Viking Days

Æbleskiver
Danish Hearth, $3

As populations shift and tastes change, the mark of the Scandinavian cultures that shaped many of neighborhoods on Seattle's north side seems to be fading:  the Van de Kamp's windmill in lower Queen Anne is a distant memory, the Scandinavian Bakery building is now a Thai restaurant, and Scandinavian Specialties is Ballard's last remaining source for Nordic imports. 

But the frenzy of the Nordic Heritage Museum's " Viking Days" celebration suggested that while those cultures may be less obvious today, they are neither gone nor forgotten.  The Museum's parking lot was crowded with Viking reenactments and historical displays, demonstrations of traditional crafts, retail stalls, and plenty of food.  In addition to the usual beer and grill tents, there were regional "hearths," booths dedicated to the foods of a particular country. 

The Danish Hearth's line was longest and slowest, but it gave customers a front row seat as expert volunteers cranked out the only item on the menu:  æbleskiver.  Cooked in special cast iron skillets with dome-shaped indentations, these spherical pancakes are served with jam and a sprinkling of powdered sugar (above).

     


One volunteer worked non-stop to meet the demand for fresh batter (left), which was then passed down the line to the cooks stationed at portable stoves (right).  



Each new batch started with a hemisphere's worth of batter (left).  As the underside of the batter skinned over, the cook used a skewer to lift the cooked section partway out of the pan, allowing more of the uncooked batter to contact the skillet. 


 
Little by little, the hemispheres became bowls, then Pac-Men (left), then spherical golden-brown æbleskiver.

At the Icelandic Hearth, there were thin slices of vínarterta ($1), sawed off of a towering stack of cardamom shortcake layered with spicy prune jam.  The recipe for "Vienna cake" dates back to at least the mid-19th century, when European pastry chefs began to have access to refined white "Vienna flour."  It's been a popular cake for Icelandic celebrations ever since, with even fancier rainbow-striped versions made by using a variety of different jams.  After the cake is baked and constructed it is wrapped tightly, then set aside to age for up to two months.  

 After running out of Finnish rice pudding early on, the Finnish Hearth substituted a Norwegian almond cake ($1), as moist and rich as slightly aerated marzipan.

Countryside Donut

Maple Bar and Old-Fashioned

Countryside Donut, $.85 each

For a donut-maker to hand over your order packed in a brown paper bag is a bit of a gamble. Will you make it out the door before fryer grease mottles the bag with disfiguring stains? Will you be down the block before the bag corrodes into oily pulp?

Or, if you've stopped by Countryside Donut on the way to the Edmonds ferry, will you get most of the way across Puget Sound before even a hint of oil stipples your to-go bag?

Husband-and-wife team Sokgim Lim and Youkhun Taing (below, left) came to the US as refugees from Cambodia, with a young family and no resources. After years of saving, planning, and looking for opportunities, they bought the Countryside Donut House, a new business in a small Mountlake Terrace strip mall. Absolutely the only thing they knew about donuts was Americans really like them.

Twenty-five years later, they know a whole lot more. The first months were rocky; the Taings lost customers and trashed unsatisfactory batches as they struggled to master the unfamiliar process. But being self-taught turned out to be a huge asset, with the Taings developing their own techniques that make their ordinary offerings (fritters, old-fashioned, glazed, etc) extraordinarily light and flavorful.

In addition to being not at all greasy, the old-fashioneds (above, front) combine crisp edges and a cakey center, while the maple bars (above, back, and below right) are airy and delicate, made with a slightly tangy dough and a mildly sweet glaze.

Countryside Donut House

21919 66th Ave W #1

Mountlake Terrace, WA

425/672-7820

Cafe du Monde

Beignets
Cafe du Monde, $2.10/3

Cafe du Monde's original location in New Orleans' French Market sells fresh beignets 24 hours a day. Whether you need something to balance out your morning oatmeal, or--more likely--could use a sobering bedtime snack, Cafe du Monde will supply you with as many deep-fried dough pillows as you require. During the day, the cafe is teeming and boisterous to an almost Disney-esque degree. In the small hours it has the unflattering starkness of an Edward Hopper painting, only with a few more people and a lot more powdered sugar.

Beignets

Beignets
Café Du Monde, $2.10/3

One of my fondest memories of a childhood trip to New Orleans involves eating beignets from Café Du Monde--but not at Café Du Monde. My parents and I picked up a couple of orders of the deep-fried square doughnuts on our way to the airport. Our flight home was delayed on the runway, and we were stuck in our seats for several hours while our plane went nowhere. How to pass the time? Break out the grease-stained paper bags! As a rule fried foods don't travel very well, but those beignets were one of the best picnics I've ever enjoyed--although, of course, they never made it off the ground.

Beignet derives from an old Celtic word meaning "to raise", and the pastries are made from a yeasted dough that turns to a golden pillow when dropped in hot oil. Beignets probably arrived in Louisiana by way of France, possibly introduced by Acadians expelled from Canada in the mid-18th century or by Ursuline nuns who arrived in New Orleans in 1727. While French versions were generally filled with fruit, the American beignet is pure dough, served in a thick drift of snowy confectioner's sugar and usually paired with milky, chicory-tinged café au lait.

Café Du Monde opened in the open-air French Market in 1862, rival beignet stand Morning Call in 1870. When Morning Call moved to the suburbs a century later, Café Du Monde became a quintessential experience for French Quarter tourists. Franchises began to appear in the 1980s and they now include more than 50 locations in Japan alone.

The original French Market location is open 24 days a year, every day but Christmas--and, as their website notes, "...on the day an occasional Hurricane passes too close to New Orleans." Café Du Monde closed during Hurricane Katrina and reopened two months later, having undergone renovations rather than repairs.

Café Du Monde
French Market
800 Decatur Street
New Orleans, LA
504/525-4544

A newer player on the beignet scene, Café Beignet has two French Quarter locations. One is attached to the "Musical Legends Park" and boasts everything you'd expect from a Bourbon Street address--live music, late hours, and strong cocktails--plus fresh beignets ($2.95/3). On more sedate Royal Street there's a tiny full-service cafe; at a lacy cast-iron table on the patio it shares with the neighboring police station, you can enjoy an order of light, airy beignets and share your pound of excess powdered sugar with some very jazzed birds.

Café Beignet

334-B Royal St

New Orleans, Louisiana

504/524-5530

Rocket Donuts

Almond Cake Donut

Rocket Donuts, $1.29

As if donuts on their own aren't retro-cool enough, Rocket Donuts serves theirs up with a coating of kitsch and a sprinkling of sci-fi.

To find the Rocket Donuts in downtown Bellingham, look for the snub-nosed silver rocket (below left, a not-too-distant cousin of Top Pot's vintage Airstream trailer). Choose your treat from the case (chocolate-glazed cake donut with almond slivers, above, bacon-topped maple bar, below center; there are also vegan and gluten-free alternatives) and order a cup of joe. Perch at the counter and check out vintage sci-fi memorabilia that includes eye-popping movie posters, the "Creature from the Blue Lagoon"'s head, and a full-sized Gort from the "The Day the Earth Stood Still".

Rocket Donuts

306 W Holly
Bellingham, WA
360/671-6111

Lucy's Bag o' Donuts

Lucy's Bag o' Donuts

TASTE Pavilion, $5/6-pack

Throughout the summer, Seattle Art Museum has been hosting a Thursday evening farmers' market at the Olympic Sculpture Park. I can barely think of anything more Seattle-esque: stalls of fresh produce and specialty foods with a dance floor and live music on one side, public sculpture, Puget Sound and the Olympic mountain range on the other.

I'd like to say that I showed up for the last market of the year thinking of heirloom apples or organic chard, but really, I went for the doughnuts.

At the tiny stall operated by SAM's restaurant, TASTE, pastry chef Lucy Damkoehler has made a weekly tradition of creating a seasonal, locavore doughnut based on current market offerings. Her earlier flavors included s’mores, bacon and brown sugar, and sweet corn crullers, each highlighting a local product such as Finnriver flour, Skagit bacon and eggs, and Alverez corn.

For the farewell market Damkoehler offered an autumn-tinged doughnut flavored with Finnriver's apple cider. The tartness sliced through the grease and a generous dusting of sugar, adding a crisp and high-toned complexity to what would already have been a pretty stellar cake doughnut. A perfect comfort food for those of us looking forward to the coming of fall while still pining for a summer that never quite was.

Top Pot Doughnuts

Raspberry Glazed Chocolate Cake Doughnut

Top Pot, $1.49

Top Pot has been suppling Seattle with "hand-forged" gourmet doughnuts since 2002. Their pleasingly symmetrical name was a happy accident courtesy of a recycled neon sign from the derelict "Topspot" Chinese restaurant, which lost its "S" along the way. Actually, most things about Top Pot have that retro/recycled feel, from the melamine-topped tables and vintage books at their 5 stand-alone cafes to their recipe itself, which dates from the 1920s. When they start a mobile doughnut cart later this summer it'll be housed in--what else?--a Airstream trailer.

Top Pot offers more than 40 vintage varieties, including "old-fashioneds", crullers, cakes, fritters, and the coconut-covered "boa". Doughnuts are grouped and priced in three categories (in ascending order of extravagance): standard, premium, supreme. My "premium" chocolate cake with raspberry was lovely: soft and fresh with a comforting cocoa warmth and bright little bursts of raspberry.

The Doughnut Plant

Les Tres Leches Doughnut
The Doughnut Plant, $2.25

While the Doughnut Plant's website is full of streamlined graphics and elegant animation, by far the most moving feature is a slideshow of owner Mark Isreal's family photos, ending with a heartfelt thanks to his supportive loved ones. Several black-and-white snapshots feature his grandfather, a commercial baker who died with Isreal was only a toddler but left behind a valuable legacy scrawled on a yellowing index card: the recipe for an egg-free yeast doughnut.

Those light, fluffy, and vegetarian-friendly doughnuts were the foundation of the grandson's fortunes. For five years, working in a converted tenement basement, Isreal baked through the night, then delivered doughnuts to high-end retail outlets by bike each morning. In his spare time, Isreal perfected an original recipe for a stellar cake doughnut, now available in flavors such as Blackout (chocolate encrusted chocolate cake bursting with chocolate pudding) and the Cinco de Mayo-inspired Les Tres Leches (pictured above). The Factory's square jelly doughnuts are also a departure from the norm; instead of a single jelly core waiting to drop in your lap like hot lava, there's a generous seam of house-made fruit preserves circling the dough like an enclosed racetrack.

Doughnut Plant products contain no transfats, no preservatives, and no artificial flavors. They are made with carefully chosen ingredients--Valhrona chocolate, Tahitian vanilla, fresh coconut, seasonal fruit, and nuts that are roasted and ground on the premises. Ingredients like lavender buds, Meyer lemons, or rose petals that could end up as just so much frippery are used deliberately and to full, flavorful effect. Overseas shops (in Tokyo and Korea) have a slightly different menu, featuring local produce and flavors (shiso and yuzu!).

After waiting in a long but snappy line at the Plant's Lower East Side store, I ordered a cup of hot, strong chai and a Tres Leches and perched on the windowseat to eat. The seat was delightful--crayon-colored tiles stamped out with a doughnut cutter and raku-fired by Isreal's father, Marvin. The doughnut was even better--plump and light, with a milky glaze and a mildly sweet, sensuously creamy filling. The "three milks" were in harmonious balance, no one flavor or texture overpowering the others. As I ate I found myself thinking of St. Exupery's definition of perfection--"...not when nothing more can be added, but when nothing more can be taken away.”