The Pumpkin Papers

Waxing Gnarly

2011-11-26T00:35:00.000-08:00

Widmer Galaxy-Hopped Barleywine
Burly, bitter flavors envelope the roof of the palate with a thick cloud of pie spice aromas and a sandy mouthfeel, mirrored in its smoky topaz color. Notes of burnt-to-the-crisp bacon, with marjoram and torched citrus peel rising on on the extra-long finish. Cellar for a couple of years to let settle and then serve as the A1 sauce condiment with a well-marbled steak, appetizer of truffled deviled eggs, or after-meal milk chocolate or triple-crème Camembert.

Word for the Day

2011-11-21T17:30:00.000-08:00

"Gnarly," as in "There's some gnarly smoke coming out of the bakery, yo" as experienced today here and spotted here and here.

Pastry Chef for a Day

2011-11-07T14:59:00.000-08:00

L-R: Emily Armstrong (Regional Director, Public Relations,
Fairmont Hotels & Resorts), Chef D'Oyen Christie, y moi
Photo by Catherine Roscoe Barr

Recently I spent an afternoon with D’Oyen Christie, master pastry chef at The Fairmont Empress in Victoria, British Columbia. Chef Christie grew up making pastries with his mother, also an accomplished pastry chef, in his birth country of Jamaica. He relocated to Canada at the age of 17 to pursue his culinary career. Among his accomplishments: training at Valrhona's Ecole du Grand Chocolat in France and serving his confections to the Queen of England during her last visit to Victoria (in 2002).

Donned in chef’s hats and personalized aprons, apprentices get hands-on, step-by-step instruction from the affable chef. The day I attended, the class tasted and melted different grades of chocolate, fashioned chocolate eggs using flexible pastry molds, and whipped up chocolate mousse, learning proper spatula technique in the process. “It’s all about the air,” said Christie, showing us how to gently fold in the egg whites, whipped to soft peak perfection, a third at a time into a bowl of chocolate ganache. “Really, you can do this at home,” he encouraged. (He encouraged spatula licking too. “It’s also important to have fun,” he laughed.)

Melty chocolaty strawberry yumminess.

At the end of the class, students tucked into their own plated dessert, taking the leftovers home (or back to the hotel room) for sharing. Many calories later, we certainly gained some weight, but also an appreciation for the techniques and ingredients used in a modern professional pastry kitchen.

Lately, Christie has been working on recipes for gluten- and dairy-free diets. “I never stop learning,” he said.

The Pastry Apprentice Program is open to children 16 and under (children younger than 8 should be accompanied by a parent), and there are adult-only classes too. Upcoming programs will be held on November 27 for adults, and December 27 for children. For reservations and more information, call 250-389-2727 or visit www.fairmont.com.

This article originally appeared in the November/December 2011 Northwest Palate.

Postcards from Pacific City

2011-10-27T00:39:00.000-07:00

Lovely last weekend in Pacific City. Beers at the Pelican . Deluxe accommodations at the Condos . Awesome sunsets both evenings.

"Quail and Dumplings"

2011-10-06T01:07:00.000-07:00

PEANUT BUTTER

2011-09-14T22:28:00.000-07:00

Due to devastating drought conditions in the South, this year's peanut crop is going to suck. Peanut butter prices are expected to increase by 30%. So now's the time to stock up, or switch to an alternative nut butter, like almond, cashew, or hazelnut, and while you're at it, listen to this amazing track called "Peanut Butter," a dub mix of "Pull Up to the Bumper," by the Compass Point All Stars.

The Slap & the Pack

2011-09-08T23:12:00.000-07:00

Reading the chapter "Manolis" in The Slap just reminded me of the time I yelled "Fuck!" during a family get-together at my grandparents'. I couldn't have been more than 3 or 4 at the time.

"Peter," said my grandfather, calling me over. "Where did you learn that word?" he asked calmly.

***

Tonight at Saraveza, there was a guy wearing a Clay Matthews jersey who kept obstructing our view of the television.

"Hey Clay, you're in our way!" Did I say that, or did he not hear me? He just kept texting.

***

Silly Putty.

File under: Corny

2011-09-06T22:36:00.000-07:00

Suzi Quatro does Goldfrapp on her new album. Suzi Quatro is 60, and damn does she look and sound great.

Unfortunately, there's also a corny ballad devoted to Elvis Presley called "Singing with Angels."

Okay, maybe this is cornier.

I haven't seen the remake, but like Willie Wonka, I bet it's not nearly as good as the original.

Corn. It's what's in season.

Wanks

2011-09-05T17:18:00.000-07:00

Wachovia
Washington Mutual
Wells Fargo
World Savings

Summer vacay day 8

2011-09-03T10:49:00.000-07:00

Approaching McIntyre Bluff.

Entering Le Vieux Pin.

Root stock from this year's mudslide.

Lots of cyclists on Black Sage Road, entering Stoneboat Vineyards.

Lanny and his son Tim at Stoneboat.

Great pairing at Black Hills Winery: ricotta and carbonated grapefruit with Alibi (white blend).

On the road again.

A slice of the awesome view from Miradoro at Tinhorn Creek.

Calamari + rosé at Miradoro = YUM!

Well, hello, Road 13.

summer vacay days 6 & 7

2011-09-01T22:58:00.000-07:00

Lunch at Victoria Rd Deli & Bistro:

Signature duck prosciutto panini, housemade ketchup, and frites.

View from Poplar Grove on the Naramata Bench.

Sunset in Summerland.

Checking in at DeerPath Lookout B&B.

The view out our bedroom.

On the grounds of DeerPath.

Clouds.

And more clouds.

Potato cakes at Vanilla Pod in Summerland.

Fresh mussels tonight.

Sunset from Poplar Grove after the Cab 'n' Za tweet-up.

summer vacay days 4+5

2011-08-31T10:41:00.000-07:00

Who needs schedules?

Mike and his local whiskey at Urban Distilleries in Kelowna.

Sitting on the dock of Lake Okanagan in Peachland.

Life is peachy in Peachland.

Working Horse Winery's Tilman Hainle leads Gretta.

Gretta and Meghan grazing in the fields.

The vineyard at Working Horse.

Guinness and me take a walk around the vineyard.

Phil and the "Nasty with Attitude Burger" at Nasty's in Peachland.

Can he do it?

Oh yes he can.

Sunny-side up farm-fresh eggs.

summer vacay day 3

2011-08-29T10:06:00.000-07:00

Di and the wine spirit at Summerhill Pyramid.

Pete queues up under the Brut bong at Summerhill Pyramid.

The cheese counter at Carmelis.

The goats that make the milk that becomes the cheese at Carmelis.

Mural at Carmelis.

The view from Terrace restaurant at Mission Hill Estate Winery.

The amuse that started our epic meal at Terrace.

First course: Diana dug the basil oil and feta.

A collaboration of vegetables.

Post-collaboration.

The golden arches at Mission Hill.

summer vacay

2011-08-27T22:41:00.000-07:00

The road to Ellensburg.

Yellow Church Cafe.

Detail: Art house (near Yellow Church Cafe).

Detail: Art house.

Self portrait at Lake Chelan.

Day 2: Road trip provisions.

Fluffy clouds over Vaseux Lake.

View from our villa at Lake Okanagan.

Heirloom tomatoes at Wild Apple Restaurant at Manteo Resort.

What do you see in the salad?

Sunset over Lake Okanagan.

Vic Mix

2011-08-12T09:04:00.000-07:00

Fake Eyelashes... YUM!

2011-08-09T13:37:00.000-07:00

The Outpost

2011-07-14T21:55:00.000-07:00

Ten hours of fishing a day. Pulling up traps full of Dungeness crabs and spot prawns. Beachcombing for clams. It was all this and more during my recent visit to The Outpost in Haida Gwaii.

Who da where?

It's pronounced High-dah g-why and means "Islands of the People" in Haida, the language of the people of indigenous or First Nations descent, as recognized by the Canadian government. In 2010, the collection of 150 islands off the northwest coast of British Columbia was renamed Haida Gwaii, replacing the former moniker of the Queen Charlotte Islands.

No matter what you call it, it's beautiful country and good fishing.

Foraging with Hank Shaw

2011-06-25T23:51:00.000-07:00

Foraging for wild edibles with the author of Hunt, Gather, Cook, Hank Shaw. He and chef Matt Lightner (of Portland's Castagna) are putting on a dinner tomorrow night featuring some of the vegetation they gathered during the day, with the help of some members from the Portland Culinary Alliance.

The weather was absolutely perfect. Under a bright cobalt blue sky, the morning was pleasantly cool (high 50s) and turned into warm, but not-too-hot afternoon, perfect for a hike through some woods near Washougal, Washington.

Hank Shaw, checking out some Claytonia

saskatoon berry

flower

Thimbleberry flower

Wild yellow violets

wild raspberry

beware the ham sandwich

2011-04-27T00:45:00.000-07:00

I had the croque monsieur at St. Jack today. An almost negligible amount of ham between two slabs of stale brioche and a thin smear of dijon, topped with cheese (brie?) and broiled to a golden crisp. It was fabulous except for the fact it made me ill an hour later -- crapped it right out. The service was also crappy. At least I lived, which is more than could be said of Mama Cass and the ham sandwich that felled her.

What hams.

Nuts

2011-04-05T00:12:00.000-07:00

Pistachios, to be precise, coated liberally with pimenton. $3 at Kir, presumably just a wine bar, but where I ate some of the best plates, small or otherwise, during my past month-long feeding and drinking frenzy. While I diet and detox for the next three months, I'm going to dream spicy little dreams of never-ending bowl-fuls of these burnt-to-perfection beauties.

Quake Up, Portland!

2011-03-24T18:10:00.000-07:00

Dine Out on Tuesday, March 29^th to Support Japanese Earthquake Relief

More than 50 Portland restaurants, bistros, bars, and coffee houses participating

Join the Portland restaurant community in supporting relief efforts in the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquake in Japan.

On Tuesday, March 29^th, the following restaurants will be donating a portion of their sales to Mercy Corps to help survivors of the earthquake.

23hoyt

Aalto Lounge

Apizza Scholls

Aquariva

Ate–Oh–Ate

Bar Avignon

Beaker and Flask

BEAST

Biwa

Bluehour

Broder

Bunk Bar

Bunk Sandwiches

Castagna Café

Central

clarklewis

Clyde Common

Country Cat

Dick’s Kitchen

DOC

Fratelli

Gilt Club

Grüner

Jade Teahouse

Kenny and Zuke’s

Ken’s Artisan Bakery

Ken’s Artisan pizza

Kir

Laurlehurst Market

Laughing Planet Café, all locations

Lincoln

Little Big Burger

Little Bird

Meat Cheese Bread

Masu

Mee Sen

Miho

Mississippi Studios

Navarre

Nostrana

Olympic Provisions

Park Kitchen

Podnah’s Pit Barbeque

Pok Pok

Produce Row

Saphire Hotel

Saucebox

Savoy Tavern+Bistro

Spirit of ‘77

Stumptown Coffee, all locations

Tanuki

Tasty and Sons

The Aviary

The Observatory

Toro Bravo

Vita Cafe

Whiskey Soda Lounge

Yoko’s

Zilla

For an up-to-date listing of all participating restaurants, please visit

http://www.mercycorps.org/fundraising/portlandrestaurantrelief

June

2011-03-14T05:51:00.000-07:00

I could very easily become a regular of Portland restaurant, June. Chef/co-owner Gregory Perrault cooks with seasonal ingredients, ensuring that new menu items keep things interesting visit after visit.

Steelhead roe

Heirloom carrots

Miner's lettuce

Humptulips River steelhead

Octopus

Forelle pears

Twitterecipes

2011-02-15T14:22:00.000-08:00

Click here for a compilation of recipes, 140 words or less, compiled via Twitter by The Oregonian's Leslie Cole. Writing a set of cooking instructions and ingredients concisely is a lot harder than it might seem, but whaddya know? One of my tweets made the grade!

sunchoke puree
@peterpdx/Peter Szymczak
Boil 1# sunchokes til tender in salted pot of water. Drain. Add 2T butter + 1/2c milk. Purée til smooth. Add 1T chopped chives.

What inspired me was a big bunch of sunchokes that my wife brought home from New Seasons Market and my trusty Judy Gorman's Vegetable Cookbook.

Sunchokes can be pretty dirty, so make sure you wash them well in cold water; you might even scrub them with a vegetable brush before boiling them in a large pot of fresh cool water, about a gallon's worth. Add to the pot 2 Tablespoons of salt, which will season the sunchokes as they cook. The sunchokes are cooked when you are able to easily pierce through the skin with the tines of a fork, or inserting a knife into the middle of the root comes out cleanly. You don't need to peel the sunchokes, but they can be a little fibrous, so make sure you achieve a smooth purée consistency. You might even sieve the purée for an even smoother consistency.

Whoa! Exceeded my 140 character limit there, didn't I? But really, it's pretty crucial information.

A little ear candy for Valentine's Day

2011-02-14T16:27:00.000-08:00

It doesn't get much funkier than this jam from Josephine Jones. "You don't need no cookbook" -- just put this on and the kitchen will heat right up!

Celebrating Sinclair and Frederique Philip

2011-02-10T10:38:00.000-08:00

Great video on the Philips, co-owners of Sooke Harbour House. Look for a feature on James Walt, one of the many chefs who've been inspired by their time in the kitchen at Sooke, in the March/April issue of Northwest Palate.

The Gourmand of Oregon's Wine Country

2011-02-09T15:19:00.000-08:00

Jason Stoller Smith is featured in this great short video, produced when Smith was the head chef at Dundee Bistro. This past June, he took the post of executive chef at Oregon's iconic Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood. Look for my feature on Smith in the upcoming March/April issue of Northwest Palate magazine.

happy hour reconsidered

2011-01-25T00:52:00.000-08:00

I went on record here saying happy hours were not one of my favorite things. I find it to be the time when most restaurants offer cheap(er), largely uninspired food, bartenders short pour, and diners jostle for the open bar stool.

Ostensibly, it's an opportunity to sample a chef's food at a fraction of the price, although oftentimes the trade-off for half-price plates is smaller portions, drink minimums, and/or loud crowds of other food budget-crunching patrons. So what's the big deal?

Fenouil made a case tonight for me to reconsider my curmudgeonly attitude toward happy hour. Theirs runs from 4-6PM daily. According to French slang, "happy hour" translates as "un cinq à sept," or from 5 to 7PM, a much more civilized period of time, I think.

But that's about my only nitpick. On the menu, chef Jake Martin's small plates were superb across the board. To drink, $5 glasses of red, white, and bubbly from GM Ginger Henderson's wine list. I had the Desert Wind Viognier: fruit-sweet on the front end, with a streak of acidity, it paired well with everything.

caramelized onion tart, whipped brie, herb salad,
toasted caraway

confit chicken wings, candied garlic, scallion,
sriracha aioli

ahi tuna crudo, compressed apples with yuzu, shoyu, white miso

shigoku oysters, cucumber, champagne gelée

pork cheek pot au feu, turnip, carrot, potato

heirloom carrot cake: cream cheese bavarian, braised pineapple, carrot-pineapple sorbet

blood orange polenta cake, lemon curd

crèeme fraiche cheecake, candied lime peel

Desserts were also stellar, if not half-price. Nonetheless, they were worth every bite. The lighter-than-air sponge cake filled with Twinkie-like cream and a quenelle of carrot-pineapple sorbet and baby chard leaves left me breathless for spring.

Hazelnut Ice Cream

2011-01-22T17:32:00.000-08:00

A shipment of Organic Valley creamers arrived on my doorstep the other day. There were two pints apiece of hazelnut and vanilla-flavored half & half, alongside an equal amount of soy-based non-dairy versions.

What to do with all this milky goodness? Make ice cream, said my belly, so that's just what I did.

Seeing Amanda Hesser on this week's episode of Top Chef is probably what made me reach for my well-worn copy of The New York Times Cookbook (the old Craig Claiborne edition). His recipe for vanilla ice cream is really basic and simple, and therefore easily adaptable. Following is my recipe remix:

HAZELNUT ICE CREAM
6 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
4 cups Organic Valley hazelnut-flavored half & half
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup chopped hazelnuts

1. In a mixing bowl, add the egg yolks and sugar, and whisk until pale yellow.
2. Pour the half & half into a 2-quart saucepan and heat over medium-high heat until it comes just to a boil, then turn off the heat.
3. Pour about 1/2 cup of the hot half & half to the blended egg yolk and sugar mixture, whisking continuously until well-blended. Add the remainder of the half & half, whisking continuously, and then pour it back into the saucepan. Add the salt.
4. Heat the mixture over low heat, stirring and scraping all around the bottom with a wooden spoon. DO NOT BOIL OR YOU'LL END UP WITH SCRAMBLED EGGS! Cook the mixture for about 5 to 7 minutes, continuing to stir all the while, until the liquid is noticeably thicker and coats the back of a spoon.
5. Pour the mixture through a fine-mesh strainer into a mixing bowl and let cool to room temperature before putting it into the refrigerator to chill. (TIP: Put the bowl in a bigger bowl filled with ice and water, AKA an ice bath, to cool down the mixture faster.)
6. When the mixture is completely chilled, pour it into an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions. When the ice cream is just about done, add the chopped hazelnuts and churn for another minute or two to combine.

P.S. The other cool thing about this project was that I got to use my grandmother's nut chopper. One of my earliest cooking-related childhood memories was when she made a recipe that called for chopped nuts and she asked me do the chopping with the aid of this little gizmo. Putting the whole nuts at the top bin, cranking the arm, and watching the broken bits fall into the glass lower half was magical. The chopper still works like a charm. Jan. 30 will be the second anniversary of her death. Love you, Granny.

starosc nie radosc

2010-11-29T15:58:00.000-08:00

99 bottles

2010-11-22T22:33:00.000-08:00

Cabezon

2010-11-12T02:09:00.000-08:00

A few of the damn near perfect plates at Cabezon tonight.

cornmeal blinis with halibut ceviche

arugula and radicchio salad with pistachio chevre truffles

mesquite grilled new york strip loin with fingerlings, walla walla onion rings + bordelaise

petrale sole with red quinoa, brussels sprouts + tangerine butter

hood river farms bosc pear "tarte tatin" with vanilla ice cream

the aftermath

Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg-Slogan

2010-11-11T12:43:00.000-08:00

a tale of two pigs

2010-11-10T01:32:00.000-08:00

In one corner, pork from a pen-raised Red Wattle pig; in the other, that from its pasture-raised sibling. An interesting epicurean experiment. Would the pork from one taste better, and will it pair well with the artisan brews made by Upright Brewing?

"Suds 'n' Swine" dinner at OCI featuring beers by Upright Brewing, proceeds benefiting the Chefs Collaborative

1st course
Pate de Campagne with stone fruit chutney paired with Upright Late Harvest

To be honest, I never could get straight (and neither could the servers or the chefs), which pork was which during the course of the meal. Perhaps one of the pates was slightly more livery than the other, but for all intents and purposes the preparations on each side of the plate were so near identical in taste as to be negligible. The toast points were a bit thick and coarse, and the chutney was a better pair with the beer than the pork. Alex from Upright described the beer as perhaps a bit too aggressive or robust for the plate, and I'm in total agreement. Missing was a little sprinkle of salt, which would have amped up the flavor. Alan from Hair of the Dog, who sat next to me, had good things to say about the beer's chocolate and pepper notes.

2nd course
Pen- vs. Pasture-raised braised pork belly w/ cabbage, apple + ham hock, paired w/ Upright 4

The beer was slightly smoky and vanilla-laden, which Alex said makes this beer a perfect pairing with cheese -- so why they paired it with the pork belly is anybody's guess. Not a good pairing at all. One bite of the slaw yielded a fishy flavor, which Alan also detected. Anchovy? Weird. Otherwise, the diced swedes and root veg were pefectly par-boiled and sauteed, and the pork belly DID NOT SUCK < highest compliment possible!

3rd course
Brined + herb-roasted loin w/ potatoes gratin + mustard jus paired w/ Upright 5

The loin was a tad dry. One of the loins was much more herbaceous than the other, but the texture of each was about the same. Thin slices of pork loin are potentially one of the most boring proteins ever. But bring me a while bowl of those potatoes gratin with mustard jus, and the beer really doesn't matter, as long as I have one, although this would be a fine choice --

4th course
Cotechino sausage with lentils + wild shrooms paired w/ Upright Redwood Smoked Lager

Another awesome dish: perfectly cooked lentils and sauteed chanterelles with two slices of fatty meaty porky deliciousness. The beer was intensely smoky, with a smooth texture, like fine incense.

The side-by-side comparison of pen- versus farm-raised pigs posed a difficult tasting challenge. Taste-wise, it was nose-to-nose. If any difference in the flavor or aroma existed, it might more be attributable to the cooking precision than the meat itself.

Cost will no doubt be another story. It costs more to raise pigs "ethically" and "naturally," it takes longer, allowing them the simple pleasures of roaming the countryside, wallowing in mud, and just generally being authentically piggish in their behavior - than it costs to raise "unhappy" pigs in a pen, deprived of their natural environment, with regulated feed, growing faster for market. Do those pigs taste any less better? Do I care?

Yes, I do. I will choose to eat the pig that was treated to a luxe life before being lead to its slaughter, and wincingly pay the price, yet remain skeptical that others will accept the trade-off of eating less meat derived from sustainable, certifiably humane, family-run sources such as Heritage Farms Northwest.

My people

2010-10-26T01:39:00.000-07:00

Look at those lovely cucurbits!

Beaverton Farmers’ Market to Close Season with Special Halloween and Harvest Markets

Cornstalks! Pumpkins! Apples! Squash! Gourds & More !

Only three Saturdays left to shop the Market.

Harvest Market on November 20th

BEAVERTON, OR—October 13, 2010— The end of the market season is approaching sooner than we’d like, but the final three Saturday Beaverton Farmers’ Markets will celebrate a terrific season of fall harvest bounty and entertainment. Sights, smells, and tastes of the season will immerse market-goers in the splendor of harvest. The market will be open the next three Saturdays in October, and then reopen for the fun and festive November 20th Harvest Market.

Fall delivers a splendor of festive goods, including pumpkins, of course, but so much more! Gather up gorgeous winter squash, sweet potatoes, wild mushrooms, chanterelles, brussel sprouts, colorful cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage; cured meats from Olympic Provisions and a variety of roast meats – beef, lamb, pork, yak, buffalo, chicken, rabbit; apples, pears, and strawberries; wonderfully thin handmade pasta; chocolates, pies, and peanut butter marshmallows; beer from Captured by Porches micro-brewery, and much more!

At the Halloween Market on Saturday, October 30, a children’s activity tent will keep the little ghouls and goblins entertained with market goodie bags, pumpkin and face painting, and games. The market will be chock full of pumpkins, which shoppers can paint for free with purchase while being serenaded by Haris Blackwood’s family-friendly tunes. Come in costume to really get in the ghostly spirit!

The Harvest Market is a celebration of one of the most important meals of the year, Thanksgiving. On Saturday, November 20, The Beaverton Farmers’ Market re-opens for this one special day so that the community can put local, harvest-fresh foods on their Thanksgiving table. There will be packaged food goods from our cottage industries, wreaths, swags and festive holiday trimmings. This market is held rain or shine.

Holiday recipes and food samples from market vendors will be featured in the Tasting Tent. But the star of the Harvest Market is, of course, the turkey! Heirloom turkey varieties will be available from Pine Mountain Ranch and Champoeg Farm est. 1856.

Festivities abound with live music, holiday wreaths, garlands and table decorations, plus great holiday gifts and stocking stuffers will be available. Join in the fun– and bid adieu for the season to the largest market in Oregon–as we wrap up a bountiful season at the Beaverton Farmers Market!

We’ll see you at the market!

MARKET HOURS

SATURDAYS
5/8/2010 - 10/30/2010, and 11/20/10
8am - 1:30pm

WEDNESDAYS
6/16/2010 - 8/25/2010
3pm - 6pm

SW Hall Boulevard, between Third and Fifth Streets, Beaverton, Oregon

503-643-5345

For map/Directions go to: www.beavertonfarmersmarket.com

SHOPPING AT THE MARKET MEANS:

Enjoying whole foods that are at their peak of flavor
Enjoying foods that have not been shipped across the country burning precious fossil fuels
Buying plants that were raised and nurtured by the people who sell them
Supporting artisans who produce products that are made with attention to craft and quality
Boosting our local economy by supporting Northwest producers

# # #

Sous vide, veni, vici

2010-09-27T06:45:00.000-07:00

When life (or work, as the case may be [as if the two were separate entities]) gives me fancy kitchen equipment, it is my not-so-solemn duty to use it like my mother taught me -- which is just what I did with the Sous Vide Supreme (SVS) that arrived on my doorstep this past week.

With a cubic footprint comparable to an egg-laying chicken's cage, it's bigger than most of the other appliances that reside on the countertop -- food processors, ice cream makers, rice cookers, and the like -- all, come to think of it, except perhaps my mother-in-law's broaster oven. That sad, over-sized hunk of ancient kitchen machinery calls home a shelf in the basement, where it can be found collecting dust rather than performing the work its inventor intended it to do.

In the box, along with the SVS itself, I unearth a couple of instruction manuals, an assortment of plastic sleeves and seasoning packets, and a "vacuum sealer." Is it just me or does it sound like I received a box of goodies from the kitchen sex toy shop?

I stroke the SVS's stainless exterior, hoist it in my ever-loving arms, and rest it lovingly onto the kitchen counter, where I plan to make sweet sous vide love to a batch of T-bone lamb chops.

I plug the power cord into the back of the unit, which goes "beep" upon penetration. The control panel is located on the bottom of the unit's front. Why did the creator put the magic button in such a difficult to stimulate place? I press down the "power" button but no dice, so I consult the instruction manual. Turns out you have to depress the button for three seconds in order for it to turn on. No coincidence, that's about how long it takes me too.

I set the temp to 56 degrees Celsius. Fuck Fahrenheit!

I take off the lid. It's surprisingly lightweight, a tad tinny. How much does this thing cost? $450. I know it's not an accurate measure of a thing's worth, but the impractical heaviness of being is a common trait of the luxe. Gold chains, vanity wristwatches, the latest issue of 425 magazine.

Next I pour several pitchers of tap water into the SVS's inner basin, I'd guesstimate about two gallons' worth, until the water level reaches the FILL line. Above FILL, is MAX. My stomach needs lines like these.

While the unit preheats, I set about to the task of vacuum-sealing my little lamb chops, which have been marinating in white wine and stone ground mustard for the past couple of hours. The user manual explicitly states that wet marinades are not to be used with the vacuum sealer, since the liquids can get sucked into the vacuum, thus rendering it inoperable. Rules, laws, "thou shalt not"s -- who needs them?

I'm careful, note the emphasis, and promise not to share any fluids. Oh, I'm sure some escaped, but just a little. It's not like I'm going to spread any diseases or get anybody pregnant. It's just a little fun with a vacuum sealer.

And does it suck! But it takes practice. My virginal attempt to seal a bag proved to be anything but satisfying. It's a wonder I tried again, but then the compulsion to get it right kicks in, and in the passion of figuring it out, suddenly, it clicks, and you find yourself sucking, sucking, sucking, until there's nothing left to suck…

But I digress. Suffice to say, I got the hang of it, and before you know it, I was a vacuum sealing fool, and I'm fairly confident not an ounce of marinade was spilled. Woody Harrelson would be proud.

And the rest is history. Guests were due at 7 pm, so at 4:30 pm I dropped the chops into the water bath. [Is the water warm enough? Yes, Lisa.] The recipe said to cook the chops medium-rare for a minimum of 1 hour, and maximum of 4 hours (any longer and the flesh will turn mushy -- and that sounds YUCKY, unless you're a fly and like to slurp your protein).

This fudge factor is what's so BAD ASS about getting it on sous vide-style. Work it for one hour, or up to three hours, and the meat stays perfectly medium-rare. That's some serious Albert Einstein-meets-Harold McGee suspension of time shit. Dig it! It's like Viagra, or Cialis, so long as you call your physician if an erection persists for more than 24 hours.

I split the diff and pulled the chops out at 6:30 pm, resting them in the SVS's lid, which doubles as a cooling tray. It's sales copy like that that makes me think how cheap a thrill this is.

TO BE CONTINUED

shucks

2010-09-08T21:26:00.000-07:00

Had a glass of Muscadet Sèvre et Maine, Château de l'Aiguillette, 2008 ($7 or 28 by the bottle) at Bar Avignon the other night. Turns out it's a $10 bottle, more reason to be happy -- much happier than the $5 happy hour pour of plonky Portuguese white that preceded it. If only I'd had the mus-ka-DAY rather than the latter with my oysters, $1 each during happy hour.

Home of the burger

2010-09-06T23:43:00.000-07:00

"FREE" Recipe

2010-09-06T22:37:00.000-07:00

pie crust
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup butter, cubed and chilled
1/4 cup ice-cold water

filling
2 pounds fresh cherries, cleaned and pitted
Zest and juice of 1 lime
1/4 cup sugar (Demerara, white, or brown - your call)
juice and zest of 1 lime
2 Tablespoons water
2 Tablespoons cornstarch

topping
1 cup hazelnuts, shelled and deskinned
1/2 cup sugar (again, your choice what kind)
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 eggs
1 Tablespoon vanilla

supplies
9-inch pie dish
wax paper
food processor

1. To prepare the dough, combine the flour, salt, and sugar in the bowl of a food processor and pulse 2-3 times to mix. Add the butter and pulse until the butter is chopped: it should look like damp sand clumped together. Slowly add the cold water a tablespoon at a time while pulsing the dough until it is evenly distributed. You may not need to use all the water! The dough should not be too wet or sticky, but should just hold together. Remove the dough from the food processor and flatten into a disc. Cover in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for an hour. You can also freeze the dough at this point for later use.

2. Prepare the filling while the dough is chilling. Place the cherries and any juice in a large bowl and add the sugar and lime zest. Mix the water, lime juice, and cornstarch together in a small bowl until dissolved. Add the cornstarch mixture to the cherries and stir until incorporated.

3. To prepare the topping, add the hazelnuts, sugar, and nutmeg to the bowl of a food processor. Pulse 2-3 times until mixed. Add the eggs and vanilla, and process until blended.

4. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

5. Remove one of the discs of dough from the refrigerator and roll out in a circle between layers of wax paper. The dough should be wider than the pie plate, about 11 inches in diameter. Place the rolled out dough into the pie dish and using your fingers, gently mold it to conform to the shape of the dish. Add the cherry pie filling, then pour the hazelnut topping over the cherries.

6. Bake pie for 45 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool to room temperature before serving. Keep refrigerated.

Max

2010-08-31T21:50:00.000-07:00

Photo by Kathleen Bauer. Read the full story here .

We Got the Recipe

2010-08-11T09:04:00.000-07:00

Today's special for all my food- and music-loving followers is this sweet slice of soul from Bo Kirkland and Ruth Davis.

Pure Energy

2010-08-09T23:08:00.000-07:00

The gum aisle at New Seasons is much different from mainstream grocery stores and roadside ice houses. There's no Wrigley's, BubbleYum, Fruit Stripe, Trident, nor Cinnaburst. But there is Solar Energy Gum. Offputting at first is the cost: about $3 per package of 12 individually jet-packed chicklets in flavors that range from Big Bang Bubble to Moon Melon. If you're like me, you'll dig the cosmic theme and put it in your basket right then and there. The effective packaging doesn't stop there. This chewing gum is caffeine, sugar, gluten- & soy-free AND vegan. Not to mention loaded with vitamins B12, B6 and amino acid: "2 Pieces = an 8 oz. Energy Drink"

I popped one tab of Solar Gum—Peppermint Planet flavor—after a 10am-noon meeting on the upcoming September/October 2010 issue of Northwest Palate magazine (which is looking great, btw), and headed to the gym.

The gum held up through 30 minutes on the Stairmaster. Pleasant minty flavor that lasted. Not sure that I felt a noticable boost of energy, but I only had one tab, and I had eaten a good breakfast of two eggs and a mug of coffee around 9am.

Dinner was some steamed rice and homemade kimchi dumplings (previously frozen), which I made a couple months ago following a recipe from Andrea Nguyen's book, Asian Dumplings, served with a quick vinaigrette of Bragg's, rice vinegar, sesame oil, and some chopped fresh mint and basil.

In commemoration of this fantastically energetic and productive day, I give you the Information Society's hit song from 1986, Pure Energy. I never really dug it much at the time, bit cheesy for my taste, but my musical soulmate, Kristen, would always rock out to it, so it's one of those songs that always reminds me of her. The vocal sounds very Tom Bailey from the Thompson Twins, one of my favorite bands of the Eighties (I'm not ashamed to admit, although a recent listen to their supposed greatest hits was a bit of a slog). The dub mix is pretty sweet, gotta say. And that's what's on my mind today …

Tame Impala – “Half Full Glass of Wine”

2010-08-08T19:18:00.000-07:00

I'm late to this psychedelic blues party -- taken from the band's 2008 EP, this track was also featured on an episode of Entourage -- but better late than never, I guess. Nice freakout at the end, goes great with a half full glass of Fall Line's 2006 Aldercreek Vineyard Horse Heaven Hills red blend.

Tame Impala - Half Full Glass of Wine from Special Problems on Vimeo.

simmering

2010-08-05T20:37:00.000-07:00

Source.

Sauté 1 onion julienned, chunks of carrots + celery. Add sauce, bring to boil. Throw in a bunch of coarsely chopped broccolini. Simmer 10 minutes. Serve with steamed white rice and garnish with fresh cilantro. Easy peasy + delicious.

On aftertaste, I am definitely tasting black cardamom (or is that acid reflux)?

***

THE FRUIT SONG

2010-08-01T22:42:00.001-07:00

Pinot Haze

2010-07-24T10:21:00.000-07:00

McMinnville, OR — Linfield Colleg.

It's a balmy evening, but a gentle breeze stirs the air, so nothing sticks. An amazing sunset: streaks of pink, orange and red in an ultramarine sky filled with paintbrush clouds, as a waxing full moon ascends over stately Dillan Hall.

More than 50 dining tables are set with white tablecloths and amphora-shaped wineglasses on the grassy campus field. 650 people are sipping fine wines and mingling as four courses are prepared by a few of the region's top chefs, working with a kitchen staff of volunteers.

A woman in a sundress, slinging a digital camera, walks up to me and asks, "Is this your dish?"

"No, I'm just making sure everything is on the plate."

Braiins

2010-06-12T01:50:00.001-07:00

Here comes the judge

2010-05-22T00:38:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow night is the Portland Iron Chef tournament, and I'm excited to be one of the judges: like Chairman Kaga, it's this man's fantasy come reality.

Iron Chef is the cooking show that first stirred the inner food critic in me (and countless others no doubt), the original Japanese show, not the American version, although I watch them both. Invincible men (and women) of culinary skills put on displays of creativity, feasibility, and energy.

Tomorrow night it's contender Andrew Garrett of Cafe Nell versus reigning champion Adam Sappington from Country Cat in a 40-minute culinary competition based on a secret ingredient.

If the secret ingredient is lamb, I'd give the edge to Sappington. At his restaurant last night he served a perfectly cooked and sliced lamb loin over nettle and ricotta gratin with baby turnips in a paprika sauce that was just fabulous. At Cafe Nell tonight I ordered Garrett's lamb three ways: one way done properly would have sufficed. The belly was overcooked and salty, stringy and on the dry side; the lamb T-bone was ordered medium-rare and arrived rare blue with a hunk of inedible fat, I sent it back, it returned acceptably medium but lacking any seasoning; and braised lamb shoulder was shredded and mixed into Israeli cous cous with a heavy handed amount of mint—some cranberries, veg, or a sauce would have helped the dish immensely.

If the secret ingredient is fish… Well then, the heat will be on. The fish fry at Country Cat last night pleased my in-laws, and their plates looked absolutely killer. Filets of Petrale sole fried dark and handsome, served with a crock of rice (weird side dish, which is honestly why I didn't order it) and homemade tartar sauce—$11. At Cafe Nell, the cod was well cooked and served with a beurre blanc bursting with lemon, green beans, potatoes, and black truffles, which took the dish over the top—$24. Both were great dishes, but totally different. Much tougher call.

Tickets for the event are $200 per person. [Update: the event has SOLD OUT!] Proceeds go toward Children’s Relief Nursery’s work with at risk children in the Portland Community. Children’s Relief Nursery aims to prevent abuse and neglect in children birth through four by partnering with caregivers committed to strengthening their families.

For more information or to register online visit click here.

Allez cuisine!

Fish Fryday

2010-05-21T01:00:00.000-07:00

.
In honor of last night's Petrale sole-satisfying fish fry at The Country Cat -- which, as an added bonus, 10% of the evening's sales were donated to Raphael House -- here's a mix of pescetorial tunes I made for my buddy, Primo, fisherman par excellence.

Pleasing lacto-vegetarian ice cream

2010-05-17T22:18:00.000-07:00

A friend of ours prefers eggless ice cream. When I tried her first batch of frozen yogurt, which turned out texturally chalky and a bit too tart, I thought of this recipe. Substituting the agar agar for gelatin should work.

Fig* + Balsamico Ice Cream
Adapted from Cooking by Hand by Paul Bertolli.

Makes approximately 1 quart.

5 Tablespoons cold water
1/2 teaspoon powdered agar agar**
1 + 1/3 cups whole milk
3 Tablespoons light corn syrup
1/2 cup + 3 Tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup cold heavy cream
1 pound very ripe black Mission figs
2 Tablespoons + 2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar

1. Pour 2 Tablespoons of cold water into a small bowl. Sprinkle the agar agar on the water in an even layer and let it sit until softened, about 5 minutes.
2. Put the milk, corn syrup, and 1/2 cup of sugar in a medium saucepan and heat gently to just below the simmer point.
3. Place the cold cream in a large bowl. When the milk mixture is hot, pour about 1/2 cup of it into the agar agar, and whisk until it is dissolved.
4. Pour the agar agar and hot milk mixture into the rest of the hot milk through a fine-mesh sieve into the bowl with the cream. Whisk to combine the ingredients well. Set aside.
5. Remove the stems from the figs and cut each fig into quarters. Put the figs, the remaining 3 Tablespoons of water, and the remaining 3 Tablespoons of sugar into a clean saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook until the figs are tender, about 10 minutes.
6. Remove the figs from the heat and coarsely chop them in a food processor. Stir the figs into the cream mixture and refrigerate until very cold, at least 4 hours.
7. When the mixture is chilled, add the balsamic vinegar. Transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer's directions.

*I think you could substitute other seasonal fruits: berries, plums, apricots, etc.
**Vegetarian gelatin. It's a whitish color, and comes in either sticks, flakes, granules , or powder, usually in a little packet. Look for it at health food stores in the Japanese foodstuffs or along with seaweeds (dulse, kalp, wakame, etc.).

I lurve larb

2010-04-26T15:33:00.000-07:00

*
Here's a great lamb dish from Chef Chris at CK's in Hailey, Idaho, featuring Lava Lake lamb.

Spicy Lamb Vietnamese Salad

2 lb. Ground lamb

2 Tablespoons toasted rice powder (2 Tablespoons white rice toasted in a dry pan until golden brown add ½ tsp red chili flakes after the heat is off, toss, cool & grind)

1/4 cup finely diced shallots

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

1 Tablespoon garlic chopped fine

3 Tablespoons fish sauce

1/4 cup lime juice

1 Tablespoon sriracha

12 butter lettuce leaves to use as wraps

1 cup cilantro leaves

1 cup fresh mint leaves

1 cup sweet onion fine julienne

1 cup cucumber thin sliced

Brown the lamb in a large sauté pan until brown. Drain all but 1 Tablespoon of the rendered fat. Put the shallots and garlic in the pan and sauté until they lighten in color, about 2 minutes. Add the drained lamb back to the pan to reheat, and then add the rice powder. Mix well. Combine the fish sauce with the other liquid ingredients and pour into the lamb mixture. Adjust the seasoning, and then add the chopped cilantro just before service.

To serve, make little tacos with the lettuce as the wrapper and the vegetables as added filler. Top with sriracha or nuoc cham.

Nuoc Cham

6 garlic cloves smashed

1 or more hot red chili pepper seeded and minced

2 limes peeled with a knife cut into small cubes

1/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup fish sauce

1 cup water

Combine all the solid ingredients in the processor and whizz to a paste. Add the liquid ingredients and whizz to combine. Adjust flavor with water if it is too fish saucy for your taste. Keeps for weeks in a glass jar in the reefer.

IACP: Day 5

2010-04-23T14:29:00.000-07:00

*
Oh my, did I really sign up to volunteer at an 8am seminar today? You bet your bupkus I did, so I hauled my ragged ass out of bed and slogged over to the Oregon Convention Center for the "Fire Up Your Gaiwan: There's Oolong Tea to Be Tasted" class.

After locating the conference room, I met my fellow volunteers—IACP Culinary Demo coordinator Hank Sawtelle's mother, and an intriguingly serene bloke named Paul who seemed to know a lot about tea. We poured scalding hot water into pitchers while the husband-and-wife team of Mary Lou and Robert Heiss, authors of The Tea Enthusiast's Handbook, gave their presentation.

IACP: Day 4

2010-04-22T21:54:00.000-07:00

*
Got into the office early to work on the upcoming issue before heading over to Le Cordon Bleu. I'm volunteering for a culinary demo and lecture on "Redefining Soul Food" lead by Bryant Terry.

I arrive almost a half-hour early and briefly duck into the men's clothing store Collier. Cool threads.

Once in the kitchen, the prep consisted of stripping the leaves off about 10–15 bunches of collard greens, then julienning them. The three of us—one Le Cordon Bleu chef-instructor, one bakery student, and me—banged them out, and I was able to join the lecture just as it was getting started.

Bryant Terry is a great presenter. He told his story, from childhood to today, how we became an eco-activist, helping to promote healthy diets through community work, books, and public appearances. His message is also very similar to that of Jamie Oliver and the "Eating Clean" ladies, but his delivery is coming from the African-American perspective, rather than Brit/outsider or suburban housewife.

Walk back to work and proof some more. Lots of last-minute layout changes, but it's getting closer.

A full evening ahead. Pick up @bonnevivante and meet D for dinner at Pok Pok. An hour's wait for inside, as usual, so the three of us head over to Whiskey Soda Lounge for preprandial drinks and nibbles. Service is a bit slow, registering about a 3 out of 10 on the surly-meter, and thankfully music is somewhat tamer. Loud music supposedly really does make people eat and drink faster, and that seems to be WSL's m.o.

Finally sit down at Pok Pok around 9:30pm and still manage to enjoy an epic dinner: finger-lickin'-good grilled prawns, Ike's Vietnamese chicken wings (not as meaty or saucy as on past visits, but still delectable), catfish larp, papaya salad, sticky rice. Great meal and conversation.

Then it's off to the Nostrana party. The place is packed, Chef Cathy Whims looks ravishing, and some super wines are being poured. Not soon after we arrive (11-ish, due to dinner, which ran late), there's a mass exodus as the scenesters shift to the "Return of the Hebberoys" midnight bash. Those masters of non-p.r. did it again, managing to upstage IACP and all it stands for. Established culinary community was rumored to have been turned away at the door.

An-all around amazing day.

IACP: Day 3

2010-04-21T21:52:00.000-07:00

Volunteered at a morning seminar, "Eating Clean." The presenters basically echoed the themes that Jamie Oliver has been covering on his television show. Eat healthier by avoiding processed foods. How to overcome the barriers that are preventing people from eating healthier, such as lack of cooking skills/time &/or desire to prepare their own meals from whole foods.

I helped make some carrot and coconut juice, blended with ice and sprinkled with some nutmeg and cinnamon, served in Dixie cups. People didn't really seem to like it. I thought it was good, although it tasted healthy. Many of the attendees were drinking, tellingly, Starbucks, soft drinks, etc.

After the presenters gave their spiel, the attendees separated into groups, did some exercises, and then discussed their thoughts. There were some funny stories told. Like the woman who mentioned the worth of having a cast iron skillet in one's kitchen. "It can be used in the oven, on the stovetop, and to ward off your husband." Now that's sensible advice.

Or the other woman who shared how she wrote a cooking book for her son to take to college. All the dishes could be cooked in a toaster oven, served in a bowl, eaten with simple silverware, and required minimal ingredients. She saw cooking as a way her son could a) save money, and b) impress girls by cooking for them in his dorm room. Now that's a good mom.

Got into the office early afternoon to check proofs on the upcoming issue of Northwest Palate. It's getting there slowly but surely.

For dinner, Diana and I attended the "Pinot in the Pearl" dinner at the Heathman. An excellent meal prepared by the new chef, Karl Zenk (and apparently Philippe Boulot and the sous chef) with spot-on wine pairings. Chatted with James Frey from Trisaetum winery while enjoying his estate Riesling. and closed the night with Anam Cara's dessert Gewûrztraminer. In between, enjoyed glasses from Rex Hill, Raptor Ridge, and Adelsheim. Superb service. Big kudos to hostess with the mostest, Claudia Bowers.

IACP: Day 2

2010-04-20T21:20:00.000-07:00

.
Didn't participate in any IACP activities today. Mentally preparing for the days ahead though. Volunteer duties begin tomorrow. First seminar is (don't laugh/gag) "Eating Clean" at 10am.

On deadline with the May/June travel issue of Northwest Palate. Feature stories cover:

• Jacksonville, Oregon: restaurants, bakeries, cheese makers, farms, wineries, Applegate Valley, travel, hotels, inns, B&Bs, Peter Britt Music Festival, whitewater rafting, Rogue River). By Kris Wetherbee.

• Northern part of Okanagan Valley: winery-by-winery tour of the British Columbia region. Where to stay and eat. By Cole Danehower.

• San Juan Island: Overview of the food, wine, and lodging scenes on the island. By James Patrick Kelly.

• Interview with Andy Ricker, the James Beard Award-nominated chef/owner of Portland's Pok Pok, Ping, Whiskey Soda Lounge. By me.

& more. It'll print next week and be on newsstands in early May.

IACP: Day 1

2010-04-19T23:00:00.000-07:00

*
That's International Association of Culinary Professionals for all y'all that aren't in the know. The annual conference shindiggity dog and pony show is taking place this week in Portland.

Tonight I attended the volunteer kick-off meeting, seeing as how I'm an IACP member who didn't want to shell out the 700 beans it cost to attend. Membership has its privileges, but they don't come cheap.

Location was conference headquarters, the downtown Hilton off SW 6th and Salmon. I parked on 10th and Salmon in a 3-hour zone. Good space.

I arrived promptly at 5:30p - must've been thinking it would earn me brownie points or something. Arriving on-time did afford me a choice of slices from Pizza Schmizza and soft drinks of the Cocaine-Cracka cola variety.

Meeting didn't start until 5:50p-ish, and the room was packed - hot as "alabama in july," per @extramsg). My guesstimate was potentially as many as 100 volunteers, an impressive turnout.

A show of hands indicated there were many non-IACP members. The guy seated to my right, Wes, was one such public-at-large volunteer. It seemed he and volunteer organizer Hank Sawtelle knew each other. Wes works at In Good Taste, previously at Lauro, and graduated from Western Culinary Institute (aka Le Cordon Bleu, aka Learning to cook for $10 an hour).

The meeting was scheduled to go until 7:30p, but it broke up by 6:30p. On my way out I saw Joan, Andrea, Stephanie, Brenda… Good peeps, and I leave on a cautiously optimistic note.

Diana thinks the fluorescent orange volunteer t-shirts are hideous.

No fear

2010-03-12T16:11:00.000-08:00

"I still think there is a little sense of desperation," [Edward] Behr said, when I asked him about his glossy counterparts, and the ever-increasing demands of corralling a mass audience. "I feel that they are afraid of the reader. Maybe I am, too, a little, but in a completely different way. I'm afraid that I'm not giving the reader something good enough, useful enough, practical enough, high enough quality. And they're just afraid that the reader won't resubscribe. It's similar, but it's not the same thing at all."

White + Blanc

2010-03-07T22:57:00.000-08:00

Of grillings and kings

2010-03-07T21:55:00.000-08:00

You don't give me love;
you give me pale shelter.

You don't give me love;
you give me cold hands.

Remember to mount sauces
with cold butter.

And all I want to be is,
completely in command.

Wild about Wildwood

2010-02-10T22:29:00.000-08:00

Had an absolutely stellar meal at Wildwood a couple weeks ago. And away we go…

Started off with this cornmeal-crusted Willapa oyster over braised frisee and a chowder-like/hollandaisey crème fraîche sauce with guanciale and salsify. I seriously could have had this one dish and been good, it was so satisfying. Perfectly seasoned, lots of lemon in the sauce to balance the creaminess. Crunch in the crust, and creamy oyster within. The braised frisee was so tender, yet toothsome, almost like pasta. Sooo-good.

Ricotta gnocchi with roasted New Mexico peppers, almonds, brown butter and grana padano.

The gnocchi were perfect consistency, airy and light. I might have liked the peppers and almonds more if they'd been made into a romesco sauce, rather than served whole. Grana seemed out of harmony with the other ingredients. Still, flavors paired fairly well, and it was a bold winter dish.

Grilled Hawaiian tuna over olive-mashed potatoes and wilted escarole and preserved lemon salsa verde.

That was some seriously perfectly grilled tuna. For the potatoes, Chef Clark used kalamatas, if I remember correctly, and they were on the salty side, but the combo was brilliant, and we've been mashing olives into our potatoes at home ever since, trying to find the perfect olive and ratio to potato.

Lamb confit over Ayers Creek polenta, roasted butternut squash, walnuts, feta and pomegranate reduction.

A great foil to the previous course and another great winter dish, although somewhat heavy and rich. The lamb was well-braised and nicely seared, which added texture but extracted succulence. It was a bit on the dry side, but paired with an absolutely juicy Pinot Noir from Scott Paul, "La Paulée."

And for dessert, apple pie with ice cream.

There was cheddar in the pie crust, so flaky, it went "poof" in my mouth; it was worth the first bite alone. The apple filling was sweet as honey and just melted, cooled off by the sage ice cream in a pool of brandy sauce. To be perfectly honest, I don't remember the exact flavors of the ice cream or sauce, but no matter. What I remember is, it was excellent. The best dessert for 2010 starts here.

Mussels two ways

2010-01-26T22:18:00.000-08:00

After a fun day of tasting 100 or so wines, judging for this year's Portland Seafood & Wine Festival, I headed over to neighborhood standby Kappaya. From my seat at the sushi bar, I rapturously watched owner/head sushi chef Terry make broiled mussels with sake and soy sauce for a couple of his regular Japanese customers. Awed by the beauty of the dish, I asked him if he'd make me some.

Terry said "Sure," but explained that he usually prepares them with a squirt of mayo, sriracha, and ponzu sauce, which is more appealing to Western palates. Which way would I prefer?

Frankly, I was beyond braindead from deciding which Pinot Noir I liked best among the 40 or so I'd tasted today. So, after an awkwardly long pause of indecision while I blankly stared back at him, Terry offered to make me one each way.

And the winner is?

It's a tie! The Japanese-style kept the mussel flavor in the foreground, with the sake and soy, which I slurped from the shell, adding lightly sweet and salty notes. The American-style was spicy and creamy, taming the brininess of the mussel.

As for the winner of the wine competition, I'm sworn to secrecy for now. You'll just have to attend the festival and find out for yourself. It's a great event, with a portion of the proceeds from ticket sales benefiting the Oregon Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Man Man

2010-01-24T02:22:00.000-08:00

Just Give 'em Whiskey

2010-01-19T00:08:00.000-08:00

The Ultimate S’Mac’down

2010-01-18T11:59:00.000-08:00

Executive Chef Nick Musser of Seattle’s icon Grill has a contest prepared to revitalize and redefine the quintessential Americana comfort food: macaroni and cheese. Seattleites are invited to enter their unique and personal twists on the classic dish, and Chef Musser encourages cooks to think outside the oven. “I’m really looking forward to seeing how inventive people can be with this,” Musser says. “I’m talking about inventive, like a deconstructed version of mac and cheese… or maybe a mac and cheese cocktail?” Hmmm, that sounds like an episode of Alie & Georgia, but it's surprising (or not) there actually has been research done on just this front.

Entries will be accepted until February 28, 2010. Chef Musser will winnow down the entries to the “Final Four,” and judging will be held both by restaurant-goers and online voters alike. Winners will receive a $100 gift certificate to icon Grill, a complimentary bottle of wine, and a signed copy of Aroused Americana. Finally, the cheese de résistance: a Golden Macaroni trophy, awarded to the Final Four.

For more information, visit icongrill.net.

The Dark Side

2010-01-14T23:47:00.000-08:00

Will Cascadia Dark Ale be the next category of beer?

Calling it a "dark" IPA is oxymoronic: a dark pale ale just doesn't make any sense. The brew is dry hopped, made similar to IPAs, but with the addition of Carafa, a toasted malt and grain that adds some color, mostly aroma, and some are tinted with Sinnabar to give it a deep brown, reddish black hue.

Widmer's Pitch Black Dark Ale won double gold at the Great American Beer Festival, and I got the opportunity to taste it tonight. The aroma drew me in, sweet yet piney. On the palate, it first tasted malty and sweet, but quickly turning bitter, with a dry finish. Resinous, as some have termed it.

Rare beef topped with bleu cheese is one suggested pairing, and this sounds magnificent. Tonight it was paired with a fork-tender but pitiably underseasoned osso buco, mushroom risotto (undercooked at the kernel, mushy on the outside), and grilled asparagus (thinner than pencils and as tasty), which as you might guess was not a home run.

Even if brewers might not have the most sophisticated food palates, they're a hearty bunch. Jokes were cracked, stories were told, and the beer flowed. The Widmer brothers were amiable and supportive of the more experimental endeavors of their brewers, which is crafty cool.

It's certainly got a marketable color. Like a black leather clad, heavy metal bad ass in a glass. Black is back. Check the popularity of Sessions Black Lager.

Whether this relatively new (traceable back to 2000 or thereabouts) and distinctly Northwest brew will catch on remains to be seen, but my guess is they've got another hit, following the success of previous W series beers: Brrr, Drifter, and Broken Halo.

Coppa-cabana

2010-01-13T21:55:00.000-08:00

Back from an informative afternoon in the kitchen with Chef Adam Stevenson of Earth & Ocean restaurant (at the W Hotel). Chef Stevenson demo'd the process for curing coppa, and then plated a dish using the product. Look for the story and recipe in the March/April issue of Northwest Palate.

Next stop: the recently opened Mistral Kitchen, where I was treated to a four-course tasting menu, including grapefruit granita-topped Kushi oyster, a bone-gnawingly delicious lamb chop, the most prefectly seared morsel of foie gras (I can now honestly say I've actually enjoyed foie gras), and a dessert that paired two of my favorite tastes—chocolate and thyme—in one stupendous dessert.

The afterglow from the day and meal had me feeling I was in sunny Havana instead of rainy Seattle.

***

Faves '09 (2)

2010-01-06T01:15:00.000-08:00

Fave dishes '09

Gnudi at Tilth > Chef Maria Hines' little fluffy clouds of joy.

Roman-style lamb and carcofi > Portland was represented at the James Beard Awards by Nostrana's Chef Cathy Whims. At the pre-ceremony dinner in Seattle she served up a rustic lamb chop and (phallic) braised artichoke that literally [arti]choked up the assembled media. We'd consumed so much food by the time her course came out that some folks had a hard time getting it down, but I ate every last unctuous, saucy, gamey bite. Surely the first (if not two) of the 15 pounds I put on this year came from this dinner alone, which also included amazing morsels from chefs Ethan Stowell (whose appetizer was another highlight: a spoonful of geoduck, perfectly seasoned with olive oil and herb-he really knows how to pick his EVOO), Joséba Jiménez de Jiménez, Jason Wilson, and the aforementioned Maria Hines.

Beef Tartare > Paley's Place. This past year I probably ate more of Vitaley Paley's food, whether at his restaurant, special events, or from cooking recipes from his cookbook, than any other chef's, aside from Cathy Whims. (I know, I'm a lucky sonuvabitch.) but this dish was just perfect. Even my wife, who doesn't like raw meat or runny eggs—and when I put it that way, who can blame her?—liked the yolk and succulent flesh combo. With a half bottle of something French. Order anything on this guy's menu with confidence. [Other rock stars include Greg Higgins, Kevin Gibson, John Taboada, Tommy Habetz, Corey Schrieber, Adam Sappington, Andy Ricker, David Anderson, Benjamin Bettinger, David Anderson, Eric Bechard. Pastry ladies like Cheryl Wakerhouser at Pix, Lee Posey at Nel Centro/Little T (etc.), Jackie Sappington at Country Cat, Elizabeth at Sahagun. They are why I eat to live, and live to eat, in Portland.]

Progressive dinner at Harry Kambolis' restaurants—Nu, Raincity Grill, C > The pinnacle of my gluttony, beginning at Nu with apps and cocktails—no idea what I was in for—followed by five courses apiece at Raincity and then C, capped with more desserts and cheese at Nu. This was the meal to end all meals. (And easily two more of the pounds I put on.)

A flotilla of finessed apps prepared by the Canadian Culinary Olympics Team. Served on a boat, in Horseshoe Bay, Vancouver, B.C. with wines by Working Horse Winery. Just shoot (and flog) me.

Best sandwich > Pork on a light-as-air, mini Po' boy-style baguette at Fuel (now known as Refuel, perhaps the worst rebranding ever). A close second: everything at Bunk. (Both places have coincidentally? similarly bad branding. Okay, it's a tie.) Next level textures and flavors. The secret to a magical sandwich.

Fave drives '09
• Boise to Ketchum. Desolately beautiful and lush, like a Wim Wenders film. The hospitality at Christina's was the filmic equivalent of Mostly Martha; CK's was comparable to a fine dining version of Alice; and Ketchum was a bit Twin Peaks.
• Portland to Leavenworth via I-84. Home via spectacular Snoqualmie Pass and sidetrack to Roslyn, WA (and then disappointingly I-5 back to Portland).
• I-5 South, Portland to Donald exit "shortcut" to Oregon wine country

Fave hotels '09

Hotel Murano, Tacoma, WA
Sleeping Lady Resort, Leavenworth, WA

Hotel 1000, Seattle, WA

Marqueen, Seattle, WA
Fairmont Waterfront, Vancouver, B.C.
Listel, Vancouver, B.C.

Predator Ridge, Kelowna, B.C.

Cottages at Cape Kiwanda, Pacific City, OR
Hotel Deluxe, Portland, OR

Faves '09

2010-01-01T23:44:00.000-08:00

fave soup
Biwa
At the bar during early and late night happy hours, Chef Gabe Rosen offers a soul-satisfying bowl of ramen - silky, slurpable, yet toothy noodles floating in dreamy umami-laden pork broth. The basic bowl is $5; add-ons include white miso-glazed pork loin ($3), and soft-boiled egg ($1). Wash it down with a $3 draft Sapporo. Factor in a $3 tip on $12, and there's my favorite $15-and-under meal of the past year (food carts included).

fave lunch
Terrace (at Mission Hill Winery)
On a sunny late summer day, with a liquid breeze ebbing and flowing off Lake Okanagan, I dined alfresco, lapping up three courses, impeccably composed on the plate and harmoniously paired with wines made on the grounds (underneath actually). Plans are in development for a resort complex stepped into the hillside, with sites based on wind patterns, adding to its architectural marvel.

fave wines
• Montepulciano Cerasuolo Torre dei Beati 2008: Sipped on the patio at Nostrana with slices of simple pizzas during a meal with friends and family on an early summer evening.
• Archery Summit Red Hills Pinot Noir 2007: The number 1 Pinot in Oregon? I dunno, Adelsheim's Calkins Lane is pretty phenomenal. Still, I feel lucky to have nabbed a couple bottles during a lovely day of tasting in the Dundee Hills before the article came out.
• Cabernet Franc: Tasted ones from Northstar and Tinhorn Creek that gave me pause.

fave dinner
• Emmer & Rye Tuesday night dinner series (described in excruciating detail here). Chef Seth Caswell is one to watch in 2010, with his restaurant opening finally after much delay. Other new places I'm anxious to try in '10 include Toulouse Petit, Refuel, and Olympic Provisions.
• A close second would be a lovely, relaxed, extended evening at A Cena. Started off with great cocktails and an abundant antipasto platter - house-cured pickles, an assortment of cured meats, and lots else I'm forgetting - and we just kept the plates coming. Shared soup, pasta, entrée, wines: all was wonderful.

fave new restaurant
• Comune Accanto: The bistro side (aka better half) of recently relaunched Genoa is where Chef David Anderson gets loose with a bevy of inspired dishes. I haven't much cared for the formal dining experience, but we'll have a special occasion to celebrate there soon, so we'll see.

Adelsheim 2007 Calkins Lane Vineyard

2009-12-11T22:53:00.000-08:00

Simply mesmerized by this wine at the moment.

Swirling releases rose/lilac aromas and brings out the radiant garnet color. Like flower petals landing lightly on the palate, the flavor releases a burst of acidity followed by warm spices and furry tannins that dissolve and radiate through the finish.

I'd love to try this again in another year or two. Cheers.

OCI awards honorary degree

2009-11-10T11:06:00.000-08:00

Just look at the pure smile of joy on the face of food fanatic Laura Jaques after she was bestowed with an honorary degree from Oregon Culinary Institute. That's Chef Brian Wilke on the left, an unidentified OCI student, Chef Melanie Hammericksen, OCI President Eric Stromquist, Chef Roy Perez, and another OCI student.

A lifelong foodie who always dreamed of cooking professionally, Ms. Jaques, now a resident at Marquis Care, was awarded the degree on November 5, 2009, following a tour of the facility and catered lunch with more than 30 friends and family.

Just goes to show, my friends, it's never too late, so get in the kitchen and cook.

***

Now cooking: Sanguincello. Wanna know about it? Email me.

Emmer & Rye

2009-11-09T23:04:00.000-08:00

Tuesday Dinner Series

November 3, 2009

Chef Seth Caswell holds court between courses during one of his Tuesday night dinners at Seattle's Art of the Table restaurant.

Caswell's restaurant, Emmer & Rye, hasn't opened yet; matter of fact, it doesn't even have an opening date since the major investor pulled out, leaving Seth without a kitchen to cook in. And that's a major injustice considering the food I've witnessed him prepare.

The evening started with an exceptional amuse bouche: a Shigoku oyster—sorry, no photo: it was gone as soon as it hit the table, washed down with delicious bubbles (Codornui Cava NW).

First

Autumn Leaves, Jowl Bacon, Boiled Eggs, Walnuts, Chicken Liver Toast

Cabinett Riesling—Selbach Riesling Kabinette '06, Mosel, Germany

• Lightly dressed greens, tossed with chunks of salty, unctuous bacon—check out those nuggets of egg yolk!—and toasts, sliced and toasted to perfection, smeared with umami-laden liver.

• Paired with a wonderful Riesling that balanced slate, citrus, and sweetness.

Second

Cauliflower, Kabocha, Cecilia

Silver City Brewing Oktoberfest, Silverdale, WA

• Deconstruction at its finest. All the individual elements, tasted together, came together cohesively. Bonus points for serving a beer course amidst wine pairings—what a refreshing concept!

Third

Tuna, Ozette Potato Cakes, Wild Mushrooms, Sunchokes, Pepper Puree

O'Reilly's Pinot Noir '07, Saint Paul, Oregon

"Duh, it's the superlative Owen Roe, 2nd label"

Fourth
Brisket, Brussels, Cippolinis, Faro Cake, Red Wine

Domaine Charite Dame Noir Mourvedre '05, Cotes Du Rhone, France

Dessert

Chilled pear soup, hazelnut merigue, cocoa cream

Townshend Cellar Late Harvest Gewürtztraminer '03, Colbert, WA

I was too stuffed by this point to give this dish its delicious due—brilliantly executed layers of flavor and texture. The meringue was crispy and crumbly, adding delicate texture and then melding with the not-too-sweet pear purée. The light-as-air cocoa cream was perfect by itself.

To make reservations for the next dinner, email Seth.

On Hawthorne

2009-11-06T23:43:00.000-08:00

Fine dining is being made over at two of the finer spots on Portland's Hawthorne Boulevard.

First, Sel Gris suffered damage to its kitchen due to a building fire, shutting down service until repairs can be completed (they're hoping to reopen later this month). Godspeed.

Meanwhile, a couple doors down at Castagna, there's been a change in chef for the second time in three years, giving owner Monique Siu reason to tweak the look and the menu of her 10-year-old establishment.

Siu updated the interior, painting over the alabaster walls with a coat of dark brown ("Morel," she color-corrected) and installing banquettes that bookend the space.

In the kitchen, Siu has turned to 28-year-old Matthew Lightner. The young chef recently returned to Portland with a sack of cooking tricks — foams, snows, and sous vide — that he picked up in Spain during a stage with Ferran Adrià and 18 months at Mugaritz. Lightner has also studied with James Beard Award-winning chefs Philippe Boulot and Paul McCabe… So suffice it so say, he's talented, ambitious, and excited to showcase his food.

Lightner replaces another young chef, Elias Cairo, who stepped up from sous to exec chef when original chef, Kevin Gibson, split with Siu three years ago. (Gibson resurfaced at Evoe on upper Hawthorne a few months later and has been wowing lunch counter diners ever since.) Cairo flew largely below the radar during his two-year tenure at Castagna but promises to make a much bigger splash at his next post: overseeing the salumeria at the soon-to-open Olympic Provisions, where Clyde Common's Jason Barwikowski will helm the kitchen (scheduled to open Dec. 1).

I recently had the opportunity to dine at the updated Castagna and try Lightner's new menu. We each ordered tasting menus, five courses apiece and all different, which was a special accommodation. In all, we tried 15 dishes; the parade of dishes strutted out of the kitchen with military marching band precision—eight minutes between courses without fail.

As for the food itself, the dishes missed their mark more often than not. Lightner scored high points for presentation, but flavor and texture were disharmonious, sometimes pitchy (too sweet, acidic, or al dente), flat (monotonal, lacking seasoning), or simply out of tune (disparate flavors).

That said, my guess is this kitchen is going to start rocking once the staff and kitchen hit their groove. I got a good vibe from Chef Lightner. He seems genuinely committed to using local products, and he brings an intellectual approach to a Portland dining scene that is jam-packed with places showcasing rustic Northwest fare.

First Course

Matsutake mushrooms, pine nuts, trout roe, garlic

Everyone remarked about the broth's pronounced earthy flavor. I got a mouthful of grit, and the mushrooms were a little woody and chewy, not in a pleasant way. The trout roe, garlic, and pine nuts played not just second fiddle, but were barely in the mix—their flavors buried beneath the broth.

Crab dungeness crab, amaranth, lemon, cardamom

This was one of the table's favorite dishes of the night. Those globs of lemon foam were at exceptionally tart (mouthpuckering as a Warhead ) yet silky smooth on the palate—a really odd yet intriguing sensation. Cardamom was barely perceptible, the crab was sweet and succulent (what little there was of it), and the amaranth added a touch of nuttiness and texture.

Oysters asian pear, fennel, raw oysters, horseradish "snow"

Three oysters, fennel fronds, and perfectly diced cubes of Asian pear lurked beneath a flurry of what was texturally more like slush than snow, which Chef Lightner explained he made with liquid nitrogen. The brininess of the oysters in the melting snow wasn't the most pleasing flavor or texture, and the horseradish was too subtle.

Second Course

Cabbage halibut, fresh ricotta, whey, savoy cabbage, mustard

This was hands down the favorite dish of the night. The buttery broth melded seamlessly with the tender and juicy sous vide-cooked halibut. A surprisingly spicy bite of mustard under the cabbage cap kept the dish from being too monotonous.

Leeks mussels, char grilled leeks, cream, charred hazelnuts

The leeks and mussels were prepared impeccably, soft and succulent, but the tepid temperature kept the flavors from really singing. A warmed plate would have done wonders.

Onions salt cod, pickled, grilled and smoked onions, garlic

A beautifully presented dish, but I couldn't get over how much like pickled herring this tasted. Because of the really pronounced pickling spice and fish flavors, I might have enjoyed the dish more if it had been served chilled and served with rye bread and shots of vodka.

Third Course

Duck Egg seeds, grains, rye crisp, slow egg and jus

Slimy gooey egg, in a pool of soy sauce, a scattering of birdseed and some sinewy greens: A combo I'll not rush to put in my mouth again anytime soon.

Tubers potatoes, sunchokes, carrots, pancetta, aioli

The root veggies were a bit mealy, the tarragon aïoli was tasty but there wasn't enough of it to go around, and the pancetta lacked crispiness. With more sauce and a protein, I could see this working, but as a standalone dish, not so much.

Fourth Course

Beef aged rib eye, smoked fat, oxalis

Despite being draped by a sheet of fat, this was one of the toughest, most difficult-to-cut pieces of meat I've ever encountered, and there was not enough sauce to mop up with the cotton-dry potato balls. The saving grace was the unmanipulated oxalis, which had an exquisite flavor.

Potxas lamb, beans, toasted seeds, peppers, onions

The lamb had the texture of crème brûlée: a layer of fat on top had a shatteringly crisp texture, while the fat underneath was creamy, and the muscle was so tender it verged on being mushy. It melted in your mouth, but the gaminess of the lamb made this flavor and texture combination a little off-putting. The beans were al dente, making this an all-around challenging dish texturally.

Celery Root oxtail, celery root in ash, apples, cress

The celery root in the form of gnocchi is a great application, and if you gave me a big bowl of them with enough oxtail stew and jus to cover them, I'd no doubt be a happy camper. Sad to report there wasn't enough meat or sauce, and those wilted slices of apple were so out of place on the dish.

Dessert

Apple cream tart, apple, caramel, fresh cheese

My favorite dessert of the three. The apple was roasted to caramelized perfection, and the cheese ice cream added tang, while the tart shell added crumble. The tarragon "leaves" were a beautiful touch.

Hazelnuts ice cream, frozen meringue, pears

More snow, this time saccharine sweet. The pears were a little hard-poached, and came attached with some core. I love hazelnuts, but one bite was enough.

Chocolate mousse, almond streusel, frozen white chocolate

I loved the playfulness of this dish: frozen chocolate "dirt" on the yin side, landscaped with micro herbs, and white chocolate snow on the yang/right side. The flavors were muddled—no deep dark chocolate rush or cocoa buttery flipside—and by this time the snow had appeared in one too many dishes.

***

Consider the classic George Benson track "On Broadway" redone by Gary Numan. It's kinda like Kevin Gibson's Castagna going the route of molecular gastronomy. You with me on this one? [The real treat is Billy Currie's synth solo. One word: Epic.]

Marcona Almond Aïoli

2009-11-01T08:30:00.000-08:00

The judges loved the Marcona Almond Aïoli that Chef Holly Smith made to accompany her deconstructed bouillabaisse in episode 2 of this season's The Next Iron Chef. But that was unfortunately all they loved about the dish, and Chef Smith was eliminated.

"I think the judges talked about [the aïoli] for like four and a half minutes during my judging," Smith recounts. "I wish I had said to them candidly - although I thought that’s just going to sound horrible - was it was the only thing I didn’t think about. I made something that I love that’s yummy. I had never made it before. But it was the funniest thing that this little component just really showed me, and they loved it. And the rest of the stuff that I did they did not love, and I did not love."

Oh well, their loss and our gain, since Chef Smith graciously shares the recipe below. She serves it at Café Juanita with a slice of Wagyu beef atop bruschetta, and I found it to be a delicious dip with roasted or grilled asparagus, and also a great sauce for pan-fried breaded sole.

Marcona Almond Aïoli
Courtesy Chef Holly Smith, Café Juanita

Takes about 10 minutes to make, and makes about 2 cups.

Ingredients
½ cup salted roasted skinned Marcona almonds
1 T finely chopped garlic
1 egg + 2 egg yolks
½ Tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 cup extra virgin olive oil + more as needed
1 Tablespoon sherry vinegar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

• Place Marcona almonds and garlic in food processor. Pulse until the almonds achieve a smooth paste consistency.
• Add eggs and Dijon mustard. Process until blended, about 30 seconds,
• Drizzle in 1 cup of extra virgin olive oil and process until well blended, scraping down the sides occasionally. The aïoli will still be rather thick at this point.
• Transfer the aïoli to a bowl. Whisk in sherry vinegar, salt, and cayenne pepper, and finish with more olive oil until desired consistency is achieved.

***

Links:
Christopher Kimball on Gourmet [and the Food Network]
Shin of Beef Stew with Marcona Almonds
What's the deal with Marcona almonds?

Game Over

2009-10-18T14:23:00.000-07:00

“That was not my best day—ever, I think,” Chef Holly Smith said about her elimination last week from The Next Iron Chef. “I didn’t have my A game, or really my B game.”

She went on to say that the show was just “a fun game,” but after talking with her over the past three weeks about the cooking competition, I got a strong vibe that she had approached it head-on and was in it to win it. Heck, all it takes is one look at the disappointment on her face when Alton Brown announced, “Chef Smith, you will not be the Next Iron Chef”—I could feel the sting through the screen.

The dish the judges deigned worst in episode two was her deconstructed take on the classic French dish, bouillabaisse. As anyone who has ever eaten her inspired Italian cuisine could tell you, Chef Smith and deconstructed food is about as unlikely a pairing as peanut butter and arugula. But for whatever reason that day she felt she needed to put a twist on the dish that would impress the judges. “I was just so worried that if I gave them any soup, that would be too similar. But I was wrong,” she realizes now. “As long it would have been delicious, it would have been fine.”

That’s a great piece of kitchen wisdom. In our present food culture that celebrates cuisine as an art form, it’s easy for cooks to get caught up in the concept of a plate and its presentation, rather than focus on what the food will actually taste like.

Another realization that came too late: "I was talking to a few of the people who went further in the competition. They said if they got out of their strengths and didn’t really listen to the challenge, or if they just didn’t cook from their core, that it rocked them. Then you start second-guessing yourself."

Not cooking her style of food was in large part what caused her early exit, as you'll read in the interview that follows. But Chef Smith sounded far from defeated. When I asked her what's up next for her, she perked right back up. "I’ve got a bee in my bonnet to open up something that’s a multi-use space, that has a restaurant and maybe a butchery, and I have to find a home for Poco Carretto," she said of her farmers market gelateria.

Q: Where did you go wrong in making the bouillabaisse?

Holly Smith: {big pause} I could not even think… Bouillabaisse has a lot of fennel, right? I just kept thinking, what a farce: I have never, ever eaten bouillabaisse, which is really kind of absurd. How am I going to reinterpret something that I’ve never even enjoyed? That was where I kept my head, and I couldn’t get it out and say, “Okay, we have a Mediterranean fish soup. Why don’t we do brodetto and turn it Italian, or what if I put rabbit instead of fish and use all the same flavors and an ingredient I love. All those things that come to you hours and days later. I locked up and kept with that bad idea. I am not one to deconstruct anything, and there were two competitors who were telling me just to deconstruct, and I was like, really? [She laughs.] They probably would have deconstructed it quite well, but I did not.

Q: But there was still that one great component you put on the plate—the almond aioli…

Holly Smith: That was the funniest thing. I think the judges talked about that for like four-and-a-half minutes during my judging. I wish I had said to them candidly that it was the only thing I didn’t think about. I made something that I love that’s yummy. I had never made [almond aioli] before, but it was this little component that just really showed me and they loved it. And the rest of the stuff that I did that had no connection to me, they did not love, and I did not love. I make that aioli at Café Juanita all the time now for little parties, passed nibbles, maybe with a slice of Wagyu, and people love it.

Q: It seemed like there was genuine shock among your fellow chefs when you were eliminated.

Holly Smith: I remember walking through and Nate and Seamus were just looking like, what in the heck just happened? I could see it a mile away. I’m pleased that they all had more faith in me today than I did. And that feels good.

Q: You knew Nate before cooking with him on the show, right?

Holly Smith: He went to Brasa right after I left, and I believe he had eaten at Café Juanita, and we had met briefly. We both have Italian restaurants. I certainly looked at A16 menus and loved his book when it came out. He told me, “You’re my biggest competition. We gotta get to something Italian!” We’re like-minded and have a very similar sensibility, so it’s natural that we were both looking to see what the other person was going to do. I was excited to see what he was going to make.

Q: It’s surprising then, that you called him out during that first strategy challenge.

Holly Smith: I didn’t though! No, no, no, no, no, it’s edited to show it that way. I did say I didn’t like the tagine, but when we were walking back I told him, "I thought your shoulders were broad enough to handle that," and he said he knew it. If you didn’t say something, often Alton [Brown] would say, “Holly, what do you think about this dish?”

Q: That component of the show seems meant to have the chef-testants go after one another…

Holly Smith: Oh yeah, and honestly—and I think Alton would say this too—it was like pulling teeth for him to get half of us to say anything. I was definitely being cautious. That just seemed like it wasn’t a constructive thing, it was only for potential sound bites, and I really didn’t want to go there personally, So maybe I wasn’t a good chef-testant in that regard. I was just kind of quiet.

Q: It would be a different story if you were in your restaurant kitchen?

Holly Smith: If Nate and I, or Amanda and I, or any one of us were standing in one of our kitchens, and was asked, “What do you think?” My god! You’d probably get ten minutes of constructive criticism. That is not always pretty to hear, but you want it. You have to critique yourself and your staff, but this was just the nature of the game. It was interesting and I know why they did it. It tells you about people’s preferences, tastes, and you might see people playing strategy.

Q: Is being able to voice your opinion indicative of a stronger chef, someone who might go further in this competition?

Holly Smith: I think it means their head was completely in the game, and they walked in realizing it’s not personal and not worried about how it could look. You know, just not wanting to look like an ass.

Q: When you first met your competition, did you get a vibe from anyone that they were the person to beat?

Holly Smith: Dominique is a very powerful and confident woman, and I just remember thinking, "Who is that?" when she first walked into the airport. She was somebody that I really wanted to find out more about. She can also be quite quiet and reserved, but especially on camera she’s powerful. So she was very interesting to me.

Q: How about Brad?

Holly Smith: I love Brad. He’s got one Michelin star. He thinks really well, he can execute. He’s technically a very good chef, and he embraces fusion which I think in this game in particular will work well for him. He has a lot of what it will take to get ahead.

Q: Amanda?

Holly Smith: She’s funny, and she has a cool perspective of being a judge on Chopped, and she had done an Iron Chef, so those two things will be fun to watch. She and I share an Italian background as well, so we’d often talk about that on the side.

Q: Chef Mehta—everybody really seemed to love his curry dish?

Holly Smith: In a couscousière of all things. It was really pretty, the curry had a lot of curry leaves and kafir lime, and it was very light and pretty. There were a lot of really delicious things that day, but for me I just thought it was a really interesting way to use a couscousière. It got my vote for flavor—and he did what you need to do. He swung it into his strengths. He didn’t use it like it’s used at all.

Q: How about his taking all the grape leaves so Chef Treviño couldn’t use them for his dish?

Holly Smith: That was an interesting thing.

Q: Would you have thought to do something like that?

Holly Smith: No. Are you kidding me? I think you can hear my voice in the background at one point. Chef Treviño asked, “Does anybody have grape leaves?” and I’m like, “No, no…” They didn’t show it but I was flipping Brad’s asparagus in the first episode because it was on the grill next to me and I didn’t want it to burn—it’s my natural instinct. I guess I should have let it burn, but I wouldn’t want to do that.

Q: How about Jose Garces?

Holly Smith: He is really focused, really serious about this competition. He’s just a really methodical, organized businessperson, and he’s a great chef, so he’s there to win. He’s definitely someone to watch.

Q: Chef Treviño?

Holly Smith: I love the way he speaks, for instance the way he named his chicken feet dish, “Phoenix Claw and Rising Sun”—that is him. He’s a big personality. I was really impressed with his Mongolian hot pot: it was delicious and tasted authentic. He is a jokester, but also very serious.

Q: Chef Mullen ended up on the bottom of the first challenge.

Holly Smith: Everyone piled on to voting against him, so I didn’t jump onto the pile, but it was definitely a dish that didn’t work that day.

Q: But then he came right back and won the second challenge…

Holly Smith: That’s the thing. They’re just such oddball and difficult challenges. I think that’s what you’ll see as the show continues with the highly different conceptual challenges. If you don’t set off on the right plan, everybody is vulnerable.

***

On behalf of all Northwest foodies, I’d like to thank you, Chef Smith, for representing the Pacific Northwest in this most absurd yet highly entertaining cooking game show.

Episode 3 airs Sunday, Oct. 18 at 9pm Pacific Time. Here's a sneak peek…

The Next Iron Chef? Part 2

2009-10-09T23:34:00.000-07:00

A collective gasp was heard (not to mention incredulous tweeting) when Chef Holly Smith was lumped into the bottom three chefs facing elimination in week one of FoodNetwork's The Next Iron Chef.

In the premiere episode of the show, Chef Smith had the task of cooking jellyfish, an ingredient she had never worked with—and she wasn't alone. Her fellow contestants were presented with an assortment of out-of-the-ordinary ingredients, grasshoppers and sea cucumbers to name just a few. Their task? To prepare two dishes that illustrated their "fearlessness" featuring their assigned product. Based on those dishes, their worthiness to become the Next Iron Chef would be judged.

The panel of culinary critics were nonplussed by the two Asian-inspired plates Chef Smith prepared. She displayed courageousness in stepping outside her comfort zone of Italian cuisine, but that was trumped in the judges' eyes (and on their palates) by the lack of originality in one of her dishes and the unpalatable saltiness of the other.

"I wish I’d been thinking better," she said, reflecting on the episode. "That’s one of those hindsight things, and I’m not one to make excuses, and I certainly wasn’t going to say anything to those guys [i.e., the judges]."

Chances are her showing would have been much stronger had she pulled the bowl of unlaid eggs (with fallopian tubes still attached) that were assigned to Chef Nate Appleman. "I wanted Nate’s unlaid eggs, probably for the same reason why it worked well for him," she said.

Chef Appleman made pasta and sabayon, two dishes that are in Chef Smith's repertoire. "I think I would have shown it as just an egg as well. At Café Juanita, we do a really rich crema with truffle, the yolk is in there, and it just breaks and really enriches the dish. I know the eggs were attached to the fallopian tubes, and that freaked everybody out, but in all reality the eggs were pretty exciting to me," she said.

"And cockscombs," she added. "I love cockscombs, and they’re really hard to find," she said of the ingredient given to Chef Jose Garces.

In the final judgment she narrowly escaped elimination—insert collective sigh of relief—and goes on to cook another day in her quest to become the Next Iron Chef.

Following is more of her insight on the first episode, and a look ahead at episode two, which airs this Sunday night…

Northwest Palate (NWP): How much of a factor is time?

Holly Smith (HS): People who have worked for me remark how fast I am, and yet the first 15 minutes of the first challenge just melted. I found myself rushing through things that in the end I didn’t need to rush through.

NWP: How did you find the process of being judged?

HS: Well, I get critiqued every day, and have for many years, and especially so with the advent of a blogger on every table.
Going before the judging, that’s when for me, it’s a game. You want to do as well as you can, but you have to give it over to the gods at some point, you know? Mistakes happen all the time, but usually within a restaurant setting you build in all sorts of safeguards to catch your mistakes, and some great things come from learning from them.

NWP: What would you have done differently?

HS: Oh man, about 8,000 things! Learning about the time, and the holding, and you’ll potentially see me saying some things about this in the interview in the next episode, about how to work within these parameters every time we have a challenge. My hope in this episode was that I would get on my feet sooner than later, because I definitely didn’t feel like I was on my feet yet.

NWP: In episode two you have to use a one-pot cooking devices to make a family-style dish. How did that go?

HS: You’ll see me jump in and use a piece of equipment that I’d never used before—a clay pot, used in Korean cuisine, like Sun doo Boo (a kimchi broth with tofu and seafood).
I am a simple-minded soul, whether I was simplistic or if I fulfilled the task is to be seen, but when I looked at that—and it was the same thing with jellyfish—I just couldn’t imagine swinging it Northern Italian. It just seemed like it would be a laugh, kind of like putting a canary in a fishbowl.

NWP: What's the Chairman like?

HS: Isn’t he great? I was so sick for the first episode, so he got me Sudafed, which I thought was very sweet. I had a cold during the first week, I was pretty sick and hoarse. I think Jose Garces showed up with a cold, and got over it pretty much by day two, and then I got it. It’s the last time you want to be sick. The poor makeup people kept coming over because I was wiping off my nose. It was a bummer not to be feeling well. I kept feeling like a jerk, because I kept having to blow my nose—I couldn’t breathe!

NWP: Was it intimidating having Alton Brown walking around, quizzing you while you cook?

HS: Actually, I found Alton to be a lot of fun: but he’s tough, too. He’d say little things like, “You wouldn’t want to overcook those kidneys, now would you?” And I’m like, I’m trying not to!

Episode Two of the Food Network's The Next Iron Chef airs Sunday, October 11 at 9pm ET/PT

Lunch at OCI

2009-10-07T23:56:00.000-07:00

Pan-roasted halibut, sauteéd baby carrot and haricot vert with smoked cipollini and tomato vinaigrette

Enjoyed lunch at my alma mater, Oregon Culinary Institute. Took the MAX, got off at Goose Hollow Station, and walked two blocks to the restaurant. Their lunch is one of the screamingest deals in all of Portland. Monday through Friday, the four-course prix fixe costs $12 [dinner is $17]. The students get to practice their food chops under the tutelage of dedicated chef-instructors. It's a great program. Go already!

Mmm, beeeeeeeeer …

2009-10-01T23:58:00.000-07:00

I was fortunate enough to spend a day in Pacific City recently, getting a taste of the menu that will be served at the upcoming, sold-out Brewers Dinner on Oct. 25 at the Pelican Pub & Brewery.

The smoked salmon and arugula on puff pastry (pictured above) with Scottish Style Ale was my favorite pairing of the day.

The Wee Heavy Ale was my favorite stand-alone beer (either that or perennial favorite, Doryman's Dark). The Wee Heavy was true to its name: light yet creamy, almost sudsy, and a little bitter and tangy through the mid-palate and finish. It had body and a bite—balanced, in other words, probably due to the fact it came from the personal stash of the brewmaster and had been bottle-aged for almost a year. The new release is coming out Oct. 30. I know I'll be cellaring some. Cheers!

By comparison, Stormwatcher's was thick and rich, like a quad shot of espresso served straight-up, with a dense pool of crema floating on the surface. The finish was intense, like black licorice that's stuckl in your teeth, and lingered well past the comfortable point. Not a beer to end on, at least to my taste, but it was intriguing nonetheless and I hope they figure out something to pair it with. Cheese and honey, or chocolate maybe?

The Wee Heavy and Stormwatcher's were options for pairing with the proposed dessert: a roasted apple napoleon, or conversely a roasted apple crumble, both served with pumpkin ice cream. Neither of them hit the mark, but the tweaks that were discussed should bring it around.

I waddled out of the pub, onto the beach, and saw this boat pull up onto the beach. Beautiful…

Dory boat at Cape Kiwanda

The Next Iron Chef?

2009-09-30T15:46:00.000-07:00

After winning the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Northwest in 2008, what's the next rank up the chef hierarchy for Chef Holly Smith?

Becoming the Next Iron Chef, naturally.

As chef/owner of Café Juanita and her year-old gelateria, Poco Carretto, Chef Smith has focused on Northern Italian-inspired cooking. The Maryland native moved to Seattle in 1993 and worked as sous chef at Tom Douglas’ Dahlia Lounge for four years. In 1999, she helped Chef Tamara Murphy open Brasa, leaving a year later to open her own restaurant, Café Juanita, in 2000.

Since then, she's received accolades and honors from near and far, but possibly none as potentially career changing as being asked to compete on the new season of the Food Network show. At stake is the opportunity to stand on the international culinary stage beside the other Iron Chefs—Bobby Flay, Mario Batali, Cat Cora, Masaharu Morimoto, and Michael Symon.

I talked with Chef Smith ahead of Sunday's premiere episode, and here's what she had to say about her experiences on the show, her fellow contestants, and why she loves cooking in the Pacific Northwest.

Northwest Palate (NWP): How did you prepare for the competition?
Holly Smith (HS): I couldn’t imagine any way to prepare for it. I expected a skill challenge, as I think we all did. So I made sure we brought in different fish than we had done in a while: I was filleting 25-pound salmon, black sea bass, and sablefish. I do a decent amount of butchering: I butcher pigs and things like that pretty routinely. Sweetbreads and kidneys and tripe and rabbit, all that stuff is a regular staple at Café Juanita, so I was just thinking about that one giant fish.

NWP: Could you have imagined sixteen years ago when you first started cooking that you’d find yourself living in a culture that celebrated celebrity chefs?
HS: Oh my goodness, no! I remember being on the line at the Dahlia Lounge and Tom [Douglas] saying, “We’ve got some people from this new thing called the Food Network coming in.” It must have been 1994. They walked on the line with their cameras and I remember them saying, “Look at how much butter she put in that pan!” And we’re going, I can’t believe we’re cooking and someone’s filming this—this is insane!

NWP: Why do you think the Pacific Northwest is attracting so much attention for its food culture?
HS: I think we have the potential to be leaders in sustainability issues and really incorporate local farmers into our menus in a way that others aren’t doing. We’re starting to surpass places like San Francisco because we’re doing it in our own way, with owner-operated restaurants. I love the Pacific Northwest: it’s a pretty special place. We know we’re lucky enough to live here but I think that the food that comes out of here is different than anywhere else.

NWP: Because of the farm-to-table connection?
HS: I think so, and it’s not just a tag line. We are really doing it, and that’s a big difference. I was talking to the New York chefs and they were just trying to get one farmer who would deliver to them. I was shocked because Hudson Valley and all those farmers between Pennsylvania and upstate New York… It seems like they would be inundated. But from what I could see, they get some pretty crappy vegetables in New York. So, I think we’re lucky.

NWP: Your food philosophy is to let the ingredients speak for themselves. Did you have to change your approach at all for the show?
HS: You’ll see this in episode one. I love sourcing the best ingredients, and when you don’t source them for yourself, or you don’t fill that pantry or fridge for yourself, it’s interesting to pick a fish or piece of meat or anything that you didn’t source yourself. I’ve always known that being a good shopper was a huge portion of my success. Being very picky, you lose a lot of control when somebody else fills the fridges. That was the most challenging thing for me. You’re not as much on your own footing when it’s not your own stuff.

NWP: When did you first learn who your fellow contestants were?
HS: In the airport. I think I was one of the first to arrive. People started coming in from all different places, that was an interesting thing to see. Everybody started sizing up each other and thinking, “What is about to happen?”

NWP: Did you know any of your competitors?
HS: Nate [Appleman] and I had met a long time ago. But otherwise, I think everyone went to their hotel rooms and Googled each other.

NWP: Once the competition started, was there camaraderie among the chefs?
HS: Oh, for sure. It’s a great group of people. Brad [Farmerie] just came by Café Juanita for dinner on Saturday night. There’s a lot of downtime while you’re waiting to film, so people had a lot of time to talk and shoot the breeze. It kind of felt like college again. One of the funniest things was Amanda Freitag reading from Chelsea Handler’s book: some of it was not business-y, just having fun.

NWP: Are you competitive by nature?
HS: Oh yes. I played competitive sports in high school and college.

NWP: You definitely displayed your competitiveness in the promotional video, as you wrest control of a cooking implement from Chef Farmerie.
HS: I cannot wait to see that episode—that was hysterical! As we were realizing we had to go after something, I saw Brad is going to cut that corner and I’m going to be impaled on that table. My instinct was to go faster, not to let him go first, so I suppose that shows my natural competitive nature. He’s much bigger than me, but I used my shortness to duck in between two pretty big guys and sneak the thing that was in the middle.

NWP: What did you learn about yourself and your fellow chefs during the competition?
HS: It’s such an odd experience, and you don’t know what any of it is going to be like until you’re going through it. I’m used to doing events with chefs around here who are friends and colleagues—we just had the Chef Series of Dinners with Thierry Rautureau and Jason Wilson, Maria [Hines] and everybody.

Seattle Chefs, from left, Jason Wilson (Crush), Maria Hines (Tilth), Holly Smith (Café Juanita), Joseba Jimenez de Jimenez (Harvest Vine), Thierry Rautureau (Rover's), and John Sundstrom (Lark)

[Being on The Next Iron Chef] was a different kind of interaction, to be with peers who you’re meeting under professional guises but in so many ways it is just personal. There wasn’t as much business talk because we don’t share a region or a market, so it was very different from any way I’ve been accustomed to relating to people in my industry.

NWP: You won Best Chef: Northwest 2008, and this past year the James Beard Foundation celebrated women chefs at the awards ceremony. There are presently five male Iron Chefs, and just one female Iron Chef. Is it time for another female Iron Chef?
HS: The question was out there, and I think you’ll see that in other interviews with all three female chefs. I don’t think that some people consider me to be the best female chef in the Pacific Northwest, and I don’t ever hear people saying, “Oh, Tom [Douglas] or Thierry [Rautureau], you’re the best male chef in the Pacific Northwest.” The lack of equilibrium always confuses me. It really does not matter. But then again if it brings me business and recognition to the restaurant and helps me do what I love to do, then it’s not anything I’m going to get on my high horse about.
One thing that we all did talk about was, every person within those ten contestants, at some point we discussed how important it was to all of us to have a mix of men and women in our kitchen. I’ve always believed that, starting at the Dahlia. Tom always worked hard to keep the mix good, at a fairly even ratio, because we do bring naturally slightly different approaches to problem solving, and temperaments. But then again I’ve been in kitchens where women were kicking way more testosterone than the men!

NWP: Are you planning anything special for the viewing?
HS: We’re going to have a big party at Café Juanita. We’re going to have big screens, a cocktail party from 7:30–9pm. I’m going to make popcorn with crab butter powder, and watch T.V.

The Next Iron Chef premieres this Sunday, October 4, at 9pm on the Food Network.

Wild Game Dinner Menu

2009-09-29T23:01:00.000-07:00

Chef Chris Cosentino was in town this past weekend for the annual Wild About Game extravaganza. He stayed a couple extra days, joining forces with three Portland chefs for a dinner featuring game ("wild" is a bit of a misnomer, since all the meat is sourced from ranches that grow the animals) held at the Heathman.

I hearted Chef Cosentino's starter of venison heart and foie gras tartar: it had a silky smooth texture and a subtle, sultry gaminess. The only other app I sampled was Gabe Rucker's veal cheek arancini with botarga dipping sauce, which lacked the robust flavor you'd expect from the featured proteins.

After we were seated, the first course that arrived was Chef Cosentino's deconstructed reuben: pastrami buffalo tongue slathered with a mustard seed dressing that popped in my mouth, crunchy rye croutons, and pickled onions. The wild boar bacon and maple syrup-infused bourbon was a much better pairing than the aquavit cocktail.

Chef Paley perfected his rabbit salad, which he also served at the Classic Wines Auction Feast from the previous week. This time he dressed it lightly, and tossed in whole roasted shallots, cloves of garlic, and crunchy coxcombs (from Kookoolan Farms)—a rustic yet elegant dish that contrasted deliciously and compellingly with a glass of sparkling rosé.

Chef Rucker's dish had some great elements, but the flavors and textures didn't really come together. The perfectly cooked lamb came topped with a couple of delectable quail legs, but I wish he would have puréed the roasted corn and giblet salad instead of serving it chow-chow style. Worst part was the wine, which was D.O.A.

Chef Boulot's course was an unimproved repeat, also from the Classic Wines Auction Feast. I wish I could afford to drink '05 Chateauneuf du Pape every night, because this wine was delicious—structured dark cherry fruit with a touch of peppery bite and a long finish.

Desserts were a mixed bag, but all were elegantly presented. The crowd favorite was definitely the goat cheese cheesecake that combined sweet and savory flavors to a sensory-jarring but stimulating effect.

Speaking of sensory-jarring, when I arrived at the dinner, who should I run smack dab into? If it wasn't Carol Burnett herself, on her way to her appearance at the neighboring Arlene Schnitzer Auditorium.

Thanks for the memories, Carol and Chef Cosentino!

Classic Feast

2009-09-24T02:38:00.000-07:00

All four of Portland, Oregon's James Beard Award-winning chefs came together recently for a rare meeting of the city's culinary elite. The occasion? A fundraising dinner with proceeds benefiting the Classic Wines Auction and its five area beneficiary charities: Metropolitan Family Service, New Avenues for Youth, Friends of the Children-Portland, Trillium Family Services, and YWCA Clark County.

Portland, Oregon's James Beard Award-winning chefs.

Left to right: Greg Higgins, Vitaly Paley, Caprial Pence, and Philippe Boulot.

About 50 diners packed the dining room at the Multnomah Athletic Club for the five-course feast that also featured wines made in Oregon. (Full disclosure: I attended as a member of the media, so my seat was provided gratis.) Sparkling wine from Argyle was poured at the pre-dinner mingler with passed hors d'oeuvres prepared by the chefs.

Chef Boulot served cauliflower with uni (which tasted a tad metallic and had a challenging texture for some). Chef Higgins made a piquant duck sausage wrapped in wilted spinach, while Chef Paley offered demitasse cups filled with a decadent duck royale—smoked duck ham and duck liver mousse paddling in duck broth. Chef Pence, a native Oregonian and the first Portland chef to win the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northwest, filled pâte à choux with rabbit rillettes.

Chef Higgins led off the sit-down meal with his house-cured prosciutto, saffron-poached pears, blackberries, and young mizuna greens, which he paired with a 2006 Reserve Pinot Gris by Chehalem.

Laurent Montalieu, winemaker/owner at Solena , served as emcee between courses. He introduced Harry Peterson-Nedry, founder/winemaker/managing partner of Chehalem Winery, who spoke about his wine (not a "Riesling," as his wine was introduced [jokingly?] by Montalieu). A dramatically shaded Gris, the 2006 Reserve had depth, weight, and a released a spectrum of aromatics that complemented the salty ham, ripe berries, and the star of the dish, the spicy-sweet pear.

Chef Pence was up second. Her course, a lithe, ginger-flavored Dungeness crab bisque topped with wonton crisps, had sweet and briny notes that coupled beautifully with Penner-Ash's Viognier. Wafts of tropical perfumes teased the nose, followed by a slightly oily mouthfeel that lubricated the palate for the courses to come.

"To the good life!" we toasted at our table of 12. Each table was purchased for approximately $5,000, so by count more than $20,000 was raised this night alone, with the auction's total take around $2.2-million for the 2009 auction.

The second half of the meal wasn't nearly as good as the first. Chef Paley's salad of rabbit, George's salad greens, and roasted heirloom carrots was woefully overdressed, but the flavors still melded tastefully with his paired wine selection, Solena's Grand Cuvée Pinot Noir .

Solena made another appearance during course number four: its peppery and tannic Del Rio Vineyard Syrah was served beside Chef Boulot's saucy venison loin and sauteed greens, which were unfortunately overcooked by the time they reached our table.

There was a fifth, dessert course: a tuile-topped, too-large tapioca patty floating in a prune-armagnac sauce, and a dessert wine, too, but it was all a bit too much.

Gorging on this surfeit of food under the auspices of raising funds that are funneled into rehabilitation efforts for the less fortunate makes me twinge with moral incorrectness. Do the means justify the end? One thing is for certain, these Portland's chefs have big hearts when it comes to helping folks in their community, and we are the richer not only for their culinary but more so philanthropic contributions.

M-M-M-My Kelowna

2009-09-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

Ooh my little pretty town, pretty town.
When you gonna give me some wine, Kelowna?

After a couple, skip-and-a-jump plane rides, I landed in beautiful Kelowna, B.C. this past Monday afternoon. It was a sunny day, about 30 degrees Celsius with a warm breeze — impeccably perfect late summer weather.

A last-minute schedule change meant I had time to explore some wineries in the area immediately upon my arrival, so with GPS in hand I hopped into my rental car (provided by Tourism Kelowna) and hit the road. Getting around Kelowna is simple: Highway 97 runs through the center of town, and signs pointing to wineries are well-marked.

Finding a bite to eat before winetasting proved to be a little difficult, but not insurmountable. I made my first stop at Chef Ned Bell's Cabana Grille, which was just winding down lunch service. One of my dining commandments is to arrive a minimum of an hour before service ends if I'm just stopping in without a reservation, so I decided not to dine solo in the bar or on the patio. Looking around the space, it felt a little Hard Rock Café meets Melrose Beach, with gussied up hostesses and one of the most ridiculously poorly designed men's bathrooms I have ever experienced. The big, amphitheater-like dining room looked promising, though, and I've heard good things about the place, so I'd still like to dine there in the future.

I hopped back into my rental car and drove about five minutes down the road, pulled into the strip mall parking lot that is the unlikely home of the well-regarded 764, one of local wonderboy-chef Mark Filatow's restaurants. Damn! if they're not closed on Mondays. Strike two. Another place I'll have to check out on a return visit.

I hear there's a bistro at Summerhill Pyramid Winery and think what the heck? A monument to new age winemaking, the pyramid on the property is about as big as a three-story house and is where they cellar their wine. Not surprisingly, all their grapes are grown organically.

Summerhill Pyramid Winery

Kelowna, BC. Sept. 14, 2009

The scene is a bit helter-skelter in the bistro when I arrive. Dishes stacked up everywhere, wait staff seemingly unconcerned, guests desperate to pay their checks so they could leave, other newly arrived guests growing impatient to be seated… Still, I'm hungry and eager to start tasting, so I decide to wait it out. I dip outside to let things sort themselves out, which allows me time to check out the grounds, give the pyramid the once-over twice, stretch my legs and soak some rays.

The winery has great lake views, funky art, and seems to be pretty family- and tour bus-friendly. After about 20 minutes, I make another approach and finally get seated. It takes more patience but I finally place an order: crab cake sandwich and the soup du jour—cold melon—and a glass of their recommended pairing, a flute of Cipes Brut, which is also one of their signature wines… as if you couldn't tell by the following photo, which was taken just outside the bistro.

Summerhill Pyramid Winery

Kelowna, BC. Sept. 14, 2009

More waiting for my food to arrive, and thank the deity it was decent. The sandwich was stacked tall, with a light and fluffy crab cake, butter lettuce, and thick slices of tomato on a flaky, eggy bun. A bit bland, but just the base I need. The melon soup had a beguiling touch of cilantro, but the brut was a little on the yeasty side and a tad bitter—a rosé or riesling (more on the latter to come) might have paired better.

Fifteen minutes after I'd been taken my last bite, and my water glass long since empty, my server finally stopped by to see if I'm ready to cash out. I look at her name badge, which reads "Dining Room Manager," and decide not to waste my breath complaining about the service.

***

After a ten-minute drive to Tantalus Winery, I spend the rest of the afternoon chatting with the affable Jane Hatch and taking a dusty shoe tour of their construction site. They're several weeks away from completion of their expanded winemaking operation plus tasting room and kitchen (designed by none other than Mark Filatow—more on him to come as well). Jane tells me this will be the first LEED-certified winery in Canada.

Tantalus' wines are intriguingly esoteric. They offer two Rieslings and both are aromatically complex, featuring palate-puckering acidity; while their Pinot Noir has a delicately balanced fruit profile and sleek finish that slinks off the tongue. Current case production is low, but the new operation promises to triple their capacity to meet demand. It's worth noting that there's a new winemaking team at Tantalus this year, so it'll be interesting to see how the winery evolves.

***

Ooh you make my motor run, my motor run.
Gun it headin' off the road, Kelowna

Leaving Tantalus I head north on Highway 97 to Predator Ridge Golf Resort, about an hour's drive from Kelowna to Vernon, where I was staying for two nights. They have a newly redecorated dining room and chef, so it's the food and wine that are the draw for me, rather than the greens.

I follow the directions given by my trusty GPS, which leads me on a 6.5-mile drive down back country gravel roads. My Ford Focus struggles to hug the road, but Bob Dylan's deejaying on the satellite radio station, playing Mississippi Delta blues, which is the perfect soundtrack for the off-road adventure.

I get there with about a half-hour to spare before dinner. I check into my fourth-floor (topmost) suite, which has a great view of the driving range and practice putting greens. The room is spacious, with a full kitchen, living room, deck, double bed, desk, bath and shower: it's a bit rustic chic for my taste, but no doubt would appeal to the country club jet setters and business executives on a golf junket.

The balmy night was perfect for dining on the patio at Predator Ridge's restaurant, Range. Hearty hors d'oeuvres—seared scallops, duck quesadilla, and tuna—followed by manly-sized steaks on well-sauced plates, all prepared to a tee. Lots of impressive, pricey bottles on the wine list, and decadently rich desserts. A solid par for the Continental cuisine course.

***

The next day I drove back to Kelowna to visit Mission Hill Winery, which draws 100,000+ tourists each year. The grounds are nothing short of stunning, reminiscent of the Boboli Gardens. The scent of lavender and roses leads visitors to the grand courtyard and its Etruscan-inspired arches, bell tower, and other edifices. Underground are the cellar and winemaking facilities. The whole facility is an architectural marvel, seamless in form and function, with a classical yet contemporary feel, amazing artwork and details. Truly a wonder to behold, and as you can see, the weather was once again postcard perfect.

Mission Hill Winery

Kelowna, BC. Sept. 15, 2009

And then there was lunch at the winery's alfresco restaurant, Terrace, where I was treated to a three-course lunch.

Amuse: Halibut, bacon foam, oregano oil.

2nd course: Canary melon soup and prosciutto, watermelon, herb salad.

Entrée: Venison loin, duxelles, roasted baby root vegetables.

With my meal I tasted Mission Hill's rosé (with the amuse and 2nd course) and Oculus with the entrée, both of which were spot-on pairings. Before lunch, I also had an opportunity to taste through their '08 Five Vineyards Pinot Grigio (would make a great complement to roasted chicken); the '07 Perpetua Chardonnay (controlled oakiness, balanced by apple notes, and minerality on the finish); '07 Reserve Riesling Icewine (lots of spice notes to balance the sweetness, making for a clean and bright finish). Among the reds, I tried the '06 Reserve Pinot Noir (well-controlled balance of fruit and oak); and two of their Bordeaux-style blends—the newly released, youthful and dynamic '06 Compendium, and the deeper, darker '06 Quatrain.

Good taste abounds at Mission Hill, making it a stop that should be on every epicurean adventurer's itinerary.

***

Next stop is downtown Kelowna for an interview with Chef Rod Butters at his restaurant, RauDZ©. Look for the article in the Jan/Feb '10 issue of Northwest Palate.

Afterwards I doubled back to the West Bank and tasted the wines at Quails' Gate. Stylistically the winery has an upscale lakefront beach, very homey quality. I'm told they hosted two tour busses earlier in the afternoon, but no one seems the worse for the wear. I wish I'd had the time and appetite to try their signature restaurant… Oh well, another rain check.

I did get to try their wine with food later that night, however. I enjoyed their Pinot Noir with a great entrée of duck, roasted radishes, and baby root vegetables at Waterfront R estaurant & Wine Bar, hosted by Chef Mark Filatow. Starters of chickpea-battered spot prawns and falafel with fenugreek sauce featured Indian spices—some of which, like coriander and fennel, Chef Filatow is sourcing/growing locally!!—paired perfectly with a glass of 8th Generation Riesling. Several wineries in the area have a knack for producing some outstanding Rieslings, from Mission Hill to Tantalus to 8th Gen. to Gray Monk, which I didn't get to visit but must next time to try their portfolio of German varietals.

***

Woke up to a spectacular sunrise over the golf course.

Predator Ridge Golf Resort: Sunrise #1.

Vernon, BC. Sept. 16, 2009

Sunrise #2.

It's a damn pity I didn't get on the golf course. I can only imagine what the resort is like during a big event, for instance the Skins Game, which has been held here twice. Some people stay year-round in Predator Ridge's attached housing development, so the winter months see more locals at the restaurant. Some food and wine dinners are being planning for the upcoming months, and I'd love to go back and hike some of the trails surrounding the property. Lots of places I missed seeing in Kelowna, Carmelis Goat Cheese for instance. Can't wait to go back!

Allison Wonderland

2009-09-09T23:13:00.000-07:00

That rather loud "creak" that was heard all across the Willamette Valley, from Dundee to Portland, was the sound of The Allison Inn & Spa opening its doors today.

A couple of months ago the inn's GM Pierre Zreik walked us through the construction, which at that time still had most of the finish work to be completed: everything from tile to carpet, woodwork, lighting and plumbing fixtures, and landscaping was in various states of installation; staff still needed to be hired; and the first marketing push was underway.

Flash forward, and the transformation is impressive, to say the least. It's a testament to what 250 workers working around the clock for 60 or so days can accomplish. As its 155,000 square feet stands, the hotel today is very close to 100% completion, as evidenced by the cattle call of media folks getting the grand tour, and the first customers who are getting a taste of the place, staying in the hotel rooms, being serviced at the spa, and dining at the restaurant.

With 85 guest rooms, one of, if not the largest spa in the Northwest (a 15,000-square-foot garden of manicure, massage, and water therapy eden), and a "garden"-to-table culinary program lead by a hotshot chef from California and his crew of California sous chefs, this is just the place the Willamette Valley wine industry has been lacking. The décor is Northwest chic -- rough-hewn stone, warm and dark wood tones, textured wall panels. Reservations do not come cheaply: rooms start at $295/night and go upwards of $1,000. This is shelter that will appeal to out-of-state winers and diners, as well as companies who need contemporary, comfortable environs for holding business meetings and conferences. It's also an attractive spot for weddings, and if you're somebody staying at nearby Hazelden, it's nice digs for your family to call home while you're undergoing addiction treatment.

What the Allison seems to lack in soul, which may become less apparent once the new smell wears off, it more than makes up for in the vision of its founder, Joan Austin, the matriarch of the well-to-do Newberg family, which made its ginormous fortune in dental equipment. The building was constructed "to last a hundred years," Austin says, and that seems to be putting it midly. With its solar panels, filtered water in every room, a 10,000-square-foot green roof, and kitchen that cooks products cultivated on-premise and purchased from local producers, the sustainability quotient is high and the project is on-track to receive LEED Gold certification.

And if all that isn't enough, it shares the name of one of my all-time favorite Elvis Costello songs.

Prins for a Day

2009-09-05T03:26:00.000-07:00

Prins Thomas played Portland tonight. I went out for a late night even though I was pretty worn out from the day. I had a flat tire on my '98 CRV, following a four-hour interview with the city's reigning Iron Chef champion, Adam Sappington of the Country Cat. Later, a writer stood me up. Went to happy hour at Bar Avignon, which got off to a good start but shouldn't have stayed for dinner. Came home, watched week 3 of Top Chef (I guessed Preeti) followed by an episode of Daniel Boulud's After Hours.

Still, I succeeded at extricating myself from the couch and walked over to Holocene, where I witnessed one of the world's finest deejays absolutely tear it up in front of a largely witless audience – not to mention dodgy sound for the first two hours. Why Holocene insists on making deejays play the front room rather than in the performance space with farrrrrrrr superior sound is beyond me.

Apps at Bar Avignon were good. D liked her glass of rosé, my gin and tonic was decent. Thinly sliced bresaolo, dijon on the side, Little T's baguette (meh), and crescents of melon with halved figs, shaved pecorino, basil chiffonade, and toasted marcona almonds. Round one was a winner.

Problem is we stayed for dinner, having heard the new chef is entrée-worthy. My plate of fideos was a mess. D liked her roasted half-chicken: the breast was cooked nicely, but the dark meat was on the medium-rare side. Sandwiches served to other tables looked good.

Earlier in the day I watched Chef Adam Sappington of the Country Cat restaurant break down a 14-pound turkey,which was truly an honor to behold — as was watching him caramelize mirepoix, marinate squab, serve up creamy-on-the-inside, crispy-on-the-outside potato wedges that I couldn't stop eating. He and his wife, Jackie, have created a great neighborhood restaurant.

Three toast weekend

2009-08-31T22:17:00.000-07:00

Started off the weekend by seeing Amos Lee in concert at the Portland Zoo. D's birthday was a couple days earlier, but this was our celebration with a group of friends. The sound and crowd were pretty decent, but our lawn seats were less than ideal -- sitting on the ground behind a bunch of people with taller chairs, in the middle of the crowd, so it was hard to access, lots of people packed into an ever-tightening space. The food and wine was okay but not great. Worse yet, it rained, and it was cold. Not that it was unbearable, but far from great conditions. To cap it all off, I got the Night Train song stuck in my head. Still, D enjoyed the show, and that's all that matters.

Saturday we went to a friend's wedding. Really amazing setting here > http://www.gorgecrest.com/

A deejay played old funk and soul. People danced. Men beat on their drums.

The drive home was lit by a raspberry and mango sunset over Mount Hood, reflecting off the Columbia River along the Gorge, to the soundtrack of the amazing Sargasso Trio.

Sunday we drove to Seattle and checked into the Hotel Andra. It's a downtown property that appears to have had a makeover a few years ago, although it's a bit frayed around the edges now. I wouldn't say it's on life support, but in the bathroom there was an oxygen product that you could buy for $59.95 (refillable oxygen canisters cost $15.95), which the hotel could use itself. Location is great, though, and benefits from being surrounded by Tom Douglas properties: Lola is the attached restaurant, Dahlia Lounge is across the street, as is his eponymous bakery, which serves an absolutely killer breakfast sammie -- a slice of heirloom tomato, crunchy sprouts, and a fried egg on a buttery, pillowy muffin.

After checking in, we hopped back in the car and drove out to Chateau Ste. Michelle in Woodinville, WA, where Diana Krall was appearing in concert. August 30 would've been my mother's 62nd birthday: she loved Diana Krall, so attending this show was in honor of her spirit. I've listened, wincing all the way, to compact discs of Diana Krall's music, so suffice to say I was hoping to be pleasantly surprised... And was I! Diana Krall was utterly captivating, an amazing vocalist and pianist. Her whole band displayed jazz musicianship of the highest caliber, drummer was exceptional. [We ran into him on the way out, and I got to gush a few superlatives - "Amazing, beautiful," - which he accepted really gracefully. Very cool.]

This clip is a great example of her spot on vocal delivery and key-tickling and features the phenomenal bassist Robert Hurst who played with her on the tour. (Note: Feel free to stop the clip around the 4:20 mark when the song ends, which segues into a rather terse interview on Australian morning television.)

Came home this afternoon and attended the Yamhill/Carlton AVA tasting. Enjoyed a couple tasty Estate Pinots from Shea, Twelve, and Roots before dashing off to the media gathering at Ten01. Keep an eye out for great cocktail and canape recipes, and some excellent wine tips from Erica Landon, perhaps in the next Northwest Palate.

kookoo for cucumbers

2009-08-05T23:50:00.000-07:00

Tannis Ling, one of the über-talented bartenders at Chambar restaurant in Vancouver, B.C., is opening her own restaurant, Bao Bei, this fall. Her mother's cooking is the inspiration for the menu.

She previewed a few dishes for me recently, pairing a deliciously fresh and frothy cocktail (see recipe below) with a hearty bowl of soup, made from her mother's recipe, featuring thin strips of quickly cooked pork, ramen noodles, and mustard greens swimming in a subtly star anise-flavored chicken broth. On the side, quick-pickled cukes (note the rustic "smash" of the cucumbers, resting in a pool of fish sauce and tossed with fresh garlic). An absolutely killer combo—filling and savory, yet smooth and light.

Death Proof
Courtesy of the Chambar bar team.

3 slices of cucumber
1 tbsp fresh cilantro
1 oz gin* (Hendricks)
1 oz sake* (Gekkeikan)
dash of Green Chartreuse
juice of half a lemon
1/2 oz simple syrup
1 1/2 oz brewed green tea
egg white

Muddle cucumber and cilantro in shaker. Add the rest of the ingredients and shake hard for the egg whites to foam. Strain into glass and garnish with cilantro sprig or thin cucumber slice.

*Call spirits are indicated in parentheses, but feel free to experiment with spirits produced in the Northwest—such as Aviation Gin, or one of the sakes made by Artisan or SakéOne.

Nacho Ordinary Cheese

2009-08-02T00:18:00.000-07:00

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Because one doesn't get the opportunity to witness live cheese carving everyday, I was compelled to stop by the recently remodeled Hawthorne Freddy's this past Sunday and check out the Cheese Lady, Sarah Kaufmann. She was a real pro, chatting up the gawkers while she sculpted the likeness of Fred Meyer himself into the 300-pound block of cheddar cheese—as part of the store's Grand Re-Opening Celebration.

I must say, the renovation of the store is impressive. The complete overhaul of the store's inner workings has taken the better part of the past year. While I couldn't help but notice a lot of the old checkers are gone, replaced by self-checkout terminals, there did seem to be lots of new staff positions created in the expanded food service departments.
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Of cars and carrots

2009-08-01T22:44:00.000-07:00

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How times have changed. Once upon a time Americans ate hot dogs and apple pie and they drove Chevrolets. Today they queue up for house-cured bacon, gazpacho, and the chance to test drive a hybrid car.

Leather Storrs of Noble Rot dishes up a tray of crostinis topped with pickled peaches, house-cured bacon, and basil chiffonade.

Jenn Louis of Lincoln restaurant grates ricotta salata over cantaloupe tossed with red pepper flakes and mint.

A fleet of Portland's top chefs—Jenn Louis of Lincoln, Leather Storrs of Noble Rot, Ben Bettinger of Beaker & Flask, Pascal Sauton of Carafe, Cathy Whims of Nostrana, among others—doled out samples to the masses at the Beaverton Farmers Market this past weekend.

The occasion: The first stop of a 12-city, coast-to-coast "Farm to Table Tour" sponsored by Toyota.

“Opting to drive a hybrid, shopping at the farmers market, and eating locally grown foods are all choices people make based on their beliefs," said Keith Dahl, Toyota National Manager of Engagement Marketing. "The Tour was created to connect with these individuals, while at the same time providing Toyota an opportunity to give back to the communities where our customers live.” Toyota made a donation to the Beaverton Farmers Market Inc.

Farmers market shoppers who tasted three food samples and got their "Farm to Table Tour" passport book stamped at each food booth could line up to receive a free potted plant. A wooden cutting board could also be had for test driving a Hybrid Prius.

A new Prius costs upwards of $20,000, but Soultek notes that:

The Prius recovers it costs in less than 5 years at current energy costs. Nonetheless, gas prices are expected to increase, not just this summer, but into the future, especially when the recession concludes. In fact, many, such as Boone Pickens, are predicting a huge oil price spike in 2011.

According to hybridcarblog.com, "Prius is the litmus test by which even automakers must judge their hybrids." If Toyota continues to innovate not only in car technology but also in ways such as this promotion, it seems the car company is positioning itself to stay well ahead of the hybrid pack.

eep neek

2009-07-26T22:06:00.000-07:00

It's how the French phonetically pronounce IPNC. It's the password at the juke joint door that gains you admission. It's the squeaky wheels of a food-laden speed rack as it rolls across campus on its way to an alfresco dining location. It's the meek request for a pour from someone's rare bottle of wine—Just a splash, please?

It's the woozy, whimpering sound my head and feet make when I groggily wake up. Mornings are brutal: I rolled out of bed with far fewer hours of sleep than my work- and party-ravaged body begs me for. I rub my throbbing temples and sore calves, steady myself, and stand up. Duty calls: I must get back in the kitchen.

The annual extended weekend of food and wine, better known as the International Pinot Noir Celebration, took place this past weekend. Upwards of 1,200 people, myself included, converged on the campus of Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon. Held during the last weekend of July for the past 23 years, the festival draws attendees from around the world—New Zealand, California, France, and the Pacific Northwest.

My role at the event was to serve as a kitchen volunteer, or "K-vol" as we're affectionately referred. Top regional chefs, veteran line cooks, culinary school interns and alumni, augmented by amateur gourmets and local residents, friends of friends, and a media type or two—everyone volunteers their time for the coveted opportunity to take part in this convention of food and wine aficionados.

The kitchen crew prepares and plates food at a score of dinners, luncheons, brunches, family meals and breakfasts, to complement the main draw—Pinot Noir from the Northwest and beyond.

About 30 sommeliers pour wine at tasting events, seminars, and dinners. Their language is wine, their dress is formal, and their impressive depth of knowledge is on display. Like peacocks with feathers spread wide, the somms strutted around in their suits and ties, posh frocks, and designer casual wear. It wouldn't be fair to call them elitist wine snobs, but it surprised me to find them so unapproachable. They probably felt the exact opposite about the kitchen folk, but same difference.

At the other end of the culinary caste system is the pastry team from Edmonds Community College. The bakers and pastry folks have a reputation for being odd birds, but I found them to be a hardworking, shoot the shit, good times brigade. Together they created canapes, confections, and sweet bite-size treats by the thousands. Latecomers to Salmon Bake are advised to forego the long salad and meat carving lines and start with dessert.

If I attend IPNC again, I'll make sure to put in my provisions pack:

A corkscrew. Keep on oneself at all times. Use for opening bottles of Acqua Panna, San Pellegrino, and Pilsner Urquells. The consequence of not having one will result in desperate attempts to pry open a crown cap on the lip of a sidewalk, trashcan, cigarette lighter, or table's edge; or perhaps getting a meat thermometer stuck in a cork, the temperature reader ripped from its stem, the wine barely dribbling out.

Stamina. 14-16 hour work days, followed by dorm parties and get-togethers that extend well into the night. Hours upon hours of stripping oregano leaves from their stems; removing the stickers from yellow bell peppers, halving and coring them; slicing pork terrines into half-inch slabs, then quartered, arranged into 8-by-10 rows on full-size sheet pans lined with parchment paper, and wrapped in plastic.

Water. Hydrate! Hydrate! Hydrate! That was the mantra. Water coolers were scattered everywhere across the campus. Alcohol and coffee will dehydrate you, and the heat (daily average temp of 95˚F) will literally take the piss out of you if you don't imbibe copious quantities of water. Nobody passed out that I know of. Way to go, Hydraters!

An alarm clock. Bring a reliable, loud one. Sleep is not something you do much of during IPNC. The days and nights begin to blur Vegas-style due to the nonstop agenda of cooking, chopping, slicing, dicing, mincing, wrapping and unwrapping, chowing down, throwing it back, rubbing shoulders, sharing stories, laughing, flirting, hugging, smooching, handshaking, giving the rock, carousing, mingling, and making new friends, young and old, for four days. Sleep and you'll risk missing out on savory encounters. This is, as they say, "the best adult's summer camp in the world."

During Saturday night's Salmon Bake, I was assigned the task of working the carving station, but right before service I lost my spot. I hung around to help out if need be, and it wasn't long before I stepped in to help at one of the stations, which was being manned by two K-vols, a husband-and-wife team.

The station had three components which needed to be dished up onto diners' plates. 1) slices of bavette steak on a bed of red peppers and potatoes, topped with ancho chile romesco sauce. 2) 5-pound pork loin roasts, had to be sliced and served, along with a dollop of peach chutney. 3) Whole fillets of salmon had to be sliced and served with a pie server.

The station really needed to be manned by three people, so I stepped in and asked if I could help. At first I helped dish the beef, then I took over slicing and serving the pork loin. Then they doubled us up, with salmon and pork on both sides of our station, which was a train wreck of epic proportions.

I kept switching tools—from the carving knife and tongs for the pork loin, to the pie server for the salmon—which was an incredibly inefficient way to work! I should have carved the whole fish and pork roast as they were delivered, and forced diners to be patient. Oh well, major lesson learned.

Chef Vitaly Paley set up the most efficient assembly line during the Grand Dinner. With his stern game face and militant composure, he lead the battleground of food service like Wellington at Waterloo, directing people to face each other on opposite sides of a line of cafeteria tables and instructing us clearly and succinctly in the ways of plating his dish. The point person had a stack of plates, which he/she handed to the next person down the line (my position), who plated a scoop of corona beans braised in tomatoes. The next person up the line took the plate and handed it the person next to him/her, who added a slice of lamb sausage-wrapped tenderloin of loin in a caul fat package on top of the beans. Up the line, microgreens were placed and crowned the whole lamby affair, and then the plate was swept onto servers' trays and set before the diners. It takes someone who has done this a few times to know how to pull this kind of thing off. Bravo, chef.

Dessert—macerated blueberries over lemon pound cake and a dollop of mascarpone—was plated in similar assembly line efficiency, ending the night on a deliciously high note.

The night had gotten off to a chaotic start. The first course—John Sundstrom's tomato salad—took 35-40 minutes to plate (I didn't participate in that plating, but the finished plate was beautiful and looked delicious, I didn't try it either), followed by Rocky Maselli's charcuterie dish. Plating was a disorganized, frantic scramble of eight elements: a cluster of three Pinot Noir-pickled cherries at 12 o'clock, a chicken liver mousse bonbon rolled in crushed, roasted hazelnuts at 6 o'clock, a piece of pork terrine at 3 o'clock, and pork rillette spread over toasted baguette at 9 o'clock.

I overheard little to zero swearing, which is notable considering the reputation for cursing that exists among chefs. "Eep neek" says it all.

Bits + bites

2009-07-05T11:47:00.000-07:00

Happiness is a tub-full of green walnuts. These lovelies are presently taking an extended soak in Hood River vodka and Pinot Grigio, plus some sugar, lemon peel, cloves, and a vanilla bean. The mixture is on its way to becoming the nonpareil Italian liqueur, Nocino. Around Thanksgiving time we'll strain and bottle it, drink some and gift the rest. I can't wait to taste how my test batch with a coffee-bean-and-cardamom-studded orange turns out!

This was my dessert offering for Nocino-making Day: cherry upside-down cake, featuring freshly picked cherries from our neighbors' yard (the same fertile yard as the walnut tree). I followed the recipe from Cory Schreiber & Julie Richardson's excellent new book, Rustic Fruit Desserts. The cake garnered a lot of compliments, but alas it fell short of this cook's perfection: I baked it a bit too long, and I overfilled the cake pan. It called for a 9"-square pan, but I only had a round one. I should have held back about a cup of the batter. Oh well, you live, you learn.

After a morning of shopping at the Milwaukie Farmers Market, we stopped into the nearby Casa de Tamales, which is owned and operated by the same folks who run the Canby Asparagus Farm. Service was a little slow yet friendly, but what impressed was the food, which came out lickety-split quick and tasted heavenly. We shared this fantastically delicious platter of "Nacatamal" -- a belly-filling Nicaraguan-style tamale steamed in a banana leaf. The subtly sweet masa is fortified with mashed potatoes, bell peppers, and whipped cream for moistness. Inside is succulent chicken, creamy potatoes, tomatoes, jasmine rice, plus Spanish olives for an intermittent salty zing, and plump Oregon plums and raisins for additional sweetness and texture. It came served with a perfectly balanced spicy-acidic-herby salsa and rich crema. We added sides of beans and rice, which were well worth the $3 upgrade, and to drink, a $2 horchata. A soul-satisfying meal for two for $14 (plus tip).

From the Best of Oregon Food & Wine Festival media dinner held at Urban Farmer, the highlight of the five-course tasting menu was this dessert: lemon pound cake with strawberry compote and rosemary semifreddo. Elegantly presented, not overly sweet, and seasonally in tune -- and perfectly paired with a glass of Valley View Winery's 2007 Anna Maria Late Harvest Pinot Gris.

If dessert was the good, this was most certainly the bad. The meat course, from left to right: Syrah gelée (imagine bitter, tannic Jello that tasted like sucking on a wine barrel chip), flanking a pile of wilted arugula, which was texturally akin to muddy, wet shoestrings (and tasted just as bad). But the pièce de résistance… What looks like an overturned can of cat food. You can't tell from the photo, but to make matters worse, the meat was wrapped in caul fat. A really unfortunate dish. The other savory dishes were vastly better (i.e., they were edible), but the real stars of the dinner were the paired wines from Viento (winemaker Rich Cushman poured his fantastic Grüner Veltiner), Archery Summit, Brooks, and the aforementioned Valley View.

Here's a fun dish from one of the newest welcome additions to the neighborhood -- Sushi Mazi, at Southeast 21st & Division. We loved the Super Rock 'n' Roll -- fried tempura shrimp rolled and topped with spicy salmon, shredded krab, diced mango, and tempura bits. Chef Pakawat [Marc] Suwansathien's creative combos will appeal to families and culinarily adventurous couples - cricket nigiri, anyone? - but perhaps not so much to sushi purists. I'm looking forward to trying their lunchtime offerings soon.

En garde & bon appétit!

2009-06-21T00:28:00.000-07:00

The dueling sommeliers dinner at the Heathman this past Saturday night was an evening of phenomenal food prepared by Dustin Clark of Wildwood, and paired with the wines of choice by four local sommeliers: Jeff Moore (JM) of Wildwood, Jack Hott (JH) of Castagna, Andy Zalman (AZ) of Higgins, and Jeff Groh (JG) of the Heathman.

Course 1: ricotta cheese gnocchi with Groundworks organic carrots, green garlic, pea shoots, and grana padano.

The vegetables dominated the dish: super-sweet carrots, pithy pea shoots, possibly some onion &/or tarragon(?) - an inspired riff on mirepoix! The gnocchi were somewhat sparse but delicious. A really light dish, seasonally correct, absolutely delectable.

To my palate the '06 Lucien Crochet, Sancerre, France ($26, JM) was second only to the Castel Sallegg, Sauv Blanc, Alto Adige, Italy ($18, JH) - but I could have easily flopped. The '08 D'Arenberg, Hermit crab, Viognier-Marsanne, Australia ($14, AZ) garnered the majority of 1st place votes, and I think the '07 Maculan, Pinot & Toi, Veneto, Italy ($14, JF) was good, but just too light-bodied for the dish.

Course 2: red wine braised squid crostone with summer savory and anchovy mayonnaise.

A really robust dish. The bread was crusty, and the squid was kind of muddy... inky, actually - Chef Clark said the squid were really tiny, swollen with ink, and therefore difficult to clean. The aggressively garlicky flavor of the mayo overpowered the squid: perhaps it could have been drizzled or dotted around the crostone instead of dolloped on top, but I'm splitting hairs.

The sommeliers paired four reds, which fell in two aromatic camps. Two had a tar, rubbery aroma that really intensified the flavor of the squid: '07 Ventura, Vina Caneiro, Ribeira Sacra ($23, JH) and '04 La Gerla, Rosso di Montalcino, Italy ($20, AZ). I found these less pleasing than the aromatically herbal wines - an '07 Argiolas Perdera, IGT, Isola dei Nuraghi, Italy ($16, JM), which was lighter than the '05 Bodegas Breton, Lorinon Rioja, Spain ($15, JG) - though I could have chosen any of these wines for any number of reasons.

Course 3: Confit of Cattail Creek lamb shoulder, creamed peas, new potatoes, feta mint salsa verde.

Rich, creamy, heavy, unctuous, maybe a tad too much for a spring/summer dish, but deliciously comforting on this rainy night in Portland.

My notes on the four wines:
'05 C. le Goeuil, Cairanne, "Lea Flesch," France ($18.50, JM)> cherry, full-bodied;
'05 Domaine Tempier, Bandol Rouge, France ($48, JG)> cherry, toast, medium-bodied;
'06 Amalie Robert, Pinot Meunier, Oregon [fer chissakes!] ($26, AZ) > fruity, dusty, minty;
'04 Cader de Gombaude, Pomerol, France ($28, JH) > menthol, brett

I ended up siding with the Amalie Robert, although once again, it was a roll of the dice. Each had more pluses than minuses.

For dessert? Seascape strawberry tart, caramel ice cream, and pistachio brittle.

The two sides didn't marry, imho, but both were delicious in their own right. I'm getting to the point with strawberries where I was with asparagus a couple weeks ago - more strawberries - but then I taste a dish like this that gets me excited about their flavor again. And what can I say? I love ice cream, and this was excellent - creamy, salty, nutty.

Each dish posed challenges for the sommeliers, but they seemed to be in agreement that this was the most difficult.

4a: Dom. la Tour Vielles, Banyuls Reserve, France ($29, JH)
4b: Chambers, Rosewood, Rutherglen Muscat, Australia ($32, AZ)
4c: '07 Banfi, Rosa Regale, Brachette d'Acqui, Italy ($19, JG)
4d: R.L. Buller, Premium Fine Muscat, Victoria, Australia ($32, JM)

Being more of a caramel ice cream and pistachio guy, I liked the bourbon, vanilla, scotch, warming aspects of the muscats, although the Chambers was a bit more delicate, and so that's the one I went with. The Banfi Rosa paired pitch-perfect with the strawberry tart, and if the crust had been a bit lighter and the strawberries a little tarter, I think this would have been devastatingly delicious.

After all the votes were cast, Andy Zalman took first place this evening, building on his lead from his first place finish at the first dinner. The next dinner is scheduled for August 8 with guest chef Elias Cairo from Castagna Restaurant, and it promises to be another spectacular night of fine food and wonderful wine.

Special thanks to the Heathman and Broussard Hill.

Stalking Ruth

2009-05-18T10:04:00.001-07:00

I'm not serious, of course, but our paths did cross several times this past week.

The first time was at Ruth Reichl's book signing/lecture event at the Bagdad Theater on Wednesday, May 13. Her newest book, Not Becoming My Mother, is an ode not only to her mother, Miriam, who serves as the butt end of the joke in many scenes of Reichl's previous memoirs, but also to the many women of her mother's generation who worked and established fulfilling careers prior to and during WWII, yet gave up their jobs when the soldiers returned home. Despite suffrage, these women were pressured by society to accept the traditional professions as mothers and homemakers, stations in life that filled them with ennui. It's not a book for foodies, so to that end I was disappointed, but once again Reichl proves herself to be a master of the memoir, and it's obvious she knows who her audience is - row after row of middle-aged and older women, many with their daughters in tow, filled the auditorium. Boy, did I feel like a wolf at a sheep's convention.

The second intersection occurred on Friday in Seattle. After a grueling five-hour drive from Portland, I checked into the Hotel Max - chic digs, a sexy red light district/black shaded affair with modern art-donned walls - then hightailed it over to the Six Seven restaurant at The Edgewater hotel. Nestled beside Elliot Bay, the bar and restaurant affords the premier waterfront view in the city, and I got there right in time to catch a spectacular sunset. I enjoyed the chef's tasting menu with wine pairings, then headed over to the Zig Zag Café and had one lean 'n' mean cocktail, called The Liberal, made by legendary bartender himself, Murray Stenson. My final stop of the night was Spur, and this is where Gourmet magazine’s editor-in-chief herself tweeted the previous night about the "great bourbon cocktail" she enjoyed here. For the record, barman David Nelson made Reichl (and myself) his Bourbon Swizzle - bourbon, lemon juice, falernum, chartreuse - which could very well be the greatest cocktail I've ever had the pleasure of imbibing.

Morning came wayyyyy too early on Saturday, but the Seattle Cheese Festival beckoned. I loaded up my cart with boxes of the "amazing" new issue of Northwest Palate and hiked over to the festivities at Pike Place Market. The fine folks at Ritrovo were kind enough to share their space with us: while handing out copies of the magazine, I also doled out slices of Taleggio cheese topped with red wine chutney to the hungry masses. By 2pm I was out of magazines and in dire need of something to eat. Thank goodness The Steelhead Diner was within stumbling distance. Chef Kevin Davis treated me to house-cured beef bresaola, served with wild watercress, ricotta, and pickled artichokes - light, herbaceous, and refreshing; followed by a garlic-laden bowl of humongous prawns that was the cure for what ailed me; all of which I washed down with a Boundary Bay IPA.

Fast-forward to Brush with Ruth, Part III: dinner at Tilth Saturday night. The former New York Times restaurant reviewer dined there earlier that evening, and according to her tweets she tried the Smoked Yogurt Flan (bacon, green garlic, mustard green) and Mini Duck Burgers. I charted my own course, starting with the Young Carrot Soup (sorrel, ginger, wild baby leek), followed by House Made Ricotta Gnuddi (fava bean, cipollini, lemon balm), and heavens to Ruthy - The gnuddi were amazing! D. called them "Little pillows of joy."

Lolling around Walla Walla

2009-05-12T05:49:00.000-07:00

We rolled into Va Piano, where the charismatic owner/winemaker Justin Wylie filled our glasses with his elixir-in-the-making, pulled straight from the barrels. He needn't have excused the wines for only being six months old (with another six to go in the barrel, followed by bottle-aging for 6 more). These Tuscan-style reds might be young, but they're showing beautifully already - big but controlled fruit with a lush mouthfeel, a little peppery balanced by traces of vanilla.

Next we traipsed over to Trust Cellars, which is also home to Chateau Rollat. The latter's 2005 Edouard captivated us on a previous visit, so we were curious to see if we could start building a vertical. The 2006 vintage was only available to cellar club members, so we splurged, signed up, and carted off a half case - 3 bottles of Edouard and 3 of the Rollat.

For dinner we went to Saffron Mediterranean Kitchen, owned and operated by Chef Chris Ainsworth and his lovely wife, Island. The service was gracious and personable. The food, simply divine.

From the raciones (small plates to share, like tapas only a little bigger portion-wise):

• Pulpo ($8): grilled, eminently tender chunks of baby octopus tossed with chopped radiccio, green garlic, and Spanish white beans in a lemon oil vinaigrette, served in a cazuela;

• Kobe Beef Cheeks ($9) served on top of eggplant agrodolce, with basil and saba: after sopping up the sauce with the fantastic house-baked breads, we practically licked the plates clean

• Mushroom and Asparagus Flatbread ($14) with caramelized onions, fontina cheese & truffle oil: Nothing wrong with this dish, but it was probably my least favorite of the three.

With these bites we enjoyed a bottle of Torrontes '08 by Flying Trout, a winery which is rather interestingly based in both Walla Walla and Argentina. The white wine was made with Argentinian grapes and was very Viognier-like, redolent of jasmine and luscious honey.

Tweeting & Eating

2009-04-20T10:24:00.000-07:00

A memorable night of firsts...

Tonight was the first time all of the James Beard Award-nominated chefs from the Northwest have come together to cook a meal before heading out to the award presentation ceremony in New York City. Assembled were four chefs from Seattle - Ethan Stowell (Union, How to Cook a Wolf, Tavolàta, and Anchovies & Olives); Maria Hines (Tilth); Joseba Jiménez de Jiménez (Txori, The Harvest Vine); and Jason Wilson (Crush) - plus one lone Portland representative, Cathy Whims (Nostrana).

Clare Barboza Photography

It was also the first "TweetUp" that I had ever heard about or attended. Brandishing iPhones, Blackberries, and other hand-held devices, the folks in attendance were encouraged to comment on the meal in real-time. (Click here to read the stream of tweets.)

Clare Barboza Photography

Now, as we all know, ahem, the first time can be awkward. But this was a match made in heaven, both in the kitchen and in the dining room.

The vibe among the chefs was 100% pure fun - there wasn't a domineering ego among them, and they seemed to be having a blast working in the close quarters of the open kitchen at Crush, which hosted the event. During service they helped each other plate - such teamwork is always a beautiful thing to behold - and, as the plates were brought to the table, the chefs shared the inspiration behind the dishes they presented, revealing the passion for their craft.

Clare Barboza Photography

On the dining side of things, we had silverware to eat with and hardware to tweet with. Under normal dining circumstances, I feel it's bad form to take digital photos of the food; but, on this

night, we were encouraged to let it all hang out and be as much of a food geek/freak as we wanted to be. If there was a lull in the conversation at the table, you could jack into the virtual one online or openly envy a fellow diner's PDA.

As for the food, it was a romp of orgiastic proportions. Every chef made an appetizer and a main course, everything was paired with wine, followed by two (yes, two) dessert courses. Suffice it to say, they pulled out all the stops. Here's a little food porn featuring my favorite dishes from the night...

Geoduck crudo with celery from Chef Ethan Stowell

Clare Barboza Photography

Abacchio alla Cacciatore

(Cattail Creek lamb, artichokes all romana, sage)

from Chef Cathy Whims

Clare Barboza Photography

Roasted Neah Bay Halibut

(spring morels, caviar urchin sauce, green garlic)

Clare Barboza Photography

Skagit River Ranch Pork Cheek

(trotter cake, Parmesan broth)

Clare Barboza Photography

Meat Me at Paley's

2009-04-02T09:55:00.000-07:00

Testa Porchetta

Now, I know I said I wasn't going to eat pork during Lent, and I know I just finished reading The Face on Your Plate and had every noble intention of curbing my carnivorous enthusiasm, but MAN OH MAN! was tonight a meat-lover's dream.

To celebrate the anniversary of our first date, Diana and I went out for pre-show sips and nibbles followed by a White Bird Dance performance at the Schnitz. We dropped by Carlyle for this week's installment of the Recession-Proof Mixology series hosted by House Spirits, but the bar area was packed to capacity and the mood rather subdued (not to mention we were made to feel a tad uncomfortable standing in the foyer), so we turned on our heels and headed to NW 21st and Paley's Place.

I'm ashamed to admit I've only dined there once. Diana and I marked our wedding anniversary at Paley's several years ago, but we haven't been back since. I've recommended it to folks who are visiting from out of town or looking for someplace to celebrate a special occasion, but it's not someplace I ever think to go on a whim. After last night's experience, however, I'm rethinking ... I might have to go back on a weekly basis from now on.

Fool on the Hill

Our intention was to have one drink and skedaddle - HA! First, we had the Wednesday flight of wine. Tonight's theme, befitting of April Fool's Day, was "The Fool on the Hill," featuring wines from higher elevations. While we sampled the four wines (two from Italy, one from California, and a mystery wine whose origins we never discovered), we were treated to an amuse of artichoke leaves topped with a house-made cheese blend, which harmonized pitch-perfectly with the wines.

Chef Paley (he's no fool) stopped by the bar and greeted regulars - and irregulars - alike. How could we say no to the charcuterie plate that he said he'd been working on all day? The house-cured testa rossa (pork head cheese rolled and sliced like pancetta) quite literally melted in my mouth; a forkful of beef tongue and brisket terrine with a dab of the accompanying rhubarb mustard was delectably savory.

Appetite whetted, I said what the heck and ordered a half bottle of 2003 Château Teynac, Saint Julien (Bordeaux) to go with an "outrageously simple" salad - a heaping mound of George's Gathered Greens tossed with lemon and extra virgin olive oil… Oh, and an order of steak tartare.

I ate lots of raw beef growing up. There, I said it. Diana grossed out when I told her, and my diet as a youngster probably has a lot to do with the (ahem) "physique" that I have today. But this was sublime: finely chopped beef mixed with mustard, salt, and onions and pressed into a circular ring mold, bookended by precisely arranged lines of chopped parsley, finely diced white onions and caper berries, and served with grilled toast points. Diana even enjoyed it up until I broke the large, amber-orange yolk that perched atop the puck of beef, which took the dish to another level of luxurious richness.

We left with 15 minutes to curtain, but made it with time to spare. I dozed in and out through most of the performance, due in equal measure to being in a food coma, just being generally exhausted, and having a blocked view that made watching frustrating. What I saw of the show had incredibly high energy, lots of acrobatics, "beat street" and martial arts-inspired, slightly modern dance. It was a little bit like watching aerobics, which made me wish I could jump in and work out along with them. Lord knows, I've got more meat on me than these guys (but mine is in all the wrong places):

Dance Brazil