Thursday, September 9, 2010

Lucy's Bag o' Donuts


















Lucy's Bag o' Donuts
TASTE Pavilion, $5/6-pack

Throughout the summer, Seattle Art Museum has been hosting a Thursday evening farmers' market at the Olympic Sculpture Park. I can barely think of anything more Seattle-esque: stalls of fresh produce and specialty foods with a dance floor and live music on one side, public sculpture, Puget Sound and the Olympic mountain range on the other.

I'd like to say that I showed up for the last market of the year thinking of heirloom apples or organic chard, but really, I went for the doughnuts.

At the tiny stall operated by SAM's restaurant, TASTE, pastry chef Lucy Damkoehler has made a weekly tradition of creating a seasonal, locavore doughnut based on current market offerings. Her
earlier flavors included s’mores, bacon and brown sugar, and sweet corn crullers, each highlighting a local product such as Finnriver flour, Skagit bacon and eggs, and Alverez corn.

For the farewell market Damkoehler offered an autumn-tinged doughnut flavored with Finnriver's apple cider. The tartness sliced through the grease and a generous dusting of sugar, adding a crisp and high-toned complexity to what would already have been a pretty stellar cake doughnut. A perfect comfort food for those of us looking forward to the coming of fall while still pining for a summer that never quite was.

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