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What a great evening at Yakuza Lounge! In addition to providing a wonderful networking opportunity, this month’s PCA social hour had a special focus, thanks in large part to Yakuza’s manager, Kyle Lovell.

If you are unfamiliar with Yakuza Lounge, you only need to know three things. (1) Yakuza Lounge brings the Japanese izakaya tradition to Portland, where small plates and sake are shared between diners. (2) The food is delicious. And (3) the Zen-like ambiance and knowledgeable staff make spending time here a pleasure.

Back to Kyle, who arranged to have Briana Seeley (of Young’s Market Company) conduct an introductory tasting for our gathering. Briana did much more than pour three different kinds of sake. She explained some of sake’s appeal to modern drinkers. (Did you know that it is naturally gluten and sulfite free?) And she gave us the key to judging a sake’s quality—polish ratio!

The polish ratio refers to the amount of rice left after the grain has been milled: the lower the ratio, the higher the quality. Of course, none of this insider knowledge does you any good if you don’t recognize the Japanese terms that you’ll find on a sake bottle. But with patience and humor, Briana walked us through the (arcane to American ears) terminology; where different grade levels intersect with various sake styles. So now, we have a shot at deciphering the label on a bottle of premium sake when we encounter terms like:

• Genshu: undiluted
• Nigori: unpressed, cloudy with rice sediment
• Junmai: rice only
• Ginjo: 60% polish ratio
• Daiginjo: 50% polish ratio

Briana and Kyle served us three wildly different sakes that really helped us to understand how much there is to learn about this amazing libation. The Taiheikai Tokubetsu Junmai,  Kannihonkai “Ring of Fire” Junmai Genshu, and Murai Family Nigori Genshu ran the gamut from floral to earthy to slightly sweet. In each case, we had a chance to correlate what our taste buds were experiencing with the facts we had just learned.

Of course, the evening was even more enjoyable because we paired our sake with Yakuza’s tasty small plates. The hamburger was especially popular, but my personal vote goes to the Black Cod on Parsnip Purée…yum!

All in all, not a bad way to spend a Thursday night.

—Luisa Simone, Web Designer at Tadpole Graphics

  The story of how the Firehouse restaurant came to be is a charming one.  Husband and wife move to our beloved Portland.  She, Elizabeth, pursues a career in chiropractic and naturopathic medicine, while he, Matthew, a career in the kitchen.  They both look for that perfect place to set up shop.  With a good eye and apt intuition, Elizabeth discovers the beautiful old Dekum Firehouse in the Woodlawn neighborhood for sale.  Matthew protests, but is quickly won over, and a striking idea takes shape; a multi-purpose space for both their businesses and the resurrection of a lovely, historic building.  Joined by longtime Portland chef and business partner, Eric Rose, and pastry chef, Gretchen Glatte, the Busettos have made a delicious contribution to the rich Portland food world..

The Firehouse was the destination for our Annual PCA Dinner and its history, warmth and good food made a befitting setting.

 

 

 

The evening was dedicated to visiting with old friends and new, thanking our governing members who have contributed so much, ushering in a new group of leaders and of course, sharing in the incredible food the chefs prepared for us.  A warm thanks was given to Susan Hauser for her enthusiasm and dedication to leading the PCA as President.  And an equally warm welcome was given to Lota LaMontagne for stepping  up to be our new President.

 

 

To start us off, plump house cured sardines were passed around the table, accompanied by perfectly roasted beets with almonds and buffala ricotta salata, crisp fried cauliflower with capers and braised kale and pecorino on crostini.  Montinore Estate graciously supplied their wines to complement the meal.  The Firehouse has a hand crafted wood oven in the center of the restaurant where much of their food is cooked.  I was ecstatic about the beautifully executed iron skillet mussels that were luscious in their drawn butter and the Neapolitan style pizza that has certainly wedged a spot for itself next to Ken’s, Nostrana’s and Apizza Scholl’s divine pies. 

 

Firehouse makes a point to truly cook throughout the seasons and each dish was a testament to this simple philosophy.  The genius is always in the chef’s ability to preserve the inherent flavors, coax even the subtleties, compliment ingredients through simplicity and bring the food to an even higher representation of its self.  Their simple salad of Simington Farm lettuces with Humboldt Fog cheese, filberts and red wine vinaigrette did carry through on that promise.  So did the rotisserie chicken with crispy pumpkin, sage, and chicories.  Dessert from the very talented Gretchen Glatte ended our meal.  They were the perfect foil for the good food, warm surrounding and wonderful company.  

 

-Brenda Crow

October’s first Saturday brought blustery fall weather but PCA members and guests stayed cozy inside the beautiful Hotel deLuxe as six esteemed authors read us their deliciously inspiring words.  The literary symposium featured writers of food fiction and food memoir.  The novelists included:

Jennie Shortridge, Eating Heaven and Love and Biology at the Center of the Universe

Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

Diana Abu-Jaber, Crescent and The Language of Baklava

These authors are passionate about food and cooking in their personal lives, and the plots and characters in their novels are intricately connected to food as well.  All three women reminisced about their characters like old friends, and proved to us how deeply emotional food experiences can be. 

The featured memoirists were:

Matthew Amster-Burton, Hungry Monkey

Shauna James Ahern, Gluten-Free Girl

Molly Wizenberg, A Homemade Life

This dynamic, Seattle-based trio happens to be great friends, and they all have popular blogs. As Matthew joked, if you want to get published, know one of them! Their books and blogs capture how food is woven into their careers, relationships, families, and daily living. The stories bring tears, joy, and laughter; it was interesting to hear how they each balance sharing their personal journeys with the world.  There were many other food writers in attendance curious about how writing fits into the schedules of the six talented authors. During a panel discussion with each group, the audience posed insightful questions to the authors. The presenters all quickly dispelled any glamorous notions of being able to delve into the world of their work for long stretches at a time. They have busy lives with other jobs, children, and chores, but writing was clearly a joy and passion for all of them.

Stomachs were growling as we listened to each mouth-watering story. Fortunately, our bellies were filled with delicious food from the chefs of six Portland restaurants. Each chef created a menu item inspired by one author and their work, and they took a moment to share how the food in each story spoke to them and why they created their dish.  From breakfast to dessert, every bite had a story. The menu: 

• Plum Jammer Scones & Apple Upside Down Pound Cake from Chefs Adam and Jackie Sappington of Country Cat Dinner House & Bar
• Gluten-Free Pizza and Forest Mushroom Soup from Chef Mark Hosack of Gracie’s and OCI Students
• Wagyu Brisket Sliders, Housemade Kim Chee, and Lotus Chips from Chef Jeremy Frice of Departure
• Butternut Squash Canneloni with Chestnut Cream Sauce and Housemade Bacon from Chef Ben Bettinger of Beaker & Flask
• Baklava from Pastry Chef Lee Posey of Nel Centro

A feast to celebrate our love of food!

Thank you to all the chefs for a memorable meal and the authors for sharing their appetizing prose.

-Caroline Ford

Mahalo (that’s “thank you” in Hawaiian) to Don and Sandra Kruger for hosting our wonderful lu’au at Kruger’s Farm on Sauvie Island. It was a beautiful setting on a grassy area beneath a huge oak tree. Mahalo also to our lu’au chef, PCA member Mike Downing, chef/owner of Quimby’s Restaurant at Nye Beach in Newport. Mike and his assistants, Tom and Michael, got to Kruger’s at 7:30 a.m. Sunday and set to work preparing the underground oven for the pig. Everybody brought delicious food to go with the lu’au fare. The party ended with a fun hay ride around the farm. Oh, and thanks to my daughter, Meriwether, who helped me dig the pit Saturday night. — Susan Hauser

A small but enthusiastic crowd came to Oregon Culinary Institute last Wednesday to hear Anthony Boutard talk about the legumes he grows at Ayers Creek Farm. The OCI again graciously allowed us use of a classroom for our monthly program. After the program, we adjourned to the student-operated restaurant for dinner.

Anthony and his wife, Carol, moved to Oregon from Massachusetts so the Yale-trained forester could work for 1000 Friends of Oregon. They got hooked on gardening with a small community garden plot in Portland. Later they moved to Gaston, where they started their large, organic farm. The Boutards supply some of the top restaurants in Portland with produce and grains. From July on, you’ll find them every Sunday at the Hillsdale Farmers Market.

Anthony had prepared a slide show and also brought along a tray whose many compartments were filled with some of the myriad varieties of legumes grown at the farm. He spoke about each one of the beans, offering cooking and growing suggestions. He also talked about the origins of each bean and its traditional uses. For example, fenugreek, sometimes called Greek hay, was once added to moldy hay in order to prolong its usefulness.

As the tray was passed around the OCI classroom, everyone was quite taken by the enticing fragrance emanating from the hard little kernels of fenugreek. After speaking, when Anthony allowed everyone to scoop up legumes for growing in their own gardens, nearly everyone took the fenugreek.

We also learned something about the physiological effects of legumes. Anthony told us that dried beans shouldn’t be eaten after a year, but after only six months the enzymes won’t break down properly, making them hard to digest. The result is flatulence. Solution: buy beans when relatively young, preferably from a reliable supplier — Ayers Creek Farm — at the Hillsdale Farmers Market.

PCA members and guests got their Dungeness crab fix Thursday night at a delicious Dungeness crab event put on for us by McCormick & Schmick’s Harborside Restaurant and the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission. Although it’s true that you can never have too much Dungeness crab (the food of the gods — in Oregon, anyway), a lot of attendees had to ask the servers to bring a doggy — er, a crabby bag to carry home what was left of a whole crab.

And that was after sampling generous portions of crab croquette, crab-mango salad and crab cakes. Oh, and shall we talk about the appetizers? Smoked salmon, loks, scallops, shrimp, calamari, clams . . . am I forgetting anything?

Nick Furman, executive director of the Dungeness Crab Commission, had to talk over the roar of the Happy Hour that was in full swing directly below us. But in a strong voice fortified by years of eating crab, he shared with us that the crab harvest in recent years has been terrific. News reports that it was in trouble after the season opened December 1 applied only to the ocean waters off of California. There the haul has been somewhat slight. In Oregon, the crab supply is ample.

One reason for that, Nick said, is that Oregon’s commercial crab fishermen are sticklers about following the rules concerning sex, size and season. In other words, they don’t catch crab outside of the official season, which lasts through mid-August, with the peak during the first few months; they don’t keep the females, which are left to do their job of reproducing; and they don’t keep crabs smaller than 6-1/4″ wide.

Nick also showed us a video about crab processing. After watching the speedy processors, who can remove crab meat from shell in seconds flat, we all seemed to agree that cracking crab should be a leisurely pursuit. With plastic bibs around our necks and nutcrackers in hand, we dug into our whole crabs at our own pace. Volcano fudge cake and vanilla ice cream awaited as the dessert. Just before dessert was when most people requested a crabby bag.

Thanks, McCormick & Schmick’s and thanks, Nick Furman, for a delicious and educational program.

Cookies are wonderful treats any time of the year, but there’s something about cookie baking during the holiday season that enhances their tastiness. Mix the specialness of holiday cookies with bite-size confections created by the Two Tarts, and you’ve got a recipe for some very cheery chewing.

The Two Tarts are Anna Phelps and Elizabeth Beekley. After building a loyal clientele at the Portland Farmers Market with their exquisite cookies, they recently opened their own Two Tarts Bakery at 2309 NW Kearney St.

On the evening of Dec. 7, PCA members had the pleasure of watching Elizabeth (the baker) and Anna (the master marketer) prepare Hazelnut Tassies and Cashew Shortbread in the kitchen classroom of In Good Taste. Check out this video of Elizabeth making Hazelnut Tassies.

Our hostess, Barbara Dawson, PCA’s secretary and co-owner with her husband Matt of In Good Taste, contributed to the holiday cheer by serving everyone flutes of sparkling wine. The Tarts passed trays of some of their best sellers: peanut butter creams, cappuccino creams, graham crackers dipped in chocolate, marionberry linzers and chocolate chip fleur de sel.

As Elizabeth baked and Anna gave us information about their business, they both shared tips on favorite ingredients (Freddy Guys hazelnuts, Schokinag chocolate, Cremerie Classique butter) and gadgets. There followed a run on In Good Taste’s supply of pastry stampers, wooden dowels resembling cocktail muddlers, used for pressing dough into cup shapes in muffin tins (a technique used in making the tassies). Favorite cookbooks they mentioned were the Macrina Bakery & Cafe Cookbook from the famed Seattle bakery, and BakeWise by Shirley O. Corriher, which is available at In Good Taste.

Anna and Elizabeth said there are no timers in their bakery kitchen; they use their noses and their fingers to determine when a cookie is done baking. When they press a cookie’s center to see if it springs back, they’re careful to try a cookie that’s in the middle of the cookie sheet or pan.

When the Tarts concluded their demonstration, the PCA members in attendance unveiled their own cookie offerings. We set out an assortment of cookies that we brought for a cookie exchange. Then we and the Tarts strolled along the counter to fill our boxes with more tasty treats. Our tummies were already full of the Two Tarts delicious creations, but at the holidays or any time, you can never have too many cookies. Also, Barbara Dawson sent us all home with goodie bags with kitchen gadgets that will come in handy the next time we bake up some cookies. Since we were all inspired by the Two Tarts, that will probably be quite soon.

On a gorgeous fall day last weekend, a dozen or so PCA members made the trip to Panther Creek Cellars in McMinnville for an afternoon focused primarily on Pinot noir.

 

The PCA’s wine liason and host, Ron Kaplan, greeted guests with a tour of the facilities and commentary on the winemaking process as we watched it unfold before our own eyes. Ron satisfied our curiosity about how grapes go from vineyard to bottle by answering our numerous questions, and also shared a bit of history about Panther Creek, one of Oregon’s most established Pinot Noir producers.

 

After such an in depth conversation about winemaking, we were eager to taste. In the airy tasting room and winemaking facility, we sat down before a lovely spread of artisan meats and local cheeses and started sipping. Ron opened many bottles of Panther Creek Pinot, each made using grapes from one of the various vineyard sites they source their grapes from. Sipping the different wines side by side, we began to understand how greatly the region’s terroir influences the flavor and characteristics of each bottling. We compared tasting ‘notes’ on the spot and found that most everyone had their own favorite wine.

 

Next, Ron invited winemaker Michael Stevenson and assistant winemaker Bill Hanson to take a break from the harvest to come speak with us about their work at Panther Creek. They shared their thoughts on the wine we’d just tasted, responded to our questions about the winemaking process and lifestyle, and even gave us some pointers on other great area producers to sample from. And as a surprise, they invited us to try their lesser-known chardonnay to finish off the afternoon tasting. The wine had beautiful green apple aromas, cleansed our palate, and – for at least two guests – convinced them to buy their first ever bottle of chardonnay.

 

Eager PCA members gathered together last night at the Oregon Culinary Institute for an informative program about honey bees, the beekeeping industry, and that golden nectar itself. Beekeeper George Hansen of Foothills Honey Company in Colton welcomed us with a glass of mead, the alcoholic beverage made by fermenting honey with yeast. As we sipped, Hansen shared with us his work as a beekeeper of more than 30 years.

Following Hansen’s talk, students from the Oregon Culinary Institute paid the classroom a visit and shared the story behind the many honey-infused desserts they’d prepared for us that evening. Among them were a moist honey apple cake and addictive honey walnut crisps.

Enjoying the rare opportunity to have dessert before dinner, we filled our plates with these honey-sweetened treats and settled in to watch the evening’s film, Pollen Nation. Hansen makes an appearance in this film, which discusses the role of bees and the important work of beekeepers. Additionally, the film provided us with some background on the challenges of beekeeping and the need to make sure the industry continues to grow and thrive.

One such beekeeping challenge is solving the mystery of Colony Collapse Disorder. This disorder has many potential causes, and threatens to disrupt the bee industry and our nation’s agriculture industry as well. (For more information on this mysterious disorder, be sure to read PCA President Susan Hauser’s article, The Mystery of the Missing Honey Bees, in this month’s Northwest Palate magazine.)

After a Q + A session with Hansen and a honey tasting, we departed, armed with fresh knowledge about bees and a gift bag from the National Honey Board filled with everything from a honey cookbook to coupons for Haagen-Daz honey bee ice cream.

PCA members got a taste of some Oregon superlatives at a special Oregon Bounty program August 17 with an emphasis on craft distillers: Oregon has the only distillers guild in the country (17 members so far), Oregon is second only to California in the number of craft distilleries (20 so far), and Portland’s Distillers Row has more distilleries (7) within walking distance of any other neighborhood in the world, and that includes Scotland and Kentucky!

On top of all that, Portland’s Integrity Spirits was just the second distillery in the U.S. to produce absinthe, the mysterious anise flavored drink known as the Green Fairy, after an almost century-long ban was lifted last year.

Integrity Spirits, at Southeast Ninth and Yamhill, hosted the event. Distilleries from all over the state, 12 in all, displayed their spirits and offered tastes of artisan gin, vodka, rum, whisky, liqueur and, of course, absinthe.

After a tour of the distillery to learn something of the distilling process, members and guests sampled a variety of spirits, including some lip-smacking flavored vodkas redolent with the fragrance of berries and herbs.

Absinthe got the most attention, however. We watched as drops of water dripping from an antique water dispenser, made especially for absinthe drinkers, turned the spirit cloudy, or, as the French say, louche. The herbal and licorice fragrance was, well, intoxicating. To finish off the event, chefs from the neighboring Green Dragon Ale House & Bistro served absinthe ice cream with whole cinnamon sticks as spoons.