Greg Atkinson serves up the fare to benefit Housing Resources Board.

When Greg Atkinson was chef of Friday Harbor House restaurant in the 1980s, once-a-week deliveries from mainland purveyors just wasn’t frequent enough, or fresh enough.

His solution was to invite local farmers and fishermen each winter for dinner. He’d pour over the farmers’ seed catalogs with them and say, “If you grow this, I’ll buy it all.”

He brought his children with him on shopping trips at the waterfront.

“I could buy fish off the dock, the live spot prawns still kicking,” Atkinson said. “We’d meet boats from Alaska with halibut in the holds.

“I introduced my kids to so many facets of life through food. The social and economic threads of our lives come together at the table.”

Atkinson now makes his home on Bainbridge Island and is a culinary consultant for Organic To Go and a food columnist for the Seattle Times’ Pacific Northwest magazine.

He won the M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award for best food story of the year in 2000, and recently published a cookbook, “Entertaining in the Northwest Style,” (Sasquatch Books $29.95).

The recipes, arranged by menu, draw on his past experience as chef at Seattle’s well-known Canlis restaurant and bring together his ideas of cooking seasonally with regional ingredients.

Each chapter celebrates seasonal occasions, from the first spring salmon to supping “on the beach” or “in the barn,” sitting down with family for Thanks­giving or observing the winter solstice.

His introduction to each menu draws on personal anecdotes, with tips on how to prepare dishes in advance, recommended wine pairings, ideas for table decor and how to simplify the menu.

The menu he chose for the benefit dinner and auction on Oct. 1 being held for Bainbridge Island’s Housing Resources Board is the “Cider Bash.”

“I think autumn is a real homecoming time, and since this benefit is for housing, it evokes home and hearth,” Atkinson said. “Every dish has apples or cider and it also kind of evokes that gathering around and celebrating autumn.”

The wistfulness of the “cider bash” introduction was inspired at a Bainbridge event hosted by friends in 2001.

The essay’s poignancy is a reflection of the recent attacks of 9/11 and a “ripple through the crowd” as news of the U.S. bombing Afghanistan trickled in, juxtaposed with the backdrop of kids running around, laughing and shaking apples out of the tree.

“I try to put the menus in the context of my life,” Atkinson said.

He began cooking as a child with his mother, Annie Atkinson. At first he was given chores like peeling potatoes, but his mother held out the carrot of “Oh, you have to be skilled to make roux or brown meat.”

He advanced to making after-school treats like brownies and cookies and then on to baking his own bread.

“I’ve always been interested in food. The kitchen was an arena where I could do whatever I wanted,” Atkinson said. “I liked the creative outlet. When cooking or writing, I get the same satisfaction of making something.”

At 13, he gave up meat for Lent and became a vegetarian until he was 20, which in the 1970s meant he had to cook for yourself.

He worked his way through college in Bellingham at a variety of restaurants, eventually settling in Friday Harbor with his family and working at Cafe Bissett there.

But feeling there were still “holes” in his cooking skills, he went to France in 1992 and worked one winter at the Michelin three-star restaurant of Roger Vergé at Moulin de Mougins, in the town of Mougins near Cannes.

“The most important thing I learned in France was an affirmation of things I already understood. Vergé cooked seasonally with things native to the region,” Atkinson said.

In fact, his tome is a tribute to Vergé’s book about entertaining at home. “Vergé said the restaurant is an extension of his home and a way to entertain his friends and family,” Atkinson said.

Similarly, his book grew out of his experience at Canlis, a restaurant where Seattlites celebrate special occasions.

“I never wanted it to be a restaurant cookbook, but rather to take the style of the restaurant to the home kitchen.”

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Tasty times

Sample the “Cider Bash” menu from Greg Atkinson’s book, “Entertaining in the Northwest Style” at the benefit dinner and auction for the Housing Resources Board, 6 p.m. Oct. 1 at the Wing Point country club. Proceeds support HRB’s affordable housing efforts. Tickets are $75 per person; seating is limited. Make reservations by Sept. 28 to HRB at 842-1909.

Meet Atkinson at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 10 at Eagle Harbor Books, and at Field’s End at 7 p.m. Nov. 15 at the Bainbridge library.

From the “Cider Bash” menu in “Entertaining in the Northwest Style,” with the author’s permission:

Willie’s Apple Crisp

Now fully grown and starting a family of his own, “Willie” was a child of 10 when he developed this formula for the crispest of crisps.

Willie’s neighbor, Sharon Kramis, a cooking teacher and cookbook author introduced the crisp to her friend Marion Cunningham, who saw to it that the formula was widely popularized.

In the late summer, I sometimes mix up a large batch of the topping mixture and keep it covered in the freezer. A windfall of berries or apples may then be quickly dispensed with under a handful of the crunchy cookie-like crust.

(Serves 6 to 8)

For the topping:

1 cup flour

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 egg

For the filling:

6 cups apples (peeled, and sliced thin)

½ cup sugar

2 tablespoons flour

½ cup butter, melted

Cinnamon Ice Cream as an accompaniment, optional

Preheat the oven to 375°F and have ready an unbuttered 8 x 8-inch baking dish.

Stir 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar, the baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the egg. Beat the egg with a fork and gradually incorporate it into the flour and sugar mixture.

Put the apples into the baking dish and toss with ½ cup sugar and 2 tablespoons flour.

Sprinkle the first mixture evenly over the top of the fruit. Drizzle the melted butter evenly over the top.

Bake until the topping is golden brown, about 40 minutes. Serve warm with cinnamon ice cream.