Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Voodoo Donuts: the video

I should have put this in my Voodoo Donut post. Better late than never. You know it's cool because it's got Anthony Bourdain and Chuck Palahniuk in it. The actual donut part starts about halfway through the clip, so hang in there.


Saturday, November 21, 2009

Northwest tour

We stayed last weekend with our good friends Gary and Terry, who live in a beautiful big house in the woods across the river from Portland. Gary and Terry have four adventuring kids who normally reside in assorted far-flung regions of the planet. As it happened, though, Greg had just returned from the Philippines on Thursday. And then we learned that Julia would reach Medford Friday night on her way north from Mexico, and so it was arranged that we would have the pleasure of her company (and her kitten “B”’s company) in our car for the last leg of her journey home. At the house we met Axel, the Mexican exchange student living with our friends this year. And to bump up the festive reunion atmosphere still further, Terry invited mutual family friends Torrey and her boyfriend Alex to round out the party of ten for Sunday brunch. It was great to see everyone, and we even got to wear our jammies.

After a walking tour of downtown Vancouver to window-shop the gorgeous old houses for sale - if I had $375,000 I would buy this one right now - we headed back into Portland for our Powell’s fix. We also stopped in at Voodoo Donuts as promised for a little something to tide us over until dinner. So many to choose from! The Bacon Maple Bars looked good but when it came down to it I sprang for the Mango Filled, with lots of sticky sweet mango filling and a sort of marshmallow topping with citrus dust. Alekka picked the Bubble Gum, a raised donut with white frosting and bubblegum sprinkles topped with a piece of bubblegum. And because we were headed to Eugene next to see Alice, we thought we’d treat her to the oreo and caramel goodness of an Old Dirty Bastard, to go.

We met up with Alice at Soriah, a white-tableclothed cafe we have patronized occasionally for around fifteen years. The food is Mediterranean/Middle Eastern, with a combination of standard and newer dishes featuring the ingredients and spices of that large region. We started with an appetizer of fried calamari, made with just a light dusting of flour and topped with an interesting caper sauce – very nice. For the main course, Alekka picked lamb chops, I had duck breast stuffed with cheese and fennel, Andreas chose a chicken and artichoke dish (sans rice because he’s doing low carb) and Alice ordered the steak Diane that a friend had recommended. Everything was prepared to the doneness requested, flavorful and attractively presented. The kitchen is definitely competent, although I wouldn’t call it inspired. The accompanying vegetables were the same for most of the dishes, which communicates to me that there are too many mains on the menu for real attention to detail. I would say the food is consistently good, but predictable.

Dessert is shown on a tray rather than from a menu – Alekka chose an above-average chocolate mousse, dense and not too sweet, and flavored with grand marnier; Alice and I shared a pumpkin crème brulee that was quite nice (you can always count on an interesting crème brulee at this restaurant – one of my favorites was a lavender one I had here several years ago). My main quibble with the cafe on this visit was our rather peculiar waiter, who seemed to lack people skills. A bossy fellow, he and Andreas had a power struggle over a fork that was oddly amusing but not the sort of thing you usually see in a restaurant. We had a good laugh about it, and decided he must be related to the owner.

After dinner we took Alice to Trader Joes. On the way, my cry of anguish nearly caused Andreas to drive off the road when Alice shared that the only reason to make a roast chicken is because all you have to do is throw it in a pan and stick it in the oven. Aaargh!!!



Like Julia, Alice has new kittens. Meet Geoffrey and Colin (with Alekka, who would like to move to Eugene so she can kitty-sit).

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Ikarians of Middle Earth


Faithful followers of this blog will by now know far more about Ikaria and its people than they ever imagined they would. In our latest foray into all things Ikarian, I take you to Portland for the first meeting of the newly founded chapter of the Pan-Ikarian Brotherhood. That would be chapter 27, “Mesaria” which translates variously as the midlands, the heartland, or (my favorite) the hobbity Middle Earth.

We drove up to Portland for the Saturday night organizational meeting at Eleni’s Philoxenia & Estiatorio in the Pearl district, which we think is the best Greek restaurant in Portland. Actually, it is Andreas who thinks this. But Andreas eats in a lot more Greek restaurants in Portland than I do, and after dining at Eleni's I am inclined to trust him on this one.

So many Greek places prepare the same predictable assortment of spanikopita, moussaka, fried calamari, and so on, most of which I make competently enough in my own kitchen that it’s just not all that appealing for an evening on the town. Eleni’s offers something different. The menu consists mainly of small plates offering a wide variety of cheeses, vegetable dishes, legumes, seafood, meat dishes, and other specialities, prepared authentically but inventively, with a modern American sensibility for presentation. For example, the tzatziki made with thick Greek yogurt, garlic and mint had slices of cucumber arranged on top instead of grated and mixed in the usual way.

The eight people in attendance feasted heartily on tzatziki; crusty bread with olive spread; roasted vegetables with feta; mussels with chopped tomatoes, onions, and chard; grilled calamari; gigantes (giant lima beans in a tomato sauce - I hate lima beans but I love gigantes); and sauteed prawns. Some people at our table chose larger-portioned entrees such as stuffed eggplant, pasta with meat sauce, and roast lamb. I took a pass on dessert but the fellow next to me seemed to like his baklava.

In addition to all this, we enjoyed a lovely Gaia Estates Greek red, as well as after-dinner Metaxa and coffee. Our party hogged the table for a good four hours as the new membership figured out who was related to whom (they are all related, wouldn’t you know), passed around photos of summer trips to the island, and picked out their home villages on the big map. By the time it was over, Andreas was elected treasurer and it was unanimously decided that the summer Ikarian independence day meeting will be held in our back yard. Opa!

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Roasting a chicken

I have long been an admirer of Jan Roberts-Dominguez, who writes a food column for the Mail Tribune. I find her commentary to be insightful and her recipes both creative and accessible. But a couple of weeks ago – October 28, to be exact - she surprised me (in a bad way) with this article on “The ‘perfect’ roasted chicken.” You can click on the link and read it yourself, but I’ll just summarize here: In search of a moist and flavorful chicken, Jan consults two of her favorite go-to cookbooks, The New Best Recipe and Cookwise, quickly discovering that their definition of simplicity does not match her own. Jan reprints The Best Recipe instructions with the title “'Easy’ Roast Chicken”; quote marks on “easy” suggesting that it’s not.

Well. I love roast chicken, and it’s true that you can just stick it in the oven and wait until it’s done. That’s easy. But as Jan and her favorite cookbook authors have found, the result can be disappointing. So if you want a really good roast chicken you’re just going to have to put in a little more effort. Jan says that the entry on roast chicken in the Best Recipe book was FOUR PAGES (her caps) long, but so is just about every recipe in the book. The beauty of that cookbook is the explanation of what they tried and what worked and what didn’t and why. I love that about it (as I have said in the past, I am a geek that way). The recipe itself is not complex, fitting nicely in a little four inch square on the newspaper page. Maybe I am seriously out of touch, but I cannot see what isn’t easy about this method. You salt and pepper the chicken and brush it with melted butter. You roast it on its side 20 minutes, turn to the other side for 20 minutes, and then turn it breast-side up until done. How hard is that?

The recipe I use is from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but it’s very similar to the Best Recipe one. Julia’s recipe goes on for several pages as well, but that’s only because she explains everything in such detail. Who would have wanted her to leave out the bit about how to tell when the chicken is done: “A sudden rain of splutter in the oven, a swelling of the breast and slight puff of the skin, the drumstick is tender when pressed and can be moved in its socket.” Captures it pretty well, I'd say.

Anyway, Julia instructs you to start roasting the chicken in a hot oven first to brown it, then lower the temperature to finish cooking. Like the Best Recipe folks, she has you turn the chicken a couple of times during cooking. This is essential if you want the breast meat to be juicy, and Julia’s got a couple of extra turns to promote even browning.

Here’s a summary:

Start with a 4 lb chicken. Preheat oven to 425. Rinse chicken, dry it, salt inside, and smear outside with 2 T softened butter. Put chicken breast-up in a V-rack in a roasting pan and put it in the oven. From now on, every time you open the oven to turn the chicken, baste it quickly, starting with another 2 T melted butter mixed with 1 T cooking oil. After 5 minutes turn it on its side. After 5 more minutes turn it on its other side. After 5 more minutes reduce heat to 350. 30 minutes later, put it back on its other side. After 15 more minutes turn it breast side up, and roast for another 15 minutes. Check for doneness as instructed above; it may need up to 15 more minutes.

Okay, maybe that sounds like a lot of fussing. But you're probably in the kitchen anyway, peeling potatoes and trimming green beans and washing lettuce, and all you have to do is brush the chicken a couple of times and turn it over when the timer beeps. This is not hard. I promise.

Julia also has us add vegetables to the pan to flavor the juices for the gravy you’ll surely want to make. I don’t do that, but instead roast the chicken with a stalk of celery, a half a carrot, and a quarter onion in the cavity. I also don’t truss the bird – I don’t think it makes all that much difference and feel vindicated that Best Recipe doesn’t include this step. I use the pan drippings afterwards to make a milk gravy, because that’s what Alekka wants on her mashed potatoes.

The other very important point is to start with a good chicken. I like the organic Smart Chickens that the co-op sells; I have also bought nice ones from Bickle Family Farms. Pretty soon, I’m hoping, we’ll be raising our own. The factory farm chickens from the supermarket surely are cheap when they are on sale and they are fine for making stock, but I think they have an off taste that’s sort of medicinal when roasted plain. (I don’t really want to know what that taste is but I just picked up a copy of Jonathan Safran Foer’s new book Eating Animals so I suppose I will soon find out).

Yes, I know this is a duck, not a chicken, but I like the picture. It’s the cover of magazine Andreas picked up for me at the Paris airport. The article (as well as I can tell with my limited French) is about the those crazy Americans and their fascination with French cooking despite its reliance on fat, salt and so on. That’s Meryl Streep as Julia Child in "Julie and Julia," in case by some fluke you missed the movie.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

When the frost is on the punkin…


...you’d best hurry up and pick it before it freezes and turns to mush.

In years past our garden has produced enough pumpkins for friends and neighbors to pick their jack-o-lanterns from our backyard patch, but this year the vines weren’t very prolific. Fortunately we did grow enough for Thanksgiving pie and a bit more besides.

Some people are afraid of pumpkins, I think. Maybe it’s the thick skin or the goopy seeds. But don’t be intimidated. If you didn’t grow any yourself, you can likely find them at a farmer’s market or at the co-op. Look for small “baking” or “sugar” pumpkins – the big Halloween varieties are mostly gone to the great compost heap in the sky, but they aren’t much good for eating anyway.

Once you’ve acquired your pumpkin, you’ll want to cut it in quarters or halves (a big chef’s knife should do the trick) and put the pieces cut-side down on a baking sheet. Don’t worry about the seeds – we’ll take care of those later, after the baking. Put the baking sheet in the oven at 300 degrees and bake for at least an hour. When a fork goes in easily, they’re done. I have read that if your pumpkin is too hard to cut, you can just put the whole thing in the oven or microwave for a few minutes to soften it before cutting. Personally, I believe that this would work in the oven, but I would be wary of the microwave unless you’ve poked some good holes in the skin first. A pumpkin explosion would be messy indeed.

After it’s baked, let the pieces cool a little, then use a spoon to gently scrape away the fibrous strings and the seeds. Then scrape the flesh away from the skin or just pull the skin off with your fingers. You can mash the pumpkin flesh or do like I do and whir it around in the Cuisinart. Then it’s recipe-ready, and what you don’t use now you can freeze for later. It may not be quite as easy as opening a can of Libby’s but it is homemade and organic.

I’ve accumulated quite a few pumpkin recipes thanks to bumper crop years – pumpkin soup, pumpkin stew, pumpkin bread, pumpkin cookies… the list goes on. This weekend I dug out the final container of last year’s frozen pumpkin to make this recipe, a standby from the 1985 Sunset cookbook Cookies . They’re called “bars”, but in my opinion, they’re cake. Whatever they are, the recipe is ideal for when it’s Sunday morning and you just remembered it’s your turn to bring coffee goodies to church.

Pumpkin Bars

4 eggs
¾ C canola oil
2 C sugar
2 C cooked pumpkin
2 C flour
2 t ground cinnamon
¾ t each ginger, cloves, and nutmeg
¾ t salt
2 t baking powder
1 t baking soda

In a large bowl of an electric mixer, beat eggs lightly; beat in oil, sugar, and pumpkin. In another bowl, stir in together flour, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, salt, baking powder, and baking soda; gradually add to pumpkin mixture, blending thoroughly.
Pour batter into a greased and flour-dusted 10 by 15 inch baking pan. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 35 minutes or until edges begin to pull away from the pan and center springs back when lightly touched. Let cool in pan on rack.

The original recipe also has an orange cream frosting topped with almonds that is quite superfluous. Without it they will still be the hit of coffee hour; I guarantee you, those Unitarians will scarf them down faster than they can say “multicultural peaceful spiritual renewable organic solar diversity.”

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Tattie lifting

This was the weekend for tattie lifting. No, I didn’t buy a new bra, silly (cross my heart.) Tattie lifting is when you dig the potatoes out of the ground.

It’s really more fun than you might think. You rummage around in the dirt with your hands and come up with big beautiful potatoes. Leave the spade in the shed or you'll just wind up with hash.
Tattie lifting is great for getting in touch with one’s Scottish roots (Scottish tubers?). Being a little bit Scottish myself, I once spent an autumn in the tiny village of Nethy Bridge in the Highlands, where kids got days off from school to participate in the potato harvest. As I recall, it looked like they were having a good time of it. (Here is where I wanted to insert a video of Ewan MacColl singing "The Tattie-Lifter's Song" but it seems no such video exists on YouTube. You can hear a little bit of the song here on Amazon... track 15... perhaps a little bit goes far enough).

We had a good time, too.


Alekka and her friend Suzie were excited about digging up the buried treasure.

We had forgotten which plants were which, and potato plants all look pretty much the same above the ground. When all was done, the garden yielded a big box of lovely russets, red skinned potatoes, and yellow fingerlings.

In case you're wondering why anyone would bother growing potatoes when they can get a ten pound bag for two dollars at Safeway, you might feel differently after tasting the fresh ones. Homegrown potatoes actually do have a flavor - earthy - and an excellent texture.

Check out this fine example from our garden, just before it was scrubbed, baked, and served up steaming at the dinner table – great chieftain of the tattie race!

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Scary and sweet




Hey folks, I’m back. I took a little detour from blogging into fiction writing after my good buddy Jenni convinced me to sign up for NaNoWriMo, but I have already fallen off that particular wagon. Evidently I will not be composing the Great American Novel this month (you can all exhale now).

I realize that not posting since September has probably cost me my loyal readership - all three of you. I will try to win you back by posting twice this weekend. Let’s start with the Halloween post I didn’t write.

Halloween: a time for spooky stuff, and candy too.

Which brings us to my daughter Alice. Scary and sweet. Alice learned to wring the necks of chickens while living in a beach shack in Mexico and now has a chicken skeleton tattooed on her arm, in memoriam. Alice makes gourmet meals for unemployed friends out of stuff she finds in dumpsters. Alice clipped articles on the Italian olive oil industry out of magazines for me by candlelight in the back of the moldy van that used to be her home (probably one of the few homeless people with a subscription to the New Yorker). But these are all topics for other posts.

Our princess in army boots came to visit for the weekend (she lives in Eugene now, in an actual house). Alice is great fun in the kitchen and, as usual, we traded some new recipes and cooked up a couple of terrific dinners together. Then, the morning before she left, Alice popped a batch of bacon into the oven and took her brother and sister on a walking field trip to… Donut Country.

We have the fortune – good or bad, I’m not sure – to live a few short blocks from one of the best sources of fried dough in the region. If you live in East Medford, you will be able to deduce by the absence of cars lined up for the drive-though around back that I took this picture in the afternoon; also missing is the crowd of white-haired retirees in search of a window booth intermingled with tweens stopping by the counter on their way to Hedrick Middle School up the street. Mornings are pretty busy here in Donut Country.

So anyway, on this particular morning, Alice and Nik and Alekka returned from their excursion with a bag of freshly frosted maple bars. Alice took the bacon out of the oven and laid it in strips on top of each maple bar, and before my aghast eyes, the kids proceeded to consume them. Alice tells us she learned about this, um, dish on a recent road trip to Portland, where she and her friends feasted on Bacon Maple bars at Voodoo Donuts.

After watching the frightening spectacle for a few minutes, I got up the nerve to try it myself. And what do you know, it was pretty good – a lot like pancakes with maple syrup and bacon. So good, in fact, that I pledge to stop in at Voodoo Donuts when I’m in Portland next weekend so I can compare with the original. I’ll be reporting back with my findings.


On the sweet and scary bacon theme, here’s something I’ll bet you didn’t find in your trick-or-treat bag this year.


It's a chocolate bar with bacon bits. You can get them at Lillie Belle Farms Artisan Chocolates in Central Point. Our boy Dimitri picked this one up for me… come to think of it, maybe he's a little sweet and scary as well. Must run in the family.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

The very best thing ever to do with tomatoes





First thing this morning I spent a little time in the vegetable garden, hand watering the areas not served by drip lines. Usually Andreas does this but as he is in Greece for two weeks the job falls to me. I'm actually enjoying getting out there in the early hours of the day. This morning I brought in some squash, several cucumbers, and another big bowl of tomatoes, in addition to my favorite summer morning treat, squash blossoms.

Breakfast today was an omelet made with the blossoms, some herbs from the garden and a couple of local eggs. It was my intention to have our own chickens by now, but the coop-construction plans got sidetracked this summer in favor of a bedroom redecoration and a few other home improvement projects. We still hope to have it done before next spring, as we've promised Alekka some baby chicks. Fortunately local eggs aren't hard to come by.

After breakfast Alekka and I headed out to Ashland to shop at the co-op and to check out the Eat Local kick-off celebration in front of the store. They had a bluegrass band and some purist-friendly food samples. The Eat Local organizers had a table and I made my participation official by signing up. They are sticking to the standards, these THRIVE folks, and I guess that's a good thing - although it means I don't get to call myself a Purist. Coffee drinkers may as well turn in their badges right now. Oh well, been there, done that. So this year I am an Idealist.

The bar is pretty low for Idealists: all you have to do is eat one meal a day that is all-local. That's too easy. I intend to keep to my own Powdermilk Biscuit standard ("pure... mostly"; also "tasty" but not necessarily "expeditious"). However, after checking out the bulk food section at the co-op I think I will write myself a couple of more exceptions. I thought I remembered that Black Ranch wheat (sold at the co-op) had a white flour but it seems they don't. So I'm going to allow myself my usual white flour from Bob's Red Mill, located about 30 miles outside the 200-mile zone; the wheat itself is grown mainly in Idaho. And I'm going to use that Napa Valley red wine vinegar our son brought up last year. It will make a better vinaigrette than lemon juice does.

So, you might ask, why can't I manage without flour? After all, it's only a week. This is why - it's to make the bread that goes so well with with the amazing tomato stuff. You lightly toast a slice of rustic bread, spread it with with goat cheese (made locally by Siskiyou Goat Dairy or Mama Terra, from Ashland Food Co-op) and top it with these roasted tomatoes dripping in garlicky olive oil. Last night I wasn't allowing myself the bread because the wheat wasn't local, so I put some of the tomatoes on my steak. That was good, too.

One day last summer Nik ate an entire batch of these tomatoes in a day, so last night I secured the bowl from midnight snackers with rubber bands and a "do not eat" sign to make sure there would be some left for tonight. By the way, when the tomatoes are gone, don't throw away the oil - use it to make dressing, to cook eggs in, or for dipping more bread.

Pomodori al Forno

1 C olive oil, divided
2 lbs. plum tomatoes, halved lengthwise, seeded
1 1/2 t dried oregano
3/4 t sugar *
1/2 t salt
1 or 2 garlic cloves, minced
2 t minced Italian parsley

*Eat Local people - it will be fine if you omit the sugar

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Pour 1/2 C oil into a 13x9 glass baking dish. Arrange tomatoes in the dish, cut side up. Drizzle with remaining 1/2 C oil. Sprinkle with oregano, salt, and sugar. Bake 1 hour. Use tongs to turn the tomatoes over. Bake another hour. Turn tomatoes again. Bake until deep red and very tender, about another 15 to 45 minutes.
Layer tomatoes in a bowl or glass loaf pan, sprinkling garlic and parsley over each layer. Pour the liquid from the baking dish into a large measuring cup. Pour just the oil that rises to the top of the measuring cup (not the tomato liquid) over the tomatoes until they are covered (if there is not enough baking oil, use additional olive oil). Let stand at room temperature 2 hours. Serve with goat cheese and toasted bread slices.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Mapping out a week of Eating Local

Today is the first day of my third year of the Eat Local Challenge and I’m feeling confident. The first year, I was a self-described “stickler” who made no exceptions whatsoever to the 100-mile rule. One of the things I learned from that experience was that I need exceptions. My second year, last year, I wrote a blog about my week of eating local for the Mail Tribune. We had some great meals that week and I found several new sources for local ingredients. This year will have a few new twists.

The rules themselves have changed for 2009: “local” according to the sponsor's rules, is now defined as “grown, raised, or produced within the 200 mile radius.” I assume this change was effected to include the coast with its fishing industry and also seawater (for salt) from Port Orford. Well, 200 miles is all right by me. I love fish and now I won’t have to write myself an exception for salt. But I don’t like the “grown, raised, or produced” part – I like to keep it to grown or raised. “Produced” means the ingredients could come from anywhere; this might be good for the local economy but if you are concerned about food miles I think you need to look at where all the individual components come from.

I got out a map and tried to make a geometry lesson out of the new local definition but my 12 year old daughter wasn’t having any of it. It’s been a rough first week at school for us both. So I drew the circle myself: it arcs the coast from Lincoln City OR to Fort Bragg CA. Heading up I-5 it reaches just north of Salem to Keizer, and south as far as Willows CA. Heading due east we go past Lakeview to an area called the Basque Hills. Ought to be plenty to eat in that big circle.

As I mentioned, work has been a bit of a trial recently. In fact, I didn’t get to the Ashland food co-op this week at all and so started the challenge today somewhat unprepared. But we’re doing OK. There were nice local 49er peaches (from Quality Market) for breakfast. Lunch was some eggplant salad made according to a recipe in a previous post with all-local ingredients (except the oil - see below), some leftover steamed green beans from our garden, a carrot bought last week at the co-op, and some raspberries also from the garden. I was hungry when I got home so I ate the leftover garden chard that was in the fridge.

I had to dig around in the freezer a little to find dinner for me and Alekka. I bought a quarter beef from rancher Larry Martin in Central Point a while back - one of the big changes in my food purchasing habits that came about because of last year's Challenge was that now we get almost all of our meat now from local producers - but now most of it is gone except for some short ribs and stew meat. I have an order in for a half beef but the animal won't be killed until October.

But then I found a package of long strips of round steak down in the bottom of the case and thawed it out in the microwave after work.For dinner I cooked that on my stove-top grill along with some Romano beans from the garden – they’re great tossed with some olive oil before grilling and sprinkled with salt and a little lemon after. Alas, no local potatoes in the house but I’ve got a loaf of bread baking in the oven (no local flour in the bin, so the bread will just be for the kids). That and some of our amazing baked tomato stuff (more about that tomorrow) and I think the two of us are all set for decent - and local - meal.

I call myself a purist but I have to make a couple of exceptions if I want get to the goal of educating myself with local eating lessons I can use throughout the year. I don't see this as a Lenten-like deprivation exercise, rather as an opportunity to open my mind to the to realities of agribusiness while exposing my tastebuds to nearby epicurean delights. That's how I interpret it anyway. I could survive a week on steamed zucchini and raw tomatoes from the garden but that wouldn’t inspire me to any kind of higher level. So –

1) I get to drink coffee. The first year I did the challenge, I gave up coffee (it doesn’t grow here) but got a mongo headache that didn’t go away all week. I haven’t done anything to cure myself of my addiction so there we are. Anything that goes into the coffee, however, must be local.

2) Cultures. So many tasty foods depend on yeast and bacteria that I’m just not going to worry about where those ingredients came from. That means I get to make yeast bread (with local flour, of course). I suppose maybe for next year I could get a starter going and make sourdough bread out of the air. But meanwhile for our purposes I declare that yeast is not a food. Same with bacterial cultures used to make buttermilk, sour cream, cheese, and so on. I would not be able to partake of the delicious local cheeses or even make my own if I worried about where the starter was made (the one I use comes mail order from Vermont, but I don’t know where they get it). Even Daisy brand sour cream whose sole ingredient is listed as “cultured cream” contains bacteria of unknown origin. Same with sulfites added to wine and other similar trace chemicals. I say, who cares.

3) Olive oil. My son is allergic to all dairy products, but aside from butter, there are no local oils. You have to have some oil for cooking, and if I choose butter for its local-ness, I have to cook a second dinner for my son without it. No thanks. Besides which, olive oil is delicious and good for you. I get mine in bulk at the food co-op in a container I reuse, so at least I can say I save on the packaging.

4) Lemon juice. I need something sour to make salad dressing and to add a little tang to things. The other option is vinegar. Last year one of our sons in California had the grace and good sense to bring a bottle of Napa Valley red wine vinegar with him on a visit during Eat Local week and I talked myself in to thinking that was legit. But I think we need a real exception. The lemon juice is from lemons we picked ourselves on a visit to LA but I can’t honestly say that makes them local-legal – that’s a slippery slope (I mean, where are the food miles savings if I fly to Ecuador to satisfy a banana craving?)

So, those are my rules. Tomorrow I'm going shopping.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Off he goes, in to the wild Blue Zone

Andrea has gone to Greece for two weeks. He and his brother Tony and their uncle Andy are flying today from Athens into the little airport at Faros on Ikaria. This is something I hope to never do. For one thing, the airport at Faro makes the Medford International Airport look like LAX. Please note in the photo how the runway ends at a little cliff above the sea. And who, I ask, would willingly board a dinky plane headed for an island named after a guy who fell out of the sky and into the waves? There is even a big statue of Icarus in front of the airport (you can sort of see it in the picture). Aristotle would call this hubris. I would say take the boat. Aack.

Andreas is going to Ikaria with his uncle Andy so they can sort out the family property there. They need to get it surveyed and registered with the authorities so it doesn’t end up belonging to the guy storing lumber in the old kafeneo or the other guy who’s using one of the houses as a goat shed. Andreas is also (we hope) finalizing his paperwork to become a Greek citizen. We shall see.


Evdilos

The travelers aren't actually staying in their own village, which is called Arethousa. Instead they're staying nearby in the larger port town of Evdilos. Andreas's aunt called from Athens last week to warn them not to stay in Arethousa because two guys there want to kill Uncle Andy. Eighty-year-old Uncle Andy hasn't been to the island for thirty years but he seems to inspire that kind of thing in people. Andreas emailed me to say that Uncle Andy nearly caused an international incident at Orly airport last week when the French customs officer got a little too personal.

Ikaria recently found itself in the limelight once again after being identified as a “Blue Zone”, one of those places where people live to remarkable ages. Here’s a short video about it. Apparently there's a best selling book about this Blue Zone thing. It was even on NPR. For those of you who have a lame computer like mine and can’t watch the video, these are the “eight simple secrets” of becoming a very old Ikarian:

1) wild greens
2) herbal teas
3) low sense of time urgency
4) daily naps
5) mountain living
6) strong sense of community
7) goat milk
8) Ikarian diet (more vegetables, beans, olive oil; less meat & sugar. Not so much fish and grains, but plenty of potatoes.)

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

This is inhumane

It is the first day of school and I am leaving for work before the squash blossoms are open. Sigh.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Squash blossom summer

One the best things about summer is finding breakfast in the back yard. The sun shining on our little garden plot in the morning is a joyous sight to behold. Andreas is an early riser even when on vacation, so he’s the one to get the drip coffee going and JPR on the radio. By the time I wander downstairs I’m often greeted with the smell of Trade Joe’s organic fair trade breakfast blend and one of Andreas’s special garden frittatas. The method is simple: gather peppers, squash blossoms, and basil from the garden, saute the pepper with chopped onions, add some roughly chopped basil and squash blossoms and also some crumbled cheese(feta or goat); whisk some eggs and pour them over the vegetables; bake until puffed and set. If there are some mushrooms in the refrigerator, slice and saute those with the vegetables, or chop some garden tomatoes, or put in some leftover sauteed zucchini. Whatever you do, it will be good.

Some days Andreas can’t wait for me to drag my lazy self downstairs and he’s already had his oatmeal or omelet before I show my face. If I’m lucky, though, he’s picked a few big beautiful squash blossoms and a handful of ripe raspberries and strawberries and left them on the counter to brighten my morning. I like the blossoms prepared very simply: beat an egg in one dish, and in another dish mix a handful of flour with some salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Dip the blossoms in the egg and then dredge them in the flour. Fry them in butter. That plus a little dish of strawberries and raspberries, or some just-picked cherry tomatoes will brighten your morning as if you’ve swallowed the sun.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

New Sammy’s Cowboy Bistro

We’ve been trying to get to Sammy’s all summer. Sammy's is hands down, without a doubt, the best restaurant in southern Oregon. In fact, so far as I know, it is the best restaurant in all of Oregon, and much of California besides. We’ve been eating there as often as the budget has allowed ever since we moved here in 1991. Since the budget doesn’t allow much, that’s normally been twice a year.

This year, various factors necessitated putting off our traditional June date night at Sammy’s. Then family business called Andreas to take off this morning for fifteen days in Greece without me. He goes with my blessing, but I wasn’t going to say no to a conciliatory dinner at Sammy’s. When he called the restaurant Tuesday for a reservation, the only time available for Friday night was 9 pm. We took it, along with the promise of earlier seating in the event of a cancellation. On Thursday they called back and we were in at 8:30, and then Saturday afternoon we got another call for 7 pm. Perfect.

We used to consider Sammy’s one of the best-kept secrets in the Rogue Valley. Locals dining there 15 years ago were reluctant to recommend it for fear of diminishing their own chances for a future reservation at one of the only six tables. It’s not such a secret anymore. Word got out somehow – how could it not – and I guess we should all be glad for the proprietors’ sakes that the place is so popular. Last night, from the snatches of conversation we picked up, it seemed our fellow diners were all Californians up for the festival (one table of two had another food blogger at it, and the people at the big table in the next room were taking photos of their food as well. Dinners at Sammy’s seem to be well-documented these days).

Before the remodel, Sammy’s sported an (extremely) low-key exterior: it was a multi-colored shack with a mostly burnt-out flashing arrow, and no sign. Now it has a more conventional California-mission face with the restaurant’s name spelled out in big letters above the door. I do miss the diamond-in-the-rough look – I felt like I was entering a speakeasy, a private boîte open only to those in the know. But the original six white linen-covered tables, arranged in three rooms with combination bistro and cow motif on the walls, is still contained within the new exterior. We always ask for a table in this old area; the new addition includes an attractive bar, tile floor and custom hammered-metal tables and is sleek and modern but loud. The biggest problem with it is that in there we miss the quirky charm of the original.

The food at Sammy’s is entirely the creation of the talented Charlene Rollins, and the extensive wine cellar is the responsibility of her husband Vernon. When the place was smaller, Charlene literally did all the cooking herself. More tables mean she has some additional help in the kitchen now, but she has made certain that the food meets the same standard of excellence as before the expansion. The food itself is artfully presented but not fussy; creative and interesting but not outré. It’s made with attention to what’s local, what’s fresh, and what’s good. Much of it comes from the restaurant’s own garden or nearby, named producers. It’s a lot like eating at the home of the very best cook you know. Vernon and Charlene Rollins have been creating fine food in California, France and Oregon since 1978 (the whole interesting story can be read here). There are usually red meat, fowl, fish, and vegetarian options, and the kitchen is open to making adjustments for special dietary requests.

For my dinner last night I chose the prix-fixe menu. It began with a generous slice of organic chicken liver terrine with mixed green salad, garnished with marinated chiogga beets, spiced walnuts, pickled red onion and accompanied on the plate by thin slices of lightly toasted seeded rye bread. My main course consisted of two large grilled Umpqua Valley lamb loin chops served over a beautifully balanced risotto with sweet corn kernels, shiitake mushrooms, onion, marjoram and pecorino cheese. On the prix-fixe menu the diner gets a choice of desserts, and I selected a satisfyingly rich bittersweet chocolate cake with cherry mousse ice cream.

Andreas chose his dinner from the a la carte menu. His first course was a coho salmon and sorrel terrine with Meyer lemon crème fraiche and a small salad. Andreas can’t say no to duck, and he was not disappointed by the grilled skinless, boneless breast in spiced cherry sauce, served with braised mustard greens, applewood smoked bacon, chiogga beets, and polenta. His dessert selection was a crispy, cold torte of frozen sorbet layered with chocolate-almond meringue, served with orange sorbet and blackcurrant sauce.

Vernon is a knowledgeable wine expert; he’ll come to your table after you place your order with the server to take your wine order. We've learned to ask for his educated opinion on the wine. He’ll ask you what you like, get a gentle feel for your budget, and make some suggestions. Last night we took his advice on by-the glass options and had a cotes-de-Rhone that went well with both our meals. The wine prices are so not absurdly inflated as they are in many restaurants, and the selection is extensive. There is a $6 corkage fee if you bring your own, but if you also choose a second bottle from Sammy’s cellars then the fee for yours is waived (it’s relevant to remember here that in Oregon it is legal to bring open leftover wine home with you.)

In addition to all this, diners are kept tantalized with a small parade of clever amuse-bouches based on ingredients from the restaurant’s garden: before dinner we had a couple of grapes and tiny tomatoes accompanied by a paper-thin and spicy-hot wafer. This was followed by an egg-cup of “white gazpacho” made with cucumber, almonds, grapes, and dill, and a little plate of edamame pods served with a tiny rice ball and a spoonful Asian dipping sauce. Sammy’s is known locally for their rustic house-made bread, which is also sold in stores and farmer’s markets; at the restaurant it is served with tangy olive oil for dipping. After dessert we were presented with two tiny ground-cherries (raw tomatoes) dipped in dark chocolate.

While spendy by southern Oregon standards, urban visitors will be pleasantly surprised at the reasonable price. The prix-fixe menu last night was $51.00. First courses are around $10-15, desserts a little less, and mains around $25. Lunchtime has a different menu, with lighter dishes, soups, and salads – and is a serious bargain at around $15-20 per person.

Friday, September 4, 2009

End of summer salads

When I’m not cooking or eating or blogging about it, I’m often busy being the librarian for a large public high school. This week I’ve tried hard to get back into the academic-year routine but it’s been a rocky start. Our new library is going to be gorgeous, however right now its salient characteristic that it is under construction. I have it from a reliable source that the building will be fit for human habitation by next week, but this week was frustrating in the extreme. What’s a librarian with no library?

I’ve pledged not to think about it this weekend. Labor Day offers the last opportunity to ignore real responsibilities before the treadmill revs up (speaking of treadmills, my new routine will include an hour at the YMCA every morning– you heard me say it, folks). So let’s have a picnic and I’ll bring the salad. Here are two more of my family’s current favorites.

Watermelon-feta salad was everywhere a couple of years ago. I’ve seen it billed as a Greek dish (it’s not), or Mexican when made with cotija instead of feta cheese; Nigella Lawson puts in some black olives and calls it Israeli. But I’m pretty sure some American just made it up. In any case it’s light and refreshing on a hot day, and very simple to make. There are recipes that include balsamic vinegar instead of lime, cilantro or basil instead of mint, and numerous other variations. I like this particular version because I can remember it without looking it up in my file. I think of it as the 4x4 salad (that would be a dumb name, but it makes it easy to remember the proportions) – 4 cups of watermelon plus ¼ cup each of the other 4 ingredients. If the agribusiness aura doesn’t put you off too much, get one of those cute little personal-size Dulcinea watermelons , or else use up the rest of that giant melon you regret buying because it’s taking up half your refrigerator.

Watermelon-Feta Salad

4 cups watermelon, cubed (seedless, or remove seeds)

¼ C lime juice

¼ C finely chopped red onion

¼ C finely chopped fresh mint leaves

¼ C feta cheese, crumbled


Toss all ingredients together. Chill.



The green beans in our garden are ripening by the bucketful right now. I found this recipe on Epicurious – it was originally from Gourmet magazine, April 1995 – and made it take to the Pink Martini show at Britt last week. After we ate all the green beans Andreas couldn’t bear to throw out the dressing that had dripped to the bottom of the bowl; he was inspired to pour it on some blanched chard the next day. Very tasty indeed.

By the way – if you don’t already, keep your fresh ginger root in the freezer. It’s easy to grate off what you need while it still frozen, then put the rest back in the freezer for next time.

Green Bean Salad with Asian-Style Dressing

Dressing

3 T white-wine vinegar

2 T rice vinegar

2 t soy sauce

1 garlic clove, minced

1-inch piece of fresh ginger root, peeled and minced (about 1 T)

2 t sesame oil

1/3 C canola oil


Salad

1 T sesame seeds

2 lbs green beans, trimmed

2 scallions, chopped fine (about 2 T)


In a small bowl, whisk together vinegars, soy sauce, garlic, ginger root, and sesame oil. Add canola oil in a stream, whisking until emulsified. Season dressing with salt and pepper.


In a small dry skillet toast sesame seeds over moderate heat, stirring, until golden and transfer to a small bowl.


In a large saucepan of boiling salted water, cook beans until crisp-tender, about 4 minutes. Transfer beans to a colander and rinse under cold water. Drain beans well.


In a large bowl, combine beans, scallions, sesame seeds and dressing and toss well. Serve salad chilled or at room temperature.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

I left my heart in San Francisco, part two

We had tickets for 1:00 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The timed entry scheme was due to two hugely popular special exhibits running simultaneously at the museum this summer. One is the Ansel Adams / Georgia O’Keefe show (did you know they were friends?). Good stuff, but the other exhibit was the one I really wanted to see. Richard Avedon. I love black and white portraiture, and Avedon was the master.

When I was living in Washington DC in the early1980s I had a great friend named Kelly. We both worked at Georgetown’s New Wave emporium, Commander Salamander. I was a self-styled prairie punk with cowboy boots, an orange and purple fauxhawk, and a thing for Willie Nelson. He was an ethereal blonde with great bone structure and a better style sense than anyone else I knew. When the Commander gave us time off from hawking pink hairspray to Amy Carter and her friends and punk accoutrements to touring rock performers (I once sold Prince a leather jacket), Kelly and I made a striking pair on urban excursions. We smoked a lot of Sobranies, danced to Martha and the Muffins at the 9:30 club, and marinated our angst in vodka tonics at Cagney’s on Dupont Circle. Ah, the life of the tragically hip.

For all his flamboyance, Kelly sheltered his secrets well, and I only saw his apartment on one occasion. We had been talking about the photo studio in San Francisco I’d worked in before moving to D.C, and how much I admired the work of Diane Arbus. Kelly said he wanted to show me something. He took me upstairs in a dingy apartment building to a tiny studio with a Murphy bed and a hotplate. And there on the wall above the dresser was a huge black and white photo of Kelly taken by Richard Avedon. Avedon had noticed Kelly when he was a teenager blowing though his inheritance by living high in New York’s Plaza Hotel. I don’t know what ever happened to Kelly, or his picture. I look for it in the indexes to Avedon books and on the walls of exhibits, but I never have seen it again.

One of the several things Kelly introduced me to in Washington was Ethiopian food. Late at night after work we used to drive in his gargantuan late-model Cadillac sedan from Georgetown up to Adams Morgan, to the Red Sea restaurant. We always ordered the kitfo – chopped raw beef in spiced butter, loaded with enough hot mitmita pepper to make your eyes water. We both thought it was the best food in the world. I remember Kelly’s solemn promise to find a way to mail me some when I moved back to San Francisco.

My taste for Ethiopian food has followed me everywhere. Now whenever our family goes to LA, the East Bay, or Portland we have to have an Ethiopian meal. After our Sunday at the museum, we went back across the bay to Oakland where the best Ethiopian food in the Bay area is located. We have several places we like, but there was a newcomer with us this time in the person of the intrepid Stephanie, and we wanted her to have a good impression. That meant we had to go to the friendliest, homiest one of the bunch, which has to be Ensarro on Grand Avenue.

When people ask what the Ethiopian cuisine is like I usually say that it is something like Indian, but without the curry powder. It sort of looks like Indian food, and the texture is similar (medium thick stews), with a lot of vegetarian choices; the spices are quite different however. The meal is served family style on one big platter with the various stews mounded separately on a giant round of injera. Injera is usually described as a spongy, sour “bread:” really more like a thick pancake cut into wide strips and rolled up. (Someone told me it made them think of “wet gray rags” – a comparison that stubbornly sticks in my brain, like the spinach-as-hair-in-a-drain metaphor offered by a fellow grad student in a foodways seminar. But don’t let that put you off). Anyway, everyone takes a roll of injera and tears off pieces to pick up the various stews and eat them. No utensils involved here, but you still need to mind your manners: etiquette requires you to eat with your right hand only.

The main types of dishes are wats (stews), tibs (small pieces of meat sauteed with onions), and various vegetable dishes including lentils, greens, and sometimes grains. I have never been to an Ethiopian restaurant that didn’t have helpful descriptions in the menu. There are many good choices for vegetarians but vegan options are limited: many of the vegetable dishes are made with niter kebbeh, a seasoned clarified butter. This ingredient probably won’t be listed in the dish descriptions so if you are a strict vegan you should ask before ordering; vegetable oil can sometimes be substituted. Also, many dishes are spicy, so if you are sensitive you will want to inquire about that as well (there are plenty of mild options).

I am still a great fan of kitfo, the raw beef dish. It is my absolute favorite and the primary criterion in evaluating an Ethiopian restaurant. If you want to try it, be sure to emphasize that you want it raw, not rare. We have learned that some places don’t expect non-Ethiopians to order it this way (although it is the correct and traditional way to make this dish) and so will automatically ask the kitchen to cook it slightly unless you make this clear to your server. Cooked kitfo is pointless. Don’t go there.

Most restaurants offer combination dinners. We have found that if you have fewer than 6 or 8 in the party that this is the best way to go. A meat combination usually gives you three small meat dishes for the platter, and a vegetarian combination gives you four vegetables. By ordering one each of the meat and vegetarian combinations plus an order of kitfo, a small party can get plenty of variety (eight items) and plenty of food to serve three or four people. It will all be served on the one platter, family style, the same as if you have ordered separately. For a larger group you might want to have each person choose an item for the platter, or still get the combinations plus some additional dishes for variety.

Last Sunday at Ensarro we ordered a bottle of tej, Ethiopian honey wine, to go with our meal. We were surprised to learn that the brand offered at Ensarro, Yamatt, is made locally in Oakland. It is sweet and amber-colored, with a light a taste of honey – we all enjoyed it very much. The food also goes well with beer; there are Ethiopian brands available.

I have to tell you that the proprietors at the family-owned Ensarro are lovely people. They will make you feel at home even when your husband insists on walking into the kitchen to meet the cook (it’s a Greek thing). We have not actually met the proprietors of Addis, but all of the other places listed below are recommended because of the both the delicious food and the charming and helpful staff.

Oakland
Enssaro 366 Grand Ave
Asmara 5020 Telegraph Ave
Addis 6100 Telegraph Ave

Los Angeles
Messob 1041 S Fairfax Ave

Portland
Dalo’s Kitchen 4134 N Vancouver Ave # 207

Sunday, August 30, 2009

I left my heart in San Francisco, part one



John Murdoch MacIver, stevedore
born Stornaway, Lewis, Scotland, 1833
died San Francisco, California 1902

I keep thinking I’ve been in Oregon long enough (almost 20 years) that I don’t care about California any more. But then we spend a weekend in the Bay Area and suddenly I’m looking at real estate ads and trying to figure out how to dupe our mortgage lender into letting us borrow enough for one of those Berkeley brown-shingles. My ancestors arrived in San Francisco in 1863 and I’m afraid it’s in my blood. I’ll find a way to get back, someday.

Saturday was reserved for my 32nd (don’t ask) high school reunion, in the form of a picnic at Heather Farms Park in Walnut Creek. Sadly, the alma mater is no more (a mere pothole in the road to excellence - Del Valle's demise is on page 41), so these get-togethers are a kind of traveling show. I must say that high school was not a whole heck of a lot of fun, and it required no small amount of intestinal fortitude to take my overweight and wrinkly self on this potential death march down memory lane. Surprisingly, the mean girls and beastly boys got a whole lot better during those 32 years. And as for the ones I remembered fondly from school, well, I’ll just offer the sentiment that some things never change. I’m glad I went to the picnic.

Sunday was a beautiful bright day spent in the company of our son Kosta and his charming friend Stephanie. Stephanie deserves the good sport award for dedicating an entire day to an excursion with Kosta’s embarrassing parents and 12 year old sister. It seems she is something of a daredevil as well: a day with us is certain to involve the ingestion of strange substances, so with her long list of serious food allergies Stephanie made sure to bring along her epi-pen. We are happy she survived to tell the tale – and didn’t even need the antidote.

After picking up the kids at Kingman Hall in Berkeley we proceeded in search of a dim sum breakfast. Our favorite spot in Oakland, Peony, has a wide variety of delicate vegetable and steamed seafood offerings, but its 11:00 am opening time (and terrible service) would have made too late a start for our plans. So we thought we’d go another standby, Legendary Palace, which starts serving at 9; the dim sum there is heavier with more of an emphasis on pork, eggs, and fried dishes. Once on the freeway, however, we decided to head straight to Chinatown in SF for a visit to Y-Ben House. Not for the faint of heart, Y-Ben House. But we like it anyway. Read Daniel B’s review on Yelp – he describes it well.

Y-Ben seats everyone at large round tables, so if you have a party of fewer than eight you will probably be sharing. The hostess will ask you if that’s OK, but I wouldn’t recommend saying no if you ever want to sit down. Anyway, sharing can be part of the fun. The man and his young son who were already at the table were gone before Andreas returned from parking the car and were replaced by a middle-aged couple. We observed the wife carefully wiping her and her husband’s plate and chopsticks with a tea-moistened napkin – I will remember that for next time, I think. Our party started to select items from the carts, and the wife was soon engaged in improving Kosta’s chopstick technique. Alekka and Stephanie were also found wanting in the table manners department (I’m sure I was, too, but apparently my elder status exempted me from the lesson).

Andreas finally arrived after parking half a mile away, and in short time an older man was seated between him and the other couple. The new arrival was wearing earbuds (I wish I knew what was on his iPod) and as soon as he sat down started to shout “Toe-jam” (or so I thought) until a bemused waiter brought tea. The other couple looked slightly alarmed at the outburst (although I expect they at least knew what our neighbor was saying); the rest of us assumed the frozen smiles of Caucasians in an Awkward Situation. However our gentleman turned out to be harmless, and friendly to boot. It soon became apparent that the man was, if not a friend of the proprietors, at least a regular customer; he started explaining the restaurant hierarchy to Andreas (“boss… half-boss…. big boss… boss’s wife…”). After we got all that straight, he set about mapping our group’s familial relationships. Who knows, maybe the guy is a structural anthropologist. He thought Kosta and Stephanie made a nice couple, with Alekka as their daughter (I have to agree there is something similar about all three of them around the eyebrows). Andreas set him straight about who we all were (in a loud hand-waving talking-to-foreigners way, but then between the earbuds and the clanking dim sum carts maybe shouting wasn’t uncalled for). Our friend demanded to know from the youngsters when they were getting married. Yikes. Again, thank goodness Stephanie’s a good sport.

Dim sum at Y-Ben starts at 7 am and goes until 3 pm. The food is maybe a little simpler than some places, and occasionally the hot dishes aren’t as hot as you would like (look for steaming carts). But it’s an adventure and you can’t beat the price – even with the always mysteriously overpriced Chinese broccoli, our bill was $37.50 including tax for our party of five. I'll be practicing with the chopsticks for next time.

I am droning on… the rest of the day will be another post.

Legendary Place, 708 Franklin St., Oakland
Peony, 388 9th St. Suite 288, Oakland
Y-Ben House, 835 Pacific, San Francisco

Friday, August 28, 2009

Lotus petal, anyone?

I don’t have a good excuse for my extended absence from the blogosphere. It started with two weeks in LA, where I bravely soldiered on with my borrowed laptop until – well - there is just something about Los Angeles. I find that getting anything accomplished there is, to borrow a phrase from Nik’s most recent (antipodean) stage director, like marching through treacle. It doesn’t help that so few of my husband’s relatives are engaged in regular employment, and that those who are tend to keep irregular schedules. Lots of coffee drinking, crossword puzzles, wandering the neighborhood on missions to drop by cousin so-and-so or Thea something’s house to pick a basket of lemons or to drop off some figs; a schedule of general time-wasting punctuated by leisurely meals at strangely late hours. It’s hard to be productive during a sojourn in the Land of the Lotus Eaters. I did manage to plan a few posts, but it would be best not to bore you with outlines. Maybe I’ll still get around to writing some of them up. I do promise a complete report on my immersion into kollyva-making with Aunt Koula, though, since that was one of the main reasons for the trip south.

Since LA, I’ve been to Nevada City, where I kept Mom company at home for a couple of days while my sister trained for a new job. Then back to Medford for the invasion of the twenty-somethings: our boys Kosta and Dimitri were up from California along with five of their closest friends to watch youngest brother Nik perform as Fleance in Ashland’s Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Macbeth. Lots of food and wine happened that weekend, including an all-day stint in the kitchen preparing a family favorite - lamb osso buco with risotto Milanese – for the twelve of us. Then there was a church retreat, a couple of dinner parties, and finally a last-ditch (and successful) attempt at squeezing out the last little bit of summer with a weekend in San Francisco. Lots of cooking, lots of eating, just not a lot of writing.

So here’s a little something I need to get off my chest. For the past five years, the Rogue Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship has held a weekend retreat at Camp Latgawa in the Rogue National Forest. One of the great attractions for our congregation is the tasty home-cooked camp fare served in the dining hall. Latgawa’s hosts, Greg and Eva, are a young couple who bake their own bread and use fresh local ingredients wherever they can. This year the meals were yummy as always, but we were disappointed to discover after we arrived that the Forest Service had suspended all burning due to extreme fire hazard. No campfire! Unitarians love to sing around a campfire – without Unitarians, “Kumbaya” would have died a natural death before 1980 – but we are resourceful, so this year the singalong took place around a camp lantern.



A camp lantern, however, was not going cut it in the s’mores department. (I hope I don’t have to explain what a s’more is, but just in case my readers come from another planet: a s’more is a sticky sweet camp treat, purportedly invented by Girl Scouts, involving a toasted marshmallow and a square of Hershey’s chocolate sandwiched between the two halves of a graham cracker.)

So… it came to be revealed that some of our members were along on the trip just for the s’mores, and that the retreat experience would be completely worthless without said s'mores (these are adults we are talking about here, by the way). I can sympathize maybe a little bit – there is something special about a perfectly toasted marshmallow when camping. But the way I see it, no campfire, no s’mores; that’s life. My husband, however, is ever obliging to a lady in distress, and got the bright idea of making s’mores in the kitchen's convection oven. Eek! I had to leave the room and join the lantern singers at that point. There are some things that just have to be done a certain way, and to my way of thinking you cannot make a proper s’more in the oven. It ain’t right.

All who participated in this horrifying crime against nature had good things to say. In fact, they had the nerve to suggest that s’mores were EVEN BETTER this way. Then they told me about S'more Kits. They told me about microwave s’mores ("in a fraction of the time and without the mess.") One person even said she'd been known make a whole batch at night at home in the oven and eat them cold for breakfast. I find this alarming in the extreme. To me it is evidence of a strange trend toward out-of-context consumption. Call me old-fashioned, but I say cotton candy has to come from a carnival or county fair. Retsina only tastes good in a Greek café, outside. And a s’more has not earned its credentials unless the marshmallow has actually spent time at the end of a stick, in or above a burning pile of wood. Sheesh. What is this world coming to? I couldn’t even bring myself to take a picture. But here’s a video my daughter Alekka (age 12) made in her animation class this summer.

Friday, July 31, 2009

Three Drunken Goats


Alekka’s lovely nona Aleka treated our daughter to a girl’s night out – the movie “Up” and dinner at Twohey’s restaurant in Alhambra – leaving Andreas and me free to enjoy the kind of dinner kids don’t like. Tapas sounded good, and after a little Internet research and discussion of our shared mutual aversion to dressing up (thus eliminating Vertical Wine Bistro in Pasadena) we settled on Three Drunken Goats in Montrose. Really, with a name like that, how could we pass it up?

Montrose is a cute little LA neighborhood that reminds me of Elmwood in Berkeley – not as hip as Elmwood, certainly, but home to a few browse-worthy shops and restaurants. On a Monday night the street was quiet except for the crowd of young locals socializing at Blue Fish’s outdoor tables. Three Drunken Goats itself has a pleasant ambiance with high ceilings, dark wood, and wine-red painted walls. The large dining room is not divided up at all: more suited to a noisy weekend crowd than an intimate dinner, really, but we were enjoying our date night regardless.
I’m not a fan of television in the bar (or anywhere else) and the nuevo-punk background music was a distraction, but the low light was nice and the seating comfortable.

Despite the dearth of custom, our waiter seemed a bit distracted; I suspect he might have been new on the job because our questions seemed to make him nervous and he kept wandering off. Andreas appreciated that he didn’t hover but I think the guy at least ought to have mentioned the evening wine flight offerings without us having to ask (flights are different every night and not listed on the menu).

We started with a sampling of three reds: 2007 Onix Priorat grenache; 2007 Carro Tinto Monastrell-syrah; and a 2006 Martin Berdugo tempranillo. As I’ve said before, I’m no wine expert, but I know what I like, and it’s only fair to mention that I don’t usually like Spanish wines very well. These were no exception. Too fruity, too simple. Of the three I preferred the Onix: less fruity, more complex (I’m pretty predictable that way).

We had decided on a tapas bar in part because neither of us thought we were very hungry, but once we saw the menu our appetites suddenly returned. We really went to town on the small plates, starting off with bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with chorizo and napped with a cream sauce; pulled pork and piquilla with thick country toast; and garlic prawns with pocha beans. The sweet-salty combination of the dates was great; the creamy French-style sauce, while tasty, seemed a little at odds with the oily pork flavors of the dish. That didn’t stop us from soaking up every last bit with some crusty bread (we had to ask for the bread). The pulled pork, alas, was plentiful but watery and bland – I wouldn’t recommend it. Andreas, a true seafood lover, was pleased with the prawns. The pocha beans were clearly from a jar, but I would have been very surprised to find fresh ones as they are a rarity in this country.

Round two… more wine… Andreas ordered a glass of the Martin Berdugo he had enjoyed. I switched to a white that I liked better, a Basque Tatai that was dry and slightly effervescent. We flagged our elusive waiter down and ordered two more items: the lamb chops with mint and the artichoke and goat cheese croquettes. These dishes were delivered to us by an enthusiastic kitchen worker who certainly knew more about the food than the waiter did. This guy would have been a much better salesperson for the menu, but it was pretty evident he likes working with the food. They ran out of the chickpea puree that was supposed to be served with the lamb chops but no matter – the socca cakes with a hint of honey that we had instead were delicious, and the tiny grilled rib chops themselves with the chopped mint sauce were the best thing we had all evening. The croquettes were okay, but the breading and goat cheese overwhelmed the delicate artichoke flavor, and the baby lettuce with bell pepper sauce and berry glaze they were served with were so American that the dish seemed out of place on the otherwise mostly Spanish menu.

For dessert we shared a Queen of Nuts cake (Reine de Saba, for anyone who’s worked their way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking) – very nice, not too sweet, with marmalade to make it more Spanish and a scoop of vanilla ice cream as well.

Prices were a little high for tapas: about 7 or 8 dollars a dish, and 14 or 15 for more substantial items like the lamb. The portions were a bit larger than you often find in a tapas bar but I don’t consider this necessarily a good thing; I would prefer smaller, cheaper plates, so I could order more different items.

If you want to check out Three Drunken Goats, I’d recommend visiting on a busy weekend night. For the best value you could stop in during Happy Hour: from 5 to 7 Monday through Friday, the dates, pulled pork, prawns, croquettes, and also a cheese plate and fried calamari are all on the $5 menu.

Three Drunken Goats 2256 Honolulu, Montrose