Seeking food inspiration

Two months without a blog entry? Have I no sense of shame?

Last week I finally started paying attention to the eruption of food carts here in Portland. One article I read reported that we had more than 200 now, scattered around town in "pods", which appear to share rent in an empty lot, along with utilities and dining areas. The familiar array on the Transit Mall downtown seems to be primarily Indian, Thai, Thai, Indian and Thai. Plus some Indian food. Elsewhere in town the diversity is much greater, and new pods appear constantly, requiring websites solely to track and review them.

Alex and Becky made a timely visit to Portland last week, and we chose the very new pod on Belmont near 43rd for our first exploration. So much to choose from! Mexican, Italian, Korean/Hawaiian, sausages, fresh produce, "comfort food", Thai, Middle Eastern... 

Although the Dawg of the Day was tempting, I opted for the pulled pork plate at Namu's Killer Korean BBQ, and the result was even better than expected. Shredded pork, slow-cooked with cabbage  was served along with sticky rice and a sauce (I chose creamy horseradish), and traditional Korean cucumber and spinach salads, and kimchee. Absolutely delicious.

Alex and Becky chose the Eurotrash cart and came back with equally delicious options.

Because we were having a late lunch, we almost had the entire site to ourselves. Based on observation at other locations, I'm guessing that the place is jumping during the noon hour and in the evening (almost all of these carts are closed by 10 pm). As pleasant as it was for us, on a cool summer afternoon, I have to wonder how well the carts will do in the Winter when the table umbrellas will offer little shelter. The Hawthorne pod has a big tent for seating, but most of the pods I've seen are highly exposed.

A perfect marriage

I have been a fan of Four Roses for about a decade, although it has long been a geographically-challenged affection. Up until a short time ago, Four Roses distributed their bourbons in Kentucky and nowhere else in the US; the primary market, in fact, was Japan. Even when I learned that they were reentering the US market, I figured it would be years before any found its way to Oregon. I was ecstatic when the Yellow Label, the Small Batch and the Single Barrel appeared in OLCC stores within the last year.

Four Roses has a unique approach to bourbon production. They maintain five different yeast strains (used to create the "beer" that will then be distilled into whiskey) and two different mashbills, with varying amounts of rye grain.To crib from their website:

All 10 of these recipes are gently aged undisturbed in new white oak barrels in our one-of-a-kind single story rack warehouses. All 10 recipes are expertly married together to create Four Roses Yellow. Four are married for Four Roses Small Batch Bourbon. Only one is hand selected for Four Roses Single Barrel Bourbon. To the thrill of Bourbon connoisseurs and Bourbon collectors, from time to time, our Master Distiller will select an exceptional single barrel, or marry a few exquisite recipes, to create one of our highly acclaimed limited release Four Roses Bourbons.

I had no expectation of ever seeing the Mariage in Oregon, but a helpful bartender steered me to a liquor store with a few bottles in the back room. The 2009 Mariage combines 10 year old and 19 year old OBSK with 10 year old OESO whiskies. (If you want to know what the codes mean, check here.)

When it comes to reviewing beverages, I'm completely useless. My friend Ryan can bang out 200 words on a single wine in minutes, complete with (to me) obscure references to fruits and vegetables, and solid suggestions on how to pair the wine with food. In whiskey reviews, I constantly run across references to leather, pipe smoke, or granite. Or, as D G Compton titled a short story collection: Hot Wireless Sets, Aspirin Tablets, the Sandpaper Slides of Used Matchboxes, and Something that Might have been Castor Oil. So I will again crib from the Four Roses site, because it's as close as we're going to get to appropriate language:

Nose: Rich fruity aromas of ripened cherry and pipe tobacco, hints of lemon citrus and dried oak.
Palate: Ripe fruit and allspice with creamy layers of caramel and toffee.
Finish: Long and smooth.  

See! Pipe tobacco! What did I tell you?

The word I've always used to describe Four Roses bourbon is "soft," although I'm hard-pressed to explain why. The reference to the finish above, "smooth" pretty much defines Four Roses bourbons, all the way from the lowly Yellow Label on up. Any one of these bottlings might offer the perfect introduction to bourbon for people who "don't like whiskey", but I'm in no way implying that they are training-wheels bourbons. Mariage 2009 is warming, rich, and complex.If you can find a bottle, buy it.

Pomegranate YUM

Working backward: I was craving a Picon Punch and realized that some time back I had thrown out a critical ingredient: grenadine. Not the hideous red glop from Rose's, but real grenadine homemade from pomegranate juice. Digging around for recipes, I discovered that Jeffrey Morgenthaler had posted a recipe that looked considerably simpler and better than what I had used previously. That version began by reducing pomegranate juice by half and then adding sugar. The grenadine tasted OK, certainly much better than the fake stuff, but it was much too thick, especially since I was refrigerating it. Grenadine from that bottle slid directly to the bottom of the glass, looking like an unappealing lava lamp.

Morgenthaler's recipe simply requires dissolving the sugar in the juice, exactly like making simple syrup (or hummingbird nectar, for that matter) but then gives the grenadine an extra punch and richness with the addition of orange flower water and pomegranate molasses. Pome-what? Pomegranate molasses turned out to be easier to find than expected. In fact, Barbur World Foods not only had pomegranate molasses, they had multiple brands to choose from. Obviously, I've been missing something in the world food line or I would have known this. The grenadine was just as advertised: simple, colorful and absolutely delicious. (Shortcut hint: I skipped the "squeeze a pomegranate" and went for the pure juice.)

When I asked Morgenthaler what to do with the 12 ounces remaining in my bottle of molasses, he suggested I just save it for the next batch, but after tasting the stuff I decided he may have missed the boat on this one. This morning's breakfast included bacon, French Toast and pomegranate molasses rather than syrup. Jackpot! Further exclamations of joy and sensation! Not only is the pomegranate flavor a delicious change but the molasses has a delightful tartness to set off the sweetness of the fruit.

Maybe I should have washed breakfast down with a Jack Rose or a Picon Punch, but coffee seemed the wiser choice. Pokey, incidentally, is guarding a bottle of the grenadine.

UPDATE: Doing a little more digging, I found an interesting blog post about pomegranate molasses, with recipes. The barbecue sauce is definitely on my list.

A bit of cooking

One of my favorite Szechuan dishes is Steamed Pork with Mei Gan Tsai, which I discovered accidentally in an Oakland family-style restaurant. At the time, I lived on a ridge above the restaurant, where the kitchen fans blew up to the apartment in the evening. Needless to say, decisions about what to have for dinner often involved walking around the corner for Chinese food. Having become a loyal customer, I could get good advice and make unfamiliar choices. Moving away could have been traumatic, because it's not a commonly-offered restaurant dish, but Bruce Cost's excellent book on Asian ingredients provided the recipe.

It's a simple dish, with a time-consuming preparation. The first step is to boil a nice chunk of pork belly for about 45 minutes. The meat is drained, patted dry and rubbed with dark soy, then browned in very hot oil. Tonight's meat came from Fubonn market on 82nd Avenue, which has an excellent meat department. This is a particularly nice-looking slab with plenty of meat and fat.

Eight cloves of garlic, about four ounces of pickled mustard greens, dark soy and a half cup of Shao Tsing rice wine is sauteed briefly. The meat is sliced and placed in a bowl, with the greens and seasoning ladled on top. The whole dish then goes into the steamer for a good 2.5  hours, during which time the hard fat of the bacon will break down into soft yumminess and add lots of pork flavor to the greens. The process is essentially the same as the breakdown of fat through slow cooking in the best barbecue.

Pork on the left, Ma Po Bean Curd on the right. And, of course, there is rice.

Chicago with the Snobs, Day 5

Day Five was primarily a travel day for the remaining Snobs and, naturally, the weather was gorgeous after four days of gray and damp. Most of the group had either left on Sunday or had mid-day flights out on Monday, but Peter, Ryan and I had brunch at Heaven on Seven, a Louisiana-themed restaurant in the Loop. Excellent food, and Peter's introduction to a po'boy, which he handled with grace and style. Ryan and I had a daily special, shrimp and cheese grits with gumbo on the side. Yum.

After seeing Peter off to a few pints and his flight, Ryan and I had one last Chicago task, a visit to the holy shrine of hot dogs: the Vienna Beef factory store. Located in an industrial area not far from De Paul University and its lovely neighborhood, we reached it with a short trip on the Red Line and another short bus ride west. The "store" is also a diner and the company lunchroom, with plenty of other products on sale besides the essential hot dog--all sorts of meat goodness, packages of condiments, t-shirts--the works, as it were. Even though we'd been well fed at Heaven, Ryan got a hot dog at the Source. It seemed a fitting conclusion to all the days of excess in Chicago.

Chicago with the Snobs, Day 4

Four of the Snobs had invested in tickets to a Sunday ball game (excellent seats!) and had been viewing weather forecasts with some dread. Over a hot dog breakfast in the Loop, we watched the rain pour down, and considered options. We could abandon the idea entirely and find a warm dry nook with food and beer, or we hope for some periods of dryness and at least tour an unfamiliar ball park. For my own case, opportunities to see a Major League game come infrequently, and there was always the possibility that the visiting Mariners would avoid being swept by the White Sox. Not a strong possibility, but hope springs eternal.



Chicago makes baseball easy, at least on the South Side, as the Red Line stops a few hundred yards from the park. We were seated four rows back, on the first base line in right field. The stadium is built so that this meant we were virtually at field level with a great view. It was wet. And cold. Tarps were down over the infield and their removal was greeted with a roar of approval. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad! And just as the game began, it rained. Not for long, though, just enough to give everyone a good soaking in preparation for blasts of really cold air. For the most part, the rain held off for nine innings but the cold and the wind never did. We stuck it out, though, along with the thousands of happy locals whose team won this game, along with the previous two games in the series. Me, not so happy with the result, but very pleased we'd taken our chances.

CTA makes baseball easy after the game as well. Portable fare machines, lots of extra customer service staff directing fans down to the trains, which were frequent and capable of carrying far more people than the light rail trains I'm used to in Portland. Red Line into town, Blue Line up north and a quick bus ride to the Map Room, where we settled in for the evening. For the baseball Snobs, all this meant no beer until 5:30 pm! Clearly, we needed to work hard to make up for the delay. Dinner was take out, delicious Cubano sandwiches from a few blocks away.

I was tucked up snug in bed before midnight. Other Snobs, however, finished up with cheezborgers at the Billy Goat. No, seriously.

Chicago with the Snobs, Day 3

More food and less beer, more or less. Knowing that there would be a line at Hot Doug's, the plan was to arrive when they opened at 10:30 or as close to that time as possible, given the longish transit ride out to sausage paradise. Since it was The Snobs, naturally, the plan fell short at critical moments and we ended up arriving at about noon. There was a line. We stood and talked in that line for 90 minutes before reaching encased meat heaven. Thanks to the generosity of absent Snob, Charlie Gow, we indulged. Well, others did. I only had a Chicago dog, a corndog and an Uber Garlic Pork Sausage with Roasted Garlic Dijonnaise and Moody Blue Cheese. And duck fat fries. There were other sausages at the table, mostly from the specials section of the menu.



We packed our well-stuffed casings on to the bus and then the El (Chicago understands public transit as well as Chicago understands meat) and landed at Rock Bottom for many pints and many Chicago fans screaming as their hockey team won in overtime on multiple screens. (Chicago also understands sports, as one would expect of a city with two baseball teams, a hockey team and a basketball team.) Additional Snobs drifted in and then out through the afternoon. There was beer.

And then there was pizza. Five of us pushed off through the rain to Gino's East for excellent deep-dish pies, the crunchy polenta crust stuffed with cheese, meat, tomatoes and spices. Both pizzas were considerably better than in a visit seven years ago to a different Gino's, and the service was terrific.




Don't these guys look happy? (From left: me, Ryan, Steve, Andy, Dave.) Most fortunately, our server offered to take the photo before we started to eat. Damage to the food was considerable and certainly not pretty. Nothing to be done after all this but push on through the rain to the Billy Goat for Old Styles. No cheezborgers, though, at least not this night. I hear rumors that cheezborgers were consumed the previous and the following nights, in the wee hours.