kitchen corner

Chef Erin does not like lentils! But she loves hummus, so we’re having fun anyway and creating a new recipe to boot. Way better than store bought, this dip is a healthy spread for a carrot stick or pita chip. When you find out how easy it is to make you'll never buy it again.

When experimenting with the recipe for Alice’s magic mushrooms, Chef Erin may fail. This inventive dish that mimics the famous psychedelic spotted toadstool will be served as the Caterpillar’s course in Nordo’s next dinner show, “Curiouser and Curiouser”. Using pectin to create a red onion and tomato “salsa” jelly, and frozen avocado puree spheres as a base mold, this demonstration showcases the process of creating a brand new recipe inspired by Amanita Muscaria.

Can't Live Without it: Her kitchen tile is Modwalls’ Lush Glass Collection in Lemongrass.

Nordo's award-winning Chef Erin Brindley teaches you how to cook a roast chicken in her own kitchen during the Covid-19 Stay at Home order. This basic cooking instructional video is for home cooks who are hungry for techniques, like when to salt, and how to make sure your meat is the perfect temperature. Roasted veggies coated in chicken drippings are little flavor explosions in this easy-to-follow recipe. This sheet-pan chicken dinner will be your new go-to quarantine routine! Stay home, wash your hands, and eat well.

It’s spicy, ginger-ey, jammy goodness! Get out a big, ol’ pot and sizzle with Chef Erin as she uses up another pound of seasonal, Seattle plums. This chutney is delicious with dosa, for breakfast, or smeared on charcuterie (our favorite).

Olive Oil
1lb Plums (pitted and halved)
1 large white onion
1 inch knob ginger
2 cloves garlic
3 cups Apple Cider Vinegar (or enough to cover)
1 cinnamon stick
2 star anise
½ t salt
-Sauté Onions, Garlic, and Ginger until the onions are translucent
-Add everything else
-Leave on a low simmer for two hours.

If you've ever had a plum tree, (or a friend with one,) the bounty can be daunting. What do you do with all the plums?!? Wash those hands, and get ready to use the tongs nature gave you. Chef Erin plays it by ear with the authority on perfect plum tortes; The New York Times. This video is part one of three recipes, where Erin will use up over 10 Ibs of plums gifted by a friend.

Are you an Aspirational Grocery Shopper? Do you pack your cart with projects when you’re feel-ing stressed? Chef Erin’s pantry is exploding, so she’s Iron Chef-ing a healthy dinner with bone-less, skinless chicken thighs, cabbage, and 3 pieces of bacon. Discover how to peel ginger, how to salt the be-Jesus out of crucifers, and why you’re not using enough smoked paprika.

Clear your pantry of those extra limes with this boozy and delicious spread – perfect on toast, cream puffs or biscuits. Chef Erin covers the “cheat-ey” way to make an easy hollandaise (Show no fear!). Then, she adds the good stuff from the back of her liquor cabinet. This confes-sional tutorial didn’t end the way she expected. Our chef added a big cup of Whoopsie Daisey!

Let’s play with our food! Chef Erin tries out a new recipe for our Alice in Wonderland dinner show “Curiouser and Curiouser”. Using butterfly pea flower and lime juice, she’s painting your summer rolls blue and pink.

Chef Erin breaks down the perfect mashed potatoes (baked vs. boiled!) and teaches us how to cook with black garlic. Learning these basics brings together the layers of Nordo’s short rib wedding cake. This cake was featured in “Hotel Nordo” at the Culinarum in 2016, where wed-ding cakes played a mysterious role in the plot. No spoilers!

This video teaches you how to cook meat 101 with Chef Erin – salting secrets, oil substitutes and sizzling side effects. If you love your instant pot, this recipe is incredibly easy to achieve (A dutch oven works beautifully as well). This cake was featured in “Hotel Nordo” at the Culinarum in 2016, where wedding cakes played a mysterious role in the plot. No spoilers!

The first of three videos that tell the story of the best cake ever: Savory Short ribs, potatoes and cheese, layered and frosty with crème fraiche and black garlic. You have to have faith! Every-thing comes together in this first instructional video. This cake was featured in “Hotel Nordo” at the Culinarum in 2016, where wedding cakes played a mysterious role in the plot. No spoil-ers!

Just in time for your 4th of July recipes, these habanero (or jalapeno) infused cherries are Chef Erin’s secret weapon. If you want to wake up, just put your face in the pan and take a big whiff! A part of Nordo’s first show menu, “The Modern American Chicken” these cherry bombs are the first recipe Erin created on her own as a baby chef.

Go into the “risotto zone” with Chef Erin Brindley as she teaches you how to use favorite spring treats, asparagus and morels, to make this easy risotto recipe in a pan. It’s the perfect roman-tic date night dinner idea. Remember, a glass of white wine for the risotto, a glass of wine for the chef!

Pâté can be divisive, but those of us who love it love it A LOT. Chef Erin Brindley delves into the secrets mixed into Nordo’s beloved chicken liver and port mousse. This recipe was used in Nordo’s very first dinner show “The Modern American Chicken” as well as 2019’s “Violet’s Attic”, covered with white chocolate.

Erin's "Can't Live Without it list" for Chicken Liver Mousse:

Get your chicken livers at the local co-op, our are Draper Valley Chicken. Frank's Quality Produce in the Pike Place Market has great relationships with local farms.

Porto Kopke Fine Ruby Port is readily available and perfect for this dish.

Chef Erin dials in her savory tuille technique, using ingredients that repel each other like oil and water. The result? Brightly colored and psychedelically “lacey”, these coral shaped tuilles will act as a tasty and surprising garnish. Erin gives them a try for the first time with pomegranate, turmeric, and charcoal as natural food coloring. Some work…eventually. But sometimes the fun is in the failure.

If you’re craving a light dinner, this easy recipe brings out the best of our famous Northwest salmon. Why oil poach? It’s the surefire way cook a great piece of fish perfectly. Erin poaches with coconut oil, but olive oil is an easy substitute.

Learn Chef Erin’s “swirly whirl” method for poaching eggs, an audience request! You’ll master her simmer science, no problem - there’s a few simple tricks to make these show-off eggs easy like Sunday morning.

You are going to be so mad when you realize how easy it is to make ricotta cheese at home. This is part two of the “Eggs on Toast” recipe from Nordo’s David Lynch inspired dinner theater show “Lost Falls”. Classic homemade Ricotta makes up the egg white portion of the modernist dish that looks like breakfast, but tastes like dinner.

Learn the secrets of molecular gastronomy from the menu of “Lost Falls”, Nordo’s Twin Peaks inspired dinner show. It looks like breakfast, it tastes like dinner – the Egg on Toast. This is part one of two, where you will learn the modern technique for the garden pepper yolks. In part two, Chef Erin Brindley will teach homemade ricotta.

A Cooking Basics video that teaches you to turn leftover chicken bones into flavorful chicken stock you can use for a variety of easy recipes. This is slow food with very little hands-on time that will result in beautiful, golden bone broth. Take that rotisserie chicken from Costco and a few vegetables from the back of the fridge and create delicious, unctuous chicken broth.

Welcome back to Erin's home kitchen! We're still quarantined and that's not the only challenge. Our "Curiouser and Curiouser" Queen of Heart's Pepper tarts are proving difficult. This isn't always the case, but the suggestion box is open for our Chef. Try this Culinarium Test recipe and tag a photo of the best pastry fold to make a rose-shaped tart. She'll walk you through the basic idea in this video, and then you get creative with your own DIY Puffed Pastry Rose! We love giving you a little behind the scenes, in progress peek at our Alice in Wonderland inspired menu.

Welcome to my home where I'm working up the menu for Nordo's biggest show ever, our Alice in Wonderland adaptation "Curiouser and Curiouser". In this video, I'm creating the recipe for a noodle salad that uses Butterfly Pea Flowers to dye the noodles purple. When I add citrus dressing, the noodles turn pink! Unicorn Noodles everyone. And food magic.

This is how we transform dinner theater into Food Theater! If you haven't been to Café Nordo in Seattle's Pioneer Square, we create intimate theatrical experiences that incorporate imaginative cuisine and live original music. It's a feast for the senses!

Since I'm stuck at home for the Covid-19 crisis I thought I'd let everyone into my process. You can also consider this a recipe or how-to video on the technique of using this natural food dye.