cap'n blog and salty

This past weekend featured the first ever Eat Mobile! event, a fundraiser for the good people of Mercy Corps and Hacienda CDC, organized by Willamette Week. The event, held in a warehouse in a particularly desolate spot in industrial Portland, featured a dozen of Portland’s finest food carts doling out samples of the wares for the low, low price of a $5 entrance fee. The line-up included some of my personal favorites like India Chaat House and Junior Ambassador’s and several carts that I’ve been wanting to try like Tabor and Asian Station. And to top it all off, they were pouring $1 microbrews for the grown ups.

When I first saw the advertisement for the event I had to think about it for about 8 seconds before I highlighted the date in my calendar and began planning my strategy for maximum snackdom.

And it seems many other Portlanders went through the same calculation I did:
Really Cheap Food + Reeeeelly Cheap Beer + Supporting a Good Cause = What We’re Doing Saturday Night.

Unfortunately for the attendees, the organizers failed to realize what a winning combination they had on their hands. When we showed up about an hour into what was supposed to be a four hour event half of the carts were out of food. Because we spent the next hour in long queues waiting for what little food was left, the beer was gone before we’d even gotten our half-bratwursts. By the time we left, when there was still supposed to be over an hour left in the event, the cupboard was completely bare.

We did manage to get a few little bites: goulash from Tabor, tamales from Micro-Mercantes, the aforementioned bratwurst and a single delightful soup dumpling from Asian Station. But the highlight for me was ice cream from Junior Ambassador’s who regular readers may remember as the home of the panwich. This humble cart is churning out (har!) some amazing flavors that would make Ferran Adrià smack his forehead and say, “Dang! why didn’t I think of that?!” The smoked salmon ice cream – served with capers, red onion and a bagel chip – was inspired. I’d take this over schmear any day. Wow. “Bluegrass” ice cream was blueberry and lemongrass and was also very good, though not the knockout of the salmon. I was bummed that I didn’t get a chance to try their strawberry-chipotle flavor, but all the more reason to go visit their cart again.

Now for the negative stuff: The lines were long and the flow was confusing. There was a band playing jolly bluegrass tunes, but the sound was terrible. The crowd was all pretty grumbly and cranky. It was awfully annoying that they ran out of food so quickly: there were quite a few people there, but they were by no means mobbed. By (event organizer) Willamette Week’s own estimate there were 800 people there, but they said that they had expected 300. 300 people? Really? When almost free food and beer are involved? In Portland? I’m surprised that only 800 people turned out.

Now, don’t get me wrong – we did still get to try some good grub and I’m happy to support Mercy Corps and Hacienda CDC. But I left feeling like we might have been better off sending them a check and going to the Dog House for dinner instead. But, really, I don’t want to dwell on the negative. I’d rather look forward to next year’s event that will be much better organized and all the more delicious. And, of course, I’m looking forward to more (and more and more) salmon ice cream.

proof that there had been food at one point

oh, yeah, and the space was kinda weird, too

Our food adventures the next day were a lot more successful. We visited Bar Carlo for the first time. It’s one of the many fine establishment taking part in the Foster Street Renaissance. I had a sandwich called, “Surprise, Natalie, You’re in Peppersville!” which as the name suggests had a lot of peppers, plus scrambled eggs, cotija and avocado. It was served with a peculiar but delicious presentation of breakfast potatoes which were more like potato chips covered with copious amounts of smoked paprika. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. C had a stellar plate of huevos rancheros – strangely, the rice was the real stand out on the plate though the rest of it was good, too.

A few things we learned about Bar Carlo: where ever they say “spicy” or “butter” they really mean it. The chipotle sour cream on the huevos was, as promised, quite spicy and according to the menu, my sandwich was to be served on a “butter bun” which came dripping with butter and audibly squelched when you picked it up. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

huevos rancheros with seriously spicy chipotle sour cream

paprika taters

So I guess I’m not totally over this cooking contest thing yet. I’ve been secretly reading through the cooking contest listings, considering my options. One jumped out at me recently: it was a contest sponsored by Mahatma Rice. They had two recipe categories: one for brown rice and one for white rice. I had some pretty good ideas for both and since tonight is the deadline, I experimented with one of my recipes last night to see if it was good enough to enter.

Well, it turned out to be pretty darned delicious and I was all keen to write it up and submit today. But at the last minute I decided not to submit it for two reasons:

1. The grand prize is a fancy rice cooker plus a bunch of swag. That’s all well and good, but we just bought a groovy rice cooker at home that I like very much (which, incidentally, is the same as your run-of-the-mill 1600 Baht rice cooker in Thailand, but it cost three times as much here as it would over there) so I really don’t need another – even a schmancy, fuzzy logic kind. And do I really need a Mahatma apron and “appetizer serving set"? Ehhh… no, probably not.

2. They wanted submissions entered by mail. Seriously? Like the US Postal Service? Man, who even has stamps anymore?

Well, Mahatma Rice’s loss is your gain. Here I publish for you what I made for dinner last and a modified version of which I would have submitted to the contest today.

Wild Mushroom Brown Rice Risotto
serves 4 – or 2 of me

3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 small shallot, minced
1 cup short grain brown rice
8 cups low sodium chicken stock
8 ounces sliced cremini mushrooms
1/2 cup dry white wine
black pepper to taste
1 tbsp fresh thyme
1 tablespoon chopped, oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes
1 ounce crumbled goat cheese

Heat the 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a 2 quart sauce pan over medium high heat. Toss in shallot and stir for about 1 minute until shallot is translucent.

Add brown rice and toast rice grains for about 2 minutes or until brown. This step is really key to getting a good, smoky, nutty flavor out of the rice. Reduce heat to medium low.

Add stock 1/2 cup at a time to rice. Stir until the liquid is completely absorbed and add in another 1/2 cup. Ideally, you should heat your chicken stock to a simmer in another pan on the stove so the liquid will be hot when you add it, but this is not strictly necessary. It’s nice, though, since it saves time – you won’t have to wait for the stock to come up to temperature – and since this recipe takes forever you might as well save as much time as you can.

You will be adding liquid and stirring for about 45 minutes to an hour. You may need more liquid in order to cook the grains through. What you’re going for is a texture that is still toothsome, but not crunchy.

Somewhere towards the end of this stirring process, heat a skillet on another burner. Add 2 tablespoons of oil and when it’s hot, add in the mushrooms and a pinch or so of salt. Saute until the mushrooms have wilted and add the wine: continue to saute until all the liquid is absorbed. Add the thyme and black pepper and toss for about a minute more. If all goes well, your risotto and the mushrooms will all be done at the same time.

When the risotto is cooked through spoon it into 4 separate bowls, top with mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes and crumbled goat cheese.

It was really good, but sort of outrageously rich, especially after I added a completely gratuitous drizzle of truffle oil. Nevertheless, I still managed to devour two whole servings of it.

I tried it again for dinner tonight, but this time tried to take a shortcut. Rather than stirring for an hour I cooked the rice almost through sans stovetime and then at the end did just a couple of rounds of adding liquid and stirring to finish it. The result was almost, but not quite as good as last night. The texture was gummier and the flavor less deep. So as a shortcut it works OK, but it won’t be the knock out prize winner it could be with a little stirring power.

Many years ago on the number 12 bus out to the Portland Airport, my friend Joel ruminated out loud: “Gee, Sandy Boulevard just goes on forever!”

The grizzled old man sitting nearby leaned towards him and rasped conspiratorially, “You know, if you straightened out Sandy Boulevard and Foster Road and laid ‘em end-to-end, THEY’D WRAP AROUND THE WORLD TWICE.”

“Oh… um… wow!” Joel said and quickly buried his head back in his book.

Sandy – like her equally interminable brother, Foster – twists and turns and seems to run to the ends of the earth to where there be dragons. And on her long and circuitous journey through the city she reinvents herself with every neighborhood, with different people, businesses, and, yes, of course, restaurants along the way.

C and I were thinking about this while we were enjoying our dinner at Du’s Grill, a shabby little bento shack on Sandy that serves some of the best chicken teriyaki in town. It’s the kind of place that’s always swarmed with cop cars and not because anything nefarious is going down, but because if there’s a stereotype that you can rely on it’s that cops know where to find good, cheap food.

I hadn’t eaten at Du’s in years – not since I worked downtown with a woman who was so obsessed with them that she would often drive into NE at lunch time and pick up enough chicken teri boxes for the office. C had never been, but saw how popular it was and was intrigued. He became even more intrigued since he started riding his motorcycle to work past Du’s and inhaled the heady aroma grilling meats.

We headed over there last week after I warned Chris, “Don’t expect too much. It’s just a dumpy little bento place with good chicken.” And so it was. As C pointed out, it has the hedgehog thing going for it: it has one good trick and that’s about it. But it’s a darn good trick.

While we were plowing through our meal, my gaze wandered Sandy-ward. “There are so many restaurants on Sandy that we’ve never tried. Do you think we’ll ever get to try them all?”

“We could try,” C offered.

“Sandy crawl!” I said throwing my hands up over my head.

After dinner, C drove us up and down Sandy while I furiously scribbled the names of each and every restaurant on the boulevard. We decided to turn around at about 134th. We figured we probably wouldn’t get farther than the Wooden Chicken.

So some ground rules:
* we don’t have to go to restaurants we’ve already been to (unless, of course, we want to)
* chain restaurants don’t count.
* places that are primarily bars don’t count either unless we want them to – this loophole was put in place primarily because I really want to go to Pal’s Shanty.

The very next night we christened our long-term crawl with dinner at Hai Du, a newish Chinese restaurant at 58th. They are most notable from the street for the huge banner over the door:

I stole this image from Matt McCormick’s blog, but he’s a nice guy and I hope won’t mind, but if he does I hope he remembers that while he is tall and mighty I am short and vulnerable.

How can you resist that sign?

Well, you can’t. Or, rather, we couldn’t.

Things got off to a most excellent start when they brought us out a complimentary plate of fried tofu at the start. Now if there’s one way to win over my heart, it’s offering me a free plate of fried tofu and this was especially fine fried tofu. I’d say it was on par with the fabled pepper fried tofu of our long gone and profoundly lamented Saigon Harbor of Richmond, California. This version may have actually had a leg up on the other just because it’s served so hot and so fresh.

mmm… tofu…

The seafood sizzling plate came up first and the most notable thing about it was that it was not at all sizzling. I put a finger on the iron plate. It was kinda warm, I guess, but not what you’d expect from a dish with the word “sizzling” in the name. The sauce was brown and too sweet, but okay, especially with the chili garlic sauce on the table. The seafood was a little heavy on the squid and Krab, but the shrimp was nice. The star of the plate, though, was the tofu: chubby medallions of crinkly skinned beauties were fried so that the skin just barely held in a creamy, liquidy center.

note the Krab… with “k”

Then came the eggplant and cod claypot which was in fact sizzling quite vigorously. It was cornstarch and MSG heavy, but still really delicious in a slightly trashy kind of way. The flavors were right on and the fish was excellent, actually. It was my favorite dish of the night, barring the free tofu, though it was so greasy I felt like I’d been lubed from the inside out afterwards. But I mean that in a good way. Sort of.

gooey and gloppy, but still tasty

The last dish was a noodle dish that through a series of miscommunications was probably a lesser dish than it would normally be. We had wanted a rice noodle dish and when the waiter said that we could either get crispy egg noodles or soft noodles, we thought that by “soft noodles” he meant “rice noodles.” Well, what he brought out was a plate of crispy egg noodles which actually looked quite good with a colorful and varied array of toppings. But we refused it (well, Chris did – I woulda kept it) and asked for “soft noodles.” Our dish came back as a pile of boiled, greasy egg noodles with a paltry few shreds of meat and veggies and topped liberally with kitchen spite. We did not send it back again.

It wasn’t quite the gangbusters start to our Sandy crawl as I might have hoped, but Hai Du is at least as good as any other non-Wong’s Chinese restaurant in town. I know that’s not saying much – in fact, it’s kind of a dis, really, considering the Chinese food in this town – but I can imagine going back to Hai Du (unlike a lot of other Chinese places in town). After all, we didn’t even try any of their live seafoods and, as you know, they are famous.

Who knows how long we’ll actually be able to sustain the Sandy crawl, but we’ll keep plugging away at the list. Who know what secrets are in store for as at Tosis and the Wooden Chicken?

A scene from domestic life, about two weeks ago:

“You know what day tomorrow is?” I asked C, bouncing Tiggerly.

“Um… Friday?”

“Yeah, but the date?”

“March 14th?”

“Yeah! And you know what we’re going to eat?”

“Uh… no?”

“Pizza! Pizza pie… Get it? ‘Cause it’s Pi Day! “

My husband shakes his head. “You are such a nerd.”

This coming from the man who introduced me to LOLCode.

Anyway, any day is a good day for homemade pizza, but 3.14 may be one of the better ones. And I had just read a lovely looking recipe for easy pizza dough so we were ready to go.

The recipe came courtesy of Vegan Yum Yum, but I certainly went un-vegan with the toppings. I got a ball of fresh mozzarella and made up some sauce. We were going for something like an amatriciana – pancetta, spicy tomato sauce, basil and cheese. So simple, so delicious.

The dough recipe worked out quite well at least through the dough stage; it was easy to get stretched out very thin and I had high hopes. We plunked our pizza down on the pizza stone and 8 minutes minutes later a lovely looking pi(e) emerged.

The toppings were very nice – just the right level of spicing, if I may say so myself. But the dough was kind of disappointing. It looked all cracker thin and nicely browned, but it was tough! What’s up with that? I’ll have to go read my bread books again and see where I went wrong. It wasn’t bad – I’ve certainly paid good money for much worse – but it wasn’t at all what I was hoping for. Ah well. Maybe I can get it right in time for the really big Pi Day blowout on 3/14/15.

our pie getting ready for its big moment

coming out of the oven

ready to be nommed

I’ve been terribly distracted lately by such trivial things as work and school – it’s taken up all the valuable time I might otherwise spend on blogging. But at least I’m still finding time to eat well. I do have my priorities.

I have a backlog of entries and pictures to go through, but in the meantime, to prove that I’m still here and still eating like a shark, here’s a short recap of the last several months as seen from the perspective of one my top five favorite meals: breakfast.

I’ve long been a avid, one might even say ravenous, fan of breakfast – and its neighboring meal, second breakfast. Witness the breakfast map. But I am also a creature of habit and tend to revisit my favorite places over and over rather than branch out and try all the many wondrous and varied breakfast options this town has to offer. But I am determined to change that. In fact, that’s why I created the breakfast map in the first place – so I could keep track of where I’d been and where I hadn’t – plus, with the map, I wouldn’t have the excuse of not being able to think of a new place. There they were in all their yellow glory just waiting to turn green – or even red!

So! some new places we’ve visited recently:

Gia Restaurant just opened a few months ago. It’s right in our ‘hood in the location of the former Happy Teriyaki (which always looked like it should be named “Forlorn Teriyaki” instead).

Well, the spot is much cheerier and a good deal fancier now. They serve a wildly pan-cultural menu (Japanese to Italian, Chinese to Thai), but Vietnamese food seems to be their focus. But the mornings, however, are wholly devoted to traditional American fare.

C ordered a crab omelet and I ordered a tofu scramble which on the menu appeared to be their one vegan offering, but it arrived in an omelet and covered with cheese. Good thing I’m not a vegan. Their hash browns are of the shredded and nearly deep-fried variety. Only the shape of the hash keeps it from being called a tater tot. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I often wish more Portland breakfast places would serve the traditional diner style rather than the ubiquitous home-fries/country-style. Gia’s are quite nice: cracker crisp and perfectly browned.

My tofu omelet is hardly worth mentioning – a big cheesy, gelatinous monstrosity– but C’s crab omelet was actually pretty tasty. They do need to use a lighter touch with the cheese, but on the whole it was a reasonable breakfast.

Grade: B-
warrants another visit to see if they’ve worked out their kinks, but it was only okay. Still, it’s always nice to have another breakfast spot in the neighborhood.

tofu thingy

now that’s a freakin’ hash brown!

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Some of you are aware that I have a long and fabled past with the culinary treat known simply as “toast". It’s one of my favorite snacks, my first Super 8 movie was about toast and then, of course, there was the Shrine to Toast. So when a new restaurant opened in Portland and named itself, “Toast” I knew I had to visit.

It took me a while, but we finally made it to Toast last month. It’s a cutie pie little restaurant in the middle of the burgeoning neighborhood several blocks to the right of where I went to school. They have a short, but well thought out menu. One item in particular jumped out at me because it featured one of the finest word juxtapositions in the English language: “pork” and “belly.”

A generous slab of grilled belly came with two over easy eggs and a potato pancake. I couldn’t ask for anything more in a breakfast dish: it was simple but hearty and rich, its decadence balanced by its even-handed preparation.

We also ordered their in-house version of a benedict which involves sausage and braised greens. This was good, but less exciting. I really liked the greens – it’s a stroke of genius to serve bright, snappy greens with that rich buttery hollandaise. But the sausage was less impressive and the English muffin was too tough and under-toasted, not something you’d expect from a place called Toast.

Grade: A-
Gotta give ‘em mad props for the belly.

C looks on, flanked by framed toasters

the mostly good benny

i heart belly

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I’d been to Autentica for dinner before, but I’d longed to try their weekend brunch and just this past weekend we got the chance.

Now if there’s one thing I love more than food, it’s free food – and soon after we arrived we were welcomed with a kind of Mexican version of English beans and toast: a slice of bread topped with black beans and queso fresco – a sturdy and tasty snack! I really appreciate it when restaurants remember that customers are usually hungry when they come in: hence a little snack increases good will, keeps down the bad humors and helps customers think clearly about the meal ahead.

We ordered Huevos Ahogados (poached eggs that came in a chicken soup with fried tortilla strips) and Omelet Con Papas (a potato and cheese omelet).

Chris has long been searching for an omelet that comes close to his beloved Parisian cafe potato omelets, but, alas, this would not be the omelet. The potatoes were flavorless lumps and the Oaxacan cheese was overly abundant and rubbery. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t actually good either.

But! the Huevos Ahogados more than made up for any lack on the part of the omelet. That could be my new gold standard for chicken soup dishes. The broth was fantastically fresh and flavorful, the eggs were perfect and the chicken was just doggone yummy. The topping of freshly fried tortilla strips really clinched it for me. All of that is not even to mention the awesome handmade tortillas and the fabulously additive salsas served alongside. Wow.

Grade: A
despite the omelet misstep, the soup was so good I’d keep coming back just for that.

omelet con papas

huevos ahogados – that broth has two poached eggs, chunks of bone-in chicken, curling stalks of cilantro and a wonderful, heady aroma. Wow!

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We’ve also had some nice breakfasts out-of-town recently. Me, I was traveling up to Seattle every other weekend this last quarter and took the opportunity to try a few new spots, my favorite, perhaps, was Lola, a swanky downtown spot helmed by Seattle restaurant emperor, Tom Douglas. I always thought that Douglas’s restaurants would be too trendy for me, but Lola, while still pretty damn trendified, is also really freakin’ good. We had a simple spinach scramble and a skewer plate of grilled lamb’s tongue served with spicy quince paste. Hello! Both were awesome.

the scramble, topped with bacon, and accompanied by smashed potatoes.

We also went to Tilth, a place recently lauded by the New York Times, but thought our meal pretty blah and absurdly over-priced. The smoked pulled chicken on cheddar biscuits was especially laughable: $15 got you a dense, gnarled biscuit, two fried eggs and exactly three anemic shreds of chicken, which tasted more like it’d been boiled, not smoked.

Down in San Francisco early this year, I stopped by the wildly popular Dottie’s True Blue Cafe. This tiny cafe pretty much always has a line down the block. I was on my own that morning so I figured I could squeeze in at the counter and not have such a long wait. I was right: I nly had to wait about 45 minutes as opposed to the poor schmucks holding out for a proper table who were still waiting after I’d already licked my plate clean.

I was conflicted about whether I should stick with the standards or go with the sexier special: lamb sausage and caramelized onion omelet. In the end my heart said, “Baa!” (or maybe that was one of my arteries pre-hardening) and I went with the lamb. I’m so glad I did. It was a real knock out and even though I felt logy for days afterwards, it was so worth it.

the crowds gather early to get a bite at Dottie’s

… when you have fame?

You may have noticed a subtle yet compelling come-on on the cover of this month’s Portland Monthly Magazine. If you haven’t seen it yet, it looks like this:

And whose mac do you suppose they’re talking about? I’ll give you a hint…

That’s right: second place strikes back! In the article that accompanies a reprint of my recipe (and a food-styleed photo of my mac – it’s so lovely I barely recognized it!) the author calls my recipe “sublime” and “complex and gourmet, yet comforting.” How nice to get such effusive praise even after I threatened everyone with my whisk!

The author of the article (who, by the way, runs the also sublime Ristretto Roasters) was one of the judges at the competition which makes me feel better about the whole crazy episode: at least one of the judges – and one who’s a food professional, no less – would have chosen my mac for the top spot and that’s worth something, right? Maybe not $5000, but something…

Anyway, if you’re in town and you see a copy of this month’s Portland Monthly while you’re standing in the check out lane, give it a peruse or two. Even if you have no interest in Autumn Comfort Mac, you can read about awesome cheese shop Foster & Dobbs instead.

And if you can’t get a hold of a copy of Portland Monthly, but you want to give my recipe a try, it can be found here: Autumn Comfort Mac.

Winters are long here in Portland, Oregon and the skies a particularly dour shade of grey. Even though the sun has started to peep out a little bit here and there, it’s still as drab and chilly as February can be.

But not in our kitchen. We’ve been churning out bright, warm, filling meals – the kind that will keep you cheerful all through hibernation season.

I wanted to use up the last of the butternut squash in the freezer last week, but was not quite ready to make my 1st-Runner-Up Mac ‘N’ Cheese again quite yet and came up instead with this idea for a veggie cassoulet. Or, rather, it was veggie until I spied some yummy looking garlic chicken sausages at the new Laurelhurst Whole Foods (which recently took over the Wild Oats – which we always called Wild Stoats – and therefore has become known in our household as Whole Stoats).

The basic idea is this: caramelize a bunch of onions. Roast your cubed squash until it’s brown. Saute a bunch of garlic in a big pot. Add a can or two of white beans and a herbs – bay leaf and fresh thyme are necessary. Salt and pepper to taste, add a little broth, throw in your onions and squash and let it simmer, very low, for as long as you can stand (without the beans disintegrating). If you’re using sausage, brown it and toss it in, too.

Meanwhile, make a breadcrumb topping. I mixed breadcrumbs, butter, more garlic, a ton of parsley and salt and pepper.

Dish your cassoulet into oven safe serveware and brown under the broiler. Serve and nap for 3 months.

My mac ‘n’ cheese ramekins make the perfect backdrop for individual cassoulets

I made this chicken stew last night which was adapted from a recipe in Martha Rose Shulman’s slow cooking cook book, Ready When You Are. It’s chicken stewed with roasted onions, tomatoes, chipotles and prunes.

The whole thing is slightly labor intensive, but you could probably streamline it if you want. You start out by oven roasting a couple of onions and 2 pounds of tomatoes. You whirr that in the food processor with lots of garlic, clove, pepper, cumin, chipotles and a couple prunes.

Brown your chicken pieces. Then fry your sauce in a large pot until it thickens up a bit. Add in your chicken, some stock to thin it and about a dozen prunes and a cinnamon stick. Stew until the smell drives you mad.
Serve with rice.

Right at the end I though that sauce seemed to be lacking something so I stirred in some cocoa, a little sugar and more salt and I think that helped it out a lot. Martha says that it’s a dish of Veracruzian origin and I suppose my addition makes it somewhat more Oaxacan, but it was yummy enough that I think I can be forgiven for a little interstate fusion.

I hacked the chicken through the bone to get some of the marrowy goodness into the sauce. If such a thing freaks you out (then maybe you shouldn’t be a regular reader of this blog) then you can use whole legs. Or I suppose you could also use split breasts if you’re the kind of person who would stew a breast.

As much as I’ve been enjoying our winter stews, I’m desperately looking forward to spring and fresh, local veggies. But for now, I’ll keep curling up at night with these sturdy, delightful meals.

I’ve finally managed to sort through all of our pictures from the Thailand/Malaysia trip and put them together into a web-friendly form. Ladies and gentlemen, for your viewing enjoyment, please have a look at Thailaysia Tour 2007!

It’s hard to believe, but we’ve been back from Thailand for almost two weeks now. What’s not so hard to believe is that I *still* haven’t sorted through all the pictures yet. They are forthcoming, though, I swear.

We are settling back into life, work and school, but do not fret: our adventures didn’t stop at the US border. We were home less than 2 hours before I finally got to try Masu East, the swanky sushi place in our neighborhood that the cool kids are always talking about. Of course, I was out of my gourd with jetlag so I barely remember what we had – I was grateful that I was able to keep from falling face first into the wasabi. I do remember eating a beef-centric starter and proclaiming it, “really, really, really, really good.” I had a limited vocabulary at the time.

Chris’s parents were kind enough to help us put a dent in the big ol’ Noble Rot gift certificate I won for my mac efforts back in September. We had a mighty and delicious feast that night and I still didn’t use up all of my $100. I love that place – and their mac ‘n’ cheese puts mine to shame.

Speaking of mac ‘n’ cheese prizes, I’ve been wondering since I won the regionals how and when I’d receive the other part of my award: 25 pounds of Tillamook cheese. Monthly delivery? Coupons? A single giant block plunked on my doorstep? Then it suddenly dawned on me: I probably already had the coupons. I checked the gift bag they’d given me on the night of the competition and indeed, there was an envelope shuffled in with everything else. It was stuffed with 25 coupons, each good for one pound of Oregon’s finest.

There was just one problem: they expired in 2 days.

Thus began the great Cheese Expedition of (the waning days of) 2007. Chris and I store-hopped around Portland visiting 3 Fred Meyers, 1 QFC, New Seasons and Wild Oats.

Now that I’d gathered all my prize cheese, what to do with it all? There’s only one thing to do: throw a big party.

So on New Year’s Day 2008 we hosted the 2nd Annual West Coast New Year’s Crêpe-Tacular. I made heaps of savory buckwheat and sweet crêpes and our guests stuffed them full of (what else?) cheese. But we also had an array of other stuffings, including a concoction Chris and I whipped up involving coconut cream and gula melaka, a palm sugar confection indigenous to Melaka, Malaysia. Good stuff! Too bad it got all eaten up before I had a chance to spread it on a crêpe. Guess we’ll just have to go back to Malaysia.

As people left the party, I shoved blocks of cheese into their hands and snuck them into their satchels. I managed to get rid of almost of all of it.

I know what you’re thinking: how could you give away *all* of your free cheese? Well, I may be altruistic, but I ain’t that nice. I still have 15 more coupons from my runner-up finish in the Nationals. And those don’t expire until 2009. So I’ll be in cheese for a long time to come, don’t you worry.

The first days of 2008 also brought us a visit from our friend Josh, a long-time friend of Chris’s who is now finishing the long hard slog through medical school. He was visiting Portland from New York City to do rounds of job interviews and it was as good an excuse as any to eat out around town. We visited our old friends at Tandoor India Kitchen and had a reee-diculous amount of food. They were pretty busy and since Ramesh does all the cooking by himself, we had to wait a pretty long time to be fed, but he made up for it by sending out even more dishes. They were all really good, but as usual the sambar vada really stood out, as did the dhania ghost.

We went to Francis for breakfast – this place seems to get a fair amount of badmouthing from Portland foodies, but I’m not sure why. The two breakfasts I’ve had there have been superb. That night we went off to old favorite, Ichidai for dinner and gorged on their always wonderful squid salad. I think I could live on that if I had to. The next day brought dim sum at Jin Wah (which I like at least as well as Wong’s King, though it takes 5 times as long to get there) and we wrapped up the visit with another fine dinner at Biwa.

As sad as we were to leave the mind-bogglingly delicious city of Bangkok, at least we’re comforted by having so much good food right here in little ol’ Portland, Oregon. Even though I can’t get fried bananas on any street corner, it’s still good to be home.

Corned beef hash with horseradish cream at Francis

frizzled onions on the Francis omelet

Make sure your passport is valid for a good long time.

We learned this one the hard way. On our way back into Thailand from Malaysia, we were checking into our flight. All was business as usual until the ticket agent said to Chris, “I’m sorry, sir, we cannot allow you on this flight.” He handed us a print-out of a policy which stated that in order to leave Malaysia for Thailand one’s passport must be valid for more than 6 months. Chris’s was valid only for another 5 months and 20 days.

Chris kept his calm, but I kinda flipped out. “That’s ridiculous!” I ranted like an American, “The passport is still valid for the duration of our trip. And it’s stupid rule! AND if we weren’t going to be able to leave the country, then we shouldn’t have been allowed in in the first place!”

The ticket agent went to his manager who came to us and said the same: very sorry, but we can’t let you fly. After more ranting and frantic hand-waving, they finally called the Thai visa authority and got a special dispensation for us to leave Malaysia after we promised, promised, promised to leave Thailand before the six months was up. Which is just what we said in the first place, but never mind.

It all worked out just fine in the end, but could have turned into a massive pain in the rear. But let this be a lesson to all you traveling folks: renew your passports early and often because you never know when some absurd bureaucratic rule will stymie your progress.

As a side note, the ironic thing is that C and I had talked about getting his passport renewed before we left, but decided it would be prudent to wait until after the trip given the backlogs at the passport offices. After all, we thought, it’s good for nearly six months more…

Chris and I just got back from a one-week trip to Malaysia. It was a lovely trip full of excellent food, friendly people and interesting sites. I have just a few words of advice for those of you who may be headed in that direction so that you, too, may get the most out of your trip and avoid any nefarious pitfalls.

Enjoy the vestiges of empire.

We started out the trip with a big splurge: 3 nights at the Eastern & Oriental Hotel in Georgetown, Penang. The gorgeous colonial building was established in 1885 and has the easy air of privileged entitlement about it. And I mean that in the best possible way. The spacious suites all open to expansive sea views, but where the hotel really shines is in the details. From the fresh fruit set just so on our coffee table every afternoon to the plug adaptors in every room; from the helpful –but not too helpful – staff to the steak and kidney pies at the cafe – all of it suddenly made imperial aggression seem not so bad.

Other shadows of the British empire remain as well: there’s the extensive but underused rail system, high tea at every upscale hotel and a full array of Cadbury products in every convenience store.

Revel in multiculturalism.
The dominant ethnicity in Malaysia is, of course, Malay, but you’d hardly know it in the cities we visited. We went to Georgetown (on the island of Penang), Kuala Lumpur (better known as “KL") and Melaka and probably saw more Chinese and Indian people than we did Malays. One of the many wonderful things about Malaysia is its rich and diverse heritage. It’s been drawing visitors from all around the world – lured by the legendary spices of the peninsula – for most of a millennium. The port cities are especially diverse with large populations of many different Asian groups as well as British, Portugese and Dutch. These cities were cosmopolitan long before the concept even existed. Where it gets really fun is where all these cultures overlap and interact. And what better way to experience that than in food?

Penang is generally recognized as the premier food destination of Malaysia and we ate Indian, Malay, Chinese and hybrids of all of the above while we were there – and it was certainly the best food of the trip. Indian roti stands are everywhere and we had a few different versions, both savory and sweet. I watched in amazement as the roti masters coaxed lumps of dough into tissue thin pastry sheets and either fried them up plain or stuffed them full of fragrant goodies.

You couldn’t swing a sun bear without hitting a small army of Chinese wokmasters on the streets of Penang. In fact, it seems that many of the most popular Malaysian dishes are really more Chinese than Southeast Asian. Char kuay teow, nasi goreng, laksa – they could all qualify for the title of Malaysian national dish and they would all be quite at home in any Chinese restaurant. Our personal favorite was char kuay teow, a dish of stir-fired wide rice noodles usually made with shrimp, bean sprouts, chinese mustard greens and sometimes just a touch of barbecued pork (but only in the parts of town that don’t have to worry about being halal). The whole thing is seasoned with soy sauce, plenty of oil and lots of wok hei. We must have ordered char kuay teow a half dozen times throughout our trip and probably the best one was the first. We stopped off in a little hawker center near the ferry terminal in Georgetown. This place ruled – not only did they have a good array of delicious looking stalls, but they had free wi-fi, too. We ordered noodles and sat down and were presented moments later with a gorgeous plate of noodles specked with good chunks of char and delicious bits of pork.

Travel By Bus.
We did. It was fast and cheap and totally comfortable. We rode from Penang to KL, KL to Melaka and Melaka back to KL using different bus companies each time, all of which were comfortable and inexpensive and, I’m told, way more efficient than the train.

The only downside to taking a private bus is that you will have to brave the cutthroat marketplace of the bus station. In KL, that means going to Puduraya, a god-forsaken place on the outskirts of Chinatown. There’s no way to put this delicately: this place sucks rocks. There’s a huge crush of humanity there, no air-conditioning and about 6 dozen different private bus lines all with ticket agents barking the names of their destinations at full volume. There are also several scalpers who aggressively try to sell their tickets to any and every passer by. And don’t get me started on the toilets.

Maybe the bus station in Penang is the same, but we wouldn’t know since the lovely people of the E&O Hotel did all the ticket arrangement for us, bless ‘em.

The three companies we used were:

Plusliner – they run the Nice Bus lines between Penang, KL and Singapore. We would have used them for the Melaka trip, but they only do long hauls.

Metro Bus Express – We accidentally bought this ticket from a scalper, but it worked out just fine and we only paid, like, one ringgit too many so whev. The bus was nice and not at all sketchy, even if the guy we bought from was.

Transnasional. This line was recommended to us by the hotel in KL and was indeed quite cush – and cheaper than our suspect tickets on Metro Bus.

Avoid the holidays.

One of the touristy things we wanted to do while on Penang was to go up Penang Hill. Some 800+ meters above sea level, it not only has a commanding view of the island, but also has the rarest of treats: a cool breeze and low temperature. We took a taxi to the base of the hill where one catches the funicular to the top. The driver warned us that the day we had chosen was a school holiday and it could be quite busy. He wasn’t kiddin’. The place was mobbed and the next tickets for the funicular were for 3 hours later. D’oh. The nice taxi man offered to drive us to the nearby Kek Lok Si temple to kill time before our lift and so we went, but many of the other school children overflowed in that direction, too. The temple was cool, but the claustrophobic climb back down the hill through a covered stairway/market was kind of awful.

Back at Penang Hill, the funicular was packed to the gills. Once we got to the top, the view was truly spectacular and once we had some room to spread out, all was well. The plague of the school holiday came back to us a while later when we went on a forest canopy walk – a walk through the tall forest trees on a rope bridge – we were having a pleasant stroll when a huge group of kids all descended on the rickety bridge at once, shouting at us to move faster. Damn kids.

Later, when we were in Melaka, our last day happened to be the Malaysian national holiday in recognition of the Hajj. I had declared earlier that we should try to eat more uniquely Malay foods and try to eat less Chinese and Indian for our last meal in country. But I picked the wrong day for that. All the Malay-owned (and therefore Muslim) shops were closed for the holiday and we were forced retreat to Chinatown. Not that there was anything wrong with that. We went back to the same chicken rice balls place we’d gone to for lunch the day before and it was just as delightful, if not more so, than it had been the day before.

Consider carrying a headscarf.
If you’re a woman, that is. Malaysia is predominantly Muslim, but like I said above it’s also very multicultural and people of all faiths intermingle every day. So it’s not at all uncommon to see a Muslim woman in cover chatting with her Hindu friend in front of the Christmas tree in the mall. For the most part, I didn’t feel at all conspicuous going around without a head scarf on. There were only a couple of times when it would have been nice to have a scarf handy.

I was walking around a traditional Malay neighborhood in KL one day on my own. I slowly came to notice that I was the only woman without cover and one of very few unaccompanied woman. As I passed a particularly tasty-looking nasi campur place, I could have sworn I heard a man yelling, “Hijab! Hijab!” at me, but maybe I was just feeling paranoid. Anyway, it would have been nice to be able to just pull something over my hair – besides, those scarves look like they’re very effective for keeping the sun off one’s neck.

The other time I would have liked to have had cover of my own was when we visited the the National Mosque. It’s a super cool building down by the Islamic Arts Museum in Lake Garden Park. Women must wear cover to enter the mosque and while they have loaners, they are full-length robes made of scratchy, hot nylon. Not what one really wants to go sight-seeing in.

The Islamic Arts Museum, by the way, was certainly one of the highlights of our time in KL. I highly recommend it.

Don’t fall in the hole.

There were open sewers everywhere and often no sidewalks in the cities we visited. Even worse were the places where the sidewalk was made up of concrete slabs placed over the sewer, but there were many places where the concrete was missing, busted or otherwise untrustworthy. Thus, as Chris and I walked single file down these narrow and treacherous walkways, we’d constantly be shouting back to each other, “Don’t fall in the hole!” And I’m happy to report that we didn’t.

Pictures from Malaysia are not quite yet here yet, but they will be soon. In the mean time you can peruse pics from Thailand from the week before.

Just a smattering of the many highlights of the last few days:

1. Wildlife spotting at Lumpini Park. There are monitor lizards everywhere, sometimes tangling with the local turtle population. They look cute and move slow, but they have a fierce bite, I’m told. Don’t know who would win in a battle royale between them and the many stray cats around the park some of whom are a bit skittish and some of whom are Mr. Friendlies.

2. Fried foods at every turn. We were going to go to Polo Fried Chicken the day before yesterday, but as we wandered around the neighborhood we found many vendors deep frying chicken parts and they looked so good we could not resist. At first I justified it by saying that we could compare street chicken with the Polo chicken and then I just gave in and grazed on chicken from cart to cart. And bananas, too! We found deep fried banana fritters and C asked me if I wanted some and I was all like, “Duh!” (My vocabulary had been reduced by a high fat diet.)

3. Emporium Food Court. Still as rad and posh as ever. I loooove the fake library books as decor.

4. Mission Hills Golf Club and Resort. This is where we stayed in Khao Yai last night. This place is almost impossible to describe – I’ve never seen anything like it. Construction on most of the hotel seems to have been abandoned some many years ago and the jungle has taken over most of the buildings on the complex. The rest of the complex is minimally maintained. The whole thing has a post-apocalyptic feel. Now I wanna make a movie there: Imagine a setting in the not-too-distant future in which World War III has wiped out most of mankind except for this luxury resort in the middle of the jungle. The Staff, unsure of what else to do, simply continues to run the hotel as best they can. Until… three strangers from Bangkok roll into town demanding service… Hijinks ensue. (Copyright 2007).

5. Pork Ribs at Krua Khao Yai. This place was recommended to Pop as was the dish. Both very good and unusual.

6. Hell Peppers at the Shell Station. I bought some chili peppers and sampled some local hot sauce at a gas station on our way back from Khao Yai today. Pop tells me they’re called “Hell Peppers” and I now I know why. Once I get feeling back in my tongue I’ll tell you all about it.

7. Khao Yai National Park. It’s really, really gorgeous. I’m so glad we went, even though we didn’t get to see any tigers. We did see one deer and tons of monkeys, though. We went for a surprisingly strenuous hike this morning and though I was sweating like a fiend through the whole thing it was totally worth it.

8. Rama IX Bridge. Pop missed our exit on the way home which means that we got to cross the Rama IX bridge not once, but twice. It’s a really cool design and has a commanding view of the Chao Praya.

9. My new notebook that declares, “My World is Cube.”

10. The Jook Man. I heart the Jook Man! He parks his truck outside Pop’s condo building every morning at 4:30 AM and sells his rice porridge until lunch time. Don’t tell anyone, but it’s even better than the jook my grandmother used to make. And he already knows my order: one with everything.

Pictures are here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vrunka/

well, I’ll start with the bummer news first. I didn’t win the Tillamook Mac ‘n’ Cheese National Grand Finale Cook-Off Competition. I was, however, first runner-up which is like losing, but with a sash. And more cheese. If you can believe it, they gave me 15 more pounds of cheese – which brings my winnings up to 40 pounds of Oregon’s finest.

But don’t cry for me, Portlandia, for I had a much bigger prize waiting for me: a trip to Thailand. And that’s where I write to you from today, in Bangkok, the City of Angels.

I’ve met a few angels already: they may look like they’re just working the woks, but trust me they’re worthy of reverence. We were in town for less than two hours before we hopped on the Sky Train and made a bee line for Mah Boon Krung. We had packed and left Portland in such a flurry of chaos that we forgot more things than I care to admit so MBK seemed like a good first stop to pick up everything we needed – and maybe a snack or two, too.

For those who don’t already know, MBK is a massive, chaotic, frenetic mall in central Bangkok. It’s like they condensed every market, shop, restaurant and street bazaar in Bangkok into six floors of shopping mayhem. It’s also one of my favorite places in the whole city. It may have been a bit foolhardy to dive in there after having been mostly awake for 48 hours, but it was the best place I knew of to get all the things we needed: socks, bras, a SIM card and a camera battery charger.

All our missions accomplished, we rewarded ourselves with a trip to the food court. I got some fried chicken and C ordered som tom. We weren’t breaking new ground here or anything, but we had an enjoyable, simple snack.

We headed back to Pop’s condo for a short rest before heading out for dinner. The chosen spot was a branch of Taling Pling, a small Bangkok chain with one outpost not far from the condo. It’s a very comfortable, attractive restaurant with a menu the size of the Oxford English Dictionary. They offer a vast array of Thai dishes from the pedestrian to the unusual. We tried for a mix of both. For the four of us we got stir-fried morning glory, crispy catfish, wingbean salad, crispy fried beef with basil and pad thai. It was all quite good, though the pad thai was a little wimpy, but my favorite was probably the wingbean salad, in part because the beans were cut in such a way as to make them look like Tie Fighters from Star Wars. But more importantly, they were served in a very interesting sweet/sour coconut milk dressing. Very tasty.

Having just barely held it together for 60 hours now, we finally headed back to the condo and remained unconscious through the night.

I wasn’t sure if we could do it, but we did actually manage to get up the next morning. Along with Pop and Nancy, we all headed out Wat Pho, one of the few major Bangkok tourist attractions I’ve never visited. There was this cool demonstration/fair in progress when we got there which was sponsored by the Thai Natural Medicine Foundation. They had samples of herbal and traditional remedies laid out with explanatory signs attached to each. It all looked neat, but too bad the signs were only in Thai so I had no idea what any of it was. I could have found miracle cures in there if only I could read Thai. Ah well…

We wended our way through the sprawling temple complex eventually finding our way to the main attraction: the giant reclining Buddha. I knew it was going to be big, but, listen: it’s really, really big. I mean really big. 46 meters long and 15 meters high big. I recommend it, but do whatever you can to avoid going when a huge bus tour has just arrived. We just barely beat out a massive huge crowd and were very grateful for it.

It was nearly lunch time now so we gathered the troops and decided to try to find the legendary restaurant, Chote Chitr, a hole in the wall restaurant that has gained great fame since its mention in a New York Times article about two years ago. I had meant to go there on our last visit, but never made it. This time I was determined and to make sure it happened, we’d go on our very first day in town.

Our first big challenge was finding a cab driver who would agree to drive us there. Pop talked with no less that 4 cab drivers and 2 tuk-tuk drivers most of whom had no idea where this place might be (despite our having explicit directions and a map). One driver knew just the place – but when we saw that his vehicle was a tuk tuk we backed off. The only thing scarier than a tuk tuk ride is one with way too many people crammed in the back.

While Pop was in negotiations with Bangkok’s transportation fleet, I rounded us up some sticky rice from a street vendor. Delicious and only 5 Baht each. Pop finally talked a taxi driver into driving us into the general vicinity of the restaurant and in short order we found the place, indeed, a tiny spot with just a few tables and several enthusiastic dogs who seem to have the run of the place.

As soon as we sat Pop asked the proprietress for a menu and she scolded him brusquely in Thai. “We have over 400 dishes we can make: there is no menu. You tell me what you want and I’ll make it.” Pop bristled at her curt manner as she turned to the rest of us and continued in English. “My restaurant is very famous. I will tell you what you should get.”

How could we say no to that?

“You get mee grob crispy fried noodles, banana flower salad, red curry with duck and yellow curry with prawns. Four dishes is enough.”

I made a feeble attempt to ask if there were any non-curry dishes she would recommend as well, but I was either misunderstood or blown off so the recommended four was what we got. And there was nothing to complain about there. Their rightly famous mee grob had an outstanding flavor and a wonderful variety of textures: crunchy, gooey, chewy. It could have easily been way too sweet, but had just enough sweetness to bring out the other flavors. Both curries had an amazing complexity and depth that I’d never experienced before. But the real winner was the banana flower salad, a culinary triumph of a dish. It was bold, unique, nuanced and utterly delightful.

Nancy chatted up the owner and learned that she only uses fresh herbs and spices in all the dishes ("I go to the market every morning at 1:30 AM,” she droned with her eyelids drooping and her chin in her hands) and that she and her sister do all the cooking which they learned from their grandfather, who opened the restaurant some seventy years ago. All that experience and commitment to quality certainly shows: both in the food and the ‘tude.

Fully sated (four dishes was in fact more than enough: we left quite a lot behind), Nancy and Pop headed home while C and wandered the neighborhood. After about an hour of traipsing through the sois, we were in need of a sit down and chose a small coffee house opposite Wat Mahan called Mari Green Coffee. Turns out that they roast their own coffee from green beans grown in Northern Thailand. The owner is something of a coffee nerd and we chatted with him about his roasting process and enjoyed a fine cup of espresso. They had good looking sweets, too (all homemade, we were told), but were still too full from breakfast to partake.

One more quick trip to Mah Boon Krong (just can’t stay away from that place) followed by another sit down at a gelato chain called iBerry. We shared a triple scoop of guava salted plum, coconut with mixed fruit (including corn!) and lychee sorbet, all excellent. We’ll have to try the tamarind next time.

By the time we got back it was nearly six o’clock: so much for taking it slow on our first day. We rested for a bit and then tried to go to a restaurant on Silom called Khrua Aroy-Aroy, but they were closed so we stopped off at a street stall for sustenance. We got a few old timey favorites: pad kee mao, tom kha gai, pad ga prao – and one new one for fun: a chicken omelet made in the style of hoy thawt, which is to say with a ton of oil. The pad kee mao tasted a little off to me, but I liked everything else, especially the chicken omelet that had a je ne sais quoi that chicken omelets in the states sorely lack.

Sorry, I haven’t time to embed the pictures in the post, but you can check ‘em out on flickr here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vrunka/

Sorry for the extended absence, but I have excuses! And I didn’t even have to use an excuse generator.

1. It’s been crazy busy at work. Like, working the weekends and late nights, people swearing and threatening to quit busy. Merry Christmas!

2. I’ve been preparing for the big Cook-Off Finals! Making batches and batches of mac ‘n’ cheese takes time, yo. For those of you who are in the Portland area and have some free time this Friday, stop by the Hotel Lucia downtown some time between 11-1:00 PM. You, too, can witness the mac throwdown.

3. We’re preparing for our vacation. C and I leave less than 8 hours after the big Cook-Off for Thailand and Malaysia. Hooray! But learning how to say, “I want to eat what you’re eating” in two different languages takes time, too.

But lack of good food is definitely *not* one of my excuses. We’ve been eating well, believe you me. I wish I had time to write up all of my recent food exploits, but in lieu of that I’ll just leave you with a couple lovely pictures of a brandied apple coffee cake from the Arleta Library Cafe, an awesome breakfast place and not just because their motto is “Because good food is long overdue.”

Good lookin’ cake, eh?

It even has a nice looking backside…

Last Sunday brought yet another PortlandFood outing, this time to Chinese Delicacy, a restaurant on SE 82nd. 82nd Avenue is best known in Portland for its high population of cheapo car lots and perhaps even cheaper ladies of the evening – though I have to admit I don’t really know if the ladies are cheap or not. Unlike the car lots where the reader boards scream out their $599 deals, the ladies do not advertise prices.

Anyway… Over the last few years the still seedy strip has also become known for something unlikely for such a sketchy neighborhood: good food. The lower part of 82nd has become something of a nouveau Chinatown, or I should say Asiatown because many different Asian ethnicities are represented. There’s the mighty FuBonn shopping center anchoring the strip and plenty of quality eateries nearby to choose from: Pho Van, Pho Hung, Wong’s King, Malay Satay Hut, Bo Bun Hue and much, much more.

In the middle of this Asian wonderland is Chinese Delicacy. The name would suggest Chinese food and the decor speaks to old school Chinese American eats. But the owners are actually Korean and can bust out some primo dishes in any of the Chinese, Korean or Chinese-American idioms available to them. The PortlandFood group would get a chance to try all of these cuisines, in one convenient location.

I arrived a little late so I think I missed out on the first couple of dishes, not that I left hungry. Here’s a selection of the dishes I did get to sample.

Shrimp Dumplings with spinach (?). tasty, simple dumplings.

Korean Meatballs. Spiced Asianly and served in a gravy with assorted vegetables and mushrooms. The meatballs were wonderfully tender and very flavorful.

Meatball, singular.

Peking Style Egg Rolls. When they say “egg rolls” here, they mean it. These are paper thin, crepe style omelets with all manner of goodies wrapped up inside. Delicious.

The goodies inside the roll. really a fantastic dish. Note that if you head out here yourself, this is not on the menu and must be pre-ordered.

We got a couple orders of sweet and sour chicken and sweet and sour shrimp. This is the kind of Chinese food that my mother warned me about. It’s deep fried with a heavy batter in a sticky, sweet, gloppy sauce. Others seemed to be enjoying it very much, but after one bite, I abandoned it, choosing to save stomach space for other dishes. I mean, I like Chinese-American as much as the next person (after all, I *am* a Chinese-American!), but when there’s all this other good stuff on the table, it has to take a backseat.

The Korean classic, bulgogi. Theirs was excellent.

Pork Chow Fun Se. Nice, simple dish well executed.

Ma Po Tofu. Well spiced, nicely done.

Fried Chicken with Special Sauce. Special, indeed! These would have been worth the trip alone. Someday, there will be a knock-down battle between American Southerners and Koreans for the title of Fried Chicken Overlords and I, for one, want to be there to witness the competition.

There was also some excellent kim chi on the table and after dinner we got a lovely plate of orange slices and lychees. The lychees were good, but having the canned variety made me grateful that I will soon be in the land fresh lychees… and longans and rambutan and mangosteens…

All in all, I was very please with our meal, and of course, the company, too. If places like Chinese Delicacy continue to proliferate on 82nd then the much maligned avenue may soon slough off its bad reputation.

I’m in full support of the recent proliferation of waffle and pancake carts around town. As a lover of both breakfast and cheap meals on the street, the added availability of griddled bread products is a most welcome trend. The newest addition to the family: the Waffle Window on SE 36th just below Hawthorne.

This newbie on the block is actually attached to a venerable Portland institution: the Bread and Ink Cafe. Back when I was in college, the Bread and Ink, with its white table cloths and double digit entrees, seemed wholly unattainable. I looked upon it with both desire and disdain as a place for the privileged few. Once I finally got to eat there, I was disappointed (though somewhat relieved) to find that it wasn’t all that after all. Yes, it’s a bit fancier and classier than your usual breakfast joint, but food-wise, you can certainly do better.

But when I heard about their new venture, the Waffle Window, around the corner from the main restaurant I was willing to forgive and forget. Their goal is to make Belgian waffles the way they do in Belgium – crispy, caramelized, yeasty, chewy and hot off the iron. And sold from a window, too, though, I don’t know if that’s particularly Belgian.

When I visited it was a particularly dreary Portland day – probably not unlike the European lowlands this time of year. It wasn’t exactly ideal weather for eating outside, but it was just the kind of weather that makes one want hot sweet bread products. I went with the classic, unadorned waffle, though they have some positively baroque creations topped off with various fruits and creams and whatnot. My waffle was hot and golden brown with a sugary crust and served in a paper wrap. The first bite was a texture sensation: I’m not the kind of foodie who uses the word “mouthfeel” very often (doesn’t it just sound kind of… dirty?), but it was a texture that made me want to talk about mouthfeel – in a good way, I mean.

Now, I know what you must be thinking: Hey, don’t you dislike sweet breakfast? Well, not exactly, no. I just don’t like making a whole meal out of sweet breakfast. The great thing about thing about the window is that you can pick one up on your way to real breakfast. Genius. Just genius. Plus, these waffles are pretty small, about the diameter of a coffee saucer, so tucking one away is not going to fill you up and take room away that could be better used for savory treats.

But the very best thing about the Waffle Window was that since it was so rainy, I had to huddle under the Bread and Ink’s awning in order to eat my waffle. That put only a thin pane of glass between me and the yuppies eating their $12 benedicts. Sure, I was shivering outside, but I had a genuine Belgian waffle that only cost $2! I can’t say for sure, but I think the diners inside felt the full force of my gloating.

The Waffle Window on rainy Portland day

mmm… Belgium… (more…)

For a major metropolis with an educated, literate populace, Portland has a surprisingly craptacular daily paper. I was in the break room at work the other day talking with a woman who just moved here from the East Coast. She held up the Oregonian and asked, “Is this, like, the main paper here?”

“Yup,” I said with a grimace, knowing what was coming next.

“It’s terrible!”

“Yup.”

“I mean, it totally ignores the basic principles of journalism, it’s riddled with grammatical errors and the stories are lame!”

“Yup! It’s an embarrassment!” I said with a smile and a resigned shrug.*

But despite my grousing, every once in a while I have to thank ye olde O for telling me something new, interesting and useful. It’s rare, but it happens and when it does I feel like I should give the old rag its due. So, thank you, Oregonian, for telling me about Junior Ambassadors.

A couple Fridays ago, a little blurb caught my eye in the A&E section. It was a write up of a lunch cart in North Portland that serves an eclectic mix of items: hot soups, homemade ice cream and a creature called the panwich: a sandwich made with two pancakes instead of bread. This, I thought, could either be a goofball gimmick or really yummy and I could only find out for sure with a personal visit.

Now I should say here that I’m really not a sweet breakfast kind of gal. While waffles and pancakes and such always sound nice enough, I’ll always choose a savory option first. In fact, the last time I remember ordering pancakes at a restaurant was a really unfortunate “meal” at Denny’s in my long ago youth. It was about 4:00 AM and blueberry pancakes sounded like a good idea until they left me retching in the bathroom by dawn.

But I digress. The thing is that sweet breakfast always looks delightful (Denny’s versions excepted), but I know that after a few bites that I won’t be interested anymore and then where would I be? Grazing off of other people’s plates, that’s where. And it’s tough to convince my dining neighbors to order exactly the breakfast I want.

So the best solution is to have a sweet and savory mix: a little something for my very small sweet tooth and the rest salty, cheesy, yummy. Hence, my immediate attraction to the concept of the panwich and off I went in search of lunch.

The cart is in a fairly unlikely spot. It’s in a North Portland neighborhood that’s a bit sleepier than your usual lunch cart location. It’s on a big empty lot and is partially obscured by a long chainlink fence. The cart itself is painted bright orange (+1 from me) and they also have a covered picnic table on the lot (another +1 since so many months in Portland are ill-suited for outdoor dining).

I ordered a panwich with pumpkin, feta and rocket – seemed like a winning combination – and when I saw that the soup of the day was kale and garlic, I couldn’t pass it up, kale fiend that I am. The soup was simple, but nice. It was very like a soup I make at home, especially after I chili-fied it with one of the many shakers of spice laid out on a tray on the table.

a simple fall soup

But I was here for the fabled panwich and that came up fresh and hot not long after.

here it is with a bit of slaw

It’s a funny feeling, picking up a pancake sandwich in your hands, but I think it’s one I could get used to. Maybe I’d like pancakes for breakfast more if I were allowed to get my grubby paws on them and gulp ‘em down.

Or, more likely, maybe it was the cheese and other goodies inside that really sold me on this. The pumpkin was roasted soft and pliant, but still had some shape to it. It had been gently treated and wasn’t at all fibrous. The rocket added a nice bitter note and some welcome crunchy greenery. But the feta really pulled it all together, like a good cheese should.

cheesy panwich…

A few things surprised me about the pancakes: first they weren’t really sweet (so much for fulfilling my sweet and savory jones all at once, but it was just well since too much sweetness would have upset the balance) . Second, they were multigrain – this was a pleasant surprise as I’m always up for more tasty, nutty, whole-grain goodness. Third, and most surprisingly, they were hugely filling. I ate half of my sandwich and felt like I’d been thoroughly gut bombed. But, you know, in a good way. I wrapped up the other half to bring the love home (or back to work, as the case may be).

Because I can’t leave well enough alone, I also ordered a scoop of their homemade chocolate ice cream. I did get it to go, though. I tried a spoonful right then and there and, sadly, it was my only disappointment of the whole Junior Ambassadors experience. The texture was chalky and icy and the chocolate flavor, while good, was very subtle. That’s a nice way of saying bland.

But I can forgive Junior Ambassadors this fault because they are bringing the panwich to the people and there ain’t nothing I can say against that.

You can have a panwich of your very own at the Junior Ambassador’s cart which is located on N. Albina at Blandena (my second favorite Portland city street name, right after Couch). They are currently open Wednesdays through Saturdays noon to dark (which is, like, 3 hours later, these days).

* if you think I’m exaggerating about how bad the Oregonian is, take my new favorite example of their assault on the English language. In a restaurant review the other day the writer said, “The cafe’s values [are] worn nakedly on its sleeve.” See? They’ve invented a whole new genre! The mixed and conflicting metaphor.

This picture is kind of calling out for a LOLcat caption, but I’m just not sure what it is…

When Chris’s brother James announced that he and his long-time girlfriend, Nicky, were getting married he made it clear that it was going to be small and simple. Just a courthouse ceremony, no big reception, just close family. Fine, we said, but… we can still buy cake, right?

We did talk them into a cake and dinner, too. The two families met up for dinner at Wong’s King, Portland’s only Chinese restaurant, last Friday night for a mighty celebratory feast. The company was great, spirits were high and the food was excellent. Wong’s really strutted their stuff and showed why they receive such consistent praise.

We ordered 9 dishes – the traditional lucky number of dishes for a wedding – and all of them were at least really good, a few were freakin’ fantastic.

Sticky Rice Beef Balls. I had no idea what to expect with this dish, but it sounded interesting. I’m glad we ordered it as it was the most unusual dish of the evening. There’s q meatball in the center: beef flavored with orange, ginger and garlic. The sticky rice shell added a little bit of sweetness and an interesting chewing experience. I don’t know that this will be a regular favorite, but it was very good.

Char-siu, barbecued pork, with a little plum sauce.

Seafood soup with sizzling rice. Very clean, fresh flavors with excellent seafood chunks. The sizzling rice adds visual and audio interest.

Steamed bass with ginger and scallions. This is the dish I think of when I think of celebratory Chinese dinners (well, that and a whole roasted pig). Wong’s does right by this bass and treats it with care. Wonderfully good.

Shrimp and scallops with snow peas and candied walnuts. This is another dish where Wong’s love of seafood really shines. The shrimp and scallops are fresh and perfectly cooked. The candied walnuts make this one a big crowd pleaser.

Sizzling Black Pepper Steak. I had high hopes for this dish in part because the last time we were at Wong’s I noticed that several tables of Chinese families had ordered it and also because when I ordered it, the waiter said, “Ooh! That’s good!” So I figured we’d hit one out of the park with this one. But it turned out to be the only disappointment of the meal, albeit a very slight one. It was tasty enough, but not really exceptional. It hadn’t really sizzled long enough so the onions that formed the base of the dish were mostly raw. I believe that this dish can be really good, but just not this time.

Tofu and Chicken Clay Pot with Salted Fish. This was an all around winner. The texture was smooth and silky, the flavor was subtle, but vibrant. It was a table favorite.

House Special Pan Fried Noodles. This was a must-order since noodles are good luck. But, extra luckily for us, this is another of Wong’s stand out dishes. It’s crispy fried noodles with a ton of veggies, meat and seafood on top. Yum.

We also ordered, though didn’t photograph, a plate of Stir Fried Garlic Pea Shoots. These are super delicious, but they got a little overshadowed by all the other goodness on the table. They also came out last which meant we went home with a big ol’ box of them.

I hope you saved room for cake because we got a doozy. C and I were all too happy to go cake shopping when given the opportunity and we went right back to the very same place that made our wedding cake: Pambiche. We got the Torta Domino, a favorite at the restaurant, but asked them not to decorate it with dominoes like they do there. Something about the association of gambling and marriage seemed wrong.

Anyway, our hero and pastry chef, Roseanne came up with a lovely alternative decoration scheme:

And the cake itself? Awesome, of course. We were all stuffed, but somehow we all managed to clean our dessert plates.

Nicky wonders if she really has to eat the whole thing…

I’ve long been a loyal subject of Wong’s King, but I was especially impressed with this meal. Not only was the food great, but the service was perfect. They were helpful and accommodating at every turn. They had our two tables set and ready to go – in a primo spot by the fish tanks! – when we got there a full half hour before our reservation. When I got a little bossypants on them and told them how we wanted the dishes paced, they didn’t bat an eye and executed it perfectly. They totally took care of the cake – plating, serving and re-boxing the leftovers – without complaint. Everything was crisp, efficient and professional. And friendly which is sort of surprising for a fast-paced Chinese restaurant.

In short, it was the perfect meal with which to celebrate the newlyweds. Thanks, Wong’s. And Mazel Tov/Song He/Woo Hoo! to James and Nicky!

You may have already guessed, but I really love butternut squash. And it’s not just because it recently won me $1000 (though that’s pretty cool, too). That squash has so many great things going for it. Here are just a few:

1. It’s orange, my favorite color.

2. I love sweet and savory combinations, just what this squash was made for.

3. It goes great with kale and everyone knows I am wacky for the kale.

4. It’s going to win me $5000 next month and it’ll win me even more if I can track down a lasagna cook-off contest.

That’s because I just came up with a new recipe that’s sure to win friends and influence people. I don’t have a good name for it yet so if you think of one, let me know.

Possibly Prize-Winning Butternut Squash Lasagna

1 - 2lb squash, peeled and sliced into long, lasagne noodle-like strips.
olive oil
salt

2 bunches - kale, cleaned, stemmed and sliced into ribbons
1 strip - bacon, diced (optional, but c’mon, it’s bacon!)
3 cloves - garlic, minced
1/2 cup - water or chicken stock
1/2 cup - raisins
2 tbsp - toasted pine nuts (I didn’t actually use this in my version, but I bet it’s super good)

1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp flour
2 cups milk
1/2 cup shredded cheddar

5 oz goat cheese, crumbled

a fistful of pepitas if you’re feeling spunky

Brush your strips of squash with olive oil and arrange them in a single layer on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle conservatively with salt. Roast for 20-30 minutes at 425F or until golden brown. I recommend flipping them once during cooking, but this can be a delicate and challenging process. For me, it involved two spatulas, stove-side contortions and a few of the minor swear words.
Set aside your caramelly brown squash slices and allow to cool.

They even kinda look like lasagne noodles. Kinda.

Heat up a big skillet on the stove on medium-high heat and toss in the chopped bacon bit (note: if you choose to go veg for this recipe, just toss in some olive oil). Cook until browned most of the fat is rendered out and toss in the garlic. Stir for a scant milisecond before throwing in the kale (you may have to do this in batches to get the kale to cook down). Add your liquid and reduce heat to low. Cook until the kale is quite tender, about 10-15 minutes. Add in raisins and pine nuts.

While the kale is cooking, get your bechemel going. In a 2 quart sauce pan, melt the butter and add the flour, whisking until golden brown. Slowly whisk in milk and bring up to a simmer. Stir in cheddar and remove from heat. You can grate in a bit of fresh nutmeg here if you like. I did. If your tastebuds are attuned to a diet rich in sodium, add in a 1/4 tsp of salt, too.

Lightly grease a 9x13″ pan. Spread a layer of the kale mixture over the bottom of th pan and cover with slices of squash. Sprinkle half of the goat cheese on top of the squash. Do another layer of kale and another of the squash. Top with your bechemel and sprinkle the goat cheese over the top. Bake at 350F for 30 minutes or until bubblicious. I put it under the broiler for a minute, but that’s just because I’m obsessed with cheesy, crispy bits.

C had this cool idea that we should toast the butternut squash seeds like pepitas and sprinkle them over the top. They were a total bitch to seed, though, so maybe you should just buy some already toasted pepitas at the store. We wound up sprinkling it with parsley instead, though we did snack on some of our toasted seeds which were yummy, even though they were sort of a pain.

Cheesy crusty bits.

That’s what the cross section looks like.

I suppose you could also use lasagna noodles in this recipe if you felt like it. If you were trying to feed a crowd, that would help bulk it up and make it a bit more substantial. As it was we had plenty plenty for dinner for the two of us and more for bentos the next day.