Cooks' Books by Lisa Messinger

"Pure Flavor: 125 Fresh All-American Recipes from the Pacific Northwest" by Kurt Beecher Dammeier (Clarkson Potter, $32.50)

If you're planning a vacation this season to the Pacific Northwest, Kurt Beecher Dammeier's "Pure Flavor: 125 Fresh All-American Recipes from the Pacific Northwest" is a book you'll want to consider cooking from afterward to conjure up delicious recipes. It's my favorite cookbook from that region.

It's almost, in fact, like Dammeier wants to make you an honorary Pacific Northwesterner, and after filling up on the delicacies he shares, there's almost no way you wouldn't feel like a native.

Part of Dammeier's appeal as a first-time cookbook author is his deep knowledge of just what the home cook needs and wants, more than say many chichi restaurant chefs who publish their complicated recipes. Dammeier owns the wildly popular Seattle-based Beecher's Handmade Cheese, four Pasta and Co. retail shops and Bennett's Pure Food Bistro on Washington's Mercer Island, where he lives with his wife Leslie and their three sons.

His background, along with that of coauthor Laura Holmes Haddad, a former caterer and cookbook editor, ensured the recipes are simple to grasp and emulate and perfect for raucous family meals and casual entertaining.

The Pacific Northwest is, as you'll know if you do visit or have ever visited, the other star. "Pure Flavor" hits the nail on the head as a book title, since the region is bursting with freshness and the flavor of everything from just-caught seafood, to just-picked produce, to organic meats, as well as almost every imaginable organic and handcrafted product.

Because of this rich environment, virtually every recipe includes layer after layer of flavor, rather than just bare renditions.

The area's wonderful what is almost sweet salmon, for instance, is lightly rubbed with a compound butter that's packed with mashed capers, grated lemon zest, garlic powder, Italian herbs and yellow onion and then served with heated blueberry sauce that's been flavored with apples, onions, fresh lemon juice and fresh thyme. Crab chowder could be just that, but instead gets jazzed up with jalapeno, garlic, leek, Tabasco sauce and shallots. Pork shoulder is slow cooked and flavored with a triple play of oranges (marmalade, zest and fresh juice), green olives, fennel seeds, garlic and onions.

The Pacific Northwest's produce could have filled its own book and is properly feted here. The famous Pike Place Market gets its own color-photographed page and story amidst stunning recipes for grilled onion and fennel rings and rustic blue cheese mashed potatoes. A magnificent vegetable lasagna is red (beets), white (both semi-hard and semi-soft cheeses, as well as blue cheese) and green (from either a homemade green bean pesto or a store-bought regular pesto) and filled with a dazzling five-onion confit or store-bought onion-based chutney.

The creativity and freshness looms just as large among the fruit recipes. Fuji apples and the area's hazelnuts make a wonderful waffle topped off with a fresh berry sauce. No humdrum pies here: pear-ginger (with a mix of pears as well as both ground and crystallized ginger) is more like it.

Three citrus fruits (orange, grapefruit and lime) flavor one of the best honey-butter pancake syrups you are likely to try.

Dammeier could certainly rest on his recipes, but he and Haddad round out the book with informative and lively pieces on everything from wine to cheese, nuts, seafood and produce that give not only a flavor of the local food, but the hearty locals as well. It will be hard to decide whether to read the book before a trip as a guide or afterward as a loving scrapbook. Most will probably end up reading it twice.

BUTTER-RUBBED SALMON

Lemon-caper butter rub:

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted

1 teaspoon capers, drained and mashed

1 teaspoon tightly packed grated lemon zest

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon store-bought or homemade Italian herb blend

1 tablespoon diced yellow onion

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Fish:

1 (2-pound) salmon fillet, skinned

Yields 6 servings.

To prepare the butter rub: In a small mixing bowl, whisk together all of the rub ingredients. Set aside.

To prepare salmon: Remove the bones and cut the salmon fillet into 6 pieces (thicker salmon gives you better cuts) at a 45-degree angle along the bias. Try to maintain uniform thickness in the slices, cutting wider pieces toward the narrower ends of the salmon and thinner pieces toward the thick center of the salmon.

Using a basting brush and about half of the butter rub, coat one side of the salmon pieces with the rub. Refrigerate the salmon for 5 minutes, or until the butter just hardens into a glaze.

Heat a large skillet or griddle over medium-high heat.

Lay the salmon pieces, butter-rub side down, in the pan, and cook until the bottom half of the salmon flesh is opaque, about 3 minutes. Brush the remaining butter rub over the salmon and flip the pieces. Cook for 1 more minute. The salmon will be nearly opaque throughout but still most likely very moist.

Serve hot. Excellent served with heated blueberry sauce.

HEATED BLUEBERRY SAUCE

2 cups homemade chicken stock or store-bought low-sodium chicken broth

1/4 medium yellow onion

1/4 sweet apple, such as Fuji

3 to 4 sprigs fresh thyme

2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries

1 1/2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

Yields 6 servings; about 1 1/2 cups.

In a small saucepan, bring the chicken stock or broth to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium and add the onion, apple and thyme. Simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, turning over the onion and the apple, until the stock is reduced by half.

With a slotted spoon, remove the onion, apple and thyme from the stock and discard. Add the blueberries and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for 20 minutes, or until the liquid is reduced to 3/4 cup.

Remove the pan from the heat. Add the lemon juice, salt and pepper and stir. Add the butter and whisk the sauce until the butter is completely melted, about 1 minute. Serve hot. Excellent served over salmon, other mildly flavored fish, chicken, turkey, pork or lamb.

Lisa Messinger is a first-place winner in food writing from the Association of Food Journalists and the author of seven food books, including "Mrs. Cubbison's Best Stuffing Cookbook" and "The Sourdough Bread Bowl Cookbook." She also writes the Creators News Service "After-Work Gourmet" column. To find out more about Lisa Messinger and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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