(Photo/KCAW/Katherine Rose)

“It’s a good thing I bought a lot of butter.” Shelby Williams giggles and hums as she whizzes around the kitchen, whipping up her favorite buttercream.

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“I’ve seen all kinds of recipes where you just throw some stuff in a mixer,” Shelby says. “I would say that’s not a real buttercream. That’s more of a frosting.”

She’s playful while she works, but make no mistake. She’s a trained pastry chef, and the language used to describe her craft is important.

“A buttercream is a buttercream. An icing is something that sets and hardens, and a frosting?” she laughs. “I had a professor who, any time someone would say frosting, he would correct them and say ‘Don’t use the f-word in this kitchen!’ It was a taboo thing. I don’t have as strong of feelings as he did. Just because something’s easy doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

After stiff peaks form in the meringue, butter and chocolate are added to make a dark chocolate buttercream. (Photo/KCAW/Katherine Rose)

Shelby says there are a few different kinds of buttercream. French, American, English – the list goes on, each requiring its own careful technique. Today, she’s making a dark chocolate Swiss buttercream that will coat a moist, dark chocolate red wine cake.

Her recipe is in ratios, handwritten on a tiny piece of paper. And she’s making a big batch. Buttercream isn’t just sugar and butter. You have to make a meringue first. She separates twenty-five egg whites. She’s used to adapting recipes, whether she’s baking for hundreds or a few close friends.

“I like pushing the boundaries,” Shelby says. “I wouldn’t say that I stick to one tradition of baking. I like to get things down so that I really love them. There are certain recipes that I’ve honed in on. I’ve learned to make them in huge batches and tiny batches. I’ve learned to make things in ways that they work out just right for me. Like a certain pie pan that I’m using or a certain silicon mold that I’m using and they just plop out for me in perfect little cakes.”

Shelby, wearing a chef’s jacket she tie-dyed in pastry school, assembles the cake. (Photo/KCAW/Katherine Rose)

She slowly heats up the egg whites in a double boiler and pours in the sugar. When the sugar is dissolved she whips that mixture into a meringue. Then she adds the butter. Then the cooled chocolate.

“It’s the easiest buttercream I’ve ever worked with,” she says. “I don’t know what it is, I think it’s the balance of butter and chocolate that makes it still so soft and fluffy at room temperature. I don’t know. It’s magic, it’s a winner.”

Shelby may have trained at pastry school, but she first learned the art of baking at home.

“Actually in my household my dad made all the food,” she says. “In high school when I was feeling lost and didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, I was like, what do I actually look forward to? Baking with my dad.”

Her dad bakes everything. Pies, dinner rolls, sourdough. He loves bacon and appreciates fine food, and he’s taught her a lot. But he has one recipe that he’s kept to himself.

Using food dye, white chocolate and cornstarch, Shelby mixes four colors of mirror glaze that will be poured on top of the cake, creating a marbled effect. (Photo/KCAW/Katherine Rose)

“He makes this amazing very tall cheesecake that he got from an old friend of his that passed away,” Shelby says. “So it’s this cherished thing. And of course i don’t have it. It’s a secret.”

So she found her own recipe- and she’s made hundreds of cheesecakes. But she still looks to her dad’s as the standard.

“Every once in a while I get a really tall cheesecake turnout,” she says. “I’d get a 3 or 4 inch tall cheesecake. I think that’s a good standard for if you know if a cheesecake is good. If it’s tall and big and fluffy, almost like a big sponge.”

So whether it’s cheesecake or buttercream, the correct terminology in Shelby Williams’ kitchen is “indescribably delicious.”

The final product, a birthday cake with a thick layer of Shelby’s buttercream, coated in a multi-colored mirror glaze and gold dust. (Photo/KCAW/Katherine Rose)

A bunch of the green stuff, before it gets a very well-deserved massage. (Photo/KCAW/Katherine Rose)

I’m standing with Renee Trafton in her restaurant kitchen, industrial refrigerators and other appliances humming in the background, as she rips kale from its stalk.

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Renee has worked in two famed seafood restaurants in New York City. But when I asked her what she wanted to cook for Sitka Platters…she said kale salad. And I wondered, “Why kale salad?”

“Kale grows really well in Sitka,” Renee says. “It doesn’t get that cold so you’ll have these enormous kale plants. Kale in December will be kind of tough. But, if you massage it, it’ll still be good.”

Kale isn’t hard to come by in Sitka. Whether you’re growing or buying it, it’s pretty affordable. But Renee has a secret for softening the chewy fibers into something bright and refreshing.

“If you want it to be delicious you need to really work with it,” Renee says as she chops the kale into really tiny, thin pieces. And then she gives the greens the royal treatment…she massages it.

“It bruises and breaks down the cell walls which makes it more tender,” she explains.

The big, forest green pile shrinks as she kneads and squeezes it until it breaks down. She balances the kale with a rosemary vinaigrette dressing. A shallot. Sugar, apple cider, fresh rosemary and oil.

“I take a lot of pleasure in eating myself,” Renee says. “If it’s well-balanced you can eat the whole plate, you don’t have to take a nap afterwards.”

Renee Trafton breaks down kale by giving it a massage. (Photo/KCAW/Katherine Rose)

Renee got into cooking when she was at Oberlin College. She lived in a co-op, and once a week would cook for all 110 of her housemates.

“I super loved it because it was like a dinner party for all of my friends once a week,” she says. “It was the thing I enjoyed the most. In my margins in my biology class I’d have my notes for my dinner next week.”

But it was in New York City where she worked as a line cook that she learned the importance of taste and, with a bit of trial and error, how to balance the flavors in a dish.

“It’s a habit to cultivate to say, what is this missing, what can i do? When you’re flavoring something you want it to be just so and have this particular effect on a person. I think that’s the cool thing about fine dining is that you want to evoke some kind of feeling in the eater.”

Renee says while she doesn’t do fine dining at her restaurant, she still uses what she learned to try to create an experience.

“I still want to evoke certain feelings in whoever is eating my food. I do put a lot of care and mindfulness into how it feels, both in the mouth and how you’re going to feel afterwards. Like this kale salad. You should feel pretty healthy, strong, like want to do stuff afterwards.”

Lisa Sadleir-Hart makes her smoothies from berries and other fruit, kale and homemade yogurt. (Photo/KCAW/Katherine Rose)

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On the morning I meet with Lisa Sadleir-Hart to make homemade yogurt, I’m a little frazzled. It’s early, I’m not sure if this is the right house, what sound does yogurt make, anyway? I take my shoes off and walk into her quiet, dimly lit home, sunlight pouring in from the kitchen windows. And I’m forced to relax. Because Lisa isn’t just making yogurt. She’s doing yoga.

Lisa says yogurt is her  power food. She eats a lot of it, mostly in breakfast smoothies. But she realized that buying so much yogurt had its drawbacks.

“I have a love of nature and creation. And I realized that all of those yogurt containers that I was buying. I can only use so many of them to put things into the freezer. And I was like, this is craziness. I can’t do this in good conscience anymore.”

So now, once a week, Lisa makes her own yogurt by hand.

“First thing I’m gonna do is take my non-fat dried milk. As you can see I’m not an exact measurer, so i’m going to take some robust ⅓ cup scoops and scoop them into my pan.”

Lisa says this gives her more calcium and curbs cost. She adds six cups of water to the powdered milk and turns up the heat on the stove. She has a special yogurt thermometer.

“I’m gonna heat to 180, but I’ll cool it down to this green safe zone where I know the bacteria will be able to grow the best. Cuz if it’s too hot, I’ll kill all the bacteria in the culture and that’s not what I want to do. I want loads of those good bacteria in my yogurt to feed my gut.”

While it’s cooking, Lisa stirs slowly. This processes takes about 7 minutes. It’s quiet, so Lisa takes this time to do a morning meditation. She slowly stirs the yogurt as she chants, “Hari om, Hari om, Hari om,” and her voice reverberates through her kitchen. 

After it’s frothy at 180 degrees, Lisa cools the mix while stirring in a bath of water in the sink. Once it hits the right temperature, she pours the milky mixture into a yogurt maker to solidify.  

She whisks in a spoonful of yogurt starter and some of last week’s yogurt. The cultures meld together to make something new.

(Photo/KCAW/Katherine Rose)

The mix will sit in her yogurt maker all day. Then with the small bowl of thick white yogurt left over from last week’s batch, she makes her daily morning smoothie.

“I try to get a good two cups of greens in there. It’s a great way to get more green vegetables into your diet.”

But she also adds berries, a banana, ground flaxseeds, and today – a California persimmon.

Yoga is all about paying attention. To your breath, to your posture. And for Lisa, that discipline- that mindfulness- carries over to her palate.

“When I pay attention to what I’m eating there are a couple of things that happen. I become incredibly grateful. And you also taste food so much better. You can taste the kale. You can detect that hint of orange essence. From the persimmon to the raspberry to the black cherries. It puts me in connection with- where did those foods come from? Whose hands touched the food. Who were the farm workers who harvested the food so I could benefit?”

Benefit from the sustenance, and the thoughtful routine it provides.

“I’ve been doing this for at least 7 to 10 years. And I never get tired of making yogurt.”

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Tracy Turner has a recipe for you. One that moves her to song. 

“Isn’t it amazing…what baking can dooooooo oooh oooh oooh,” Tracy sings and laughs. “Cookies have been a big part of my life since forever. Even when I was a little kid, my mom would make these super hearty survival cookies.”

Cookies are still a big part of Tracy’s life and home. She got her first cookie jar as a wedding gift.

“My sister-in-law held up a negligee, and said ‘Hey, how about this?’ and my brother said ‘That’s my baby sister. We’re getting her a cookie jar,'” Tracy says.

Now over two-dozen line the walls of her kitchen. From a Campbell’s Soup can to an antique bear from the 1930s. She finds many at garage sales. But her two favorites — a ceramic jar made to look like an oatmeal container, and an Archway cookie truck — have a special connection to one of her favorite cookie monsters.

“Both of those, my husband saved up the box tops to get me the cookie jar,” Tracy says. “For the oatmeal, he was actually taking instant oatmeal to work and eating instant oatmeal for lunch without me knowing it.”

Today, Tracy is making a cookie recipe that’ll fill one…or two… or three of those jars. A classic chocolate chip cookie dough she divides in three parts, adding different ingredients to make each batch stand out. Chocolate chips go into batch one. Coconut, oats and Rice Krispies in another. And for batch three? She tells me I have to do a taste test to decide.

TRACY: Our job now is to decide, and so what we’re going to have to do is sprinkle out a few of these. And then you’re just gonna have to take a little bit of each thing with a little bit of caramel. This is all you now.

KCAW: I don’t know if I want the responsibility. 

TRACY: You know, it’s like making a quilt. The worst that can happen is you end up with something great.

She watches and narrates as I try the different flavor combinations. Cherries and sea salt chips. Apricot jam bits. And finally pecan and salted caramel chips.

“Yeah that’s like a classic,” Tracy says. “Oh my gosh, your face. Yeah, that’s the one.”

Now that we’ve decided on our three cookies, Tracy starts to prep the dough, chopping pecans, beating butter and cracking eggs. 

Her recipe book is full of notes, from her daughter’s handwriting highlighting favorite recipes, to her own suggestions.

“Matt and Grandma like the not-flattened better than flattened in this particular cookie,” Tracy reads one a note in the margins of a recipe. “Lots of notes in my cookbook. And lots of stains. Remember, it’s your cookbook. Do whatever you want.”

She measures all of her ingredients with the same glass measuring cup. She uses her hand to measure too, airing on the generous side when she puts in ingredients like pecans and chocolate chips. But one thing is certain.

“I do, always always always use a recipe for baking.”

She has tons of tips. A bit of vinegar gives the cookie some crispiness. A few tablespoons of corn syrup make them chewier.  Baking is a science and the chemistry is important.

“I think baking is also an art, but I’m a big fan of combining the arts and sciences. I think they’re just all part of the same game,” Tracy says. “And again, it is a science, but I’m not that exact.”

After mixing the dough, dividing it into three parts and adding the ingredients that make each cookie stand out, she scoops them onto a sheet-pan with a cookie scoop so they’re all evenly sized and spaced.

“A cookie? About 50 calories,” Tracy says. “Most cookies run around 50 calories. What I would tell you is that there is very little in life that can give you that much pleasure for fifty calories.”

And there’s another role cookies have played in Tracy’s life. Conversation starter with her kids.

“I would make a whole bunch of doughs and stick them in the freezer. Then, every day when it was time for them to come off the bus. I would pull out a roll and slice off a few and bake them. That way they came home to warm cookies. They would sit and they would relax and they would really talk and open up about what was going on. Instead of ‘how was your day? Fine. Did you do your homework?’ No, it was the real deal, it was ‘who’s passing notes, who broke my heart, who’s cute. All of it. That was huge in the lives of our kids growing up.”

And when the cookies come out of the oven, they’ll cool and go in the jar for anyone passing to take one or two, or three.

“That’s how I love people. I make them food. And cookies are something that anybody can appreciate.”

Tracy’s Cookie Recipe, adapted from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion

1 1/2 cups butter

1 1/3 cups dark brown sugar

1 1/3 cups granulated sugar

4 tablespoons light corn syrup

2 tablespoons cider or white vinegar

4 large eggs

2 tablespoons vanilla extract

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

4 1/2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

1 1/2 cups sea salt and caramel chips

1 cup chopped pecans

2 tablespoons milk

1/4 cup oats

1 cup shredded coconut

2 cups Rice Krispies

_______________________________________

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease two baking sheets.

In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter, sugars, corn syrup and vinegar, then beat in the eggs. Beat in the vanilla, almond extract, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Slowly mix in the flour to combine.

Divide the dough into three parts.

In cookie dough #1, add chocolate chips. 

In cookie dough # 2, add oats, Rice Krispies, shredded coconut and milk. 

In cookie dough #3, add chopped pecans and salted caramel chips. 

Drop the dough by the tablespoonful onto the prepared baking sheets. Bake the cookies for 10 minutes, until they’re just set. Remove from the oven and transfer to a rack to cool.

Arroz con gandules is a rice dish served throughout the holidays in Puerto Rico. (Photo KCAW/Katherine Rose)

Christmas lasts longer in Sitka than in many other places. Russian Christmas — which comes almost two weeks later — is partially responsible, but as Sitka becomes more diverse, so are its holiday traditions. For the first episode in our new series on Sitka’s food culture- Sitka Platters –  KCAW’s Katherine Rose spends some time with Nina Vizcarrondo as she cooks a traditional Puerto Rican dish for Three Kings Day.

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If it’s the Christmas season, you’ll likely find Nina Vizcarrondo cooking something special. But a detailed recipe? That might be harder.

Living in Alaska has its drawbacks, and for Nina specifically, access to food is a big one. But she and others have found a work-around. Like this “sofrito.” It’s a key ingredient in many Puerto Rican dishes, but you can’t get it in Sitka. So her mom mails it to her frozen.

“It’s a mix of recao,  which is kind of like cilantro. It has onions, cilantro, peppers. It’s supposed to give flavor to your food. Since we don’t have recao here, she mails it to me. That will go into our beans, into arroz con gandules.

That’s what Nina is cooking today- arroz con gandules is a bright orange rice dish served throughout the holidays in Puerto Rico. The Christmas season lasts a little longer there, they celebrate through January 6, or Three Kings Day, when this dish is traditionally served.

She starts by sauteing garlic, and throws an icy cube of sofrito in the pan, followed by rice, pigeon peas, a little water and lots of seasoning. “Puerto Rican cuisine is not really spicy, but I like spicy,” Nina says. Then she adds some chili powder.

Next, a packet of Sazon, another ingredient she can’t get in Sitka. This gives the rice its bright orange hue.

“Magic in foil. See how it changed?” Nina says.

As she’s stirring, Nina’s phone rings. It’s her mom, the person who makes it possible for Nina to cook with these ingredients.  “Sorry, let me tell my mom I’m busy because she will get mad. Hello, Mommy?”

“She’s one to call,” Nina says. “Every time I’m making something. What did you make to eat today? Did you put saison and alo on it? Oh you didn’t use Goya tomato sauce? I’m like, no, mom. I’m in Alaska, we don’t have that here. Well then that wasn’t the dish. So quick to judge,” Nina laughs. “But we’ve gotta make with what we have here.”

The rice has to cook for about 20 minutes, so Nina and I have some time to talk. She says globalization of food has its pros and cons.

“This is a pro,” she says. “You can maintain your culture identity no matter how isolated you are.”

She’s been thinking a lot about her home country this time of year as she cooks.

“I remember the three kings would be with the mayor in a pickup truck throwing gifts and candy. Those were good times but with the situation the island was in, I get so sad to think about how those kids might not be experiencing that this year,” she says. After Hurricane Maria, Nina went back to Puerto Rico to bring supplies and see her family. Her employer, Allen Marine, bought the ticket.

After about 20 minutes you can smell the seasoned rice from across the room. It’s savory, flavorful but not too spicy, and the tender pigeon peas offer a nice contrast to the buttery rice.

“It’s needed because, for me, growing up, Christmas and Puerto Rico is like none-other,” Nina says. “Food is how you remember things. That nostalgia- oh I ate that and it smelled like this. Those memories come along with the smell and the taste.”

Nina and her family will be celebrating Three Kings this January 6th and teaching her son about Puerto Rican traditions…through one medium in particular.

“How can I teach my son about my culture if not through food?”