- "Washington Grown" is made possible by funding from the Washington State Department of Agriculture and the USDA Specialty Crop Block Grant Program and by the Potato Farmers of Washington.

Learn why Washington is home to the world's most productive potato fields and farmers by visiting potatoes.com.

- Hi, everyone, I'm Kristi Gorenson, and welcome to "Washington Grown."

Farmers are making major investments to protect the air, land, and water of our state.

In this episode, we'll learn about the technology farmers are using to protect the environment and grow the best food in the nation.

I'm following Washington-grown bell peppers from the field to the roaster.

From field to my mouth.

[both laugh] And I'm making fresh ceviche with a beloved Spokane chef.

- You know the saying, if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Why have a pepper if it doesn't light you up?

[both laugh] - Well... [chuckles] Then we're visiting a farm that's testing out tomatoes for one of my favorite condiments.

- Come on, catch up.

- Oh my God.

[laughs] All this and more today on "Washington Grown."

[upbeat music] It's a flavor-cation for your mouth.

- Flavor-cation.

- And I'm just gonna hold on.

[pilot laughs] - You got a long ways to go.

Let's go.

- Okay, sorry.

I know.

Get with it.

- You were not kidding about a party of flavors.

Wait a minute, where are all my pears?

- Eat two, pick one.

- Exactly.

[laughs] - I'm gonna stick around a while.

[laughs] - We're changing hearts tonight.

- Yes, we are.

- Wow, I got work to do.

- Yeah, you do.

- All right, let's go.

[upbeat music] - Here in Spokane, there's a certain restaurateur that holds a special place in our hearts.

Two, three.

[slaps] [Kristi laughs] Chad White is well known in Spokane for all sorts of flavors, from his amazing juicy barbecue to his bright and colorful seafood creations.

So to learn how Chef Chad takes Washington's fresh ingredients and turns them into delectable plates, we took a look at his restaurant Zona Blanca before he closed it down.

For Chef Chad White, great food is all about the experience.

- It's very exciting.

It's very electric, and you don't feel like you're necessarily in Spokane, Washington.

We wanna take people on what I call a flavor-cation.

- Yeah.

- The food is absolutely outstanding.

- It's what's fresh.

They really work to bring you what's fresh.

- It's just the best food I've ever had in my life.

- Whether he's preparing brisket for the smoker or using Washington chilies to spice up a bowl of fresh ceviche, Chef Chad lives to serve his guests.

- We just want people to come here and forget about whatever else is going on.

- Yeah.

- Enjoy your staycation.

- Don't miss later in the show when Chef Chad and I make his special aguachile.

- It's just kind of like the perfect bite.

- It's a flavor-cation for your mouth.

- Flavor-cation.

[Kristi laughs] Well done.

[upbeat music] - Washington is well known for growing a huge variety of produce.

With perfect soils, abundant water, and all sorts of climates, it seems like there's nothing we can't grow.

Here in Quincy, Williamson Farms seems to be growing everything they possibly can.

- We grow garlic, green peas, sweet corn, carrots, grass seed, canola seed, cherry peppers, jalapeños, lots of other things from time to time.

[laughs] - If Eric Williamson and his team grow it, you know it's gonna be perfect, and this field of peppers is no different.

- So these are bell peppers.

They're all destined for processing of some kind.

You know, they might go on a pizza or potatoes O'Brien or a stir-fry mix.

- Well, tell me why I see wheat rows with your peppers.

This is cool.

- This is kind of something we've done to adapt pepper-growing to this area.

The soil we have is really sandy.

You know, if you get a big windstorm that comes along and starts blowing the sand, it'll just kill 'em.

- Aw.

- And so we plant these strips of wheat to keep it from blowing.

What we found was that, you know, one of the big problems you have with peppers is sunburn.

And if we let the wheat grow with the peppers, it protects 'em from the sun.

You know, the sun's shining in here like this, and it forms like a curtain there.

And then when we harvest with the machine, it basically kind of slings all this wheat everywhere, and you get kind of an automatic cover crop started again.

- It's genius.

Oh, these are beauties.

- Pick a nice one like that, and, you know, sometimes there's a little dust on it.

- It's all right.

- But, you know, you can just break it open and just eat a piece.

- Have a little taste.

- Mm-hm, they're good.

- That is really good.

It's like summer.

Don't make me take a bite out of a jalapeño though.

- [laughs] Yeah, yeah, I don't take bites out of those either.

- What's the difference between a green pepper and a red pepper?

- They're actually the same pepper.

The green is just the immature version.

As it matures, it turns red.

I don't know if you've noticed, but the red ones in the store will be like not 100% red yet.

They'll pick 'em like as they're turning red.

- Yeah.

- And then they'll continue to turn red in transit and everything, so.

- Like one plant will yield usually about how many peppers?

- If you count like every pepper on there, there'll be 10 plus, you know, 15.

But like actual usable peppers, you know, it's usually like five to eight.

You can see these little tiny ones.

It just keeps putting out little peppers.

It never stops.

- It never stops.

- It never stops.

But you know, the big ones down here at the bottom- - Yeah, those are the good ones.

- Yeah, that's what's gonna be harvested.

And the way that the harvester works is it cuts the whole plant off, and then it basically shakes it.

So they come off pretty easy when you shake 'em.

- Oh, well there you go.

- Yeah, yeah, try it.

- That was easy.

[peppers plopping] Wow, they do come off pretty easily.

Look at how perfect that guy is.

You're gonna make great fajitas one day, guys.

[both laugh] After we left Williamson Farms, we followed the peppers to the Simplot Pasco facility where plant director Tyler Johnson and his team were bringing in trucks full of peppers ready to be roasted for the hungry customer.

So the team and I gloved up and took a look around.

- So these peppers were actually in a field hours ago, right?

So they were just harvested.

They get shipped over to a plant in Boardman.

They're gonna go through cutters, clean them, and then bring them for us nice and chilled.

And then as soon as it gets off this truck, it goes straight into Simplot production.

- That's called fresh.

- Fresh.

- Sounds, like, yeah.

- So what we're gonna do is we're gonna take 'em through a flame roaster.

We're gonna blanch 'em.

We're gonna get 'em that nice taste to 'em.

After that, we're gonna flash-freeze them, lock in all that flavor, get 'em ready to pack for our customer.

- It's gonna make 'em taste good.

- Oh yeah.

[Kristi laughs] - Well, look at that.

That's beautiful, isn't it?

- Yes, very much so.

- Wow.

- So that's about the freshest green peppers you can get.

- Yes, it smells so good.

- Yes, like I said, this was just in a field hours ago.

- Yeah.

- So what you're standing in front of now is our roaster.

So this machine is literally like a giant barbecue.

- That's awesome.

- So on the backhand side, we got natural gas coming through it just like your grill at home but obviously on a much larger scale.

- A little bit bigger than my little Traeger in the backyard.

- Yeah, we can be anywhere from, you know, 300 to 450 degrees depending on which product we're running.

- Yeah, that's pretty cool.

- So this allows our customers to have that nice, fresh, grilled taste without, you know, all the trouble of preparing and that.

You just grab it from a bag, and it's almost like you just cooked off a barbecue.

- Absolutely.

- The exit of the roaster, it's gonna drop off this conveyor to take it into the steam blancher.

- Okay.

- The steam blancher is roughly right around 200 degrees.

That provides the kill step.

It'll take away anything bad that might make you sick.

It's just like cooking at home.

- I can see the nice charcoal-grilled peppers as they come off the- - I know.

It's making me hungry.

- Me too.

I think we need some burgers and- - Oh, yeah.

- Yeah.

- Maybe some fajitas.

- Yeah.

- So the next step in this process is we're gonna flash-freeze.

And basically what that's gonna do, it's gonna lock in all the quality of the peppers.

So it's this huge stainless- - Huge.

- Steel structure right here.

Inside of that is a ammonia freeze tunnel.

So when the product comes out of this tunnel, it's anywhere from negative five to two degrees.

- Yeah, that'll lock in the freshness, right?

- Very, very cold.

At this point, these peppers will remain frozen up 'till the point the customer gets 'em.

- To end our day, the Simplot team prepared some of their items fresh off the line for me to taste.

Are these seasoned?

- Yes, so this is a red and green pepper blend, and then we enrobe it with a fajita seasoning.

- Ooh, yum.

- It's very, very delicious.

It takes out the work of preparation.

Nobody's sitting in their kitchen dicing it, but you still get that farm-fresh taste.

- I'm kind of hungry.

- Kind of hungry?

Well, let's dig in.

These just came off the line, so.

- You can really taste the roasting.

- That barbecue grilled taste is one that keeps me coming back.

- Oh, that's so good.

From field to my mouth.

[both laugh] [upbeat music] - How many different types of peppers are grown around the world?

We'll have the answer for you after the break.

- Coming up, I'm making ceviche with Spokane Chef Chad White.

- It's just kind of like the perfect bite.

- It's a flavor-cation for your mouth.

- Flavor-cation.

[Kristi laughs] Well done.

- And we're in The Kitchen at Second Harvest trying Chef Laurent's Romesco Sauce with Grilled Shrimp recipe.

- It's estimated that there are over 50,000 different types of peppers grown around the world.

That's a lot of peppers.

- We're back with Chef Chad White in Spokane.

Before closing his restaurant Zona Blanca, Chef Chad let us take a look into what made his menu so special.

The key to every dish, the freshest local ingredients.

- I feel like I'm on the coast just getting the fish right out of the ocean.

- I feel a bit like I'm on holiday.

- We like to describe it as like a high-five in the mouth.

- Okay.

Owner Chad White grew up here in Spokane, so he knows the importance of fresh local ingredients.

- Our farmers specifically right here in Eastern Washington are some of the best in the country.

- They are.

Using that knowledge and flavors found during his travels, he created special flavor combinations that take guests to a whole new world.

- I lived in Tijuana for a few years, and I had a restaurant down there called La Justina for seven years.

And so I wanted to bring some of those flavors that I absolutely fell in love with to Spokane.

- The flavor is outstanding.

It's fresh.

- It is beautiful to see what kind of food he has brought to our area.

- What are we gonna make today?

- So we are gonna make the aguachile.

This is a dish that not just the adventurous and the people who love ceviche will enjoy, but it's also our gateway drug to non-ceviche eaters, right?

- Very good.

- So we've turned a lot of people who have said, [groans] "I don't like seafood," into seafood lovers.

- Love it.

Okay, I'm excited.

- All right, let's go do it.

This is a mixture of Peruvian and Mexican ceviche.

- Awesome.

- Peruvian ceviche is typically made with leche tigre, and the process of making leche de tigre is blending your chilies, your citrus, and white fish with ice.

- And that's what...

Okay.

- That's what makes it look creamy like milk, so, milk of a tiger.

- And we have our gorgeous peppers.

What kind of peppers are these?

- So those are serrano chilies.

- Okay.

- Those are quite spicy.

- Yeah.

- I call 'em the little mean ones.

- The little mean ones.

[laughs] - And a lot of these things are grown right here in the Pacific Northwest.

- I love it.

Well, let's get started.

- We're gonna soak this in lime juice.

- Okay.

- We're gonna denature the protein, essentially cooking it without adding any kind of heat.

So if you think back to like pre-Hispanic days, and they didn't have refrigeration, how could they make their seafood last longer without getting people sick?

Well, this is one of those method.

You're just gonna agitate this, and you can kind of see it's starting to turn pink already.

- Yeah.

We put ice into a blender and add a fish called hamachi, serrano chilies, lime juice, a special leche de tigre base, a cilantro mixture, and agave.

Then we blend it up and strain it.

- This is probably the best starter ceviche.

Even if they're not big seafood fans, this is a great one for them to try.

- Awesome.

- And so then we're just gonna strain this out.

It looks like it's cooked.

- Yeah, it does.

- Lime juice did the work.

- Next we cut up some cucumber and some Washington serrano chilies.

What do you like about the serrano chili?

- I do like things that are feisty, so that's one good reason.

- [laughs] Nice.

- You know the saying, if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.

- Yeah.

- You know?

Why have a pepper if it doesn't light you up?

- [chuckles] Well... - Starting with incredible ingredients from our region, from our home state, like, it just makes everything so much better.

- Yeah.

We add some purple daikon and sea salt.

Then we add our sauce.

- Then we're gonna add our serrano chilies, and we just kind of...pepper, ha-ha, these things around.

[Kristi chuckles] Freshness in a bowl.

- It really is.

- Yeah.

[upbeat music] - If you bring this to your mouth like this, you're gonna wear it, so we bring the plate to our chin.

[food crunching] - Mm, it is all over me, but that's okay 'cause it's delicious.

There are the chilies.

- Mm-hm.

[laughs] There they are.

- They're in there.

- Mm-hm, whoo-hoo.

- You get all the flavors, sweet, salty, spicy, sour.

It's just kind of like the perfect bite.

- It's a flavor-cation for your mouth.

- Flavor-cation.

[Kristi laughs] Well done.

- For more restaurants, recipes, farms, and fun, visit us at wagrown.com.

You can follow "Washington Grown" all year long on your favorite social media platform.

Here's Alyssa from our social media team with an example of what you'll see.

- One of the most popular garnishes in a cocktail is mint and did you know that Washington is the number-one spearmint oil producer in the entire nation?

Let's go make a crowd favorite cocktail using just that here at Baker's in Seattle.

Baker's is a popular neighborhood craft cocktail bar tucked on Sunset Hill in Seattle.

They are all about showcasing the very best of local Washington-grown ingredients.

And today we're making their popular bourbon drink called Into the Mystic featuring Washington Mint.

First we pour in some bourbon followed by genepy, which is basically an herbal liqueur, and some amaro made on Bainbridge Island using Washington ingredients.

It's stirred up, poured into a glass, and topped with a big rock, some orange express, and that spearmint sprig.

This cocktail is similar to an old fashioned and very spirit-forward, and I love that you can really smell the mint.

- Coming up, I'm visiting Friehe Farms where they're growing tomatoes to turn into one of my favorite condiments.

- Come on, catch up.

- Oh my God.

[laughs] [upbeat music] [bright rock music] - Hey, let's go.

While growing up and visiting my grandparents in Toppenish, Mexican flavors and dishes was just the norm.

So there's something special about finding authentic Mexican food, and with a name like Whateke, this food truck is the real deal.

Whateke Mexican food.

So tell me, what's the name?

- Whateke is urban word in Mexico City.

It means like a fiesta.

- And the fiesta flavors is exactly what you'll find here, made with incredible ingredients from my hometown.

- Many of our friends work in Yakima, you know, picking the strawberries and all of those stuff there.

So of course we always want to use all, you know, local products.

And it's fresh, and it's delicious.

Why not, right?

- Right.

They're taking those fresh Yakima veggies and turning them into a burrito that will have veggie lovers craving for more.

Sara, this looks beautiful, okay.

So this is your vegetarian burrito.

What am I looking at here?

What is this thing loaded with?

- You see the zucchini, the cabbage, the carrots, the potatoes for sure.

- All right.

- We have black beans.

We have sour cream, guacamole, pico de gallo.

We have a lot of stuff there, yeah.

Get ready.

- Cheers, all right.

- Mm.

- It's pretty light.

You know, it looks big, right?

- It looks very big, yeah.

- But because we're dealing with those fresh zucchini and the cabbage, it just feels light.

- We have a lot of regular customers like it.

They just request their breakfast veggie burrito.

That's it.

They just come to get this.

- And they don't bust the calorie bank either.

- I know, yeah, it's healthy.

It's not expensive, and it's right on time.

- As long as you keep using vegetables from Yakima, [tongue clicks] you're all right.

Now let's see what folks here in Seattle have to say about this veggie breakfast burrito.

[festive music] - It's good.

- It's very flavorful.

- Tastes like a veggie Mexican burrito.

- Definitely The tomatillo sauce tastes amazing.

- Lightweight, right, healthy.

- I like the potato in there.

I didn't think I would.

- Not bad for a veggie burrito, huh?

- Not bad.

[Tomás laughs] Not bad at all.

- It's very fresh.

- I like the crispness of the lettuce and the carrots as well.

- I'd get one.

- There you go.

[laughs] - Yeah, yeah.

- So as a vegetarian goes, this is a winner.

- This is a winner for sure, yeah.

- If you're a backyard gardener like me, then it's probably safe to say that you've grown tomatoes.

It seems like everyone has their own tips and tricks to grow big, juicy, and delicious tomatoes, so why is it that you never see fields of them?

Here in the Columbia Basin, Travis Meacham is working with Friehe farms to grow a test field that may be the start of something much bigger here in Washington.

Why haven't we ever tried tomatoes before?

- I think on one hand we have, you know, I think everybody in the Northwest 'cause I've gotten a lot of advice on how to grow 'em because everybody has tomatoes in their garden, right?

- Yeah.

- It takes both sides.

It needs the production, and then it also needs a place to take 'em.

And so traditionally, the crops are grown where they have a market, and the market hasn't really been here, you know, the processing market.

So we need to have a processor here to be able to handle 'em before we can grow 'em.

And we're even growing a different tomato than what you'd normally have at home.

These are a very solid, you know, tomato, probably a bit smaller than what you'd normally think of.

And they have gone through a lot of breeding.

These varieties are very specific to be made into a paste that'll eventually get turned into ketchup.

- Cool.

- It's a little bit funny.

I'm not a fan of tomatoes, and so I don't know if this was quite the right fit.

- Yet your shirt matches.

- I do, yes.

- Like... [laughs] - I do like ketchup- - There you go.

- So that works.

- Ketchup is good.

Oh, and people love their tomatoes, don't they?

I bet, like you said, you've been getting a lot of advice.

- I didn't realize how much people really do love their tomatoes.

- Yes, they do.

- I have gotten a lot of tips on how to grow these.

- So funny.

- These are a little bit different than what we're growing mostly at home, and so they're gonna be a very firm...

When you pick 'em up, they almost feel like a softball.

- Sure.

- And so, you know- - We've got some little guys already.

- We're just starting to see the first ones coming.

- And in order to get these tomatoes to be big and healthy, they're using a different kind of irrigation system.

- This is a Dragon-Line system.

So what we're doing is pulling a hose along and only watering right in the planted row right now.

- Oh, okay.

- This is kind of a hybrid between overhead circle irrigation and drip irrigation.

- Okay.

- On one hand, it's very simple.

All it is is we connect a hose to our circle, and we drag it, and water comes out the end.

- Yeah.

- But on our hose, we have small emitters that come out, and so we're putting out a very precise amount of water.

And so each one of those aren't just a hole poked in there.

They are the exact size it puts out.

And so if we need to put out water, we put out a longer hose, and that way we get more water down per plant.

We definitely think we're seeing water savings.

And I mean, just standing here looking at it, you're not seeing any water being thrown in the air.

We're watering right now, and so we're not getting any of that loss due to evaporation.

We're getting all the water right down where we need it.

- Simple.

- Yes, it's a very simple concept, but it seems to work very well.

So right now, we are only watering this planted row, but as these plants grow out, we're gonna drop more hoses down and continue to water the root zone.

So by the end of the season, we'll be farming with all of these hoses on the ground watering the full amount of land that you see here.

- Wow.

- Come on, catch up.

- Oh my God.

[laughs] - Farming is a great occupation and what you do and seeing everything change, but I like kind of pushing and finding that next whatever it may be, the finding that next something.

- Yeah.

- We're growing a really kind of firm small potato that has been worked on for many years to be exactly what they want to turn into tomato paste.

- And you said potato.

- I do that all the time.

[Kristi laughs] I don't even notice it anymore.

Thank you for- - Potato, tomato.

- Oh, it's so bad.

- Where are we?

What am I doing?

[laughs] [upbeat music] - We're in The Kitchen at Second Harvest Food Bank in Spokane, and I have my friends with me today.

- The gang's all here.

- That's gang's all here.

I know.

We have Val and Tomás and Chef Laurent Zirotti.

Thank you.

- Oh, happy to be here.

- Yeah, and we're in the Second Harvest teaching kitchen.

We can hear the forklifts and stuff going on in the food bank portion of where we're at.

And we're just so thankful that Second Harvest does what they do to feed the community.

You know, all of the farmers from around Washington donate food that comes here, and it's really cool.

Peppers, probably.

I don't know for sure, but- - Possibly.

- Onions, potatoes.

- It's possible.

And you know, got to hang out in a pepper field, and that was fun to process those peppers straight out of the field into roasted peppers- - Yeah, and peppers- - That you can buy at the store like in the frozen food section.

- And sometime processing is just a word of saying, you know, not adding anything.

It's all natural.

There is no additive or anything.

- It's so fresh.

So, peppers.

- Yes.

- We're gonna make something with what kind of peppers today?

- Bell peppers.

- Okay.

- And red bell peppers.

I think it's a great sauce.

It's a traditional sauce in Spain, traditional Romesco sauce.

It's beautiful.

Be careful with it because there is bread in it, so if you wanna make it gluten-free, just take off, remove the bread.

- So the sauce has bread in it?

- The sauce has bread in it to give a little different consistency.

But if you're gluten-intolerant, please just discard the bread, and you can use that recipe for many things, a dipping sauce for fish.

Today, we're gonna serve it with grilled shrimp.

But you can use it for many other purpose.

It's a great foundational sauce.

- I don't think I've ever had this type of sauce, so I'm excited to try it.

- Good, good.

Well, we'll see how it's made.

- Yeah, let's take a look.

[upbeat music] It's so beautiful and colorful.

- I love that sauce.

- It's vibrant, and it's beautiful.

- And so the name of this is again, Romesco- - Romesco.

- Sauce, Romesco sauce.

- And it's delicious.

You get the bell pepper flavor.

There's a little bit of spiciness to it.

Sherry vinegar helps also.

- This has got a little kick to it.

- This has a little kick to it, and it's just right 'cause I don't do too much kicking.

- Really refreshing.

In the summer, it's a perfect sauce for the summer.

Even to serve it with the grilled meat on the side- - Oh yeah.

- Perfect.

- Just enough kicking.

- Yeah, it's got a nice little kick.

- It's got a nice little kick.

- You can use this in so many different ways.

I love the red pepper that's in there.

I love the heat that I'm getting.

- And what a great way to showcase maybe something that, you know, you grew yourself- - Yeah.

- In your garden.

- This is really good.

- Right?

Yeah, delicious.

- Really good.

I was gonna say, it'd be great on a charcuterie board also, right?

Or your cheese board.

- Exactly.

In Spain, they use that sauce for tapas, you know, with octopus, with a grilled fish or anything like this.

They use it as a tapas.

- I like it.

- Fantastic, this is very good.

- Well, thank you for sharing.

- You're very welcome.

- Yeah, give it a try at home.

To get the recipe for Chef Laurent Zirotti's Romesco Sauce with Grilled Shrimp, visit us at wagrown.com.

With our farmers always coming up with new, innovative ideas, you never know what they'll grow next.

That's it for this episode of "Washington Grown."

We'll see you next time.