cap'n blog and salty

Eet u lekker!

That was the saying on the menu at Warung Melatie, a Surinamese Indonesian place up the street from the hotel. I’m not sure if that’s really a proper Dutch phrase, but it basically means “Eat tasty!” and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.

Everything I’d read about Dutch food was dismissive at best, derisive at worst. Sure, the cheese is good, they’d say and if you like raw herring you’re in for a treat, but aside from that, good luck.

So I wasn’t expecting much when I got here, but it’s been nothing if not a culinary joyride (the trauma of the pancake cruise aside) for the past two weeks.

Here are the highlights.

One of my main goals of this trip was to have an Indonesian rijstaffel dinner so when a few people mentioned that they were heading to such a place I quickly jumped on the bandwagon. The restaurant, Dewi Sri, turned out to be one of the finest – Indonesian or otherwise – in Rotterdam. We were a little taken aback, but they agreed to have us scruffy Americans and in return we had much delicious food. Too bad it was too dark to get good pictures, but we ordered 4 rijstaffels each of which involved 6-8 different dishes – including the few duplicates, we had something like 30 different tiny dishes laid out on our table which meant some seriously good eats. There were old standbys like beef rending, chicken curry and pork satay. And there were things I’d never seen before like peteh beans in dark soy sauce, whole eggs in sambal and tempeh fried with beans and chilies.

Sequoia leans in for a bite of our chili pepper centerpiece while Patrick looks on.

just a few of the dishes on the table…

…and a few more

A few nights later it was a quiet evening in the hotel and Jen told me that she’d ferreted out a what was supposed to be a premium Indian-Pakistani place in the neighborhood. I would have been glad to try it out in any circumstances, but was especially keen to have food that didn’t come in sandwich form so I eagerly agreed. The place was called Ambala and the food was delicious; I hope we have time to go back there again before we go.

Didn’t take any pictures, but Jen snapped a few.

Inspired by Jen’s intrepid chowhoundiness, I mined the tubes for information about other places to explore and discovered an Indonesian-Surinamese place called Warang Melatie in our neighborhood that got good reviews.

For those who just said. “Aren’t Surinam and Indonesia on opposite sides of the globe?” you are correct. But what they have in common is a Dutch colonial past. Apparently the Dutch were quite happy to play mix ‘n’ match with the peoples of the world and would use their maritime might to just move several thousand workers from, say, Indonesia or Cape Verde to South America. This created an unusual and startling mix of cultures which carries on in a number of ways, including the restaurants of Rotterdam. Incidentally there are even more Surinamese-Chinese (or better still Surinamese-Chinese-Indonesian) restaurants out there than just Surinamese-Indonesian.

So clever me, I found this place and figured out how to get there, but then I was faced with a completely baffling menu. I know nothing about Indonesian food and even less about Surinamese so I was a little stuck, but with the little bit I’d read on the web and the knowledge I had from being in Malaysia (with a similar cuisine and more importantly language) I was able to order saoto soup and bami kip (chicken noodles). I decided to leave the Surinamese side of the menu for another trip.

The place was busy, that was a good sign, and it meant that I had to wait for a while for my food. That was fine because it gave me the opportunity to watch what other people were ordering. I quickly noticed that most people were ordering from the Surinamese menu, but perhaps that was just because those items were cheaper. I watched carefully and saw that the Surinamese items were all sandwiches stuffed mostly with different kinds of saucy curries or various spice levels. At 2,50 Euros a pop, I think that’ll be my next meal for sure.

So this is what saoto soup looks like. Internet searches haven’t told me much about it, but it is crazy delicious. There’s a spice in there that I can’t identify at all, but it’s sort of similar to nutmeg. And, yes, that is a whole hard-boiled egg in there.

My bami kip – which looks yummy, but a little dull…

but it was saved from total dullness by this amazing – and HOT – chili sauce that came with. Actually there were three sauces that came with this dish – I am in full support of a dish that comes with a wide array of condiments.

Cecilia had read about this kind of crazy artists’ residence/vegan activist/zine library/performance space place called (unpronounceably) Poortgebouw on the other side of the river and organized a group to head over there for one of their Sunday night communal vegetarian dinners. We had some difficulty finding the place – we did get to walk over the Erasmus Bridge though which was pretty cool – but once we found it we realized what a cool space it is. And it looked like it had been plucked from the warehouse district of any big American city – it was full of scruffy hipsters under graffitied walls covered in band posters. We talked to one of the residents who said that the building had been squatted some 20+ years ago by artists, but not too long ago became legit and now they’re even an incorporated non-profit.

But how’s their cooking? Pretty good it turns out. They served bruschetta for an appetizer and Thai veggie curry. We split before dessert (to my mild dismay), but there was huge trayloads of fresh ripe melon being passed around as we left.

The squatters’ paradise

on the inside

Last night we had a groovy dinner at Dizzy’s Jazz Café, a swinging joint in our ‘hood. I didn’t expect too much from the food but it turned out to be really good (even better than the music which was that delightful flavor of whiteboy smooveness).

my salad to start: absolutely delicious cheese, but they gave me about 6 ounces of it. Trent ate most of it.

for dessert we had our choice of either ice cream or chocolate slut. You can tell from our tally sheet what won. The slut was tasty, but I was too stuffed at the end to eat much of it.

there’s the band. Groovy, man.

If what I read in the Dutch hipster zines is correct, just a few years ago a new snack delight was invented right here in Rotterdam (just across the canal from us, in fact) that has since taken the city (country?) by storm. It’s called kapsalon which means “hairdresser” because it’s named after the profession of the person who requested it.

So here’s how it’s made: you take a mess of fries, right?, then you pile on a bunch of doner kabob meat. Then cheese, shredded lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, tzatziki – and for those who are feeling spunky, Indonesian sambal. And that’s it. You eat the whole ungodly mess right there goop and all. It’s kind of a multi-ethnic poutine, if you will. As soon as we all read about that we knew it had to be had. I still haven’t tried it myself, but here’s the one Laird ordered and devoured the other day.

At the same restaurant (a chain kebab/falafel place) I ordered a plain ol’ falafel sandwich which turned out be really good – I mean, not L’As Du Felafel good, but pretty good and it didn’t cost 7 euros. It had a lot of cinnamon in it which was interesting.

I suspect that I will continue to eat well for the rest of the trip, in spite of all the stereotypes about Dutch food. Perhaps a bit too well. I went out and bought a large size of pants today at H&M and after a cheese party in the lobby Stefanie announced that she was unbuttoning her pants – an indication both of how much we’ve been eating and what living in close quarters with the same people for weeks will do to you.

eet u lekker, y’all.

Our hotel in Rotterdam is on the Coolhaven, just across the bridge from Delfshaven, the last remnant of old Rotterdam left standing after World War II. It’s a striking reminder of what Rotterdam, now glitzy and ultramodern, once looked like. I’ll try not to use this word too often, but it’s nothing if not charming.

For a major international metropolis – and the largest harbor in Europe – Rotterdam is a surprisingly compact city. One can walk clear from one end to the other in under an hour, 40 minutes if you stride briskly. And imagine what you could do on one of the ubiquitous bicycles.

This means that I’ve been able to do quite a bit of sightseeing in not much time. There’s a lot more to do (oh, and school, too), but it’s great that the city is so accessible.

Here’s what I’ve seen (and eaten) so far…

there’s a place nearby called MIX-R Chicken and they serve… chicken. This is the lunch special plate which comes with a generous serving of mayo and fries, of course.

I was reading some ridiculous thread on Chowhound about who has the best gelato IN THE WORLD. It’s a silly thing to discuss, but I noticed that one peron gave a shout out to De Ijssalon in Rotterdam and so when I happened past it, I stopped in. The cute ice cream boy (complete with paper hat) asked me something in Dutch and I shrugged my American shoulders.
“I asked if you could find your favorite flavors.”
“Oh,” I said, “well, yes, I ‘ll have a double scoop cone of…”
He laughed, “It wasn’t a command, just a question!”
I keep being surprised at how the Dutch have such a better grasp of English than I do.
I got a pistachio and stroopwaffel (which may now be my favorite flavor) double scoop.

They have a delivery motorcycle. Check out the “pol-ICE” sticker!

I read about this store and went to go visit, but they appear to be permanently closed. Who’s the fool now?

Saw this awesome monument to Marten Toonder outside the library. Very surreal and cool.

went to the big market (grote markt) yesterday and it was pretty cool – lots of crazy stuff: food, clothes, electronic knick knacks, antique tea pots, etc. and cheese.

lunch, dinner, kunst

We went to this cool place for dinner called Biblio. Wish I had better pics of the inside – it was all book-themed and looked like a library. Very cool. Food was good, too. I had salmon. Interesting thing about the restaurants in the Netherlands – they all seem to bring you extra food. With this I got a bowl of fries, pickled spicy veggies and a salad. Who knew?

guess what dessert we chose to share?

Did you know that Holland is very windy? Somehow that took me by surprise but it shouldn’t have if I’d thought of their freakin’ NATIONAL SYMOBOL. So, yeah. Real windy here.

Anyway, this is one of the very few (and probably only urban) working windmill flour mills left in Holland. You can tour it and locals queue up to buy flour from them on their only two open days a week. The crowd when I was there was impressively international.

is this too cliche? I don’t care – it was really cool!

inside the mill, 2nd level

in case you’re interested in how a flour mill works…

Tonight we had an organized group outing on a Pancake Boat – an hour long cruise with all you can eat pancakes! Wow. It was a short walk to the dock from our hotel. After the cruise I was really wishing that the walk were longer…

Waiting with anticipation… Someone decided that it would be fun to have a competition to see who could eat the most pancakes… I thought I was up for the challenge, but crapped out at a meager 3 pancakes. The winner downed five. ouch.

toppings for the pancakes…

and, in typical Dutch fashion, a great assortment of sprinkles.

The pancakes themselves were somewhere between an American flapjack and a French crepe and came in sweet (apple or plain)….

or savory (bacon!). They were way better than I was expected for an all-you-can-eat affair.

The great thing about Dutch is that while it may look foreign, just sounding out the words will often enlighten an English speaker as to the meaning. For example, what do you suppose one does at this establishment?

For some reason graffiti is always more interesting in other countries.

“Jewel of the Netherlands.”
“A must-see.”
“Alluringly cosmopolitan.”

That’s just some of what the guidebooks say about Maastricht, the small, ancient city in the Southern tip of the Netherlands. I decided to visit the city before heading off to Rotterdam because:
A. it was more or less on the way between Paris and Rotterdam;
B. all the praise lavished upon it;
C. I heard they had good food.

So I made my plans and a few days before I left, lo and behold, an old college friend of mine comes out of the woodwork and mentions that he’s living in Maastricht. Score! Tour Guide!

I arrive in Maastricht and Francisco meets me at the train station and the tour begins right away as we stop for a coffee near the station where we talk about the paradox of Dutch liberalism, a topic I hope to investigate further in my time here.

Off to the Stayokay Hostel which, for a youth hostel, is kind of spookily nice with Wi-Fi and a terrace on the river. Turns out I wouldn’t sleep a wink that that night because of the drunken German footballers staying throughout the hostel, but nevertheless it was a fine place and a bounteous breakfast on the terrace that morning almost made up for my sleepiness.

Charming, ancient Maastricht is named for the Romans’ preferred crossing spot on the Maas… strangely, I seem to be visiting a lot of towns named for their river crossings.

I don’t know what a Snuffel Markt is, but it’s fun to say.

A big, modern public library on the Europlein – and Francisco.

My first cup of Dutch coffee (which was excellent). Note the tiny cookies that accompany it. Francisco said, “If a Ducth person didn’t get tiny cookies with his coffee, he’d immediately call the government.”

Francisco pointed out the place that consistently gets voted the best frites in the Netherlands – which must be saying something indeed. So even though I wasn’t really very hungry, I got a “kleine” cone which was not at all kleine. I’ve noticed that portion sizing here tends to be American super-size +1. I figured when in Holland do as the Hollandish do and get the frites smeared with mayo… but in practice I couldn’t really take it. I took a few bites with the “saus, ” dumped the topp half of my cone and ate just a few more. The best frites in Holland? Seems pretty unlikely, but at least they were hot and tasty. But the mayo? Ack. And I like mayo with my fries.

One of the main reasons I wanted to visit Maastricht was to see this bookstore which is housed in a converted medieval church. It’s really cool, much cooler than I was able to capture with my camera, though it was a little weird to see the worn outlines of tombstones peeking out from under stacks of the latest bestsellers.

They expand the church theme to their in-store cafe, too. My first thought upon seeing this: this would SO not fly in the States.

Francisco and I decided to have a simple picnic lunch at his place for dinner which gave me an excuse to explore my first Dutch grocery. Very cool! This was a wall of mystery condiments (well, probably not so mysterious to the Dutch).

I couldn’t get back far enough to get a picture of the entire mayonnaise display. Suffice to say that these are just a few of the many kinds of mayo you can get at the store.

our picnic dinner – two kinds of cheese, some fine artisan bread and fruit.

You can do a lot in just a couple days in Paris. And believe you me, you can walk a lot, too.

I arrived jet-lagged and bedraggled late on Wednesday night from Frankfurt and after dropping my luggage at Vincent’s rental apartment, I went straight away to the grocery (well, almost straight away; I swung by to say, “bonjour!” to La Tour Eiffel first, bien sûr). It may not have been the best idea to walk into a Monoprix while confused and hungry; when I got back to the apartment I found I had purchased spring rolls,tortellini, an onion and some eggs. Go figure.

The next day I set out walking and swung past Les Invalides which always has a surprising number of tourists – I mean, are that many people really interested in military history? – past Musee D’Orsay across the Seine to Les Tuilieries, past Palais Royale, finally wending my way to the museum at Arts et Metiers which is RAD! I’d never been before and was wholly impressed with its displays of all kinds of cool stuff like astrolabes and early calculators.

Vincent and I met for lunch at a Japanese noodle place and then I went back to the apartment and fell into a 2 hour coma. When Vincent got back, we prepared a pique-nique dinner to bring to an open air screening of Wim Wender’s film, “Lisbon Story” at which we’d also meet some friends. We’d be 4 people and we packed enough for 18.

The park was pleasant and the pique-nique excellent. The sky had been threatening to rain but managed to hold out… until the film started. The moment the film finally began a deluge began and sent everyone scrambling for cover. It eventually let up enough (for awhile) that we could enjoy the film standing under the nearby trees.

I reminded myself the next morning that I’m actually here for school and so I set off for a cafe and read for a few hours. It was pouring rain by now and showed no signs of letting up. My Portland rain jacket was not quite enough for all this moisture so I finally relented and bought an umbrella.

A quick visit to my old friends at L’As Du Falafel – where the price of a sandwich is now up to a whopping 7 euros which seems a bit high for what’s supposed to be a cheap sandwich, but I suppose it’s not so much for the BEST SANDWICH IN THE WORLD.

Off to Centre Pompidou and its exhibits, always fun. Then back to the apartment to watch some French news coverage of the Olympics – and that freaky-ass Span Air flight disaster. Now that makes me never want to fly again.

I had a hankering for pastilla and V and I set out on what would turn out to be a long odyssey in search of a Moroccan restaurant. There was a crazy long line at our first choice and after a few more no-go choices we were starting to think that there was an anti-pastilla plot about. But we finally settled on Au Bon Couscous in the 5th and, yes, they had pastilla and, yes, they (eventually) brought us one. And it was delicious! Not as good as the one we had last year at L’Homme Bleu, but pretty good. And anything it lacked was made up for by the Chicken Tagine.

Somehow we decided to swing by Berthillon for late-night ice cream and afterwards decided we needed to walk back. We got a little turned around somewhere in the 7th and it turned into a very long walk indeed, but on the plus side, Vincent surprised himself by taking us down some streets he’d never actually been down before in his many, many years of walking around Paris.

Saturday morning was just a scramble to my train to Maastricht… off to my Netherlands adventure!

a rhino looks out over the plaza of Musee D’Orsay while Vincent looks on

A statue of a lion downing a crocodile in the Tuilieries – but that duck has the best of both of them

The outdoor film projection setup. A specially designed truck just for the film projector!

mmm… felafel.

danger, frottage.

what is it with Parisians and rhinos?

pastilla from Au Bon Couscous

I somehow lucked into first class on the Thalys and was presented with this lovely meal as I whisked away from Paris at 300 km/hour.

That’s all the German you really need to know to get along in Germany. At least that’s true if you’re only in town for a few hours to see the sights and then move on.

I arrived in Frankfurt early yesterday morning and had a few hours to kill before my train to Paris. Walked around the center for a bit and saw some things to take pictures of. Sadly, I did not get a picture of the best graffito I’ve seen so far this trip: a smiling cartoon boy holding up a banner that says, “VERBOTEN!”

I have never seen pedestrians in any major city so obedient to the walk signal as I did in Frankfurt.

creepy public art. the guy’s torso is behind him and other body parts are scattered around the park.

Found this awesome public market with green grocers, butchers, delis, etc. Got this sandwich because of its intriguing purple color.No idea exactly what kind of sausage it was, but it was very tasty – and only 1,50 euros!

This is the re-built “historical” center which is very charming, but also very new so has the air of Dineyland about it. But at least there’s live music.

Lots of charming pedestrian bridges around the city crossing the Main River where, it is said, Charlemagne and his Frank friends forded the river at the spot revealed to them by a white deer – hence the name “Frankfurt.” Thanks to these bridges we no longer need phantom ungulates to show us the way.

he many be cute and life-sized, but he is NOT FOR HUGGING.

I also went to the Filmmuseum which was pretty cool – and only 1,30 Euros – mosty because they had this RAD old flatbed made mostly of wood. Beautiful.

Want to make a whole lot of Portland area foodies really, really excited?

Try this: talk some of Portland’s hottest chefs into cooking grand dinners where they’ll use locally grown, seasonal produce. And also throw in some local winemakers or brewmasters who will share their wares paired with the delicious food. And make it a benefit for organic farming organizations. AND set the whole thing on the very farms where said locally grown produce is actually grown and harvested.

And as the final touch make it a beautiful Portland summer evening and when the sun sets bathe the dinners seated convivially at communal tables in a warm orange glow that fills everyone with a calm sense of well-being.

So in a nutshell, that’s the idea between Plate & Pitchfork, a five year old organization which holds several such dinners annually and just a few days ago we were lucky enough to attend one.

It was a hard fought battle to get tickets to one of these hot events. As soon as tickets were released for sale untold hundreds rushed the P&P website, crashing it instantly. When it came back up nearly everything was sold out, but after some pleading e-mails, I scored two tickets to a dinner at Sauvie Island Organic Farms. The night’s chefs would be Rodney Muirhead of Podnah’s and Randy Montgomery of Cava along with desserts courtesy of Portland’s chocolate goddess, Elizabeth Montes.

It was one of the hottest days of the year when we headed out to the farm the other night. The sun was beating down on us in the open field as we took a tour of the farm. The way we sweated and swore in the heat gave us even more appreciation for the hard work the good people of the farm put in every day.

Thankfully the sun did eventually go down in a spectacular blaze of color and we settled in for our meal. The beer was flowing and the few sips I tried were really delicious. It was P&P’s first brewmaster dinner – they usually host winemakers – and from the appreciative grunts, I take it it was a success.

We started with a lovely chilled cucumber almond soup with poached shrimp (okay, so the shrimp is not so local, but it is delicious).

it got too dark after this to take many more pictures of the dishes, but trust me – they were at least as lovely as this.

Next, we had a beet salad with hazelnuts, salad greens and an astonishingly good Juniper Grove cheese. I’m no fan of the beet, but this was still a fine salad – though I’m not sure that I get to call it a “salad” since I pretty much just ate the cheese.

beets on the prep table – lovely, but not for me

The main attraction was a whole roasted pig, tended by Portland’s undisputed king of the grill. This was a fine beast who must have tipped the scales at well over a hundred pounds. I paid my respects and told him how much I appreciated his sacrifice. I appreciated it even more when we got to dig into the succulent flesh. The only disappointment of this part was when our tablemates and I decided that we wanted some skin to go along with the meat, Chris was dispatched to the cutting table, but was told that the skin was being saved for dessert. Now as intriguing a refusal as this was, we were still chagrined; surely they didn’t need all of the skin… unless it’s one hell of a dessert.

Served along with the pig was a phenomenal potato salad chock full of housemade pickles from the farm’s abundant produce. This may have been my favorite thing of the night. We also got a boatload of delicious grilled corn.

Dessert showed up as an array of delightful little chocolates: an extra dark basil infused truffle, a chocolate coated blackberry gelee, an Oregon “kiss,” and, the much anticipated, fleur de sel caramel chocolate cup topped with pig skin. Wow.

Now, I’ve had bacon chocolates before and actually find the combination of bacon and chocolate unappealing (the maple bacon cornbread dessert at Le Pigeon, though? That’s another story), but this worked perfectly. There was only a hint of smokiness in the pig skin so it didn’t fight against the chocolate much and pairing it with the caramel just enhanced that wonderful sweet and savory combination. Yum. The kiss – a hazelnut concoction – was another favorite. It had a surprising and delightful texture.

This was served with cookies and coffee and a fabulous chocolate stout that brought out all kinds of crazy notes in the chocolate.

We were enjoying the cool country air and the company of our tablemates when it finally came time to say good night. As we headed off the farm, we passed a coworker of mine who happened to be at the dinner, too. He was talking with Rodney over the partially dismembered pig and I said to him, teasingly, “So are you gonna pick the pig clean?”

“No,” he said, “But they’re offering leftovers.”

“REALLY?!” I said. Something about my bulging eyes and bouncing up and down must have told him that I was serious.

“I think you have a taker!” he said to Rodney.

“That’s great!” he said. “Oh, but we don’t really have anything to put the leftovers in.” I started rummaging around in my bag for something I could stuff pig in when Elisabeth held up a paper grocery bag, “You can use this if you want.”

So that’s how it began.

Because they’d already packed away the cutting utensils, I clawed at the beast with my bare hands (well, they provided me with latex gloves, at least), filling up my paper sack – not only with meat, but with tons of good pig skin, too. It was pretty dark out there so Chris held up a lantern for me to find the best spots – ah, true love!

At some point with my hands sunk into the pig’s neck, I looked up at Chris. “This isn’t embarrassing you, is it?” I dropped another hunk of pig into my sack.

“No, not at all.”

“That’s good. ‘Cause I don’t think I would stop even if it did.”

We thanked our cooks – who actually thanked us for taking leftovers – and strolled off the farm with a sack full of pork and our heads held high.

Viva Plate and Pitchfork!

Thank you, pig!

When my friend Darcy asked me to lend a hand at her wedding, I eagerly agreed.

“You’ll be in charge of food,” she said

“Of course,” I said.

My job was to pick up all the trays of food from the restaurant and make sure they were set out and hot (or cold, as the case may be) by the time the reception started. And during the reception I just had to replenish as needed.

It didn’t seem like too much to be responsible for and I was happy to do it – and all the happier since the food was coming from one of my favorite restaurants in Portland, a Lebanese place called Ya Hala.

As is often the case with such things, it turned out to be a lot more work than I’d anticipated, but I was having fun in the kitchen so it wasn’t a big deal. The wedding was beautiful (Darcy’s handmade dress was out-of-this-world gorgeous), the food was delicious and the party was a load of fun. Even the gluten/dairy/wheat/egg-free cake was beautiful and delectable. The very best part (aside from Ya Hala’s killer aranbeet that had everyone swooning) was when the skies opened up over the garden party and a dramatic mid-summer shower let loose on the guests. The out-of-towners scrambled for shelter and the Oregonians sat back and raised their glasses to the sky.

C had borrowed his parents’ minivan for the day to help transport all of the goodies back and forth so after the wedding, we headed back up to the ‘Couv to drop off the van. Even though there’d been a ton of food at the party, we had both been pretty busy throughout the party (C was their photographer, of course) and we’re feeling a might peckish after we left his parents’ house. Somehow we lit upon the idea of going to Ming’s, a classic Chinese-American restaurant that he frequented as a child.

In my childhood Chinese-American restaurants were strictly verboten – sweet ‘n’ sour anything was anathema to my mother – but of course this made them a source of great fascination for me with their fluorescent colored sauces and deep-fried everythings. I was mostly cured of my interest in them when I moved up to Portland and found that was pretty much the only kind of Chinese food one could get up here.

But I was still interested in going to Ming’s since it seemed like it was a Chinese-American places straight outta 1972, complete with big plaster dragons and that bizzaro concoction known as crab rangoon. Plus it is, as Chris put it, his “ancestral homeland.”

C told me that he usually ordered the Szechuan chicken. This dish was on the “combo” menu that included a side of “PFR” with every dish. PFR, PFR… Parboiled Fingerling Rutabagas? Pomegrante-Filled Rhisomes? Pink Frilly Rainbows?

OK, I thought to myself, if I were a Chinese American restaurant in the middle of the burbs what would I have to provide with every dish?

Ah! Pork Fried Rice.

so we ordered Szechuan chicken with PFR and an order of spring rolls because if you might as well go all the way.

The spring roll was a monstrous sea slug, veined on the outside with some sort of crisp, eggy batter. The inside (which was on the other side of an inch-think battlement of wrapper) was a gelatinous mass of corn starch and green flecks.

The Szechuan chicken was reasonably tasty due in large part to the pint or so of soy sauce in it. It’s something I might have actually enjoyed if it hadn’t been quite so sodium intense. The PFR was exactly as it should be – greasy and unencumbered by any flavors other oil, salt and pork.

We wobbled out, dizzy and bloated, my curiosity and hunger sated. We were exhausted from the long hard day – and all the grease and sodium our bodies were trying to process – but we were happy. Happy for Darcy and Sean, happy to help out on their lovely day and happy to know where to get some first rate PFR.

I have a new friend. He lives in a glass jar and needs to be fed at least twice a week. After I give him half a cup of flour and a drink of water, he burbles happily and contentedly until the next feeding. He asks for little, but gives so much in return.

He’s my sponge.

I wish I could come up with a more original name for him, but I’ve been calling him SpongeBob. It’s doubly appropriate since he has square pants, too. Well, a square jar anyway.

I finally decided to try my hand at sourdough baking a few weeks ago and was pleasantly surprised to see how easy it is to start and maintain a sourdough sponge. It’s kind of disconcerting, actually. I just mixed some flour and water together and with 2 days it was bubbling and shimmying with natural yeast. I can kind of see why Howard Hughes lost it; once you start thinking about all the tiny creatures in the air are it can kinda freak you out.

But these little bacteria are working for me now so no need to be afraid. Once SpongeBob got going, I put him in the fridge and have been feeding him twice a week, more when I actually make bread.

Which is just what I did two nights ago. With nothing more than one cup of SpongeBob, some flour, salt and water I made this lovely loaf.

I don’t normally bake bread much in the summer, but this Northwest “summer” has been persistently chilly and rainy so I was looking forward to having an excuse to turn on the oven for an hour. But on the flip side, the house was much colder than the recommended 70-75 degrees to get sourdough to rise and develop a nice, tangy flavor. What’s a bread baker to do?

Well, one option is to wrap up your dough bowl tightly in plastic and take it to bed with you. Hey, Chris was out of town and, besides, what better way to check on its progress than to roll over to the other side of the bed and lift the sheets?

So that’s how SpongeBob got a good head start on a first rise the other night. True, it only got bedtime warmth for about 8 hours of an 20 hour rise, but it was a heck of a lot more energy efficient than cranking up the heat in the whole house for that time.

The rest of the process was a little more doctrinaire – or at least as doctrinaire as things have become in the post-No-Knead world. It had its 20 hour rise, I shaped the loaf and it rose for another 4 hours. I heated up a cast iron pot in the oven and baked the whole thing for just under an hour.

Now for the slightly sad part: I was Skyping with my Beekeeping group while baking and let the loaf go a little long in the oven. The top was pretty well blackened when I took it out: while I’m a big fan of pain bien cuit this was a lot more cuit than even I’m used to. I guess that’s what you get for too much multi-tasking.

But it was still perfectly good and had a much better crumb, flavor and depth than the other breads I’ve been making lately. I’m looking forward to many more bread experiments with SpongeBob – who knows? Maybe I’ll even take him to bed again!

The result of SpongeBob’s labor – it’s only a little dark on top

My vote for most Onion-like headline not in the Onion is this gem:
Democrats Split on Whether Party Divided

It makes me laugh and cry… though mostly just cry.

Which, incidentally, is also what Obama’s speech last night made me do, too, except in a good way. It’s going to be a fun 5 months, kids. I’m ready for lift-off: how about you?

But there was no crying at Rocket this past Sunday. The hipster gastro-cocktail lounge with a commanding view of the Portland skyline just launched Sunday brunch service a few weeks ago. C and I went to check it out and learned that it’s one of the best breakfasts one can get without a wait on a Sunday morning in Portland. I doubt you’ll be able to waltz in at 11 AM and get a table right away for very long – especially not if the hungry diners queuing for hours at nearby Simpatica get hip to the Rocket vibe – so check it out soon and often.

As if Portland vegans didn’t already have enough reasons to rejoice, there’s now Rocket’s house smoked tofu “bacon.” I’d eat this every day if I could hire a tofu bacon grill master to be at my beck and call (that’s not a bad idea, actually…)

a classic benedict, perfectly prepared. The hollandaise was perfect in every way.

60 minute eggs served on a bed of braised greens. Why, yes, that is a slab of pork belly in the back. The eggs are baked on low for a full hour giving them a creamy, semi-solid texture. The greens and the pork belly are nice complements – but, really, they’d be great complements to just about anything.

Despite what it seems like, I’ve had all kinds of things to post about in the past month.

We traveled to Las Vegas for yet another installment of the annual geekfest known as NAB. We took a break from the convention hall and casinos for more than a few meals including an encore performance of Lotus of Siam and a big splurgey meal at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon – the kind of place that costs you a fortune just to intone the whole name. The meal was delightful, but made short work of the money I had managed to win at the tables.

Me taking a picture of the astonishing sour sausage salad at Lotus of Siam.

a couple of the dishes from L’Atelier. The food was beguilingly delicious… but I couldn’t help from thinking, “Holy crap! I can’t believe I’m spending $30 bucks on one ounce of anchovies!”

I’ve been up and back to Seattle several times in these past few weeks and had quite a few good meals – including dessert (loukamades!!) at Lola, oil-poached eggs at Monsoon, the Irony Burger (the veggie burger with bacon) at Schultzy’s and as many free cupcakes at Cupcake Royale as I could get my grubby little hands on. I still don’t know why they were giving the cupcakes away: I was too busy trying to figure out how to carry three full-sized cupcakes with one free hand.

We had a really fun Mother’s Day dinner at C’s sister’s house. C and I took over most of the cooking and made grilled lamb chops (thank you, SuDan Farm), baba ganouj, tabouleh and makdous (ok, we didn’t make the makdous, but we opened the jar).

There was the slightly insane, but totally wonderful dinner at the new Japanese restaurant, Tanuki. It’s kind of a long story, but another PortlandFoodie (and, coincidentally, fellow library student) and I won a dinner there. C came along as did our host and together the four of us had everything – literally, everything – on the menu. We may have missed a few drinks, but we definitely covered all the food and even got a few bonus dishes.

adorable little quail eggs at Tanuki

May also marked the return of the legendary Black Date Chicken. The next time you see Chris, you must ask him to make it for you. It’s a taste sensation. And we learned that it’s still delicious even if you don’t velvet the chicken.

And then there’s school. I’ve been busy as a bee creating an indexing language for beekeeping documents along with my class group. Esoteric? Sure. But a great excuse to learn all kinds of crazy bee facts. Like their mating habits, for example. I won’t go into it in mixed company, but I highly, highly recommend checking out Isabella Rosselini’s film on the subject. In fact you should watch her whole amazing series of short films on the topic of insect mating habits. Seriously.

Last quarter I kept meaning to write a blog post about the librarian powerhouse known as Nancy Pearl. You may know her from her books, her NPR appearances or, most likely, her action figure. And lucky me, she’s also a professor at my school. I took a class from her called “Book Lust” after her bestselling series of books; it was so invigorating and inspiring that I briefly reconsidered my aversion to working in a public library. One of the best things I learned from that class was how to read books while in library school. I mean, books that aren’t written for library students. Books that no one is making me read. books I actually want to read. Yes! It is possible! Contemporary novels, classic fiction, essays on topics other subject analysis. I read more books in that one quarter than I have in my entire time in library school – and I hope the trend continues.

Nancy Pearl demonstrates her shushing action!

So it’s been a very full and active few weeks since last I posted. I have all kinds of half-written blog entries about other adventures and now that the Bee Thesaurus is almost complete you all might actually get to read them some time, too.

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…