Photo courtesy of Mike Russell, all rights reserved.

I found it hard to limit my own enthusiasm for finding wine in Seattle while penning that post. In choosing which stores to include, I left out many others. The greater Seattle area is home to many interesting neighborhoods. Most have small shops with owners and staff dedicated to helping customers find what suits their palates.

I’m not yet certain how often or in what form I’ll continue this series. I can share that writing for Jennifer has inspired me to share more of my Seattle with you. In the meantime, if you have a favorite wine shop, let me know which one and why.

Self Portrait. Courtesy of Mike Pirnat.

What started out as an online correspondence eventually grew into a real-life friendship. Truth be told, what initially attracted my attention was that Mike’s wife Liz was studying wine professionally. I began following her progress and soon enough we had developed a regular correspondence, which led me to act as an unofficial winery tour guide when Mike and Liz visited Washington State.

Wonder Twin Powers, Activate! Courtesy of Mike Pirnat.

Mike and I keep up with each other mainly on Twitter and by reading each other’s blogs these days. Aside from being an easy going travel mate, Mike is a bit of a Python expert and Lego-obsessed photographer. Check out his blog to see the world through his lens.

Kat, of Travel with Kat, tagged me for my “A-to-Z of travel” on December 30. This seemed like a fun way to start 2012 so, I’m playing along. However, I’m not giving you all my “letters” at once. Instead, I’ll reveal my answers in four installments.

Without further ado, I give you my A-to-H of travel.

A: Age you went on your first international trip:

I was 13 or 14 years old when I went on a trip to Europe organized by my school. We visited four countries in 10 days: England, France, Switzerland, and Italy. I learned a lot about what I don’t like when traveling: moving every day, lugging bags on and off a large tour bus, and barely having enough time to find that night’s accommodation on a map before heading to the next planned stop. That I disliked those experiences so much is why I now prefer spending, at the very least, two nights in one place. And why I typically choose staying in smaller inns, bed-and-breakfasts, or rented apartments or houses over big hotels.

B: Best (foreign) beer you’ve had and where:

That prompt conjured a memory of sitting around a table noshing a Neapolitan-style pizza in Florence and sipping on a La Rossa from Birra Moretti. The beer had caramel tones with a slight bitterness that cut the sweetness of the tomato sauce and was heavy enough to match the creaminess of the warm mozzarella too.

La Rossa from Birra Moretti, courtesy of Bernt Rostad.

C: Cuisine (favorite):

This is a tough one. It’s a bit of a toss-up, so I’m declaring a tie.

I enjoy exploring what I’d very loosely call Pacific Northwest cuisine. I say “loosely” because really there are many ethnicities and fusions that fall under that umbrella. Some critics argue this is not a culinary category at all. It serves my purposes here though. Just when I think I’ve pinned down a decent definition for our region’s food styling, chefs here find some new way to showcase the products of our farmers, fishers, and foragers.

The Asian and Scandinavian influences, the American classics made from regional ingredients then dressed up as fine dining or down to be bar food, and all the other uniquely northwestern possibilities available in food trucks and restaurants from Portland, Oregon to Vancouver, British Columbia? I’ve still got a lot of eating to do in my own backyard!

My other fave is Italian. We cook it often when we prepare meals at home because my first love in wine is for bottles from “the Boot.” (It doesn’t hurt that my husband loves making pasta from scratch either.) Plus, Italy itself is a country with enough of a diversity of regional cuisines to keep me coming back to try new dishes for the rest of my life.

D: Destinations, favorite, least favorite and why:

I’m fickle and wishy-washy when it comes to questions like these. I find such categories to be way too broad. So, I’m picking a favorite and a least favorite from my travels in the past five years.

Favorite destination
Maybe it’s because we’ve had snow and ice all week. Maybe it’s because I could have sworn the sea turtle was waving goodbye to us on our last day there. Or maybe it’s because I am already figuring out how to save up for the air fare to return. I’m declaring Hawaii my current favorite destination.

Sea turtle, also known in Hawaiian as honu.
Photo courtesy of Mike Russell, all rights reserved.

Least favorite destination
Of the places I’ve gone in the past five years, my least favorite was Cleveland, Ohio. A trip back “home” can always be bittersweet, of course. I traveled there to celebrate my father’s birthday in July of 2009 but it wasn’t the company or the cause that made this my least favorite.

What struck me on this trip was the extent of urban decay in eastern sections of Cleveland. Hough and Woodhill never really were what you’d call thriving districts during 1970-80s when I lived there. But whole blocks where every building looked like near ruins? Dozens upon dozens of once stately Victorian era homes with peeling paint and sagging walls? Invasive ivy so obviously causing damage and deterioration? Seeing those depressed neighborhoods in person made real for me just how bad the local economy had become.

E: Event you experienced abroad that made you say “wow”:

I’ve already blogged about a travel experience that changed the course of my life in many ways. What I have yet to really share here is the “wow” moment that set me on a new path. For now, I must again simply tease you about it. It happened in Italy, on September 16, 2001. I will share it here before September 2012 rolls around. Promise! (Hint: It involved wine.)

F: Favorite mode of transportation:

My own feet. Yes, I know many travel bloggers probably think first of the clichéd “planes, trains, or automobiles” when addressing this category. But the more I reflect on it, the more this rings true for me. What better way to really experience a place than to bipedally propel yourself?

Stroll an ancient city center at dawn or dusk. Hike a rustic trail. Pedal a bicycle through the countryside. Kick those flippers through the surf while snorkeling. Swing and spin on planted toes, dancing at a bar or at a party. Snowshoe near the top of a mountain or through the backcountry. Yes, definitely using my own feet is my top choice.

G: Greatest feeling while traveling:

While traveling? How are we defining “while traveling” for this? That term reminds me of standing in security lines or waiting for the call to board a plane. It makes me think of getting from here to there, which is often my least favorite part of being a traveler. So then, what was the greatest feeling I’ve had while traveling? Connection with others. Those little moments that only seem to happen when in transit.

For example, I whiled away three full hours of a six-hour flight chatting with the guy sitting next to me on the way to Hawaii. Or there was that time a Russian engineer explained to me the differences between the English alphabet and the Cyrillic by sketching them in my travel journal. It didn’t matter I spoke no Russian. We found a way to communicate with hand gestures, sketches, and scribbles on paper.

H: Hottest place you’ve traveled to:

Without a doubt, the day trip we took driving around northwestern Arizona on our way to Nothing was the hottest weather I’ve experienced. We stopped at the Burro Creek campgrounds to use the rest area, surprised there were no other cars around. It looked beautiful and completely deserted from inside our air-conditioned car. A wall of heat took my breath away when I managed to push open the door.

Photo courtesy of Mike Russell, all rights reserved.

We never were able to confirm the temperature, though based on what we could find for locations within an hour’s drive, it was somewhere between 110-125 degrees Fahrenheit that August day.

My next installment will be my “I-to-N of travel.”

Becky Selengut and me at the Oyster Roast Shoot

Inexperienced with Oysters
Despite living in the Pacific Northwest for over 15 years, I’m still a relative novice when it comes to knowing what to do with oysters. I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio where you risked food poisoning any time you tried eating shellfish. No matter whether it was farmed or wild, oysters had to be driven long distances to get to us. It took more than 9 hours to get them from the closest sources at Chesapeake Bay or Long Island.

For truly fresh fish, we had to eat what came from the lakes and rivers near us. Eating walleye and trout from the banks of Lake Erie or the tributaries of the Cuyahoga in the 1970s came with a whole different set of worries. Remember the REM song about the fabled “burning river”? Yeah. That’s why I didn’t eat much fresh fish or seafood as a kid.

Learning to Shuck
It wasn’t smoke from a river that got in my eyes on that wet May morning. Jon Rowley, a familiar face in the restaurant and foodie scene in Seattle, was tending the wood fire grill roasting oysters for Penny’s Creative Live workshop on Food Photography. I was one of the volunteer models who gathered around that weathered table so six emerging food photographers could get field experience under her tutelage. That day new records were set for rainfall and I learned to shuck oysters in front of a global audience while Penny’s photo workshop streamed live to thousands of viewers online.

As we waited for the roasted bivalves to arrive, I confessed my lack of experience in opening them to Becky while we commiserated over the chilly temperature. Fortunately for me, she’s a great coach. You can see for yourself by watching the instructional video she posted as an adjunct to her book, Good Fish.

Penny thought the unplanned tutorial Becky gave me was good material for Kathleen Walsh, one of the photographer students. She encouraged Kathleen to push in on us. “So, I’m seeing this picture right here. …these two have a little bit of color. She’s showing her how to shuck an oyster, which is kind of sweet. That’s a great moment. That’s what you want.”

Jenny Neill and Becky Selengut as captured by Kathleen Walsh

My Modified Hangtown Fry
A number of months later, a neighbor gave me 18 already-shucked Pacifics. (He had eaten his fill while foraging with his family and didn’t want to see them go to waste.) I’d already begun working my way through the recipes in Becky’s cookbook, so I took this opportunity to give the Hangtown Fry recipe a try.

I followed Becky’s recipe with some modifications: I didn’t bake the bacon as she describes and I substituted a few other ingredients to save myself a trip to the grocery store.

Here’s her recipe (used here with the author’s permission) including a few notes from me about what I did differently. For example, I cooked the bacon on the stovetop instead of in the oven. My other changes appear in italics in the context of the original recipe.

8 strips thick-cut bacon
½ pint preshucked fresh oysters, preferably “small,” or 1 dozen medium-sized oysters in the shell, shucked
Pacific oysters are large. I lengthened the cooking time accordingly.
1 cup buttermilk
I used whole milk.
8 eggs
1 ½ cups roughly chopped arugula
½ teaspoon Tabasco
¼ cup half-and-half
Salt and freshly ground pepper
½ cup panko or bread crumbs
I crushed about a cup’s worth of salted crackers as a substitute. In hindsight, getting panko would have been the better choice.
1 tablespoon high-heat vegetable oil
4 slices good crusty bread, toasted
4 lemon wedges, for garnish

Crushed crackers and eggs

Lay the bacon on an aluminum-foil baking sheet. Place in the cold oven, then turn the oven on to 400°F and set the timer for 20 minutes. Soak the oysters in the buttermilk for 30 minutes in the refrigerator.

In the meantime, melt the butter in a large sauté pan over medium-low heat. Whisk the eggs with the arugula, Tabasco, and half-and-half. Season with salt and pepper and then pour the mixture into the pan. Grab a wooden spoon and start stirring. You will be tempted to turn the heat up, but don’t. If you keep stirring the eggs at a medium-low temperature they will produce the creamiest, most delicious eggs you’ve ever had. She’s right. This technique reminds me of the eggs my Grandma Neill used to make. It should take 8 to 10 minutes to set into small curds, but they will still have lots of moisture. Look for creamy, barely set eggs. When the eggs are done, place them at the back of the stove to keep warm.

When the bacon has finished cooking, remove it from the oven and set aside to drain on a paper-towel-lined plate. Drain the oysters and discard the buttermilk. Place the panko on a plate and dredge the oysters, coating them well on both sides.

In a fresh sauté pan over high heat, add the vegetable oil. Pan-fry the oysters until they brown on one side, 1 to 2 minutes. Then flip them and cook just 30 seconds more on the other side.

Pacific oysters, all fried up

Serve each person a piece of toast and top with eggs, 2 slices of bacon, and a fried oyster or two. Garnish with a lemon wedge.

I have no quibbles with the wine pairing recommendations of a white burgundy or an Oregon Chardonnay. I went a different route, though. I paired a sparkling rosé from the Loire with this dish, which amplified (in a good way) the sensation of tasting the sea in each bite.

I said something to Becky during the food photography workshop that warrants repeating here. This time, though, it’s for the cooking advice in her book not the assist she gave me with prying open an unyielding oyster. Thanks, “…you made it easy for me!”

Oyster Roast photos reused with permission, courtesy of Creative Live. © 2011. Recipe by Becky Selengut reused with author’s permission.

Innochat, the one I played guest moderator for on November 17, focuses on the “what” and “how” of innovation. Participants have discussed a broad range of topics in just the past six months, including Gamification – the Future of Innovation?, The Impact of Information Overload on Innovation, Storytelling & Innovation, and Patent Office Logistics Around the World.

I chose to frame the discussion I led with some reflections on what it means to gain in translation, an intentional riff on the theme of TEDxRainier11 which I’d just attended.

International and Diverse
I’ve known since my first encounter with the Innocats (a nickname for regular participants) that they came from a diversity of locales. Last Thursday’s chat included Tweeters from nine states in the U.S., three provinces of Canada, and two regions of the United Kingdom. We also had folks from Colombia, Germany, and Portugal chiming in.

The professions and passions of the Innocats are equally as varied. Technology consultants, career coaches, creativity specialists, entrepreneurs, and even a jazz singer provided their wit and wisdom in answering the questions I asked.

Educational and About Education
From the get-go, the discussion was informative. My first question (“What would you do if you could do anything?”) elicited responses that included references to Zen koans and the paradox of choice.

I was reminded of many possible ways to open my mind when looking for new ideas. Taking a walk, playing music, even cleaning the kitchen were all suggested as ways an individual might shift his or her frame of mind. We also touched on the notion of getting outside a comfort zone be it through travel or by attending a class or industry event outside one’s own profession.

Another TED talk, this time one by Sir Ken Robinson, was highlighted in reference to the importance of transforming education to better prepare people to innovate in business and civic society. Robinson’s Bring on the learning revolution! challenges long-held dogmas about the way children get educated. He argues that it’s time to use all the tools available to encourage children to discover their natural talents and to develop those. Robinson’s principle arguments apply to adult training as well.

Our discussion again touched on Zen concepts with chatter about the idea that cultivating “a beginner’s mind” helps many professionals, even medical doctors, to keep learning. As an example of how one physician strove to remain teachable after establishing a successful practice, Renee Hopkins suggested reading Coaching a Surgeon.

Giggles and Inspiration
Gather enough Tweeters for a chat about any subject and soon they will attempt to make clever quips in 140 characters or less. Innocats are no different on this point and last week’s questions brought out some interesting references to humor.

Leave it to Kevin McFarthing, one of the Innocats from “across the pond,” to bring in a reference to Monty Python early on in response to my first question.

Setting aside mentions of Robin Williams and Eric Idle, laughter and comedy came up often in the back-and-forth banter throughout our hour together. As Drew Marshall one of the Innochat organizers so aptly put it, “I love comedy, too. It is a sly way to get to the truth of things. It can sneak up on an unwitting audience.”

Keeping It Fun and Creative
Our chat turned to vices like chocolate, scotch, and rum at moments of levity. Gwen Ishmael’s offhand remark about “reading too many fortune cookies lately” led to a more serious discussion. We mused about how writing fortunes could prompt creativity or be an innovative marketing tool, as it was for Linda Naiman who used some of these prophetic treats to promote a book.

Playing a game, like foosball or an icebreaker like “two truths and a lie,” was suggested as a way to prepare for a brainstorming session. Other ideas included involving a group in trying to solve a ridiculous problem such as how to cut the nails of a hippopotamus. Many described using storytelling exercises or sing-alongs as creativity catalysts as well.

We didn’t manage to solve any of the world’s more pressing problems. However, combining our suggestions led to one possible solution for shifting working contexts for children and adults alike:

A kindergarten set in nature with a focus on comedy and the arts with time set aside for Twitter.

Now, who is going to write up the business plan?

All joking aside we agreed that innovation practices, in business or philanthropy, benefit from:

• Actively cultivating a healthy curiosity.
• Listening fully and with an open mind to answers when we ask questions.
• Applying techniques from the arts to spark greater creativity.
• Maintaining humility in order to remain teachable.

A well-curated conference experience can speed up and amplify the process of gaining knowledge. TED (an acronym for Technology, Entertainment, and Design) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1996 based on an already established lecture series devoted to, as the tag line so succinctly declares, “Ideas Worth Spreading.” The non-profit now supports many offshoots, including TEDxRainier, an event produced annually in the Seattle area. This year’s theme, selected by the 2011 event curator Phil Klein, was “Gained in Translation: Ideas Crossing Frontiers.” (PDF)

Crossing language boundaries is one way that we gain a deeper understanding of a particular topic. But, as Will Hewitt so bluntly asserted in his talk about singing for 15 minutes a day, “Words are really flimsy messengers for the fullness of experience.” TEDxRainier11 speakers condensed into 9-10 minutes many complex topics that in a traditional trade show or classroom format might take a dozen or more hours to explain.

Challenged to give “the talk of their lives,” TEDxRainier11 speakers used music, video, humor, and audience participation to engage us. Much of the “magic” in ensuring the presenters were prepared was good old-fashioned rehearsal. The experts and artists practiced eliminating jargon and tangents in order to communicate clearly and succinctly to listeners from outside their professional domains. They did not disappoint and nearly all gave us a challenge of some sort before concluding:

• Culture/Rethink speakers encouraged us to learn life’s lessons, to avoid being “sorted” by technology while urging us to participate more actively in civil society, to answer the question “What would you do if you could do anything?”, and to not shy away from grieving about the horrors of the world.
• Evolutionary Change Makers presenters asked us to consider what having health care geared towards individuals (instead of populations) might look like, to spend some time every week on solving problems for social good, to listen to those we aim to help, and to bring home understanding from our travels.
• The experts and artists in Beyond Frontiers pushed us to stretch our understanding of the economics and science behind sustainable energy, to consider what we might expect from the third wave of the sexual revolution, to commit to the transformational power of daily creative practice, invited us to sing and dance with an audience from around the world, and encouraged us to “practice thinking funny.”

That last suggestion came from comedian Chris Bliss who spoke about why comedy can so successfully catalyze the spreading of an idea. “Every act of communication is an act of translation,” he stated early in his presentation. One of his premises was that effective humor uses deception based on fact to change the context of an idea. When it works, that shift leads the listener to find new questions and perhaps new solutions. As Phil suggested to me, we gain access to more fruitful dialogs when we “…leave room for the imagination, for not having all the answers.”

Questions for this Thursday’s #Innochat:

• To (again) quote Sarah Stuteville, “What would you do if you could do anything?”
• What tools or processes do you use to shift your working context?
• How do you encourage listening and understanding during the innovation process?
• How do you avoid the trap of “having all the answers?”

I invite you to join me for a discussion of these questions in 140 characters or less on Twitter this Thursday, November 17 at Noon (Eastern time). Follow the #Innochat hashtag to join in. For more about this weekly online discussion, visit Innochat.com.

Vineyards viewed from trail between Vernazza and Corniglia in 2003.

I didn’t plan on writing about travel this week. I was going to tell you I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo this month. (Hey, looks like I just did!) Thing is, I kept coming across the subject of Cinque Terre and photos of the damage done to it by torrential rains while doing novel-related research. So like any distractable and procrastinating writer, I went looking for more news, more photos, more information.

Memories of Medieval Monterosso
I found much of my current passion for food and wine in Monterosso. I made pesto for the first time at Hotel Marina. Thanks to a tourmate ignoring the chef’s instructions I learned that the traditional mash of garlic, basil and pinenuts need not have a whole or even half a head of garlic to be authentic and flavorful. The chef explained, after tasting my tourmate’s batch, the point of pesto is to let the freshness of all the ingredients express themselves.

This northern-most of the five villages is also the first place I can recall meeting a female sommelier, Susanna Barbieri at Enoteca Internazionale. I had my first real lesson in understanding all the aspects of what wine stewards call “terroir” tasting a Sciacchetrá from Riomaggiore while there. Traditionally made by allowing Bosca and Albarola grapes to wither on the vines before being pressed, this rare gem still sets my standard for how a botrytised wine should taste.

Bottle of Sciacchetrá we brought home in 2003.

I dined with my family shortly after September 11 at Il Pozzo, a restaurant in the old part of this town. I started a tradition with my sister of eating cozze when traveling where any local mussels can be found. Now, “…[you can see] only the sign, the ground floor [is] filled with debris.” (Translated by me from Il cuore delle Cinque Terre non c’ è più or “The Heart of Cinque Terre is No More.”)

Vernazza Visuals
The sea water once separating the beach from the dock has been pushed out by mud in Vernazza. It was on that dock I first laid eyes on Rick Steves, one of this village’s biggest promoters. He was there when I was in 2001 filming for his TV show. And he is among many tour operators reflecting on how best to help with the recovery process now.

Vernazza as seen from trail between Monterosso and Vernazza in 2003.

This photo journal shows how one couple witnessed the flash floods while traveling. Escaping the destructive rush of water mixed with earth and rocks lead them to have “a surreal cultural interchange in the most unlikely of circumstances.” The locals who hosted them for the night taught them how to make pizza dough. I think Rick would be proud.

More Floods Possible
Today, another storm threatens the area with even more rain. News of more wet weather on the way is not good. Parts of Monterosso and all of Vernazza have been evacuted again.

But many Italian villages have survived floods before and clean-up efforts have already begun. Though the danger may not yet be over, I’m holding out hope that these medieval hamlets will remain destinations for world travelers for many years to come.

For information about recovery efforts and how to help, watch these sites:

• Cultural Context – Vernazza Updates
• Little Paradiso – blogging from Monterosso
• Save Vernazza

One final note: If you decide you want to contribute to the Italian Red Cross, Kate of Little Paradiso offers some excellent advice about how to deal with the online donation form:

When you go to the site, make sure that on the drop down menu, you select EMERGENCY TUSCANY AND LIGURIA. If you are donating from a foreign country, leave the ‘state’ field — and the ‘nation’ field will be written in Italian. If you are from the US, the nation will be ‘Stati Uniti’. IF you have problems with the zip code fields, try 00000. I encourage all of you to give what you can, large or small, to help rebuild the towns that have been hit so hard in Liguria and Tuscany.

All photos reused with permission. © 2011 Mike Russell. All rights reserved.

On a whim, I decided to go looking for ghost towns on a recent visit to Arizona. That road trip led me to Nothing.

Arizona, especially the part of Mohave County in which this abandoned settlement was established in 1977, is still very desolate. Hot, arid with few services nearby, there really is no reason to go to Nothing now. But that is precisely what my husband and I did on a very hot summer day this August.

We had some idea of what to look for and expected there might still be an exit signpost on US 93. There wasn’t. Only the fading rock shop sign was left to let us know we’d found it. Completely gone was the proclamation that had once attracted tourists: “The staunch citizens of Nothing are full of Hope, Faith, and Believed in the work ethic… [they] had faith in Nothing, hoped for Nothing, worked at Nothing, for Nothing.”

We knew we would not be visiting the fellow who put Nothing on the map. Richard Kenworthy left for Del Rio, Texas some time ago. Though I haven’t discovered exactly when he left, the 100+ degree summer temperatures and intermittent traffic along this road gave me an idea as to why.

The only indications someone had once lived here were the notice on the one remaining building to keep out and the debris to the north and south of it. The demolition that happened sometime in the past decade left behind concrete rubble mixed with other broken down building bits. Trash, old furniture, and rusted barrels had been pushed into large heaps. The sole resident was a raven who watched over us and the dusty lot from his perch above.

The original residents of Nothing managed to eke out a living by running a gas station and selling rocks as souvenirs. In 1997, a photographer described “Old Miner” Jim who lived in the Outback (a mobile home) as a 20th century prospector who bred polydactyl cats and looked for “leftover gold” in the desert.

Notes posted in an online forum for road trip enthusiasts suggest the gas station operated up through at least 2003. And as recently as 2006, this location was used as a meeting point for rock collectors. For how much longer Kenworthy and the other residents of the settlement stayed is still a mystery to me.

Articles from 2009 and 2010 suggested this spot might be on its way to becoming a tourist trap once again. A regional news site reported that the property had a new owner, Mike Jensen who had grand plans of returning it to being a road stop attraction. Nothing was destined to become a permanent home for a promising mobile wood-fired pizza business.

With only the raven to greet us, our hunger for a freshly baked slice did not get sated. “Pizza Man Mike” blamed the government for not being able to vend there as he’d intended. His complaints of permit issues and unexpected health code requirements are pretty common ones for any restaurant startup. Though, if the $1.1 million price tag he allegedly agreed to pay for Nothing is accurate, I’d bet that health and zoning requirements were the least of his business problems.

Despite news stating the land was sold in 2005, Kenworthy is still listed as owner for the two parcels that make up this intriguing ghost town. (The Mohave County Assessor records showed different owners for 2010 than for 2011. Only a title search is likely to prove who actually owns it now.) With a declining value thanks to a continuing recession, there’s no doubt Jensen agreed to pay way too much. For Nothing.

All color photos reused with permission. © 2011 Mike Russell. All rights reserved.
All black and white photos reused with permission. © 1997 Marc Kollmuss – tm.woRK.

When the temperatures dipped to an unseasonably low point for a few nights, I noticed a few were bolting. Tasting a sample of a few plants confirmed it—the stalks were too astringent. But the leaves still had enough freshness to try using them in a salad. That fine line between clean, watery “green” and “spicy with a bitter tone” proved to be a challenge in creating an appetizing dish.

Reused with permission. © 2011 Mike Russell. All rights reserved.

I turned to one of my top three kitchen books, The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg. Checking the celery entry yielded a set of possibilities, including a use for a small hunk of stinky Stilton, a blue cheese, leftover from a wine tasting earlier in the week.

I pinched a small piece of the odiferous cheese off and smeared it on my tongue. Its hallmark tang was drowned out by how salty it had become. If I acted that day, I’d still be able to use it for something other than stinking up the compost bin. The authors’ suggestions for Stilton were a short list so I tried the more general blue cheese page.

Super-salty Stilton, spicy-bitter celery leaves – I knew that to balance these I needed sweetness and a touch of acidity. With two basic elements in mind, I flipped back and forth for more fruit and seasoning ideas. I found the linchpin ingredient for the dressing when I scanned the entry on pear flavor affinities: balsamic vinegar. I decided to chop some dried figs and let them macerate in an aged balsamic vinegar as the basis for the dressing.

I tested what I had thus far and knew it needed a little more sweetness. A drizzle of honey on the blue cheese added just enough to give my salad a perfect balance of bitter, sweet, sour, and salt.

Pear and Celery Salad

With Fig Balsamic Vinaigrette and Honey-drizzled Stilton
Makes 2-4 servings.
2-4 cups celery leaves (garden-fresh, if possible)
1 Bartlett pear
4 dried figs
Balsamic Vinegar (Choose a traditional style for more concentrated sweetness, but not with too much aging so it still adds acidity and doesn’t break the bank.)
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1-2 garlic cloves
Salt to taste
Stilton Cheese (room temperature)
Honey

Dice the dried figs and pour enough balsamic vinegar over to cover them. Let them macerate for at least 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, prep the remainder of the ingredients:

• Roughly chop the celery leaves.
• Cut the pear into 1/4 to 1/2 inch pieces.
• Place into a salad bowl large enough to toss with the dressing.

Prepare the vinaigrette:

• Mince the garlic cloves.
• Add the olive oil and balsamic-macerated figs.
• Stir vigorously with a fork or a whisk.

Compose the salad:

• Gently toss the celery leaves, pear slices, and fig balsamic vinaigrette.
• Spoon dressed salad onto plates.
• Break cheese into 1/4 to 1/2 inch pieces and garnish each serving.
• Drizzle honey over the bits of Stilton.