Sea and Smoke: Flavors from the untamed Pacific Northwest by Blaine Wetzel and Joe Ray is many things. It’s a narrative account of acclaimed restaurant The Willows Inn on Lummi Island, located just outside of Bellingham, Wash.; it’s a visually delightful walk through beautifully foraged and prepared dishes; it’s the world’s largest piece of marketing collateral. It is also a “cookbook.”
However beautiful, it more espouses an ideal than provides practical recipes. The Willows serves prix fixe menus of ingredients foraged that day. It’s a beautiful concept that, for a cookbook, is completely inspirational and evocative and completely useless. Two pages in the book acknowledge the usefulness issue, including a disclaimer begging the excuse of imprecise recipes, wonky cooking temperatures and hyper-local ingredients described as simply “unusual.” Like dried woodruff leaves.
Flax Seed Caramels was one of two recipes that didn’t require condensed clouds from the Chuckanut Mountains or freshly foraged love. With mostly sugar, a whopping cup of flax seed oil and two cups of “very fresh heavy cream,” the recipe was straightforward and came together easily. The end result was a gooey, too-soft caramel better suited to ooze over the top of a brownie than a standalone dessert. I don’t fault the recipe but rather my ancient candy thermometer and lack of candy-making intuition.
Skill level: Hard – but mostly for ingredient accessibility
This book is for: Foodie dreamers, lovers of photography, people planning a trip to upstate Washington and want to know where to eat.
Other recipes to try: Ripe Pears Buried in Hot Embers – just kidding. Maybe you can find the ingredients for Whole-Roasted Kohlrabi with Crushed Currants and Mussels.
The verdict: Salt and Smoke made me want to forage morels and pursue native Missouri ingredients, but it is not a practical cookbook. To the coffee table with this one. Battersby’s Farfalle with Gorgonzola and Pistachios reigns supreme.
Flax Seed Caramels
Yields more than 100 cubes
Scant 2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup plus 2½ Tbsp. flax seed oil
2 cups plus 2 Tbsp. very fresh heavy cream
¾ cup evaporated milk
2 cups flax seeds
• Heat the sugars, corn syrup, flax seed oil, cream and evaporated milk in a medium saucepan over medium heat and bring it up to 230 degrees, whisking every 10 to 15 minutes. Reduce heat to low and continue heating until the temperature comes up to 242.5 degrees.
• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Mix the flax seeds with ¼ cup of water, spread them across a quarter-sheet pan lined with Silpat mat (it is best not to use parchment paper here) and bake until crisp and darker in color, about 30 minutes. Remove the seeds from the pan, returning about 2 tablespoons to the Silpat mat lining the pan and spread them out evenly.
• Reserve about ¼ a cup plus 2 tablespoons toasted flax seeds. Working quickly, whisk the remaining flax into the caramel, then pour the mixture onto the seed-lined sheet pan. Sprinkle the reserved flax seeds evenly across the top. Allow the caramel to cool to room temperature, then wrap pan tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate until it sets.
Reprinted with permission from Running Press
This article appears in March 2016.