Behind the Scenes: Recipe Testing for Pacific Northwest Plates

As many of you know, I recently released a Thomas Austin-inspired cookbook, Pacific Northwest Plates. Since Austin owns a café and I used to be a chef (for proof, see the photo below), food is often mentioned throughout the series. Despite my love of cooking, I never imagined I’d end up putting together a cookbook, but after several reader requests, I decided to give it a shot. I started working on it as a secret side project, fitting it in whenever I had extra time. Over the months, it started coming together, and by late 2024, it was nearly finished.

Throwback to around 2009, when I was a chef at a conference center. My boss at the time sent me this photo and commented on me cooking miniature Cornish game hens. The funny thing is, these were actually full-sized, 4-pound chickens. I’m tall enough (think Hagrid from Harry Potter) to throw off proportions in photos, so I like to make fun of myself a bit with this one.

Once the cookbook recipes were mostly finalized, I needed to make sure they worked exactly as written before publishing. While I love to cook and do so all the time, I tend to eyeball things—a pinch of this, a drizzle of that, cook until it looks right. That’s fine for everyday home cooking, but not so helpful when writing a cookbook. To get everything right, we spent two full days cooking, double-checking measurements, and photographing every dish. My lovely mother-in-law kindly let us use her kitchen to test the recipes, since hers is more spacious and has better lighting than mine (thanks, Diana!).

I handled the cooking, while my assistant, Kianne, took charge of plating and photography. I also brought in a family member to help with prep so we could work through all 24 recipes in two days. With so much food—way more than the handful of us could eat—more family members stopped by throughout both days to help taste-test, sample wines, and hang out. Pearl, of course, took her supervising (and sampling) duties very seriously. Below, you’ll find some of the behind-the-scenes photos.

In the middle of making Lobster Ravioli with Brown Butter Sage and Hazelnut Sauce. Pearl, as always, keeping a close watch for any fallen scraps.

My assistant, Kianne, plating the Seared Salmon with PNW Hazelnut Pesto and Roasted Baby Red Potatoes, and one of the resulting photographs.

Pearl getting involved in the taste-testing process, and a shot of me taking a short break for some PNW wine-tasting.

The Triple Chocolate Guillotine Shakes didn’t last long after this shot was taken. One of the few dishes Pearl wasn’t allowed to sample, but she had plenty of her own treats, as you can see in the photo below, where she’s eagerly waiting for the photography to wrap up on her batch of Run’s Buns.

If the food descriptions in the Thomas Austin series have ever made you hungry, now you can make nearly every dish from books 1–10. The cookbook also includes Pacific Northwest wine pairings, along with personal notes and insights from me.

The paperback edition is available on Amazon, and signed copies can be found here on my website (as well as in a few local stores in the Kitsap area of Washington). The ebook version is completely free for all of my VIP Reader Club newsletter subscribers—sign up here.

If you already have the cookbook and have made a few of the dishes, I’d love to hear what you’ve tried so far! Let me know in the comments below.