With its easygoing nature, panna cotta—Italian for “cooked cream”—makes for a spectacular holiday dessert. The essence of simplicity, it can be altered to suit any occasion—built savory with cauliflower and morels in spring, created to uplift with spices and citrus in winter, or made sweetly with vanilla and strawberries in summer. Panna cotta provides a…
At Heartwood Provisions inspiration comes from a host of sources: what’s in season, what the season makes us yearn for, and a lifetime of experiences. For Chef Varin, who was born in Laos, raised in the U.S., and cut his culinary teeth at local restaurants in Seattle, this experience includes a cooking scholarship in the Mediterranean….
Recreating the Red Ryder cocktail has become one of my favorite holiday traditions. I came up with this recipe years ago for a holiday pairing dinner with cinnamon as the theme, and have made it for friends and family ever since. Not only is this cocktail seasonal and festive; it is also easy to make…
Not all of Chef Varin’s work happens in the kitchen. An avid outdoorsman, Varin can be found fishing and foraging on a regular basis. Below, he gives us a glimpse into his life on the Puget Sound—recipes and all. Chef Varin: “In the fading hours of fall and winter daylight, Seattle’s waterfront illuminates with lights beaming…
In October, Amanda Reed joined hundreds of other beverage industry insiders from around the country at Portland Cocktail Week. The educational convention is arguably the second largest in the United States, after New Orleans’ Tales of the Cocktail. The trip began in an Amtrak car reserved exclusively by Brown-Forman (makers of Woodford Reserve.) Then it…
The stretch between roasted pumpkin seeds and pumpkin pie—the weeks between now and Thanksgiving—is ripe with opportunities to work with pumpkin. So, we tapped Chef Varin for a gourd-ish twist on desserts for the holiday season. He gave us an alternative to the standard pumpkin pie recipe: an effortless pumpkin cake. “As summer winds down and…
