Crab Cakes

Dungeness crab cakes over white beans, ham & grilled asparagus, with a spicy remoulade sauce, and greens and sliced radishes on top.  I loved the sauce, but I wish there had been a tiny bit more of it.  Beans were perfectly cooked, but asparagus was a bit over.

For our last night in Seattle, Troy and I decided to go to another Tom Douglas restaurant and made a late reservation at Dahlia Lounge. These crab cakes were amazing.  Normally, I don’t order stuff like this as an entree because crab cakes aren’t always filling, but these were not only huge, they were also solid crab meat, hardly any filler.  Super delicious.  Troy ordered the NY strip with porcinis, grilled asparagus, and balsamic glaze, which was also amazing and, of course, perfectly cooked.  He let me have all his porcinis since he doesn’t like mushrooms.  I was happy to oblige.

We also had the Sea Bar appetizer, which was a sampler of mostly raw seafood.

Last, but not least, we had the made-to-order doughnuts for dessert.  I’d read that these were something of a specialty, and they did not disappoint.  They were served with strawberry jam and vanilla mascarpone cream.  I’m not embarrassed to admit that I ate the remaining mascarpone with a spoon.

Pan-Roasted Copper River Sockeye

Pan-seared salmon over grits, morels, asparagus, and snap peas with lightly pickled radish on top.

I was pretty determined to check out one of Tom Douglas’s restaurants while we are here, and Palace Kitchen did not disappoint. Since it’s Copper River salmon season here (we’ve barely been able to go more than a few steps without seeing a store or restaurant heralding that fact), I felt compelled to order some for our first night in Seattle.

My fish was cooked absolutely perfectly, and the skin, which I usually discard, was crisped up almost to the point of being a cracklin, which made it SO good. I also liked the minced radish garnish, which cut some of the richness of the fish. Unfortunately, all the other stuff on the plate was only so-so. The grits were kind of bland and loose, and the peas were so sweet they overpowered everything else on the plate.

Troy had the pork chop, which was absolutely incredible. We have a bit of a jokey competition when we eat out of who ordered the better dish (we never both get the same thing), and he won this round by a landslide.

Still, after the amazing clam appetizer we had, I really had no cause for complaint. Garlic, chorizo, lemon aioli…OMG, I wanted to take a bath in the broth. We had to ask for extra bread just so we could sop it all up.

Shrimp and Shells

Shrimp and shells with tomato cream sauce, from Pioneer Woman.

You can rarely go wrong with any of PW’s recipes. This is one of Troy’s all-time favorite dishes, so of course I had to make it for Father’s Day dinner.  First breakfast in bed and then this? Yes, he is indeed a lucky man.  I’ve made this enough times that I don’t really measure the ingredients anymore, although I do tend to use a lot more tomato sauce and less cream than in the PW recipe, but that’s just our personal preference.  I normally wouldn’t use shell pasta, but that’s what I had on hand and like everything else in my pantry, it needs to go!