One of the great things about the Altitude Design Summit, which I attended recently in Salt Lake City, was that it featured activities suited for a wide range of interests, including food. Yay for me! Of course, I signed on to anything remotely food-related in an effort to fulfill the foodie as much as the designer side of me while attending the conference.

On the last day of Alt, a Foodie Tour was going to be led by food blogger Lindsey Johnson (of Café Johnsonia). I was very eager to discover what gourmandises Salt Lake City had to offer because, as the tour’s description put it, one wouldn’t necessarily picture SLC as a foodie paradise. Lindsey was also hosting a dinner on the night immediately before the conference started. Together with Jennifer Hoiyin (of Delightful Delicacies), they took on the formidable challenge of cooking dinner for 16 strangers at SLC’s Viking Cooking School. They prepared a delightful five-course vegetarian meal made almost solely with local ingredients. Their dishes highlighted delicious handcrafted products such as bread, cheese and honey, as well as locally grown and harvested produce and eggs. The meal was a great success, and it was an excellent way to convince me, right from the outset, that SLC did indeed have a delicious food culture worth discovering.

The Viking Cooking School is an impressive space to have dinner in, if only to drool over the gorgeous appliances!

When we arrived, the cooks were busy in a kitchen that looked a little bit messy, as any kitchen that is used to prepare something delicious should. Here, Lindsey’s chatting with guest, Susan.

Guests (Merrilee, Jeanine, Hillary & Melanie) mingling before the meal starts.

The second half of the cooking duo, Jennifer, with their generous and friendly helper throughout the night, Becky.

The tables were beautifully set, complete with place markers, a menu, and a list of all the local providers that contributed to the dinner.

Loved the fragrant rosemary branch that added a pop of color to each place setting {an easy idea to do at home!}. To the right, in the background, Danyelle and Jeanine.

Just some of the colorful dishes we enjoyed (let me tell you, we didn’t leave hungry!).
Clockwise:

• Compound butters (garlic and chive, raspberry, tamarack honey) and a local hard cheese
• Winter root vegetable gratin with arugula pesto
• Creamed polenta with braised hearty greens, sun dried tomatoes and pinenuts
• Meyer lemon curd ice cream (in-cre-di-bly creamy and dairy-free, it was made with coconut milk!) with a hazelnut shortbread cookie

The ladies behind our welcoming dinner in Salt Lake City: Becky, Lindsey and Jennifer.

After that wonderful start, I couldn’t wait for the Foodie Tour. The fact that the following conference days were so full that I didn’t even set foot outside of the hotel made me really itch to go out and discover the gourmet side of SLC. Right before lunch on Saturday, I joined Lindsey and the rest of the group for a three-hour walk (which turned out to be a drive because it was raining!) around the city’s most delicious shops.

We started with dessert at Les Madeleines, where owner Romina Rasmussen, an energetic woman with an infectious enthusiasm, warmly welcomed us inside her busy pastry shop. A table was reserved for our group, so we made ourselves comfortable while Romina took our coffee orders. She then proceeded to present herself and her uncommon career path: she’s a former telecom executive who lived in Hong Kong for a couple of years before choosing to drop her previous career and become a pastry chef. I don’t know what it is with people who choose food as a second career, but they always seem so grateful and passionate about what they do! Romina was no exception, and the way she introduced us to her signature pastry, the kouing-aman, made us drool even before we were each given one to savour.

Romina Rasmussen and Lindsey Johnson, our guide on the Foodie Tour.

The kouing-aman is a rich, buttery pastry from Brittany. The outside of the pastry is crunchy and caramelized, but the inside is tender and flaky like a croissant, with a gooey heart that almost tastes like honey. Romina is famous for being one of the first to make this pastry in North America, and she was featured twice on the Food Network for her specialty, which has been called luxurious and addictive. It is definitely unique, and Romina explained that the process to make kouing-aman takes over nine hours: bread dough is sprinkled with butter and sugar, folded and rolled several times (like croissant dough), then slowly baked so that the butter-sugar mixture melts through the thin dough layers and caramelizes. Talk about a labor-intensive delight!

In Brittany, the famous pastry, whose hard-to-pronounce name comes from the Breton language, is traditionally made as a large cake that is served in slices. It is also made in individual portions, usually called “Kouignettes” (cute word!), like it is at Les Madeleines. I’m sure the full cake is delicious, but if you ask me, a one-person portion features the perfect balance between crunchy and gooey, and that’s precisely what makes this pastry so addictive.

For more info about kouing-aman, read famous pastry chef and blogger David Lebovitz’s account of his visit to the pastry’s birthplace in Brittany. If you want to try one, know that Les Madeleines ships to all 50 US states – but be advised that ordering may become an expensive habit, because you will undoubtedly become a fan! To find it outside of the US, search for “kouing-aman” + the name of your region on Google (keeping in mind that there are a few different spellings of the word) and you may be lucky enough to find a pastry shop near you that makes them.

All of Les Madeleines’ other pastries and desserts look delicious! They make macarons, cookies, cakes, and all sorts of sweet delights.

Love this: "We will happily assist you when you are finished with your phone call." Basic courtesy, people!

Les Madeleines’s endearing and generous owner, Romina Rasmussen.

I’m already dreaming of going back to enjoy kouing-aman again next year, when I return to Salt Lake City for the next Alt Summit!

After this first visit, Lindsey drove us to one of SLC’s finest food markets, which is worth a post in and of itself. Come back later this week to read more about my delicious visits in Utah!

{Useful Links & Info}

The places I visited in Salt Lake City:

• Viking Cooking School
• Les Madeleines
  216 East 500 South, Salt Lake City, UT 84111 / (801) 355-2294

The fine ladies I met at Café Johnsonia & Delightful Delicacies’ welcome dinner:

• Lindsey, Café Johnsonia
• Jennifer, Delightful Delicacies
• Becky, The Vintage Mixer
• Alison, The Alison Show
• Brittany, Lipstick & Leopard Print
• Danyelle, Dandee Designs
• Dariela, Mami Talks
• Hillary Schuster
• Jeanine, Love & Lemons
• Lisa, With Style and Grace
• Melanie Saucier
• Melanie, You Are My Fave
• Merrilee, Mer Mag
• Randi, Swoon Studio
• Susan, Freshly Picked

I knew attending the summit would be fulfilling from a creative point of view, but I wondered whether I would draw true relevant advice for my work and my blog. My blog isn't about design but about food, after all, but I figured I would give it a try. I registered for the conference, reserved a hotel room, booked my flight and waited for January 18 2012 to arrive.

As I fly back home, I can say that Alt was one of the best conferences I’ve attended so far. Many other attendees share my enthusiasm and several happy posts have already been written on the subject. Although I share everyone’s super happy, positive, creatively charged state of mind, I thought it would be great to round up the five objective reasons why I loved Alt Summit – and, if you have a blog as well, I think you will too.

1)  Abundance of relevant advice

The amount of straight-to-the-point information delivered at Alt was simply mind-boggling. After the first panel I attended, I had already filled six notebook pages with notes and new to-dos. After three panels, I switched to taking notes with my iPad because my hand was tired. What I loved most was that the advice provided was at advanced level. This is a bloggers’ conference after all; no offence to novices out there, but the vast majority of Alt attendees already have a blog and were at the conference to learn how to take it to the next level. The panelists clearly created their presentations with that in mind and (very!) generously provided their top tips to help others succeed. When the info wasn’t new to me, it still reminded me of important action items I had neglected until now.

A roomfull of attentive design lovers:

2)  Transparency of provided information

At many blogging conferences, talking about numbers is taboo. It’s as if some speakers fear that their performance will go down if they talk too much about it. Not so at Alt. From the very first conference I attended (The Business of Blogging), statistics were poured down on us: traffic numbers, revenues, earned CPC and CPM, ad rates – it felt like no topic was out of bounds with design bloggers. Sure, the speakers who shared their stats had nothing to be ashamed of, but it was very helpful to (finally) be able to figure out ballparks for an intermediate blogger like me.

3)  Approachable speakers

Another common complaint about blogging conferences is how hard it can be to reach the speakers. You usually get a short window of opportunity to present yourself or speak to a presenter at the end of sessions or during the Q&A periods, but rarely beyond that. Some speakers will stay at the conference only for the day they are scheduled to be on a panel. Others will hang out amongst themselves, making it intimidating for outsiders to introduce themselves. Again, not so at Alt. I’ve seen the most popular design bloggers (you know, those who rack in millions of visitors monthly) mingle from the first to the last hour of the conference. They attended each other’s sessions, roundtables and design camps. Instead of forming a close-knit group, they seemed to voluntarily split and mix with new people all the time, especially at lunch and dinner. That’s how I was able to introduce myself to personal favorite Jordan Ferney over morning coffee, and to have lunch with the fabulous Girls with Glasses, Summer and Brooke. Star bloggers are just like you and me – and those who speak at Alt seem to know that.

The ever-so-lovely Erin Loechner, from Design for Mankind:

4)  Variety of topics covered

When I registered with Alt, the schedule wasn’t published yet so I was unsure if the topics covered would be relevant to me, as a food blogger. However, when I was able to go through the full agenda, my problem turned out to be making choices! There were three different tracks to choose from at each session, 18 roundtable topics on Friday morning, and 20 design camps on Saturday, with topics ranging from sewing and upholstery, to photography and videoblogging. Special tours were also offered on Saturday: to the Sundance film festival, to the mountains to ski, to thrift stores, and even – lucky me! – to Salt Lake City gourmet shops more about that delicious activity soon). Even the keynotes seemed to have been chosen to cover opposite sides of the motivation scale: from the business point of view, with Pinterest’s charismatic CEO Ben Silbermann (who got a standing ovation), to down-to-earth and feel-good author of best-selling book "The Happiness Project", Gretchen Rubin. Alt’s schedule ensured that people with a wide variety of backgrounds could "design" a conference tailored to their needs.

Roundtable with Adrienne Cardon, "Tips From Ad Agencies That Will Make You a Better Blogger":

Above picture (c) Justin Hackworth

Working on my project at design camp 'Cut Paper Crafts':

Above picture (c) b.a.d photography

Our fabulous design camp group, with talented teacher and artist Patricia Zapata in the middle:

Above picture (c) b.a.d photography

5)  Value for money

Flying to conferences from Canada, my traveling costs are high so I try to make sure I get good value for the money when I choose to invest in such an activity. At Alt, I was served. This conference delivered the best ROI of all the ones I’ve attended so far. For $345, I got three full conference days, lunches, dinners, different snacks served at breaks (as well as coffee, tea and beverages at all times), the coveted Alt gift box, lots of freebies from the sponsors, material and tools at my design camps and generous tastings during my foodie tour. And dinners weren’t a boring kind of thing: on the first night, attendees chose from over a dozen options which were hosted at some of Salt Lake City’s finest restaurants. Thursday was a Diner en blanc, and Friday was the mini-parties nights where eight hotel suites were transformed into themed nights complete with food and drink. I should also mention that prior to attending the conference, free webinars were offered to attendees to help them prepare for the event. And I’ve already mentioned the abundance and quality of information and advice provided at Alt. Get it? Best. Value. For. Money.

Above picture (c) JustinHackworth.com

My roommate, Melanie Saucier, and I at Thursday night's Diner en blanc:

Above picture (c) b.a.d photography

Of course, there are countless other things I loved about Alt. In no particular order:

• Meeting my friendly fellow attendees: Heart-warming
• Eyeing everyone’s fabulous style: Inspiring
• Marveling at each business card I was handed: Creatively stimulating
• Discovering so many great new blogs: Overwhelming (in a good way!)

For all of these reasons, I will for sure attend Alt Design Summit again in 2013. Will I meet you there?

Instagram snapshot of Friday night's mini-parties:

Hungry for more info about the Altitude Design Summit?

• Altitude Design Summit {official site}
• A round up of recap posts, and another one
• A fun video
• Quotable Alt Summit speakers
• Eight steps to get over post-Alt Summit depression
• For your viewing pleasure, the Flickr set
• Business card inspiration
• More business card inspiration

Of course, I make mistakes, and of course, I take bad decisions sometimes. Some areas in my life have always given me a hard time (like budgeting, ahem!), but I try to keep working on them to get better. Because life is usually good at throwing curve balls, I never stop learning and can always count on being surprised.

In 2011, there were several things I’m especially thankful for:

• The inspiring people I’ve met online over the past year: I feel as though my circle of friends has grown exponentially;
• My friends, here in Quebec City and abroad, and my family, which is always behind every decision I make;
• E, who has been in my life for close to 10 years now. He’s the most patient, generous and supportive person I know. He’s the best person I could ever wish to have as a life partner, and I cherish every day I spend with him;
• The continued growth of my blog and the fact that my passion for maintaining it hasn’t faded one bit;
• The many places I was lucky enough to visit in 2011 (New York – twice, the Bahamas, Amsterdam, Toronto, Rhode Island, Cape Cod, Nantucket, Austin and J-A-P-A-N!). Every time I come back from a trip, I feel enriched;
• All of the great food I enjoyed over the year, the new dishes I felt inspired to try, and the new techniques I learned.

Professionally, I feel very lucky to be a freelancer. I'm so happy working from home, and this is also what allows me to play around with my schedule and cook or write blog posts during the day (not sure I would’ve kept up with the blog if I had to update it only on nights and weekends!). Last January, I wrote a six-page year plan detailing personal and professional objectives, and reading it again now I realize that I’ve accomplished many of these goals, but I also still have a lot to do. I will update this plan in the next few days – setting the bar higher every year is a great motivation to work hard!

Every year, I send a little thank-you present to my clients to show that I appreciate working with them. After all, they contribute to my happiness by allowing me to work from home. Last year, I offered a colorful box of macarons. This year, I kept with the sweet theme and sent caramels, biscotti and madeleines. I’ve had good feedback, so I think my goal of showing that I’m thankful and that I care has been reached.

Like I did last year, I thought I would share a few pictures of my thank-you craft project. Perhaps it’ll inspire you to hand-make some of your own gifts this year?

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An Edible Thank You Gift

1. After baking the sweets I decided to include in my thank you gift, I designed and printed labels to identify each package.

2. Cutting each round label using scissors was a bit of a pain! But I was happy that the result still looked good.

3. Then, I designed a holiday card, composed a heartfelt thank you message, printed the cards and signed each by hand.

4. As a finishing touch, I also printed stickers, which I also had to cut out myself (did I mention it was a pain?)

5. Wrapping time! I made sure to wrap each sweet individually so they would keep better. I used clear bags (such as these).

6. I used a different ribbon for each sweet for a colorful touch.

7. All set and ready to wrap for shipment! My "corporate color" is fushia, so I chose fushia tissue paper to wrap the sweets, and I added a layer of bubble wrap to protect the package's contents.

8. I used a silver ribbon to hold everything together and slid a bookmark-sized business card to make sure my clients knew right away who sent them the sweets

9. I wrapped the boxes in a cute polka dot wrapping paper, and printed custom-designed shipping labels on full-sheet sticker sheets (such as these). Because the sweets I chose to make weren't fragile or too perishable, I was able to inexpensively ship the boxes via regular post.

10. A few days later, thankful emails started coming in, confirming that my sweet gifts hit the spot. Until next year!

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Cheers to a healthy, happy, successful, delicious and fulfilling 2012! 

I almost dropped the project, in fact. A week before Christmas, I vented to E, telling him I didn’t know where to start, that I wasn’t familiar enough with the techniques, that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to find the ingredients. I glanced through a book that I’ve owned for many years and from which I’ve never cooked anything but miso soup and it just worsened my fear of not being able to pull it off. The dishes felt too traditional, a bit fussy, and nothing like we actually had when we were in Japan.

As I was beginning to brainstorm on another theme for our Christmas dinner, I remembered a blog that I like very much for its beautiful pictures, short and sweet posts, and unfussy recipes, No Recipes (yes, despite the name, the blog does feature recipes). The author is a Japanese chef and photographer who loves to add a modern twist to traditional recipes. His 'Japanese Recipes' section was the true inspiration I needed to begin planning our Christmas dinner. I browsed through all the recipes, selecting all that appealed to me, and then chose courses that I felt would fit harmoniously together. Finally, my menu was starting to take shape!

It turns out that the recipes I selected were totally doable and didn't require that I slave in the kitchen for hours prior to our dinner. Shopping for ingredients was the most time consuming, then I did about an hour of prep work the morning of our dinner. At night, I prepared one course with E's help, we ate it, and then we prepared another one. Preparing the meal in this way allowed us to pace ourselves and enjoy the full 5 courses, and meant that making the meal together was a great activity in itself. We were filled with nostalgia, but we were also very happy to be able to enjoy the flavors we loved so much in Japan, at home!

It was undoubtedly one of our best homemade Christmas dinners. I'll take you through the courses and share the links to most recipes, as they are all worth bookmarking for sure. 

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A Japanese Dinner Menu

Snack: Edamame with yuzu sea salt
To drink: Japanese beer and Umeshu (plum wine)

Courses:

• Miso soup with mussels
• Tofu with crab sauce
• Chirashi sushi
• Miso glazed black cod with sautéed broccoli
• Yuzu crème brûlée

To drink: A dry and bright sake, served cold

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Miso Soup with Mussels

This course was dead easy to make, but so satisfying! In fact, I served appetizer portions (about 12 mussels each), but we would have gladly eaten a huge bowl of it. After having a mind-blowing oyster soup in Japan, I knew shellfish and Japanese soups were a natural match. This recipe in my traditional Japanese cuisine cookbook was a no brainer: it's a simple miso broth prepared with homemade dashi and the mussels's cooking liquid, which both make the soup it deeply flavorful. Adding the mussels is a plus that makes the soup fun to eat as well. I will for sure make this again as a main course.

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Tofu with Crab Sauce

A simple mini course, but a flavor bomb. Preparing it with such convenient ingredients as canned crab meat, I was wondering whether it would be lacking in flavor, but the key here was, again, the homemade dashi broth in which the crabmeat is simmered lightly. The freshly grated ginger on top added a welcome dash of spiciness.

View the recipe for Tofu with Crab Sauce

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Chirashi Sushi

This dish was the highlight of our meal. It required the most advance prep and assembling it felt like working on a piece of art. I tried to put all my meticulousness at work and exercise Japanese restraint: use ingredients of a better quality in a smaller quantity. The dish itself is fairly common in Japan and often served in sushi restaurants. The best way to describe it I think is as an 'open face sushi', meaning the vinegared rice is put flat on the bottom of a plate and then it's topped with colorful ingredients like vegetables and raw fish. Mark, from No Recipes, made its version a little more posh by using salmon eggs and uni, two ingredients I couldn't find at home. I remembered a bento box that we bought at the Kyoto train station which looked very much like chirashi sushi (now that I know what it is). It was topped with shrimp and asparagus tips, so I decided to use these very common ingredients instead. Amazingly, I was able to find smoked eel and trout eggs, which truly brought the dish to the next level. The vinegared rice (which requires some technique to make), simmered shiitake mushrooms, tamago (seasoned scrambled eggs) and all of the other components (from tobiko – flying fish roe – to sesame seeds) made the dish look and taste very refined and elegant. I will definitely make it again and again, using a different and seasonal ingredient combination every time.

View the recipe for Chirashi Sushi

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Miso Glazed Black Cod with Sautéed Broccoli

For us, the black cod was the special element of this dish because it's hard to find at home and so I had only once made it at home before – but it's a fish we love to have at restaurants. Marinating it in miso have it a flavor kick and the cooking process was flawless. The fish was flaky and just perfect. The sautéed broccoli provided a discreet but nutritious backdrop to the dish.

View the recipe for Miso Glazed Black Cod with Sautéed Broccoli

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Yuzu crème brûlée

A surprise 'fusion' ending to our meal, the yuzu crème brûlée is a luscious dessert that I'll remember for quite a while. I had never made crème brûlée, always figuring they had to be banned from my lactose-intolerant stomach, but a dairy company here in Quebec recently started selling lactose-free heavy cooking cream, so it opened the door for me to try my hand at this classic dessert. I found the foolproof recipe on Hélène Dujardin's blog, Tartelette, and because I didn't have fresh yuzu on hand, of course, I was able to substitute bottled yuzu juice and dehydrated yuzu zest I brought back from Japan. I'm sure the taste would be even better using the fresh citrus, but let me tell you, this was amazing all the same. If you can't find precious yuzu lemons either, Hélène suggests a clever mix of citrus fruits that should provide a taste that's very close to the real thing. I bruleed the top using pure cane sugar from Okinawa, and was very happy with the perfectly crunchy result that my gas oven allowed me to get.

View the recipe for Yuzu crème brûlées

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Well, that was certainly one of the best meal I ever made and it have me the energy to try my hand at more Japanese cuisine at home. Did you ever try it? What are your favorite recipes?

Happy New Year to all, and I'll see you in 2012!

Interesting and delicious links to more Japanese recipes:

• No Recipes
• Humble Bean
• Lovely Lanvin

Have a delightful Christmas – don't stress too much, relax with your loved ones, and enjoy every bite.

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SAVORY TREATS

1:: Leek and Rice Tart with Roasted Bell Pepper Sauce (make this tart in mini-cupcake molds to turn it into the perfect bite!)

2:: Sesame-Infused Shrimp and Avocado Salad on Endive Leaves

3:: Warm Roast Cauliflower, Chickpea and Quinoa Salad

4:: White Bean Spread with Rosemary and Toasted Almonds

5:: Baked Herb & Pistachio Falafel Bites with Mint Yogurt & Cashew Dressing

6:: Zucchini and Hazelnut Salad

7:: Red Lentil & Goat Cheese Croquettes with Zesty Avocado Sauce

8:: Asian Cole Slaw with Wasabi Dressing

9:: Turkey Cakes with Wasabi Guacamole

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SWEET TREATS