron once wrote, “The Pacific Northwest woods offer one of the best selections of esculent mushrooms in the world—a mycologist’s dream.” THE S P I R I T O F T H E H E R B FA R M R E S TAU R A N T xix The Herbfarm’s longest-running themed menus are the A Mycologist’s Dream menu and the Truffle Treasure menu. As each year’s menus were created, Ron ensured that the foods and herbs he used would enhance mushroom flavors. He had repeatedly and systematically experimented to find the best herb and mushroom pairings. In the nine- ties, these were the exciting days of the early, emerging culinary use of Oregon black and white truffles. You will find delicious fungal recipes inside this book. The Herbfarm is said to have the distinction of being the first farm-to-table restau- rant in the United States. It is the only AAA 5-Diamond-rated restaurant west of Chicago and north of San Francisco and has been lauded in Gourmet magazine and Martha Stewart Living, USA Today, and the Financial Times. Travel & Leisure magazine rated it one of the top 50 restaurants in the world. National Geographic called it “The number one destination restaurant in the world.” A serious researcher, Ron became one of the preeminent authorities in our region on the theory and practice of Pacific Northwest Cuisine. Many classes on growing and cooking with herbs and local foods were offered at The Herbfarm each year. One of the classes I taught there featured pinto abalone, sea urchins, gooseneck barnacles, lim- pets, and other wild northwest delicacies. The classes promoted local food leaders and chefs including Bruce Naftaly, Thierry Rautureau, Tom Douglas, Dr. Denis Benjamin, Susan Herrmann Loomis, Caprial Pence, John Doerper, Jon Rowley (the champion of Olympia oysters and Copper River Salmon), Sally Jackson and her local cheeses, Kathy Casey, and too many others to mention here. In 1991 during the IACP Conference, Ron presented a master class offering a serious overview of Pacific Maritime Cuisine and the Rules of The Herbfarm kitchen. “A cui- sine is not just food. It is the way we know and understand the world,” Ron said. He spent much of his life promoting a deep appreciation for this way of cooking, eating, and contemplating the world. Ron and Carrie organized many educational forays for their staff to visit local farm- ers, fisherfolk, and cheese makers as well as other local restaurants. They encouraged their staff to discover new ingredients and explore them to their depths. Not surpris- ingly, in the end, their key staff took on ownership of The Herbfarm when Ron and Carrie retired. Once I started reading this book, I found I could hardly put it down. This is a landmark book! The Herbfarm is, after all, my favorite restaurant in the United States. Thank you, Ron Zimmerman, for the gift of this cookbook-memoir. You took the last year of your life to share the wealth of your knowledge contained within. This book is xx T H E S P I R I T O F T H E H E R B FA R M R E S TAU R A N T a shining testament to your culinary contributions; you were a pioneer and an inspi- ration to North American Cuisine. In a way, this book is also about Carrie Van Dyck, Ron’s wife and business partner. Carrie carried out a large share of the staffing, business, and educational work of the farm and restaurant. Her persistence, intelligence, and superior organizational skills used in support of Ron were essential to the completion and publication of The Spirit of The Herbfarm Restaurant. It is a great honor for me to write this foreword. This book is replete with herbal cooking tips systematically analyzed by flavor groups and food affinities. It highlights the best common and out-of-the-ordinary foods of our region, both domesticated and wild. Ron was always generous, and this book shows his generosity with his knowledge. Twenty percent of the profits from this book are to be contributed to the scholarship in Ron’s name, which provides support for students who want to continue the studies of local, seasonal creations in the Pacific Northwest. So . . . happy cooking to you. —Dr. Sinclair Philip former co-owner, operator, and wine director of the award-winning Sooke Harbour House Hotel and Restaurantxx T H E S P I R I T O F T H E H E R B FA R M R E S TAU R A N T A Tribute to Ron Zimmerman What Ron knew—intuited really, in that special way of his—is that even fonts have flavor. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true: every font, like Helvetica or Palatino or Bookman, tastes a little different to our senses, and in design you pair your fonts like choosing a wine, and you lay out a page of a book or a menu like you plate an entrée. We all know that Ron loved telling stories through food, but most people don’t realize how much he loved design: fonts, and color, and patterns, and borders. Fifty years ago, out of college and basically broke, he called IBM and somehow talked them into leasing him a $10,000 Selectric Composer, like a typewriter on ste- roids. Suddenly he was a designer, a typographer, a layout artist. He built an early career on his way with words—not just writing them or saying them or typing them, but designing them. By 1987, he was one of the first desktop publishers in the world, beta-testing a little piece of software called PageMaker. And he continued pursuing both a love of food with his love of great design . . . continued it to his last days, working on this book, not just writing but painstakingly designing every page. To Ron, words and fonts and pictures were all ingredients. And he loved mixing them, experimenting, tasting, adjusting, automating, and ultimately sharing them with friends. Ron knew that the heart of great design is expressing a story, and he and Carrie designed a life, an adventure, an amazing story shared with us, and with the world. —David Blatner, president, CreativePro Network198 T H E S P I R I T O F T H E H E R B FA R M R E S TAU R A N TTHE S P I R I T O F T H E H E R B FA R M R E S TAU R A N T 199 Duck Breast with Apple Cider & Braised Red Cabbage Serves 2 people generously per duck or 4 with half-breast servings When I was a kid, my brother and I would sometimes go duck hunting in the dry potholes of Eastern Washington. The ducks we bagged were invariably mallards, which are leaner than the domesticated varieties found in grocery stores. Since waterfowl season is in the autumn, I associate the rich flavor of duck with the fall. Duck meat is always at home with fruity flavors, so it seems proper to serve it this time of the year with a spiced apple cider sauce. Red Cabbage 1 lb Red cabbage, cored, cut in ¼" by 1 ½" strips 1 Onion, medium, diced 1 Apple, peeled, ¼" sliced ¼ cup Red wine vinegar ⅛ tsp Cayenne 4 Tbsp Butter Salt, pepper, to taste For the Cider Sauce 2 cups Apple cider 2 cups Duck stock (or chicken stock, or beef stock) 1 Cinnamon stick, small 4 Cloves, whole 4 Peppercorns, whole 3 Shallots, large, sliced The Duck 2 Duck breasts, skin-on, Salt, Pepper, to taste 1 tsp Neutral oil Make the Red Cabbage Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a large saucepan and sauté the onion until translucent; then add the cabbage strips. Cook, stirring occasionally, 5 minute to soften the cabbage. Add enough water to come half-way up the cabbage. Add apple, vinegar, cayenne, salt and pepper. Cook covered over low heat for 30 minutes. Stir in the remaining butter and adjust seasoning to taste. Make the Apple Cider Sauce Combine the cider, stock, spices and shallots in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to a bare simmer and cook until the volume reduces to 1 cup, about 40 minutes. Cool. Strain through a fine-meshed sieve and discard the solids. While duck is cooking, reduce sauce in a skillet and cook over medium-high heat until syrupy. Cooking the Duck Breasts Preheat oven to 350°F. Pat duck breasts dry. With a very sharp knife, carefully score the skin of the duck breasts on a diagonal one way and then the other. Be careful not to cut all the way through the skin. Season with salt and pepper, rubbing to distribute it well. Add the oil to a cold skillet. Place breasts skin-side down in the skillet. Gradually bring up the heat to medium-low to start rendering the fat. Pour off the fat periodically when you see it acumulating in the pan, but keep it for cooking potatoes, etc. When the skin is golden brown and crisp, turn the breasts over then place pan in oven for about 5 minutes. Finishing Remove from oven and check for doneness. Let rest on a cutting board for 5 minutes while you reheat the sauce and cabbage. Slice breasts diagonally ¼-inch thick. Plate duck and spoon sauce on top.198 T H E S P I R I T O F T H E H E R B FA R M R E S TAU R A N TTHE S P I R I T O F T H E H E R B FA R M R E S TAU R A N T 199216 T H E S P I R I T O F T H E H E R B FA R M R E S TAU R A N TTHE S P I R I T O F T H E H E R B FA R M R E S TAU R A N T 217 Hazelnut Bottom Crust Combine the chopped hazelnuts, all-purpose flour, powdered sugar, and salt in a mixer. Add cubes of the softened butter and mix well. Add water, a bit at a time, while mixing until the dough comes together into a ball. Wrap the dough in platic wrap; flatten it to a thick disk, and let it rest in the refrigerator for an hour. When ready to use, remove it from the fridge and let it warm for 10 minutes. Heat oven to 350°F. On parchment, roll the dough until it is a larger circle than your 8" springform pan: 10"–11". Place your springform top on the dough and cut the dough into a circle. Transfer it to the buttered bottom of the springform. Press the dough gently to remove any gaps between it and the sides of the pan. Prick all over with a fork; prebake in the oven for 10 to 11 minutes. Remove. Let cool a bit. Make the Filling Spread nuts in a large ovenproof skillet and roast at 325°F until lightly browned, 8–10 minutes. Remove from oven. Wrap nuts in a towel and then rub to remove the skins. Heat the olive oil in the skillet; add the nuts, the lemon zest, the rosemary, and a large pinch of salt. Cook, stirring constantly, for about 2 minutes. Chop the nuts coarsely with a nut chopper or food processor. With a mixer, beat the cream cheese with the sugar until it is light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well before adding the next. Fold in the chopped nuts and lemon juice and zest. Pour batter into the 8-inch springform pan. Smooth the top. Bake Heat oven to 325°F. Wrap the bottom of the pan in foil so it can’t leak. Set the pan in an ovenproof baking dish. Pour boiling water around the pan, so it comes about halfway up the sides. Bake for 1½ hours until a cake tester comes out clean. The center should still jiggle slightly. If not, it is overcooked. Turn off the heat. Prop the oven door open 2 inches and leave the pan untouched for an hour as the cake finishes gently cooking in the cooling oven. Hazelnut Crust 1 cup Hazelnuts, raw 1⅓ cup All-purpose flour ½ cup Powdered sugar Salt pinch ½ cup Butter, softened, diced 2–3 Tbsp Water Filling 1 cups Hazelnuts, raw 1 Tbsp Extra-virgin olive oil ¼ tsp Lemon zest ¼ tsp Rosemary 2 lb Cream cheese (four 8-ounce packages), room temperature 1¾ cups Sugar 4 Eggs, whole 1½ tsp Lemon juice ½ tsp Lemon zest, grated Saucing (optional) Blueberry, strawberry, sea- salted caramel, huckleberry, chocolate, Nutella, and heavy cream It’s Nutty—Hazelnut Cheesecake Serves 8 Hard to believe, but I was in my teens and had never heard of cheesecake until Peter Haskell, a neighbor kid, said he was having cheesecake for dinner. The idea seemed ridiculous to me, but Peter’s mom gave me a piece to try. Instant love! This version salutes the famous nut of the region: the hazelnut or filbert. We also have a wild version. This woody shrub, not really a tree, hides its nuts under its leaves. But the sleuthing is worth it mid-to-late summer.216 T H E S P I R I T O F T H E H E R B FA R M R E S TAU R A N TTHE S P I R I T O F T H E H E R B FA R M R E S TAU R A N T 217 Foragers: Look for the wild beaked hazelnut in the Northwest woods.Next >