Le Petite Terroir, Non-Caffeinted Almond and Seasme Drinks

Doof Out

Back to reality from all the traveling and good food never ends!

Very grateful to catch the last meal from Le Petite Terroir, a tiny farm to table restaurant in Woodinville, WA — in our wine country.

Unfortunately the owner of the restaurant decided that they were going to operate only as a catering company.

The restaurant was only around for less than a year.

Chef Jason Custer have not decided what he is going to do yet — and I believe we will keep an eye on him as I do enjoy his cooking.

We did the tasting menu that night.

Lighting was not the greatest, colors of the pictures were suffering a bit.

Started off with a delicious bacon jam on toasts with goat cheese.

Prior to this, I really loved the bacon jam from Skillet; however, after tasting this, I had a new winner!

It was chunky, meaty with lots of texture and chew.

The bacon was flavored with something sweet and spicy, perhaps cinnamon.

The addition of goat cheese gave a creamy and tart dimension to the otherwise crunchy toasts.

Then, we had Charcuterie that were house-made.

My favorite of all was the Copa – very nice flavor and melted in the mouth.

There was the delicious duck liver which was nice, smooth, sweet with raisin and cherry, and most definitely screaming “liver”.

A surprising piece was lamb bacon.

It was a little overly salted, gamey as lamb ought to be, and very delicious.

A cured beef round had great chewy texture and flavor; and a Mortadella that was peppery and had incredible texture which was almost crunchy and with a floral hint.

Our 3 starters were butternut squash soup, a play on Caesar salad, and a beet salad.

The best one of all was the “Caesar salad” made with chilled asparagus and roasted brussels sprouts, topped with lemon, manchego cheese and croutons of fried pork belly!

Nothing can beat fried fat!

The pork belly was flavorful and once again, melted in the mouth.

The dish was fun and tasty.

For Mains, we had a squash gnocchi, pork shank and lamb burger.

The lamb burger was perfectly cooked, rare inside with a lovely tzatziki yogurt sauce.

The gnocchi had a hint of sweet squash flavor, pan-fried crisp with brown butter, with a little sage and cheese crumble.

They were light in texture, fluffy and enjoyable.

The pork shank was very tender and soft.

Pickled cabbage was perfect done, and mix with sweet apple and a creamy mash potato base, each ingredients complimented each other really well without losing their own character.

For dessert, we had a fried brioche donut.

Hot, crispy and dusted generously with cinnamon and sugar, it was delicious.

Hoping our young chef will open his own restaurant soon so we can have his food again!

Doof Home

Weather had been pretty cold and I had been drinking hot liquids non-stop.

I started getting bored with the varieties of teas I was drinking.

Coffees and chocolates were not sippable all day for me due to my sensitivities to caffeine and large amount of sugar.

As a result, I was on a mission to find non-dairy hot drinks alternatives that I could have all day long — and I found 2 delicious candidates.

First one was a very tasty unsweetened almond drinking powder (on the right).

The minute the lid was opened, almond flavor came bursting out of the can.

The drink was smooth and the powder were fairly easily mixed with hot water.

It was made with real almond, and there were ground almond bits floating in the cup.

It was completely soothing for a cold night, and I could add healthy sweetener to it with as little or as much as I wished.

The second was a black sesame drink.

This product was sweetened with brown sugar and crystal sugar, and definitely at “Chinese sweet” level, meaning not very sweet at all.

It was marketed as a cereal drink and was made with black sesame, soy, brown rice, barley and wheat germ.

The powder was easily dissolved in hot water and with all the starches, turned thick quickly.

The black sesame flavor was wonderful.

It tasted just like the black sesame filling in a Chinese sticky rice dumpling (tang yuan) — melty form in a cup!

Joy!

Both products were made in Taiwan.

With food scandals plaguing China the last several years, I avoided purchasing food products from China as much as possible.

The almond powder came in a can, and the black sesame powder came in individual packets inside the big bag.

They were available in Chinese stores in my area.