SPOKANE’S COMMUNITY BUILDING TURNS 20

REVOLUTION ON MAIN

A new book hails the Community Building and its 20-year legacy in Spokane

BY MADISON PEARSON

The Community Building campus is situated right downtown — it welcomes visitors and Spokane natives alike into the heart of our city. With a plethora of stores selling local handmade goods, art lining the walls and spaces for people to gather, the building is a testament to what makes Spokane Spokane.

When Jim Sheehan inherited a large sum of money 24 years ago, he immediately got to work on a Main Avenue building creating a space for nonprofits to gather and where innovation thrives.

“It’s not the building that’s inherently special,” says his daughter, Katy Sheehan. “It’s the community that makes the building special.”

Katy is just one contributor included in the new book One-Block Revolution: 20 Years of Community Building. It’s not every day that you get a book written about a specific building in your city, but the Community Building warrants that kind of attention.

“This building welcomes everyone,” Katy Sheehan says. “When my dad started this project 20 years ago, this wasn’t ‘downtown’ yet. People thought he was crazy, asking, ‘Why are you doing this?’ The buildings are beautiful and were originally a part of Chinatown, so they have significance and importance to the AsianAmerican community. This was a place of gathering before we got here and was absolutely worth saving.”

It turns out that a couple dozen other Spokanites feel the same way. The book contains essays by 20 Spokane natives who describe their connection to and adoration for the Community Building, including Summer Hess, the book’s editor and Jim Sheehan’s previous executive assistant and project manager. Hess split the book into two parts: “Community Building is a Noun” and “Community Building is a Verb.”

“We weren’t trying to write a history,” Hess says. “It’s a representation of the kinds of players that help a place like this run.”

In Hess’ introduction to the book, she mentions the mission statement of the Community Building: “To host, inspire, and catalyze social change in the Spokane region.” The statement is reflected in the tenants of the Community Building: the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, Refugee Connections Spokane, the city’s beloved independent movie theater, the Magic Lantern, and the Saranac Commons.

“That mission statement is still true to this day,” Hess says. “And it will evolve and change along with our city. Spokane is constantly evolving, so of course we should move along with it.”

A celebration for the release of One-Block Revolution will be held at the Community and Saranac buildings on Friday Dec. 3, from 5-8 pm. Festivities will include appetizers, live music, a no-host bar, tours of the building, and conversations with building residents and book contributors. There will also be a panel moderated by Hess, which features several of the book’s contributors at 6 pm.

“We’re so excited to invite the community to a celebration of this book hosted in the space that it’s about,” Hess says. n

One-Block Revolution Release Celebration • Fri, Dec. 3, 5-8 pm • Free (donations in support of the Salish School are accepted) • Community and Saranac Buildings • 25-35 W. Main Ave • communitybuilding.org

THE BUZZ BIN

TACO DIPLOMACY

Talk about the U.S.-Mexico border is often fraught with negativity, focusing more on people who pass through (or want to) than on the region’s permanent residents. In her new PBS series, La Frontera, chef Pati Jinich reframes the narrative, traveling both sides of Mexico’s more than 1,200-mile border with Texas to explore culture, history, geography and, of course, food. That beef you’re eating? It’s a prime example of border cooperation from episode one, while episode two looks at a ranching family with roots predating any border wall. Jinich is a James Beard Foundation award-winning chef and host of Pati’s Mexican Table, with an ebullient personality that makes the show as refreshing as a huge squeeze of lime. (CARRIE SCOZZARO)

OOH, SHINY!

Yes, the release of Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl fell on my birthday this year; however, I was way more excited about one of those things than the other. The feeling of turning a year older is nothing compared to the feeling of nostalgia while playing the newly remade version of your favorite childhood video game. And let me tell you, it did not disappoint. I felt 10 years old again: choosing Piplup as my starter, setting off to explore the Sinnoh region and collecting as many gym badges as I could before sleep caught up to me. I know that remakes are often disappointing and not worth the price tag, but the memories that I was able to relive were worth every penny. (MADISON PEARSON)

THIS WEEK’S PLAYLIST

Noteworthy new music arriving in stores and online Dec. 3:

TOM MORELLO, The Atlas Underground Flood. The guitarist rages against single releases, putting out his second LP of the year, this one featuring contributions from IDLES, Manchester Orchestra, Rodrigo y Gabriela, and more.

VOLBEAT, Servant of the Mind. Volbeat is probably the premiere Danish metal band, but that raises the question: Who is the premiere Croissant metal band?

DESSERTS

COOKIES, CUSTARDS AND CAKES

Exploring the common ancestry of European holiday desserts — and where to find those sweet treats locally

BY CARRIE SCOZZARO

An increase in local, outdoor holiday markets mixed with memories of growing up among Polish, Italian, German and other Christian European traditions inspired this exploration of festive desserts featured from December onward.

Many desserts are synonymous with their respective cultural traditions. Yet in addition to using similar ingredients — starches, fats, flavorings and, above all, sugar — many also share common ancestry across Europe.

FRENCH

The word dessert, like roughly one-third of English language words, is rooted in French — desservir — meaning to clear the table for the final course. Just as French fine dining traditions have shaped the American restaurant industry, France has also defined our notion of desserts from cookies, custards, confections and cakes to pies, pastries and more.

However, you needn’t wait until the end of a meal to enjoy a sweet treat, which for French-born Patricia Hebert-Jenks should be both beautiful to look at and to eat.

“In my family, even if it’s just us, we go fancy,” says Hebert-Jenks, who relocated to Idaho in 2009, having traded international banking experience for a career in culinary arts.

“In France, the [holiday] tradition is more about ordering from a bakery and being proud and excited to bring something wonderful,” says Hebert-Jenks, whose quiches and truffles can be found at the Culinary Stone in Coeur d’Alene, where she also teaches French cooking classes.

For Christmas, Hebert-Jenks might make Bûche de Noël, or a Christmas Yule log cake, which can also be found in Belgian and Swiss cultures. Bûche de Noël is a thin cake layered with cream filling — Hebert-Jenks likes incorporating chocolate or raspberry — and rolled into a log, or buche in French.

Many restaurants in France simply don’t have the capacity to do all their own baking, especially when baked goods can have a very short shelf life. So patisseries abound in France; locally, their counterparts include Madeleine’s Café & Patisserie (415 W. Main Ave.) and miFlavour (3403 E. Sprague Ave.).

FOOD | DESSERTS “COOKIES, CUSTARDS AND CAKES,” CONTINUED... ITALIAN

France and Italy share a more than 320-mile border. Thus the “spoon cookies” in another of Hebert-Jenks’ favorite desserts, charlotte aux marrons, are better known as lady fingers. When they get soaked in espresso and coffee liqueur and layered with mascarpone cream, that creates the classic Italian tiramisu.

Find tiramisu at Europa Restaurant & Bakery in downtown Spokane, whose extensive dessert menu from longtime baker Christie Sutton includes roulade, a rolled up cake comparable to French buche cakes. They also have (German) apfelstrudel, and several (French-inspired) mousses and tarts.

In addition to tiramisu, Italia Trattoria in Browne’s Addition serves a bread pudding made with French brioche and roasted pears from chef Anna Vogel, reflecting the James Beard Award semifinalist’s European training and heritage.

PORTUGUESE

Italia Trattoria’s fried zeppole breakfast doughnuts are also similar to Portuguese sonhos, says Rind & Wheat bakery owner Ricky Webster, who’s Portuguese and Italian. His Spokane bakery produces a smattering of European desserts like French madeleine cookies and financier cakes, as well as a Portuguese egg tart, but holiday baking is special, he says.

“At Christmastime in Portugal, or really all over Europe, it’s about using special ingredients… that may be a bit too expensive to indulge in all year long,” Webster says.

In Portugal that includes egg yolks, cream, candied fruits, oil for frying and sugar, he says.

Last year Webster made Portuguese Bolo-Rei or King’s Cake, which is French in origin, yet has similarities to a German cake Webster occasionally offers at Rind & Wheat called stollen.

GERMAN

Stollen is more like a bread than a cake, with a core of dried fruits, sometimes nuts, or a thick, sweetened paste of ground almonds called marzipan. Its sweetest component is a dusting of confectioner’s sugar on top.

That’s typical of German baking, says Alpine Deli owner Andrea Lejeune-Weiler, who was raised in Bernkastel-Kues, about 40 miles east of Germany’s border with Luxembourg.

“Most German — most European baking, really — is not as sweet as here in America,” says Lejeune-Weiler, who earned her culinary degree in America. Prior to that she worked at Alpine Deli under its original owners. (They sold it to a Bosnian family, who eventually sold it to Lejeune-Weiler and her husband in 2019.) For her family, Christmas is all about cookies, says Lejeune-Weiler, who is partial to lebkuchen (similar to gingerbread), and vanillekipferl, a crescent-shaped, shortbread cookie from Austria.

Stollen is a traditional German sweet bread.

NORWAY

Northern Europe is well-represented in the Inland Northwest’s population, but hardly at all in its food scene. Although Scandinavian venues are noticeably absent here, desserts and other baked goods occasionally pop up in the culinary landscape, like at Breaüxdoo Bakery in Spokane Valley.

On Dec. 11, chef-owner Gage Lang and his grandmother will be making — and selling — Norway’s version of a tortilla, known as lefse, and the lighter-than-air crispy cookie called krumkake, using recipes from his great-greatgrandmother for both. Visit the bakery’s Facebook page for more details on the upcoming pop-up.

SLAVIC

When my grandfather visited friends or family, he’d stop by the Polish bakery for some kind of cake or cookie, like kolaczki, Polish fruit-filled cookies also found in Austria, Denmark and Russia. That white box tied with red and white string meant goodies in my future (if I behaved).

Although our region lacks a dedicated Polish bakery, it is rich in Slavic businesses, which offer foods — both scratch-made and imports — that represent Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, Belarus, Czech, Romania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Moldova, Latvia and Serbia.

Owned by Ukrainian Irina Ustimenko, Sweet World Cakes in North Spokane, for example, supplies decadent desserts for numerous businesses, including Magnolia, her recently opened deli and modest grocery in Airway Heights. Try the layered and cream-filled honey cake or Ustimenko’s layered-cake version of Italian tiramisu.

Yummy Snamy is one of several deli/markets catering to the Slavic community. Formerly Mariupol, the shop regularly has Russian vatrushka, a light pastry similar to a cheese Danish. It also recently added made-to-order crepes, which one might otherwise associate with France.

Additional Slavic markets where locals might find in-house baked desserts include Odessa European Deli, Matreshka European Deli and the three locations of Kiev Market.

Finally, International Coffee and Bakery serves scratch-made treats with a Russian accent. Formerly Malinka Euro Market, the bakery’s traditional Russian desserts include a baked meringue called pavlova (the origin of which is also claimed by Australia and New Zealand). Its spin on Italian cannoli consists of a delicate wafer cylinder reminiscent of Norwegian lefse and a filling flavored with passion fruit native to South America.

Its peach cookies filled with the Russian version of caramel that in Mexican cuisine is called dulce de leche are very popular not just this time of year, but all the time, says Roman Chebotarev, who co-owns the store with family. n