Right now, this is my favorite

Simple, quiet, unassuming: the first glance belies its rich, tart complexity. It is at once cold, tangy, creamy. I smear it on one half of a prune plum, layer it under granita, serve it with bread, eat it from a spoon.

Labneh cheese.

So effortless, yet so decadent. I vow to always keep it around.

Start with whole milk Greek yogurt.* I had a large container of Fage Total in my fridge so I used that. Use as much as you’d like, but I’d recommend that you use as much as you can. This stuff; it is a drug.

Take your yogurt and place it in a cheesecloth- or unbleached paper towel-lined fine-mesh strainer set over a bowl. Make sure the strainer balances over the bowl. Dump your yogurt into the lined strainer, cover with plastic wrap, and place in the fridge overnight. I think I let my sit about 12 hours and that seemed sufficient. Perhaps you can get away with less time.

Once the manna is thick, thick, thick (think barely whipped cream cheese), remove and place in a sealable container. Eat with everything possible.

*If you can’t find or can’t afford Greek yogurt, you can certainly use knock-off strained brands, or you can start with plain yogurt (the straining step will just take longer). And remember, this is cheese, not diet food, so stick with the full-fat good stuff.

Pickles

I’ll just go ahead and state the obvious, get it out of the way, and move on. It’s been quite a hiatus over here. I didn’t know if I was going to come back here and continue writing, or move on and start anew. I wasn’t sure of this blog’s identity anymore (stories, recipes, politics, funny pictures: all or one or none of the above?), and that struggle was keeping me from doing what I set out to in the first place, namely, to write. And then I decided I wanted to keep going, to keep writing—writing at least something, but couldn’t get started.

So this blog turned one and I let it be. I moved to Boston, threw a going-away pie-party and didn’t tell you. I took a real person job (in! cookbook! publishing!) and let it slide. So I’m sitting here drinking tea in the Northeastern heat wave thinking about my kitchen and how to catch up.

My new job has blessed me with an abundance of extra food. Some days it is leftover chili, pie, chocolate cake, and (ugh) slow-cooker meatloaf. Other days it is extra produce from a photo shoot: shitakes and basil, habanero peppers and half-cut onions. I lug what I can carry home during a 30-minute stroll to my (hot, hot) 3^rd floor walk-up, and lay it all out. On Thursdays I stop by the Coolidge Corner farmers’ market and buy the rest of my week’s groceries: local squash, carrots, early heirloom tomatoes, and the last of this mixed-up season’s blueberries.

My fridge is bursting at the seams, and spoilage is my mortal enemy.

So I’ve been spending my Saturdays getting to know my freezer and practicing the awesome art that is pickling. Using Momofuku as a guide, I’ve pickled carrots, ginger, jalapenos, asparagus, onions, radishes, and so many cucumbers. Quick vinegar carrot pickles go quickly, and sliced on the bias taste great in salads with walnuts and butter lettuce. The pickled ginger has been thrown in (another) salad with leftover work salmon, a spicy okra sauté, and straight into my mouth when I get home from work with a bellyache. My pickled asparagus is quite ugly: I made a soy sauce brine, and the thin spears shriveled up upon contact with the hot/salty/sweet liquor. But they sure taste good.

My best pickles, however, are my latest cucumber pickles—the brine is an agglomeration of ideas and recipes: a mixture of white and rice vinegar, onions, garlic, peppercorns, dill, fennel, and sea salt. They’re not sweet, nor sour, just cold, crisp, and preserved. I can take my time with them, knowing that they’ll still taste good next week.

And then there is the granita, the icy treat that requires no ice cream maker, no dairy, and no custard. I made a great one yesterday and I think you should try your hand at it too.

The method is simple: stir together a sweet, flavorful puree or flavored syrup (but make sure your syrup is watery; too much sugar makes for a gloppy granita). Stick it in the freezer in a shallow pan or Tupperware container. Wait 45 minutes, and stir with a fork. Wait again, stir again. Repeat. After a couple hours, you’ll have it: Italian ice, no corn syrup needed.

Here’s my recipe, but change it at will (a fruit puree would be a great addition; I’ve been eating my berries and stone fruit fresh, and quickly, so none of it makes it into these projects).

Ginger-Basil Granita

serves 1 for a week of desserts, or 4-5 all at once

1/3 cup honey

1 ½-inch knob of ginger, peeled and sliced into 1/8-inch disks

a few basil leaves

juice from ½ lime (about 1 teaspoon)

water

Stir together honey with 1/3 cup water. Add ginger slices and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Simmer until the ginger softens and the syrup has become spicy, about 10 minutes. Turn off the heat, add basil, cover, and let steep for another 10 minutes. Remove lid and let syrup cool for 10-15 minutes. Pour syrup into measuring cup and add water to measure 1½ cups. Pour into a shallow pan or Tupperware container and freeze for 30-45 minutes, or until mixture begins to freeze. Break up frozen chunks with a fork and stir. Return to freezer for another 30-45 minutes, and stir again with a fork. Repeat freezing and stirring steps until the mixture is completely frozen and flaky. If you forget to stir, don’t fret. You’ll just need to stir more aggressively once you remember.

So there is good Chinese in Chinatown! / Ping

The other day when I was in Chinatown for reasons other than eating, I thought out loud if there was actually any reliably good Chinese food to be had in the area. Those few blocks in Portland seem overrun with pretty much everything but reliable goodness – strip clubs, “lounges,” homeless shelters, and the occasional music venue populate instead.

Upon recommendation from one of my new colleagues, however, I decided to check out Ping when my dad was in town. Andy Ricker, the chef at Pok Pok, opened Ping about 6 months ago; and I have a vague recollection of reading about it, putting it on my endless “to eat” list, and promptly forgetting about it. It’s a shame it took me so long to get there.

Focusing more on Southeast Asian street food than specifically Thai cuisine, Ping is a dream for diners of my persuasion. The menu contains 21 different types of skewers, as well as a perfectly varied collection of entrée-type dishes, organized by cooking method. Most dishes are small, and the waitstaff encourages ordering as you would in a tapas bar, a couple of dishes at a time, sharing with your friends, and stopping once full.

My dad and I started with the fried pork ears, a special for the day:

(unfortunately I forgot my camera, and so these photos are from my phone…)

Crispy, porky, and slightly chewy, these were a great drinking snack, but perhaps a bit too heavy for a starter (I prefer lighter appetizers, usually, so that my appetite is wet, not deadened).

Next came the baby octopus skewers:

Just the right amount of chew, with a very spicy chimichurri-like chili sauce over the top, which added fire but still managed to allow the subtle ocean taste to come through at the end.

For our slightly larger dishes, we had the nonya-style daikon cakes, fried with eggs and a sweet soy sauce (kecap manis):

and the kuaytiaw pet pha lo, a duck and noodle dish, which was probably one of the best dishes I have eaten in months:

The duck was falling off the bone tender, juicy, and slightly sweet, accompanied by thick rice noodles, shittakes, and pickled mustard greens. These greens infused what could have been an overly sweet broth with a sour, briny complexity that echoed on my palate long after swallowing. I could eat this bowl over and over again for days, weeks, months.

After such a meal, I was totally craving an ice kachang, so I asked the waitress if they made such delicacies. She laughed and said she had never heard of it, but brought us the dessert menu anyway. Turns out they make a dish somewhat similar to an ice kachang, minus the shaved ice:

I don’t remember what this was called, and Ping doesn’t post its dessert menu online, but it was basically a bowl of assorted jellied things like tapioca, lychees, and fresh coconut shavings, covered in coconut milk and ice cubes. While not exactly what I wanted, it was very refreshing and a perfect, cooling end to a delicious meal.

In other words, the answer is now, yes, there is good Chinese (and Southeast Asian) food in Chinatown. Brave the crazies. It’s totally worth it.

Ping: 102 NW 4th Ave, 503-229-7464, Monday-Friday 11-10, Saturday 4-10.

A Love Affair with Capers and Cucumbers

I had this whole plan for today’s post that involved regaling you with my prowess of experimentation and improvisation (yet again) in the art of baking (yet again), but, alas, the weekend baking god granted me neither luck nor forethought enough to pull off a flourless/white sugar-less/almost butter-less chocolate cake. And, in the end, you are probably tired of reading about breads and cakes and the like (or at least you find me somewhat insane to continue cranking the oven up to 375 degrees at the end of August.

The cake wasn’t terrible, though, and looks kind of charming in that fallen, flat, brownie kind of way:

And if you happen to have the proper ingredients, you should probably try it (as I will probably attempt, again). The cake is almost certainly delicious, since it comes from the almost unfailing repertoire of Orangette, and really does contain only chocolate, sugar, eggs, and butter (okay, and a tad bit of flour). How could that possibly be bad?

But I come not to bring you cake, but capers. And cucumbers (for more cute recipes starting with the letter “c” and the rest of the alphabet, see Gourmet’s Sesame Street-esque September issue) – not combined together, but as two new starring roles in my usual roster of recipes (God. Can’t get enough alliteration. I promise to stop – now).

I first tossed capers into a batch of pesto a couple of weeks ago on a whim. I had been craving a tapenade, but having neither olives nor anchovies, yet copious amounts of backyard basil, I made what I thought was a compromise. A bit shy at first, I added only a few, careful not to disturb the careful balance of basil and olive oil. Struck, however, by the capers’ miraculous ability to blend right in to the emulsion, I added a few more and then a few more until I achieved that perfect hint of briny umami underneath the spicy and sharp overtones.

So. Good.

Yesterday I was again faced with too much basil – lemon basil this time – and again pulled out the Cuisinart. This time I skipped the garlic and the parmesan, and subbed walnuts for pinenuts, creating more of a pistou than a pesto, but once again added the requisite capers. This time the caper flavor shone through more fully without the competition of raw garlic and cheese, which, when tossed with raw baby squash, paired perfectly with frenchified white beans (I prepared them as I would have cooked puy lentils, with carrots and shallots) and a filet of Coho salmon (beautiful, wild caught, on sale, from New Seasons).

On the side I enjoyed the newest version of watermelon salad – with cucumber. I suppose I stole the idea from the aforementioned issue of Gourmet; however, they suggest serving the melon Greek-style with tzatziki sauce. The yogurt sounded weird, and a bit too filling to fit the rest of my meal, but the cucumber?

I have already spoke of my new respect for the vegetable in a certain beet and avocado salad crafted by a certain “Waters woman,” and I have since been looking for other new ways in which to use its crunch. Watermelon seemed the perfect match. Both are crisp, refreshing, subtle, and both pair perfectly with mint and lime (oh cucumber Ricky,* I love you so).

I chopped and de-seeded half of my yellow watermelon (yes, mom, it had real seeds – gotta love farmers’ markets!) and added de-seeded and thinly sliced cucumber (from about a two-inch chunk), about ¼ cup mint leaves in a chiffonade, and the juice of half a lime. Crunchy, cool, and with a bit of an acidic tang from the lime, this is the perfect fruit salad to eat every day for the rest of the summer – or at least until the melons are no longer ripe. Come to think of it, this combination would probably work with any ripe melon you can find, or even a mixture. Go wild!

*For my new favorite summer cocktail, muddle a couple slices of lime and a couple slices of cucumber with a couple mint leaves. Add ice and 1½-2 ounces of Plymouth or Aviation gin. Shake and pour into a highball glass. Top with soda. Sip. Sigh.

New Tastes / Pho Oregon

Add one point to the offal team:


It may be blurry, but it definitely is what you think it is - tripe. I ate it. And I enjoyed it. A little chewy, a little meaty, a lot of texture, whichever stomach this type of tripe comes from, it's certainly delicious and I think you should try it.

I also think you should get out and eat the rest of this yummy bowl of pho (number #2, in case you're wondering, with everything except the meatballs):


It is way worth the trip up 82nd during rush hour.

Do it.

Pho Oregon. 2518 NE 82nd Avenue. Portland, OR 97220. 503-262-8816.

Busy, Busy, Busy

To piggyback a bit off of Monday’s post, I’ve got some more excellent news! I’ve gotten another internship working for the Arts and Culture editor at an alternative weekly here in Portland. Hopefully I’ll be doing some food writing (!!) for them in the near future, and I will definitely keep you posted. On top of this, I’ve been moving back into my real house, unpacking my new kitchen toys (like this, my very retro Mixmaster):


and bouncing around between interviews. It feels great to be back to what I think of as my home now, and today is the first day I’ve felt really … settled … in a long time.

In the spirit of settling down and getting comfortable, I buckled down and made some sandwich bread (I know – more baking. Now that I am no longer in need of comfort food, I promise to share something not requiring an oven soon. Promise). This particular bread recipe is actually what I immediately imagine when confronted with the idea of homemade bread. My father has been baking this Tassajara loaf on and off for a looong time. The nutty, yeasty smell that begins wafting out of the oven about twenty minutes into its baking time transports me back, in true Proustian fashion, to lazy Sunday afternoons, sneaking a peek at the rising bread, and the taste of that first warm slice from the heel. It may not be the fanciest bread, or the most “world-class,” but it satisfies in a way that only a hearty hippie loaf can.

The version that follows is my own interpretation of Tassajara’s standard formula for bread, and not exactly like my father’s. I quartered their original recipe (4 loaves is three too many for little ol’ me). I recommend it smeared with honey, piled with left-over ratatouille, or toasted and topped with thick slices of summer tomatoes, kosher salt, and black pepper.


Wheat and Flax Sandwich Bread
(adapted from the Tassajara Bread Book)

2 cups lukewarm water
about ½ tablespoon dry active yeast
about 1 tablespoon molasses
½ cup dry milk
about 2 ½ cups whole wheat bread flour (I use King Arthur or Bob’s Red Mill)
about ¾ tablespoon kosher salt
1/8 cup canola oil
about 1 cup additional whole wheat bread flour
½ cup wheat bran (Bob’s Red Mill)
½ cup ground flax seeds (Bob’s Red Mill)
about 1 cup or so all-purpose flour for kneading
sesame seeds

Dissolve yeast in the water. Let it sit for a couple of minutes to proof (All this means is that it should start to bubble a bit – if it doesn’t, the yeast is old and you’ll need to try again with a new package). Add the molasses and dry milk. Stir to combine. Add the first 2 ½ cups of whole wheat flour and beat well with a wooden spoon (Tassajara says 100 strokes – try counting it, and you’ll definitely see the batter transform around stroke 75 or so. Pretty cool). Let the batter rise for about an hour. Again, you should see bubbles – this means that the yeast is working.

After the first rise, add the salt and oil – stir until oil is emulsified. Add the rest of the whole wheat flour, wheat bran, and flax. At this point, a dough should form and pull away from the sides of the bowl (it will still be sticky). If you need to, add more whole wheat flour.

Generously flour your counter with all-purpose flour (you can continue to use whole wheat here if you want; the white flour will lighten the bread up a bit) and turn the dough out of the bowl. Knead for 10-15 minutes, or until the dough is smooth, elastic, and no longer sticky. Put the dough, covered with a damp towel, in an oiled bowl and let rise for 50 minutes to an hour. It should double in bulk. Punch the dough down and let rise for 40-50 minutes more. Again, it should double in bulk.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

To shape the dough into a loaf, turn the ball out onto a lightly floured counter and knead a couple of times. Gently roll into a log shape, about the length of your bread pan. Square off the sides and ends, and pinch the seams together. Grease the pan with a little bit of canola oil. Place your loaf seam side up in the pan and flatten out with the backs of your fingers. Turn the loaf over so that the seam is on the bottom and press it, once again, into the shape of the pan. Cover again with the damp towel, and let rise for about 20 minutes, or until the top of the loaf reaches the top of the pan. Cut three slits about ½ inch deep into the top, and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Bake for about an hour, or until the top is a deep brown and the bread sounds hollow when tapped. Let cool until manageable, and turn the bread out onto a cooling rack. Let it cool completely for neater slicing, or, if you don’t care about such things, dive in right away. There’s not much in this world better than fresh warm bread.

A Cake and a Confession (and also, some great news!)

Okay, okay, great news first: I got a job! A real, paying job in a real, live restaurant! As soon as I pass the necessary background screenings (note: drug testing – not as awkward as predicted), I will be working as a breakfast and lunch hostess at a hotel restaurant downtown. It’s right on the river, is run by a former Atlantan, and, hopefully, I’ll get to train as a server if things go well. I’m pumped! Take that second-highest-unemployment-rate-after-Detroit!

Anyway, on to the cake, by way of a confession: I have a bookmarking problem. I read a lot of food blogs, so I look at tons of photos and recipes every day. Most recipes, as long as they seem at least somewhat decent or beautiful in some way, get a big fat apple-D (oh, bookmark command, why did I ever memorize you?). On a good day, I’ll only bookmark a couple. On a bad day, it can reach 20 or 30. If you were to pull up my bookmarks menu, you would at first be confronted with a long list of to-be-sorted, poorly named links waiting for a day when I have a patient, boring, minute. If you were so lucky to reach the folders, you would see a highly organized folder-within-folder catalogue of hundreds upon hundreds of ideas.

Most of these ideas stay just that – ideas, fantasies, intangible wisps of information. They sit, gathering digital dust in my 21st century file book. Sometimes, I go through and delete a couple of stale ones, those that have gone so out of season or out of fashion that I would probably never touch them. On more ambitious days, I’ll actually click on the link, revisit the recipe, and prepare some version of it.

Saturday was one such day. A few of my friends just moved into a new house and were throwing a house warming party, asking guests to bring along some sort of edible or drinkable donation.

I made cake. Specifically, the yogurt cake that found Orangette’s Brandon. Bookmarked ages ago, it has always sat in the back of my dessert brain as an object of future experimentation. The cake is a snap to whip together, and the recipe is easy to manipulate. I added peaches, cornmeal, and a bit of olive oil to the original recipe, and left out the lemon zest and glaze, giving the cake a complex savory note to counter the sweetness of my overripe peaches.

Sophisticated enough to stand out in a crowd of homemade desserts, but rustic enough for a barbeque, this cake was a definite success. And, as I had found out about my job (!) only a few minutes before digging into my first piece, the cake was eaten in celebration as well.


Celebratory Peach Yogurt Cake
(adapted from Orangette)

½ cup plain yogurt
½ cup cane sugar
½ cup light brown sugar
3 eggs
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
½ cup medium-ground cornmeal
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ cup canola oil
¼ cup olive oil
1-2 cups peeled, diced peaches

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and butter a nine-inch round cake pan. I used a springform pan here out of necessity (temporary house = temporary lack of baking supplies), which was too tall, but did help with the removal of the cake when it was done.

In a big mixing bowl, combine the yogurt, sugars, and eggs with a whisk (this makes it easier to combine the yogurt (I don’t pre-stir) with the other ingredients) until well combined. Add the flour, cornmeal, and baking powder, and mix (now you can switch to a spoon) until just combined. Add the oils and stir. Molly warns (and rightly so) that the batter will take quite a bit of stirring until the oil combines. But be patient, it will work.

Pour half the batter into the cake pan. Pour on the peaches, and try to distribute them as evenly as possible. Top with the rest of the batter and smooth with a spatula. Bake for about 30-35 minutes until the edges are golden (the top will still be a bit pale) and a toothpick comes out clean. Cool the cake on a rack for about 20 minutes in the pan, and then turn out of the pan until cooled completely.

Coast Picnic

In a few minutes, I will get in the car for what has now become a weekly jaunt out of the city with Matt. We're heading west, to Astoria, and perhaps other parts of the coast for the day. I've packed a picnic-ish lunch (hopefully the sun will be shining - or at least the clouds won't be raining - so we can sit outside):

a baguette, left-over okra and cranberry bean succotash, melon, curry chicken, port salut, chocolate, and my new favorite hot sauce/condiment - an onion and chili combo I adapted from a post on Serious eats.

Garlicy and spicy with my Thai chili interpretation (oh Fubon, you have served me well), the sauce has gotten better each day since I whipped it up on Wednesday morning. I've been eating it with a left-over polenta-white bean-kale combination, brightening the dish's otherwise muted flavors (grumpy mood = bland food). Anyhow, I imagine that the sauce will be delicious smeared on top of bread with a nice hunk of cheese.

Moroccan-Thai Chili Sauce
(adapted from Serious Eats)

1/2 Walla Walla onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, diced
2-3 Thai chilis, chopped
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon cumin
salt and pepper, to taste
1-2 teaspoons lime juice, or more, to taste
2 tablespoons water
1/4 cup (or less) olive oil

In a food processor, blend together onion, garlic, chilis, paprika, cumin, salt and pepper, lime juice, and water. Taste and adjust salt, pepper, and lime. With the processor running, drizzle in oil just until emulsified. Taste again and adjust seasonings as necessary.
Store in the fridge and eat on anything that needs a pick-me-up.

A New Plan

Guys. I’ve been a bit … absent lately. For lack of a better explanation – post-college life is tough. And when I’m struggling, it shows up in my food and my writing. I’ve been avoiding it. But I don’t want this blog to turn into a whiny pity-party rant site, I’ll leave it at that.

Well, that and the promise of a new plan. Cooking and writing and creating and writing some more is good for me, and so I’ve decided to pledge to you, wide-open blog-o-sphere to begin posting consistently. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I will put something up. No matter what.

All of this said, I have been doing plenty of cooking and eating in the past couple weeks. A girl’s got to eat, especially when feeling glum. And there’s little better than bread baking to feed my hunger for challenge, change, experimentation (except maybe croissants, but I still have some in the freezer). I recently bought a Peter Reinhart book – Crust and Crumb, not The Bread Baker’s Apprentice (the availability of a paperback copy is extremely persuasive to my new budget-minded self) – and have been doing a lot of scheming about fermented, multi-stage bread.

I’ve done a bit of bread baking in the past, but never anything as involved as his recipes. I’ve made plenty of quick breads and pizza dough, a couple loaves of sandwich bread and one deliciously crackly boule. But that’s about it. Now that I have so much time on my hands, I plan to start working my way through his recipes, starting, as soon as I get back into my real kitchen next week, with French bread.

Before I get there, though, I’ll leave you with the slightly simpler como I made last week. It uses a Poolish starter – a wet, gurgling bowl of yeast, flour and water left to ferment overnight – and a high ratio of water to flour, which yields a sticky dough. I didn’t have any trouble folding the dough in its prescribed patterns, but I think that I used too much flour. I would also recommend a longer final proof on the dough, as well as a note to made sure that all of the seams on the loafs are sealed and on the bottom. A couple of my loaves cracked open in the oven, which diminished the final texture.

Como Bread
(from Apple Pie, Patis, and Pate)

For percentages and proportions by weight, see the link above. I have a digital scale waiting for me back at my real house, and will get to use it soon, but for these loaves, I used volume measurements.

First, make the Poolish:
Combine ¾ cup bread flour, ¾ cup room temperature water, and 1/8 teaspoon yeast until well mixed. Let the mixture stand at room temperature for 12 to 16 (I let it go the full 16) hours before making the final dough.

The next day, combine all of the Poolish, 2 2/3 cup bread flour, ½ cup whole wheat flour, 1 ¼ cup water, ¼ teaspoon yeast, and 2 teaspoons kosher salt until well combined. Knead the dough on a floured counter for about 6 to 8 minutes or until it becomes a more cohesive ball of slightly springy dough. It will still be sticky.

Let the dough sit in a lightly floured bowl for one hour at room temperature. After the hour, stretch the dough into a rectangle, about 10x12 inches. With the long side facing you, fold in thirds, as you would a letter. Fold the dough a second time, in the same way, with the short sides going towards the center, so you end up with a sort-of square ball. (If this is confusing, there are great pictures on the link, so check those out). Let the dough sit for another hour, repeat folding, and let sit for one last hour. Divide the dough into three pieces (or however many loaves you want) and let rest for about 15 minutes. Stretch each piece into a strip, about 16 inches long, and seal the seams. (I made two baguette-like loaves, and one small boule, because I only had a couple of small pans. They all cooked in about the same time, so I don’t think that it matters too much which shape you choose). Let the shaped loaves proof on parchment-lined baking sheets for at least 30 minutes (or maybe an hour?) before cooking.

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees (make sure that it gets this hot!). Boil one cup-ish of water and pour into a heavy pan (a cast iron skillet works well) and stick this under the rack on which you will cook the bread (the boiling water will create steam in the oven, which is crucial to the creation of a crispy crust on your bread). Immediately stick the bread in the oven. The loaves should cook in about 20 minutes. I rotated the pans around after about 10 minutes, but make sure that you wait at least that long so you don’t mess up the initial oven rise. The finished bread will be golden brown and will sound hollow when tapped.

Let cool as long as you can stand it, and serve with various accoutrements, such as cheese, prosciutto, and summer tomatoes.

Summer Heat

In the immortal words of Nelly, "It's getting hot in herre."

Whether or not we "take off all our clothes," something must be done to tackle this, the second in a series of a predicted week of 100 degree+ weather in Portland. Unfortunately for you, readers, I avoid the kitchen like the plague. Yesterday I broke out in a sweat slicing ingredients for a salad at 10am. I had high hopes for an experiment in chilled rapini soup today, but the thought of turning on the stove to blanch the greens makes me lightheaded. So the soup will have to wait.

My only savior on days like today?

(Standing beside the open freezer door is also a nice place to hang out.)

Unemployment Croissants

These days, it has become fashionable to refer to one’s lack of a job as funemployment. The word pops up everywhere it seems – Facebook, blogs, backyard barbeques, and the like. Those who use it always emphasize the first syllable, drawing out the fun: it’s FUNemployment, and so certainly not UNemployment. I find it absolutely absurd, and have thus taken to extreme eye rolling every time the word pops up. It’s not fun to be unemployed. It’s boring. Afternoons are the biggest challenge – after filling up my mornings with a 5 mile run, another trip to the grocery store, and an early lunch, I’m left with way-too-short lists of job prospects and applications, and an infinite amount of time in which to complete them.

So, I’ve started trying to think of projects (long projects) to fill up my days. Like seeing how thin I can learn how to slice a zucchini for a salad:

Or practicing my artichoke trimming skills (I'm getting pretty good – watch out, Thomas Keller!):

My best idea so far, however, has been my 24-hour croissant-making extravaganza.

I’d never attempted such an involved baking task before. I tend towards simpler, more rustic desserts, embracing the homely ruggedness of a crooked cake, ugly cookies, or an almost-but-not-quite burnt piecrust. In fact, last weekend, Rosie and I experimented with less-than picture perfect mini pie baking when we hauled in almost 10 pounds of berries from Sauvie Island. They may have fallen apart upon contact with any serving device, but they were definitely delicious. And I’ve already spoken of my love for galettes – the most rustic pie of all – which always taste better when thrown together at the last minute.

Last minute these croissants were not. I found Nancy Silverton’s recipe for the dough online at Epicurious (the story was published in Gourmet in 2000), read through it a couple of times, and began work on Wednesday, at about 2 in the afternoon. It took the rest of my day to make the dough, let it rise, and perform the folds (folding in sticks of butter, that is!) necessary for a flaky pastry. The dough was left to slow-rise in the fridge overnight, and I started with the fun part the next morning.

My only variation from the recipe was to make a couple of my own fillings. First, in an attempt to both use up some of those berries and to recreate one of my favorite childhood treats, I pureed a pint of raspberries with a little honey. Delicious on its own, or as a sauce, I’ve been using the leftovers as a pick-me-up in the late afternoons following. I also threw some walnuts, cinnamon, and sugar in the food processor to make a cinnamon roll-type filling. These leftovers are also delicious.

The rolling step takes a bit of patience, since, just like any yeasted dough, the croissant dough has a spring to it that wants to prevent any attempts at uniform thinness. I had learned/taught myself in the past to let such types of dough come to room temperature before rolling to allow for maximum flexibility. However, the massive amount of butter in croissants makes it impossible to wait for the temperature to rise – you don’t want oozing butter all over your table (that is, until the pastries are cooked!). So I had to whack it around a bit, but eventually ended up with some pretty nice triangles that all rolled up into more or less croissant-like shapes.

Once shaped and rolled, the croissants have to sit for a final rise – about 2 ½ hours – covered. Nancy (I’d like to think we’re on a first name basis now) suggests setting up a tent for the pastries using clean garbage bags and upside down glasses. I did this for a couple batches; but, while strangely pretty:


it was actually an unnecessarily cumbersome step, and I ended up using toothpicked plastic wrap in the end.

After running an errand or two, twiddling my thumbs a bit, and staring into space for a while, it was time to set up the oven. And, just like the rest of the process, this step required attention and patience (especially since my temporary house has only one very small baking sheet, so I had to cook the croissants in four separate batches). The oven starts at 425; once it’s heated, you have to spritz it with water, close the door, pop in the croissants, spritz again, turn the heat down, wait ten minutes, turn the pan, turn the heat down, and wait ten more minutes. And then do it again, over and over, watching the clock like a hawk, awaiting perfection.

But.

When they’re finally done – all I can say is awesome.

I mean, check these out:

I made those! And they're not just beautiful, they're butter-oozing, melt-in-your-mouth flaky, toasty rolls of greatness. Remember back when I called a certain galette the best thing I've ever made? Well, these are about a billion-gagillion (totally a number, ask a four-year old) times better. I urge you, the next time you have 24 hours of free time on your hands, make these. And if you're in a job situation like, they'll almost be enough to put a little fun- into your un-….

(yeah, sorry about that one)


*But, in all seriousness, if you are in the Portland area and need some type of employee to do anything, or even if you don’t need an employee, but want to make a certain expert croissant baker super happy, talk to me. I will most certainly bake you something.

Road Trip Days 6-9 / Eating famously in San Francisco / Chez Panisse

I’ve been to the Bay Area a few other times in the past to visit friends, to hang out, to cook Thanksgiving dinner, but never with the explicit purpose to eat as much local cuisine as possible. I could have pretended that this most recent trip was planned to visit friends and to look at colleges (for my sister), but, really, I wanted to eat more; and, in a touristy fashion, I wanted to eat as much of the talked-about, famous food as possible.

As Sally and I were staying in a friend’s apartment in Berkeley, we woke up extra early on Saturday to get on the BART and head to Ferry Plaza to experience the farmers market in full force. On this visit, the market was awash in stone fruits – cherries, peaches, plums, nectarines, and, Sally’s new favorite, pluots. We walked around, sampling these fruits as well as olive oils, honeys, pickles, almond butter, peas (…) before deciding that we didn’t want to carry around fresh produce through the city all day. I picked up a pound of Rancho Gordo flageolets (awesome, by the way, and will probably pop up here again soon), a couple of pluots, and a (very strong) cup of Blue Bottle coffee, and we headed inside the ferry building for some (famous) Acme sourdough and Cowgirl Creamery cheese for lunch.

The bread itself was a bit too chewy for my taste (I like as many air bubbles as possible); flavor-wise, it was a bit bland, actually, for sourdough. I much preferred the olive rolls we grabbed as well. The cheese was delicious, but the bigger surprise was the store’s guest cheese of the day – a tarentaise made by Thistle Hill Farm in Vermont by one of my fellow Reedie’s family. Totally cool.

For the next day and a half, we wandered around San Francisco, visiting famous places, like the Williams-Sonoma mothership (10 pound bars of chocolate!) and Bi Rite Creamery (I had strawberry balsamic and ginger ice cream – epic),

and less famous, but no less authentically San Franciscan, locales like Four Barrel Coffee, Isaac’s new place of work,* and Heaven’s Dog restaurant (a hip take on Chinese, delicious, but too dark for visible photographs … sorry).

Sally and I also ventured over to the Cheeseboard in Berkeley for their Bastille Day special pie. Not only was this pizza an awesome deal for two small girls ($20 fed us for 2 ½ meals!), but also the quality of ingredients used was so fresh that I could taste summer in every bite. I could overlook the too-chewy crust (I like mine thinner, with more char and bubbles) and embrace the sharp notes of the Comte cheese and shallots, and the sweet heirlooms and thyme. The first night we ate the pizza at the apartment, with their Niçoise salad, still warm, but away from the crowds. It held up well, cold, for lunch, the next day as well, and as a snack on the road (and, now that I think about it, I can’t say the same for other famously delicious pizza like Apizza Scholls in Portland).

None of this, however, compares to our most famous meal, the lunch for which I made a reservation a month in advance, at the awesome but perhaps not too surprising,

Ben, our Berkeley host, and Joanna, my friend from high school, joined Sally and me for the meal. I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed in the beginning – the place was packed and the hostess was spacey and a bit rude, and once we were seated (about 10 minutes after our 2pm reservation), our waitress seemed to want to rush us into ordering our meal. Things improved dramatically, however, when the food arrived.

My salad, baby romaine with raw zucchini and mint, was every bit as light, crisp, and refreshing as I desired, almost like a cool glass of ice water.

My sister had a pizzetta with goat cheese, shallots, and green onion. It was a bit heavy for a lunchtime appetizer, but it tasted great and Sally enjoyed it.

Ben had a beet salad served with avocado and cucumbers. The picture doesn’t do justice to the excellence of this dish. I certainly never would have thought to pair these three vegetables, their flavor profiles seemingly too disparate to complement. Yet the flavor and texture contrasts – at the same time crunchy and creamy, crisp and rich – brought by each element recall a more complex, deconstructed cuisine, yet without the assistance of foams, gels, or liquid nitrogen. This is Alice Waters/California cuisine at its best – a celebration of seasonal ingredients in all of their unadorned glory.

Sally and Joanna both ordered the roasted chicken breast, served with grilled polenta, summer veg (corn and peas, mostly), and a tomatillo sauce. All of the flavors here were good, and the chicken very moist, but I think there was a little too much on the plate – it was almost a three-course meal in itself.

Ben ordered a pizza with housemade sausage and nettle leaves. The leaves were a new taste for all of us, and lent surprisingly creamy note, still with a lingering bitterness, which complemented the sausage nicely.

My favorite entrée was my own – oricchette with a lamb ragu. The pasta was super fresh, with just the right amount of chew, and its crevices were the perfect vehicle for the shreds of tender lamb.

For dessert, Joanna had the espresso-chocolate pave, a dense, flavor-packed brownie of a dessert – a few small bites were enough for me.

Ben had a beautiful black mission fig tart, which was surprisingly not sweet – the pure subtle taste of fig shone through.

I had roasted apricots with raspberry couli and sabayon – orgasmic. Just sweet enough, with a little crunch provided by the crust on the apricots, caramelized and warm, the best possible flavors intensified by the oven. While I wish there had been a higher ratio of apricots to accoutrements, I still licked my bowl clean.

Sally chose the most Alice Waters-y dish of the evening for her dessert – a bowl of summer fruit (Santa Rosa plums, a Suncrest peach, and local raspberries). The plums and raspberries were good (sorry, Isaac, not quite as awesome as you described), but the peach was the greatest surprise. Being from Georgia, I am a self-admitted peach snob, and thus rarely enjoy a west coast peach. But this peach was just as good as the best of the early season Gaffney peaches my mom picks up on her way back from Charlotte every summer. Juicy, sweet, slightly creamy, and golden yellow all the way through – this was what peaches are supposed to taste like.

We finished the meal a bit confused about what time of day it was (I don’t think I’ve ever eaten like this for lunch – 3 courses with a bottle of wine – but I could get used to it. Anyone out there want to fund a Gourmet lunches for Kate campaign?). Sally and Ben went home to take a nap, and Joanna and I wandered down to the Edible Schoolyard for a bit more Alice Waters time before she headed back to Carmel and I back to the apartment to pack for the last leg of the trip.

With not much famous left in us, Sally and I drove up to Ashland the next day to visit Sunya, my freshman year roommate, and then on to Portland on Friday. I’ve settled in to my temporary summer house, looking for jobs, ** cooking, and eating for myself again.

* We did sample an apple maple bacon donut here, which we later discovered while vegging out in front of the Food Network is one of their star’s “best thing I ever ate (with bacon).” Small world.

** Want to hire me? I’m a bright college grad who will do anything and everything, preferably around food. References available…