Drink Pink 2011 posterpdf

CAFÉ  CAMPAGNE ‘S    LA   FÊTE   DU   ROSÉ

 Celebrate the coming of hot summer days and warm summer nights with our annual rosé party!

 Thursday, June 9, 2011 from 4 pm- 7 pm

 Cyril, our Wine Director, has sourced some fantastic and varied  rosé wines

foryou to taste, explore and enjoy!

The $15 admission includes your first glass of rosé wine and passed hors d’oeuvre provençal:

Tomate Farci   tomatoes stuffed with goat cheese

Fennel Beignets   deep-fried fennel

Socca  seasoned  chickpea crèpe

Pissaladière  caramelized onion pizza with anchovy and olive

DRINK PINK WILL BE HELD IN THE  UPSTAIRS COURTYARD

 Drink Pinks  of the past have been  great fun and we look forward to having you with us again this year.

Valentine’s Day Weekend is just around the corner and we’re already taking a lot of reservations for what we think is going to be one of our best yet!

Chef Daisley Gordon has put together several special dishes to serve in addition to our regular menu.  We’ll serve them for dinner all the way through the Valentine’s Weekend from Friday night to Monday night.  Check these out:

Dungeness Crab Salad with Belgian endive, avocado, green grapes and tarragon vinaigrette $19

Loki Salmon Caviar served with crème fraîche, chopped egg, onion, caper and toasts $16

Foie Gras Entier, a preserved duck liver foie gras with grilled bread and house-made confiture $19

He’s also put together a few dishes meant to be shared:

Saladier Lyonnais, robust salad greens tossed with pain au levain croutons and bacon lardons, topped with sautéed livers and soft cooked egg $13/person

Coq au vin, red wine-braised, free-range chicken garnished with bacon, pearl onions and mushrooms, served with house-made noodles $24/person

Tarte Tatin, a larger version of our classic, caramelized Jazz apples baked with puff pastry and sweetened and whipped crème fraîche $10/person

Gâteau l’Opéra, a favorite of upstairs at Campagne comes downstairs to make a visit. Almond sponge cake, ganache and coffee butter cream, chocolate glaze, served with mandarin segments $10/person.

We usually book up fast, so make your reservations right now online through OpenTable! (credit card required)

Can’t wait to see you and to make it a wonderful night!

It’s been a cold winter so far! With an early snow and 20 degree weather, I know it doesn’t seem like much to our friends on the East Coast, but here in Seattle it’s been a bit intense!

What’s our answer to the cold weather? Aside from the hearty Cassoulet, Wine Director Cyril Frechier’s Vin Chaud fights off the chill of the Puget Sound winds. His grandmother’s old recipe for mulled wine calls to heat red wine (we use a Rhône blend) with brandy, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, ginger, clove and some sparks of citrus and their zest.   Garnished with an orange slice, it’s a beautiful, warming treat.

We serve the Vin Chaud all day long and would love to have you escape the chills with us for lunch or for dinner!

Have you ever heard of bugnes?  A lot of fun to say (like byoon, very French), bugnes are close cousins to beignets, fluffy doughnut-like treats covered in powdered sugar popular in the Big Easy.

If you are familiar with bugnes, you know that they are a very traditional winter treat in France.  Since we like to honor those interesting culinary traditions that may be a little lesser know, we’re adding the bugnes to our dessert list at Café Campagne for the month of January.  Not only that, we’re offering them to go!  If you’re just wandering around the market, stop by to pick up a little “bag of bugnes” to keep you warm and your tastebuds sated during your market meanderings.

Hope to see you savoring some bugne soon! (Don’t worry, it’s okay if it’s messy.)

Fresh on the heels of the news of the Campagne remodel, many of our long time regulars demanded what would happen to Campagne’s annual January tradition of Twenty Buck Duck.

So as to not disappoint our veteran patrons, our two course Twenty Buck Duck special will replace our monthly 101 prix fixe menu for the month of January.
Chef Daisley Gordon has once again put together an outstanding offering that is really quite a steal!

The first course shows so many different uses of duck.  We start sliced potatoes that are fried in duck fat, enough to really get any gourmand’s blood pumping.  We top it with a poached duck egg and cover it all with our own duck jus, which is our robust chicken jus reduced with duck liver mousse.  Remember, this is just to start!

The second course is a Muscovy hen duck leg rubbed in spices and cooked as confit.  It’s served in a bowl atop a Puy lentil ragout that includes bacon (what else?) and escarole.

So what are you waiting for?  Make a reservation and come spoil yourself with a great dinner without breaking the bank!

It’s that time of year again to celebrate what a wonderful culinary city Seattle has become.  We can’t express how happy we are to be part of such a vibrant scene where chefs are able to make excellent food that is greeted well by a loving public.  With Zig Zag and Tavern Law recently getting national recognition in GQ and Jason Wilson winning the Beard Award, it’s a really exciting time to be in love with restaurants in Seattle.  Seattle Restaurant Week gives us in the industry an opportunity to give thanks to the dining-centric Seattlites who have put our city on the map through good times and bad.

So, what are the three courses for $25 that we’re serving at the Café?

For your first course, you have your choice of our classic salade verte, pork rillettes with mustards and cornichon, or our fan-favorite haricots verts with bacon and shallots.

For the second course, we’ll have a rotating preparation of mussels, the first of which boasts cucumber and roasted red pepper with spicy harissa butter.

Your second choice is the off-traditional boeuf bourgignon, which we’re serving on a house-made spätzle.  Just in time for the colder weather of October, boeuf bourgignon is hearty and rich with that beautiful red-wine roasted aroma that is simply incomparable.

For the vegetarians in the crowd, we did not forget about you!  There is also a wonderful green chard gratin with roasted potatoes, celery and celery root, cream, plenty of garlic and parmesan cheese, and a hefty quenelle of roasted butternut squash on top.

For dessert, we figured, “why bother with a limited menu?”  The desserts you know and love are all there: cherry clafoutis, crème brûlée, terrine au chocolat, and our house-made ice creams and sorbets.  We even added the Tarte Basque aux Pommes, an incredible applebutter-filled tarte made with an almond-based crust, served with a huckleberry compote and whipped crème fraîche.

Directeur du Vin Cyril Frechier has even hand-selected wines from our glass pour list to go with each option for the first two courses, so with the money you save on the three courses you can treat yourself to expertly paired wine with your appetizer and entrée.

Seattle Restaurant Week runs Sunday through Thursday until October 28th, and is pretty busy, so make sure to call for reservations or to make one online!  Hope to see you soon.

Thank you again, Seattle.

The change in leaves, the cooler weather, and the arrival of daily cloud cover all mean the beginning of October in Seattle. And with the change in month, comes a new prix-fixe menu featured at Café Campagne.

This month the Café is taking you through a tour of the lower regions of Normandy for your Easy French experience.

This region puts a great focus on the pleasures of the farm and thus, many of the dishes include cream, potato, cheese, butter and/or apples.

Our first course this month is Pomme de Terre en Salade. This is a simple dish with fingerling potatoes, blanched celery, and just a touch of capers to balance the creaminess of the dressing.  The vinaigrette dressing is very typical to the Normandy style with a combination of egg yolk, dijon mustard, shallot, and tarragon vinn that is emulsified.

Chef’s second course is Epaule de Porc Braisee – Braised pork shoulder with cauliflower gratin and rosemary apple sauce.  The use of pork in normandy is quite common and ours is first prepared with a seasoning of thyme, garlic, and coarse salt and is seared.  Then, the pork shoulder is braised with apple cider, mir poix, bay leafs, thyme, and red wine with the last half hour having an addition of apples and rosemary.  The cauliflower gratin is made with blanched cauliflower, thyme, and béchamel sauce and seasoned to perfection with salt, fresh ground black pepper, and a sprinkling of bread crumbs.

Rounding out this month’s 101 we end the meal with one of the legendary cheeses Normandy is known for.  The third course is Camambert – Le Pommier Camembert - with a touch honey and pistachios.

Come in this October and discover the region of Normandy in it’s finest form – a delicious dinner representative of the agricultural region - at Café Campagne!

Join us in Post Alley for Café Campagne’s first communal dinner as we celebrate the bounty from the farmers who provide us with the highest quality product the market has to offer.

We’re blocking the alley off and setting a table for 60 of our closest friends, and you’re invited.  Enjoy Chef Gordon’s homage to the splendors of fall produce and savor the aroma of lamb grilled just feet from your table.

First
Marinated tomatoes and sweet peppers with baby lettuces

Main
Roasted Leg of Lamb with fennel and sultana cous cous, baby carrots and lamb jus

Dessert
Plum Tarte with lavender whipped cream

Seating will be any time between 5:30-8pm, according to your reservation.

$95 per person includes your meal, wine, tax and gratuity.

Unfortunately, we will not be able to offer any changes or substitutions to this menu.

Please call 206-728-2233 for reservations.

Pike Place Market Sunday Chef Cooking Demonstration July 25, 2010

I love carrots.  I like the flavor and the color and the endless ways to prepare it.I like them raw, roasted marinated, baked, fried and pureed. Their tastes can range far and wide depending on the variety and how they are prepared.

In my early days as the chef at Campagne and Café Campagne my love of carrots went a bit too far.  I had prepared a summer menu to be evaluated by the owner.  He said: “what’s up with all the carrots?”  Apparently it was a menu fit for Bugs Bunny.

I had a particular recipe where I diced them really really small and blanched them in salted water and then marinated them in truffle oil.  I called the preparation vegetable caviar.  I think I tried to put it on every fish special I made for a while.  But that’s how it is when you get obsessed with things.  You do not realize that the rest of the world doesn’t love it as much as you do.

My goal now is to get you to share my obsession with carrots and give it the rightful place in you cooking repertoire.  In the summer when they are in abundance, I think it is good to have some options. These are three ways that we prepare it a Campagne and café Campagne.

Carrot Salad

1 # organic carrots

12 each garlic cloves, fresh

3 lemons, juiced

1 T Dijon mustard

Sea salt

Fresh ground black pepper

Blender

Wash, then peel bunched organic carrots. Make thin slices by using a Japanese mandolin. In blender, combine 12 medium fresh garlic cloves and the juice of three lemons, 1 Tablespoon of Dijon mustard, puree until smooth, and then add olive oil in steady stream until thick and creamy. Pour vinaigrette over carrot slices and marinate at least 1 day. Adjust seasoning with sea salt and freshly ground pepper. These need a minimum of one day to taste good. The day of marinating will allow the carrots to release some of their juice and mix with the marinade and then you will get this pale creamy carrot colored vinaigrette that is really delicious.

Now the magic of this dish is in two places.  First: the carrots.  Then it is in the garlic cloves.  When the garlic is relatively fresh in the growing season, it has a softer slightly moister consistency, since it hasn’t been left to dry as most of the garlic you find in the store (which are perfectly good, by the way). Most of the time when we make creamy vinaigrettes in restaurants, we use an egg or at least and egg yolk as an emulsifier (this stabilizes the vinaigrette and keeps the oil from separating). The fresh garlic is a great emulsifier, so along with a little mustard you are able to make a purely vegetarian vinaigrette which has great creamy consistency.

Currently at Café Campagne, we use this salad on salad Nicoise plate along with lots of traditional things like egg, tomato, tuna, potatoes and marinated vegetables.  We also use it on a tartine which is made with this fantastic bread from Grand Central bakery.

I must give credit to one of my culinary heroes, Joel Robuchon (  http://twitpic.com/28nen7 )as I was inspired by a preparation years ago in his first book Simply French.

Glazed Carrots

I pound organic carrots, peeled and sliced thinly, discs or sticks, your choice.

Water to cover

2 Table spoons butter, unsalted

1 teaspoon sugar

1 pinch sea salt

Fresh herbs: parsley, basil or mint

A shallow stainless steel sauté pan (straight and short sides)

The heart of the glazed carrots is the French technique of glazing vegetables.  This is one of those things you learn very early on at culinary school or in French kitchens and I think it remains very useful. It is a technique that can be used with other root vegetables: celery root, parsnips, rutabagas, turnips, even beets, though I think it is best with carrots.  At the heart of things is keeping the flavor by keeping the juice.  Typically when carrots need to be cooked, they get boiled.  Boiling gets the carrots to a point where they are easier to eat and digest-meaning softer.  The problem is, when you dump the water, you dump most of the flavor and vibrancy that was in the carrots.  Glazing helps you keep that juice and that is where the flavor is.

Here is the procedure:

Place prepared carrots in sauté pan.  Add enough water just to cover the carrots; and a pinch of salt, little sugar and a couple tablespoons of butter.   Bring the water up to boil, then, turn it down to a simmer.  At this point, allow the carrots to cook gently until they just get tender.  If the water goes down below the level of the carrots, before they are finished cooking, add more water. When the carrots are ready, remove them from the pan with a slotted spoon and hold them on a plate.  Turn up heat and return the liquid to a boil.  Continue to boil until the liquid reduces and begins to get a little thick and glossy and there is just enough to coat the carrots.  At this point return the carrots to the pan and gently coat in the glaze.  If more time is needed to heat the carrots, add a little water and heat until hot and glazed. The combination of sugar, butter and the carrots juices create the glaze. Finally finish the dish with your favorite soft herbs, parsley, basil, mint, tarragon, even chervil.

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