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.

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).

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!

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.

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.”

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!

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.