The Accidental Palate

Appointment in Blood Alley

2008-03-05T14:06:00.000-08:00

Fam tours--you've heard of them, right? Short for "familiarization tour," they're expenses-paid trips for journalists to see what a place is "really like." I'm not much of a world traveler but I've been to British Columbia twice now on fam tours (and a few times on my own), and I'm going to tell you about my just-concluded four-day fam tour weekend in Vancouver, B.C.

Day one. I love flying in the low-flying turboprop Dash 8s that really let me see the terrain instead of the clouds. I thought I knew my Cascade peaks but there seems to be at least one more than I know—I see Hood, St. Helens, Adams, Rainier and yet another one. Hmm.

Long wait at customs getting in—flight arrives around 2:30pm and between customs lines and the half-hour wait for an Airporter bus (around $13 one way) I don’t get to Fairmont Hotel Vancouver until after 4pm. The wonderful Tourism BC welcome kit includes a bottle of Jackson Triggs Chardonnay. The room welcome includes a plate of chocolate-covered strawberries, shortbread cookies (I guess they’d call them biscuits, this being Canada), and a little box made of chocolate, with handmade jelly candies inside. Ah, the little touches!

Minutes later, I meet up with Tourism Vancouver's Emily Armstrong and my fellow guests in the lobby and we walk to the historic nearby neighborhood of Gastown. Up a seedy cobble alley--Blood Alley, according to the street sign--is Salt Tasting Room and its new underground Salt Cellar, which I love on first sight. Long wooden table. Display wine case with chalkboard notes on some of the notable wines including, no kidding, a Doobie Brothers label. There's also bags of dried apples and lots of hanging charcuterie, functional yet aesthetically pleasing.

Proprietor Kurtis Kolt offers up some Gruner Veltliner and a BC red. Such a simple concept for the menu--it's basically charcuterie, bread, cheese, and condiments such as quince paste--but the combos all taste delicious. My favorite was rabbit confit with dried cherries. My first restaurant of the weekend, and it feels more like the DIY style of inner east-side Portland than any other place we are going to visit on this trip.

A short walk in Gastown's zigzag cobbled streets leads us to Cobre, which seems like it should mean Cobra but actually means Copper. Their PR rep is Nancy Wong, whom I’ve corresponded with for years but never met. Instead of being Asian Canadian she is European and memorably dressed with accents of houndstooth in her belt and shoes. Reminds me a wee bit of Lucille Ball. She shows us to a chic little downstairs lounge and points out all the subtle little accents of copper throughout the restaurant, even in the textured wallpaper.

At our meal, we tell her how we enjoyed Salt and she says it has spawned home “Salt” parties where the host supplies one or two components—say, the wine and the charcuterie—and the guests bring the third, such as fresh bread or B.C. cheeses. Comparatively inexpensive and small effort for all.

Other seatmates are the above-mentioned Emily Armstrong, Katie Schneider from Calgary, and chocolate writer Emily Stone, who is vaguely from Pittsburgh (currently) by way of New York and, for a while, Guatemala. Later, the BC gals swap places and Josie sits down by me. I had met her in Portland at the University Club for Canada Tourism's annual Canada dinner. She was very quiet that night but tonight I learn more about her—her husband is the financial director for the company that manages Barenaked Ladies, Dido and I think Sarah McLachlan.

Dinner is a series of sampler plates from Chef Stuart Irving, ranging from tuna ceviche on a potato platform, to chupe (a potato-based peasant soup), to a wonderful Ibarra chocolate souffle.

From there we walked to the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre, home of the 30th annual Vancouver Playhouse Wine Festival. Pretty darn big, with a large space set aside for this year’s theme country, Italy. I ran into one of my favorite food writers, Tim Pawsey, almost instantly, along with a very handsome and radiantly smiling friend of his, an actress. He led us to taste this and that but truthfully I had used up my powers of discerning, shall we say, fine liquid distinctions, at least for that day.

Back at the Hotel Vancouver, I had my lights out by 11:30pm, the better to prepare for the next day's amusements. I would have slept like the dead except that the room next door started a party at 4am. I don’t mean a few minutes of noisy sex, I mean a full-on PARTY, with drinking and yakking and cackling laughter. I called the front desk and banged on the wall, but all in all, the festivities went on for an hour. Thought about crashing the party myself, seeing as I was thoroughly awake, but settled for turning on the light and reading Anna Karenina. Forget about that chick who throws herself under a train. If you want to read what Tolstoy thought about how to run a farm, this is the book.

More to come!

Driving to the Moon—and The View Point Inn

2008-03-01T07:45:00.000-08:00

Sometimes everything works out perfectly—like the other night.

We were signed up for a Sokol Blosser wine dinner at The View Point Inn above the Columbia Gorge on Wednesday, February 20—the same night as the total eclipse of the moon.

I missed last summer’s lunar eclipse because it was inconveniently “scheduled” for the wee hours of the night. I stumbled out of bed and out the front door around 4am and by then the show was almost over—anyway, the sky was overcast.

But not on the 20th. Despite the wet forecast, it was a clear evening. We drove over the Fremont Bridge from Northwest Portland and then east on I-84 into the Columbia Gorge, all of which gave us a perfect view of the fat full moon as the earth’s shadow gradually drew a reddish veil across it. We left the freeway at the Corbett exit, headed up the hill and onto the old Scenic Highway to Larch Mountain Road. By the time we pulled onto The View Point Inn’s gravel parking lot, the moon was completely covered with a fog of amber-tinted alabaster.

The View Point Inn is a splendid small mansion with the steeped pitched roof of a Swiss chalet and a lot of exterior Tudor-style details. It was built in 1925, and under the ownership of a German named William Moessner who had been the head chef at Portland’s Benson Hotel, it served as a stopping point for some glamorous visitors—Franklin Roosevelt, Charlie Chaplin, and the royalty of Hollywood and Europe.

In the past several years, its new owners, Geoff Thompson and Angelo Simione, have marketed it as a wedding venue, with a suite of guest rooms upstairs and a spacious, meticulously restored dining room with a stone “Count Rumford” fireplace and bar on the main floor.

Our table offered an expansive view of Vancouver and Portland lights to the east and we could see (though not hear) the planes taking off from Portland International Airport. Our dinner, created by the Inn’s chef, Matthew Crone, was for the most part very well paired with the wines from Sokol Blosser, the venerable Willamette Valley winery.

We started with a smoked trout “pizza” whose crust was more of a puff pastry, with velouté, watercress and truffle. This was paired with SB’s 2006 Rosé of Pinot Noir, as was the slow-roasted tomato soup. The next wine was SB’s cash cow, their signature Evolution, which is always a blend of nine white varietals. With it came a pleasingly different salad of locally grown “ice lettuce” (which may be another way of saying “iceberg”), with duck prosciutto, crispy cracklings, and a bit of gelled spiced cider.

I think at this point we stood up and wandered into the chilly but not freezing February air to see how the moon was faring. The eclipse was almost over and we sat back down again to our diver scallop with a bit of braised pork belly and cornbread pudding, served with Sokol Blosser’s 2006 Estate Pinot Gris. This is their first all-estate Pinot Gris, and there were fewer than 200 cases made, so you’re unlikely to run across it unless you were lucky enough to taste it at the winery.

The conversation moved from lunar events to the books we were reading as we tucked into our main dish, a tournedo of pork en croute, served with the winery's 2005 Dundee Hills Pinot Noir. For dessert, a trio of chocolate confections, we were served the Meditrina Red Blend, but Sokol Blosser’s savvy regional sales manager Lee Medina realized this was a misfire, culinarily speaking, and brought out the company's Riesling dessert wine instead.

I don’t know if I’ll ever spend the night at the View Point Inn—its upstairs suite of rooms with their Victorian-style furnishings seem best configured for a wedding party—but I’ll definitely be back to sample Matthew Crone’s weekend brunch, which will be a great way to start—or conclude—a morning’s hike in the Columbia Gorge.

Guest Post: Love is a Restaurant Battlefield

2008-02-20T14:21:00.000-08:00

This post comes courtesy of Northwest Palate editorial intern Peter Szymczak, who has just completed his studies at Oregon Culinary Institute. He’s dividing his required OCI “externship” between our magazine and a well-known Portland restaurant.

Valentine’s Day is right up there with Mother’s Day as one of the Hallmark holidays that instill fear in the hearts of food-service workers. In a nutshell, stakes are high.

From the opening of their doors to well past closing time, most restaurants will serve a continuous stream of diners who have heightened expectations that Valentine’s should be a night to remember — an aphrodisiac dining experience that will spark the evening’s passion to follow.

Restaurateurs also have high expectations: Valentine’s Day can be one of the highest-grossing days of the year, with the possible added payoff — if the staff delivers a memorable experience, if the food is cooked perfectly, and if every desire is attended to by the wait staff – that diners can be converted into regular patrons.

This year, Valentine’s Day fell on a Thursday, a day I don’t normally work. Chef asked if I could come in since the restaurant was booked solid with reservations and the crew was already down a dishwasher. “Count me in,” I said, sounding like a soldier who doesn’t know he’s volunteering for a suicide mission.

I arrived for my shift just as the doors were opening. The moment I walked in, it hit me like a slope-sided stainless sauté pan: this feeling, call it instinct or premonition, that tonight was going to be brutal. I exchanged some brusque hellos with the wait staff and my fellow line cooks, strapped on an apron, and grabbed a couple of side towels. I prayed silently to the restaurant gods for the night to go smoothly.

The first tickets of the evening started to print out, but everyone was behind on their prep. Chef had created a special menu for the evening. “It was supposed to be easy,” he humbly remarked. But what had looked good on paper was proving to be more difficult to execute. The line cooks were unfamiliar with the recipes, cooking times were different, and they weren’t sure how to plate certain items.

I jumped into triage mode. I went down the line asking the cooks what they needed. “Make some sauce!” “Bring me salad greens!” “I forgot the cucumbers. I can’t believe I forgot to dice the &*%$ cucumbers!” With my orders, I hustled to the back-of-the-kitchen prep area and made or retrieved the items needed and brought them out to the line.

On one trip back, the pantry cook was struggling with shucking oysters. We don’t normally have oysters on the menu, but since they are de rigueur for Valentine’s Day, we were serving them tonight.

As anyone who’s ever shucked an oyster knows, they are difficult and dangerous to open – and even more so during the demands of restaurant service. For every oyster the pantry cook successfully shucked, the shell of the next one would shatter, or her knife would slip and she’d cut herself, a pain made worse by the acidic mignonette that made her cuts burn. An order of a half-dozen oysters was taking her five minutes or more to shuck and plate, which was too much time, given the other orders that were piling up on her line. Miraculously, she kept her cool and got the oysters plated.

After about an hour of finishing up last-minute prep, Chef said to me, rather sternly, “Don’t leave the line again.” The window for completing prep had officially closed; from now on, he wanted me to assist directly on the line for the rest of service. We were, as they say, “in the weeds.”

During the rush of service, time just flies by, punctuated now and again by memorable events – like when somebody shrieks. It wasn’t a customer, thankfully: it turned out to be one of the waiters, who was holding a plate up high and run-walking to the back of the kitchen. He threw the plate down on the prep table and a crowd of cooks gathered around. “It’s right there,” he said, pointing at an oyster. We stood aghast at the sight of something squirming around – a parasitic worm in the oyster. “It was standing up looking at the customer,” the waiter said, using his index finger to mimic the worm’s movement.

“86 oysters,” Chef said, telling the waiters that the oysters were now off the menu. The pantry cook sighed with relief.

The restaurant has an open kitchen, which affords diners a view of their meals being cooked. At one point, a lady wearing a silky red blouse came up to the line, pointed at a plate of food, and asked Chef, “Is that going to be my meal? Can I take a photo of it?” Before Chef could respond, she drew her digital camera and – FLASH – shot her photo, blinding the Chef. She returned to her table, squealing with glee.

The open kitchen also affords the cooks a view of the dining room floor. During a rare lull in the service, I scanned the room and saw many people laughing, eating, drinking, and generally enjoying their night out. But I also saw stoic faces on some of the couples. Were they unhappy with their dining experience, or just unhappy in love?

I asked one of the waitresses how it was going out there and she said, “Eh, Valentine’s, shmalentine’s.”

The rest of the evening was a blur at best. When we finally served the last plate of food, I asked Chef if I could leave the line: I had to go to the bathroom! You don’t think about it, but when you’re on the line, unless you really have to go, you don’t… go to the bathroom, that is. I stepped into the bathroom and was immediately struck by the image of myself in the mirror. My work uniform had never been so dirty. Spatters of sauce covered my chest. I had new burns on my hands and arms and my hat was soaked with sweat.

Returning to the line for cleanup, I asked Chef for his thoughts on the night’s service. “We never got our feet under us,” he said. “From the get-go we were behind and never made up the slack. Tonight was certainly trying by any measure.” Then he added, “But you graduated tonight. Now it’s time to go to graduate school.”

I took that to mean I’ll probably be working Mother’s Day this year.

The Premier Cru That Wasn't

2008-02-13T14:54:00.000-08:00

I spent all of last Saturday shopping, cleaning, and cooking in preparation for a dinner and overnight visit from our friends Mike and Joy, who live on a chestnut farm outside of Sheridan, Oregon.

I was really looking forward to our evening together, but my wine-loving pals will understand perfectly when I say that one of the things I was anticipating most eagerly was that I was finally going to pop open the first—and only—Premier Cru wine I’ve ever owned.

It was an NV Larmandier-Bernier Premier Cru Blanc de Blancs, to be exact, from a biodynamic producer in Champagne. Real Champagne from France! Surely it would redefine my entire experience of sparkling wine, a drink I’m inordinately fond of to begin with.

Being a cheerleader for all things local (in my case, the Pacific Northwest), I mostly drink wines from Oregon and Washington. This treasured Champagne was a gift from a Portland wine merchant who sold me the case of (Oregon) Domaine Meriwether bubbly that my husband and I served at our wedding in 2004. We’d been waiting more than three years for a fine enough occasion to open up the real Champagne.

For you non-wine geeks, NV means non-vintage, which is very common among Champagnes—the makers strive to minimize vintage variations by combining wine lots from more than one year. As for “Premier Cru,” it’s usually translated as “First Growth,” and it alludes to the vineyards that France, in its almost comically fierce dedication to wine classifications, has determined are la crème de la crème--the very best.

Firm in my belief that sparking wine goes with everything, I made polenta con maiale, a dish of polenta with pork braised in wine. It’s a great, easy recipe from La Buca restaurant in Portland. By the way, the recipe calls for pork butt, which the butcher at Zupan’s told me is another term for pork shoulder—I ask you, does that make any sense?

My husband Scott had to work that morning, supposedly just until noon, and he called at noon to say they’d hit some snags and he wouldn’t be home until after 6pm. Great—we were expecting Mike and Joy at 4pm. I called Mike with Scott’s updated plan and the dinner menu, only to learn that Joy doesn’t eat meat. The horror! But no worries—I had a spinach salad and bread on the menu, so I added some roasted carrots for insurance. With macadamia nuts and walnuts and a few nice wedges of cheese, no one would go hungry.

The enticing Premier Cru, meanwhile, was up from the basement and chilling in the fridge. Mike and Joy arrived around 5pm laden with gifts—a lovely maple burl and a slab of walnut for Scott (a weekend carpenter), eighteen eggs of all shades and sizes from their specialty chickens, and a blue hubbard squash so big that it would take a saw to cut up. We talked about chickens, nibbled at the cheese, stirred the polenta, and waited for Scott. And waited. At 6pm I said, Let’s open the bubbly! No, no, no, they protested—such special wine—Scott will be here soon! And he was.

By 6:40pm we were sitting around the table with our dinner and, finally, four flutes of real, honest-to-God Premier Cru Blanc de Blanc Champagne. We toasted one another’s health. We sipped. It tasted…terrible. Just terrible, like a wet dog sitting on moldy newspapers under a dockside pier. I’ve never in my life had a bottle of bubbly that was afflicted by cork taint. That couldn’t be the problem! Maybe it’ll just blow off, I said lamely.

No such luck. Minutes after our guests had tactfully changed the subject, I was still glaring at my glass and feeling robbed of my Premier Cru experience. In my mind, the Blanc de Blanc Champagne was now the blankety-blank, no-good, %#*&@?*! Champagne.

There was nothing I could have done differently to keep the wine from being spoiled by a tainted cork. So what’s the moral of this story? There is no moral, except, perhaps, that when it comes to entertaining, you should always have a Plan B. Plan B in our case was to say “C’est la vie,” and enjoy one another’s company. Which we did.

Cheers!

Jack scores a ten (01)

2008-01-28T15:23:00.000-08:00

As every foodie knows, it’s become a rite of passage for ambitious chefs to cook a dinner at the James Beard House in Manhattan. An invitation to this hallowed hall of gastronomy means cooking for some of the most jaded palates on the planet, and no chef would dare bring anything less than his or her A+ game.

Last Monday night, I was lucky enough to sample a repeat of the James Beard Dinner prepared by Chef Jack Yoss of Portland’s ten01, and I have to say, he did Portland proud.

Because a trip to the James Beard House can be a spendy endeavor, restaurants try to get all the mileage they can from the experience. That means making nice with as many New York media outlets as you can. Adam Berger, the owner of ten01, tells me that abcnews.com spent quite a while shooting Chef Jack at work, and there should be a segment about it on the website in early February—I’ll keep you posted. There were interviews with Food Arts and Wine Spectator, too.

At ten01’s James Beard dinner in Portland, just about everything was flat-out delicious. Bear with me because I’m going to regale you with a few highlights, starting with:

The bluefin tuna sashimi and hamachi tartare, served with yuzu kosho, beet chips, and balsamic brown butter. One thing Jack Yoss seems to excel at is balance: flavor balance, texture balance. The secret weapon in this dish, aside from the impeccably fresh fish, was the yuzu kosho, an addictive Japanese condiment of yuzu zest, chile, and salt—yuzu being a Japanese citrus fruit. The beet chips supplied the note of crisp texture; the brown butter the umami (richness) to complement the lean tuna and hamachi. One of my tablemates said she’d had this dish at ten01 before. If you ever see it there, order it!

The same goes for the next course, a sweet onion and cauliflower soup, punctuated by a dollop of spicy lamb sausage with bits of golden raisin, chopped almond, and curry oil. Again, a wonderful textural contrast, with the almost crunchy lamb bits heightening the honest vegetable flavor of each creamy spoonful of soup.

Then came a perfectly seared sea scallop, surrounded by stewed Willapa Bay oysters, tender buttered leeks, and a drizzle of tarragon oil. On top was a spoonful of trout caviar—golden, pearl-sized beads as fun to bite into as they were pretty on the plate.

Quite honestly at this point, I could have happily retired from my meal. Each dish had been accompanied by a white wine from the Willamette Valley’s St. Innocent Winery, starting with all-but-unavailable 2000 Brut, and moving into a 2006 Freedom Hill Vineyard Pinot Blanc, a 2005 Shea Vineyard Pinot Gris, and a 2005 Anden Vineyard (formerly Seven Springs Vineyard) Chardonnay, Each wine had been a crisp and refreshing partner to its course-mate.

But such is not the way of a James Beard wine dinner. Just as St. Innocent president and winemaker Mark Vlossak told us diners that night, “My father always said a wine’s first duty is to be red,” no such feast is complete without its red meat course. And so we were each treated to roasted lamb chops with butternut squash, honey-glazed parsnips, spiced walnuts, and Pinot Noir-lamb jus—and two vineyard-designated 2005 St. Innocent Pinot Noirs. To my palate, it was all a bit of a jump, but I must say most of the plates I saw were cleared away with neat, clean bones on them.

Where I really would have drawn the line, I think, was with the dessert, a panna cotta made with the deliciously unctuous Rivers Edge chèvre, made 10 miles inland from the Oregon coast at Newport. Accompanied by poached Mt. Hood pears and a star anise red wine reduction, it was a special dish indeed, but after this juggernaut of a meal, it was simply too rich for my blood. I think I could have made a complete lunch of it—would have, given a chance. As it is, my lamb chops came home in a box.

I’ll let you know about the abcnews.com segment as soon as I hear about it.

Guest Post: Taste B.C!

2008-01-23T10:36:00.000-08:00

This post comes courtesy of Mireille Sauvé, a Vancouver, B.C.-based wine writer and proprietor of The Wine Umbrella consulting firm. To reach her, email info@thewineumbrella.com. Thanks, Mireille!

Whew! I just got in from a walking tour of the entire province of British Columbia and are my feet sore! Okay, so I didn’t tour the province physically, but rather it was a virtual tour through B.C.’s bounty of food and wine at the first annual Taste B.C. event held at Vancouver’s Hyatt Regency Hotel.

I didn’t know about this event until about a month ago when I walked into a Liberty wine store. I saw this vibrant painting on a postcard with the heading “Taste B.C.” and, thinking that sounded right up my alley, I picked up the card. In chatting with the store clerk, I learned that this event would have been titled “Liberty Wine Merchants’ 14th Annual B.C. Wine and Oyster Festival,” were it not for some problems that had occurred with the oysters in the past. (I didn’t ask for the sordid details as I find that oyster stories in general usually fall into the category of “over-sharing.”)

So, what is now the first annual Taste B.C. event turned out to be just delightful, and I personally applaud the change of name, as along with it came format changes in the event itself. You see, I have attended the Oyster Festival in years past and, as much fun as it was on a consistent basis, there was always a horrendously long lineup for the oysters and, let’s face it, there are only so many wines that you can drink with oysters without feeling like you’ve bitten into the foil lid of a sardine can. Add to that the fact that B.C. moves more and more into the red-wine-making scene with every vintage, and I say it was high time for a change.

This year’s event featured everything made in B.C. that you’d want to put in your mouth. From fruit juice to sake, from crackers to meatballs, from beer to wine, this festival was in every way a celebration of all things edible in B.C.

Highlights included Artisan Sakemaker at Granville Island and its absolutely memorable Junmai Ginjo Nawa Genhu (I don’t speak much Japanese so I hope I’ve got this right). The brew’s sweet nose smelled of scented brown rice and the sake offered a clean texture with white peach and licorice on the palate. All this made right here in Vancouver, and for only $25 a split–I can’t wait to get on my gumboots and pop over for a tour of this place.

There were a few restaurants at Taste B.C., too, but with very small food bites. My favorites were the Fanny Bay oysters from Rodney’s Oyster House and Rogers’ Chocolates’ spicy Fire Bars. I liked the sunchoke pannacotta with albacore tartare that FigMint made, too, but it was a real challenge to find a suitable wine to drink with it, as the food’s umami flavor altered nearly every dry wine to taste sweet. I ended up enjoying it with Quails’ Gate’s 2006 Chenin Blanc, so all was well on my palate at the end of the search.

Being the wino that I am, I visited more than my share of wine booths at the event, too, and here are a few wines that really stood out:

Little Straw Vineyards 2006 Old Vines Auxerrois. A distinct kumquat aroma is what lured me into this wine. Sourced from 30-year-old vines, the concentration of fruit in this wine is superb. Floral aromas wrap around white peach and nectarine flavours while that kumquat acidity carried through the length of the palate. Delicious and a mere $15cdn a bottle–how’s that for the perfect apéritif!

Dunham and Froese Pinot Blanc. A full body is what struck me most about this wine, then it dawned on me: it tastes like Alsace! So rarely do we see good Alsatian Pinot Blanc in this neck of the woods that I nearly forgot what it tasted like–and here I was tasting a fine example, only it was from B.C! Excellent weight supported flavors of white peach and chalky flint with a charming white peppery spice at the finish. A mere $16cdn is what they were asking for this gem of a wine.

Tantalus 2006 Riesling. It sells for $20 a bottle and what a deal! Bracing acidity complements an abundance of orchard fruit flavors while a mineral quality to the wine reminds me of the riesling grape, making this a very food-friendly wine that screams of B.C.’s terroir.

Golden Mile Cellars 2006 5th Element Red. An almost completely traditional blend of Bordeaux varietals. Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot, and Cabernet Franc combine to make this wine, with a bit of Syrah thrown in for good measure (that’s what I like about winemaker Michael Bartier – he’s not confined by tradition). The wine is full-bodied and complex with flavors of cocoa, black cherry, and vanilla supported by vigorous tannins. I’ll add this one to my cellar at $35cdn a bottle.

Of course, I couldn’t leave the tasting without visiting the winery that everyone was talking about as “the most expensive” at the tasting–Blackwood Lane. I tasted the flagship wine, the 2004 Alliance. At $54cdn a bottle, I have to concede that it was well worth it–a Bordeaux blend featuring a full body, good structure and complexity, and rich dark fruit flavors backed with a hint of anise.

While visiting Blackwood Lane’s booth, I noticed some packaging that I really liked on their Pinot Noir blend so I asked what the name meant. “Vicuña Roja,” as it turns out, translates to mean “A Fine Red Llama.” Isn’t it funny what some people will name their wine? --Mireille Sauvé

Discoveries Rocking My World

2008-01-14T14:27:00.000-08:00

Here are a few things I’ve discovered in the mere two months since my last posting. And when I say “discovered,” I don’t mean I’m the first to make any of these discoveries. Al Gore never claimed he invented the World Wide Web, either. I just mean, I didn’t realize this stuff until now.

I discovered that one of the advantages of a wood-fired pizza oven is that it can go on baking pizza during a power outage. My little group was one of several that retreated into Southeast Portland’s Nostrana restaurant during last December's windstorm to enjoy an oven-blistered margharita pizza by candlelight.

I discovered what galub jamon ought to taste like, thanks to the one served at the East India Co., a handsome new Indian restaurant just behind the Central Library in downtown Portland. A little ball of fried sweet dough drizzled in a light, fragrant, cardamom-laced syrup, it reminded me of French toast when it’s made with challah. I’m jonesing for it this very minute.

I discovered that I really like pastrami—as long as it’s the pastrami served at Portland’s Kenny & Zuke’s deli. I like it best on rye, but an added slice of pastrami also brings a cheeseburger to new heights of indulgence.

I discovered – and probably the entire industrialized world knows this already – that you can bake a potato in a microwave oven in 15-20 minutes, and as long as you don’t over-zap it there is no discernable difference from an oven-baked potato.

I discovered that I really enjoy staying at the Skamania Lodge in the Columbia Gorge. Just outside of Stevenson, WA, the lodge sits in a gorgeous mist-laden setting, the halls and rooms are filled with quintessential Northwest art collected by sharp-eyed developer John Gray, and the great room is anchored by a three-story fireplace I could loll in front of all day long. I also really enjoy the cheese blintzes the lodge serves at its all-you-can-eat Sunday brunch.

I discovered that the quaint little toll booth at the Oregon end of the Bridge of the Gods (Cascade Locks exit off I84 East, one dollar, please) is decorated with Christmas lights all through December. This two-lane bridge, by the way, delivers an awe-inspiring view of the Columbia River Gorge.

I discovered that the U.S. Olympic Committee wants OLYMPIC Cellars on the OLYMPIC Peninsula to stop marketing its wine outside of the Pacific Northwest. The USOC, in its OLYMPIAN wisdom, has been pestering all sorts of businesses in the Pacific Northwest with all sorts of utterly unreasonable demands. Perhaps also we need to rename the OLYMPIC National Forest as well as OLYMPIA, Washington's state capital? Read all about it in the OLYMPIC Peninsula Daily.

I discovered on Christmas Day that I CAN fit 10 people around my dining table, as long as at least four of them are madly in love. My husband and I vowed never again to serve a dinner that requires the complete attention of two cooks for the full hour prior to eating (not to mention two days of prep). We will probably forget said vow some time in the next 350 days.

Remedial Beer at the Beach

2007-11-05T10:25:00.000-08:00

If there's one thing I learned on last weekend's trip to the Oregon Coast it's this: I am a complete beer ignoramus.

I attended the Pelican Pub & Brewery's Fall Brewers Dinner on October 27 and by the time dessert was served, it struck me that if I'm so ignorant about the complex and enormous world of beer, chances are a lot of Northwest Palate's readers are, too. Therefore, I have resolved in 2008 to commission a full-length story entitled "Remedial Beer for the Wine Lover." Something like that, anyway.

The Pelican Pub & Brewery is just one component of a development complex that has been growing on the beach at Pacific City, OR, about 20 miles north of Lincoln City. Pacific City isn't really a city; it's a little town at the south end of the Three Capes Scenic Drive. Its beach sits just beneath the dunes of Cape Kiwanda, where surfers come in search of good waves. The other notable landmark is a haystack rock that puts the better-known one at Cannon Beach to shame. (Not only is it bigger, it has an arch. Also, if you look at it just right, it resembles the profile of King Kong rising from the ocean. But I digress, as usual.)

Pacific City is still a small town, but in the past dozen years, it has seen the arrival of the Pelican Pub, the adjacent Inn at Cape Kiwanda, numerous large homes and vacation rentals, and, most recently, the Cottages at Cape Kiwanda. As the Pelican Pub's guests at the Brewers Dinner, my husband and I were put up in one of the Cottages at Cape Kiwanda. I didn't know what to expect, but I have to say, for good looks and comfort, our cottage rivaled any place I've stayed on the coast, including the Inn at Spanish Head, the Stephanie Inn, and Cannery Pier Hotel.

"Cottage" is a bit of a misnomer, as these are attached units. Ours included two bedrooms and two bathrooms, one of which featured a whirlpool-style bath with a view across the master bedroom to the ocean. We also had a fully equipped open kitchen, dining area, and living room with gas fireplace, as well as three flat-screen TVs, which seems a bit like overkill, but the TV in the living room was concealed by handsome carved panels of happy whales.

A sandy path just off our semi-private deck led downward to the beach and southward to the Pelican Pub, just two minutes' walk away. We had arrived at our cottage just in time to watch the sun disappear behind an ocean horizon that was almost clear enough to show us the fabled "green ray." (No luck this time, but the green ray, like the northern lights, is a meteorological phenomenon I intend to experience before I die.)

The Brewers Dinner was held in the Pelican Pub's banquet room, and when we arrived, the room was packed, mostly with visiting doctors from Boston. We were assigned to sit with the head brewer, Darron Welch, and his wife Stephanie. Also a lovely couple named Don and Dana and, on my left, a woman named Madoka Myers who told me she and her husband, David Myers, had flown in from Boulder, Colorado just for this dinner. It turns out the Myers are the owners of Redstone Meadery, a proud practitioner of the ancient art of fermenting honey into wine. Their motto: Good Enough for Zeus, Good Enough for You! The Pelican Pub carries one of their meads on tap, and if it weren't for the full roster of beers we were already sampling, I would have had to try it.

About that beer. If you sign up for one of these Pelican Pub brewer's dinners, stand warned: you will be served six pints of beer. So pace yourself! Apparently my husband took a ribbing during my final trip to the ladies room because all six of my pint glasses were still on the table and mostly full. "She goes to a lot of wine dinners," he said by way of apology. "She knows better than to finish everything in front of her."

Before dinner even started, we were served the pub's 2005 vintage Bridal Ale. Already, a first for me: a vintage beer. The Bridal Ale is bottled with a Champagne-style closure and is, I imagine, as close to sparkling wine as a creamy, frothy beer can get...

The dinner was a close collaboration between the aforementioned Welch and the Pub's newly promoted executive chef, Pieter Vanden Hogen, and perhaps you will be relieved to read that I do not intend to reprint the entire menu here. I will simply tell you what we and our seatmates thought was the best food-beer pairing of the evening: The Doryman's Dark Ale, matched with a "Black Tamale" i.e., a tamale of mole-braised pork with masa over orzo with ancho chile vinaigrette. I think there must have been a bit of the dark ale in the mole to seal the deal.

Ah, but dessert was a close second: A Hood River Starkrimson Pear poached in Le Pelican Brun over a bed of phyllo and Le Pelican Brun caramel, topped with Le Pelican Brun ice cream, a chocolate-covered candied hazelnut, and a Le Pelican Brun Beer battered Starkrimson chip.

Got that? This was served with bottle-conditioned Le Pelican Brun, a deep reddish, Belgian-style beer.

If you could have heard brewmaster Welch's between-the-courses discourses on the historic roots of each of his beers, along with their respective malt-hop ratios, brewing protocol, and complex flavor profiles, you would truly understand why I now officially proclaim myself a beer ignoramus.

Possibly the only cure for my ignorance--any way, the most enjoyable cure--might be to attend the Pelican Pub's next brewer's dinner, which is slated for January 26, 2008. My hosts, Pelican Pub owners Mary J. Jones and Jeff Schons, told me the dinners routinely sell out, mostly by word of mouth. You've got to check it out. Beer and the beach--now that's a winning combination!

While My Guittard Gently Melts...

2007-10-14T15:59:00.000-07:00

One of those good day, bad day things...

I really wanted to take my friend Roberta to the special Chocolate Tea they were holding yesterday (October 13) in the Heathman Hotel's tea court. In spite of all her many obligations (career-woman and single mother of three, etc.), she delighted me by agreeing to come.

The occasion was a Portland visit by cult Bay Area chocolatier Michael Recchiuti. The Heathman adroitly folded him and his cacao into their year-round weekend afternoon teas and added a special chocolate dinner that night for good measure. (He also used the visit to teach a class at In Good Taste Cooking School and generally promote the beauties of genuine chocolate.)

I'd like to say I didn't eat a thing Saturday morning to justify what I was going to devour in the afternoon, but it wouldn't be true. I did burn some calories beforehand by raking up the caramel-smelling katsura leaves on my front lawn. It was the first sunny Saturday in what seemed like weeks and I was feeling silly about dragging Roberta to a dark, crowded dining room to eat on a glorious fall day.

But she arrived at my place, splendidly attired in shades of cocoa, and downtown we went. Even ten minutes early, we found the tea court packed. Within minutes we each had a chocolate martini in hand, made with Valrhona Manjari chocolate and muddled with a couple of leaves of fresh basil. Normally I'm a bit of a snob about dessert-y "martinis." I think they're sort of like putting ruffles on a rugby shirt. But the basil and high-quality chocolate elevated the drink to a higher level of interest.

Shortly after Robert and I clicked our "martini" glasses, we were presented with a little tower of sweet and savory treats. Recchiuti introduced himself as we were humming over our tiny gingerbread cakes with a white chocolate lemon topping. Taking a wild guess, I mispronounced his name ReCHOOtee, when it is ReCOOtee. (I can never get those Italian "c's" to behave for me...) Nice man, though he had lots of meeting and greeting left to do.

Roberta and I worked our way through a few more treats, including chocolate truffle shortbread cookies, chocolate-dipped sesame tuiles, and (in my case, at least) Tahitian vanilla bean marshmallows with cocoa nibs. Also a cocoa nib nougatine shell filled with duck mousse that I can't really recommend. Our happy server came by and suggested, for a second time, that we taste one of the three hot chocolates on offer. Unbelieving our own capacity, we each ordered one. Roberta's hot chocolate featured dark chocolate from different regions. Mine was a hot milk chocolate with burnt caramel to give it a sophisticated edge. I could have been happy with just this drink--warm, sunny day or not.

Less than an hour after sitting down, we were headed out the door (I was parked at an hour meter) but we got waylaid by several chocolate vendors with their samples. I thought it rather nice that an event in honor of one chocolatier featured chocolates from several producers, including Guittard, which was giving out samples of various single-origin chocolates (the near-equivalent of a single-vineyard wine).

In fact, I am sampling the Quevedo Bittersweet as I type this (you should see my keyboard). Its source is Ecuador, it's 65% cacao, and (I quote), "Its extremely dark color foreshadows its powerful but flowery chocolate taste. The intensity of this rarified Forestero varietal produces rich, green forest, tea, and slight nut flavor with a lingering banana and pound cake finish." Hmmm, I didn't get the banana thing, but tea, okay.

Each carrying a handful of little samples (for kids and colleagues--right!), Roberta and I hightailed it to the car, but not in time--there was the $24 parking ticket. Ah, well.

Anyway, if you're in the mood, check out Chocosphere, a Tualatin, OR-based company where you can order just about any of the chocolates I've mentioned and dozens more from around the world.

Portland Public Market: Home in Sight?

2007-09-27T15:20:00.000-07:00

September 27, 2007, Portland, OR--With the latest twist in the ongoing search for a year-round public market, it's bye-bye, Union Station, and (maybe) hello, 511 Building.

With Melvin Mark Development Company as its partner, the Portland Public Market Foundation and its tireless consulting director, Ron Paul, (pictured below with James Beard Foundation President Susan Ungaro) are hard at work on a new proposal to site the Portland Public Market at the historic 511 Building on Northwest Portland's Park Blocks.

The building currently houses federal Homeland Security employees, who would need to be relocated. The building still belongs to the General Services Administration, but the adjacent parking lot, says Paul, has already been deeded to the City of Portland to be an extension of the North Park Blocks.

This is the latest chapter of a saga that stretches back six years, when Paul first floated the idea of a year-round public market in a central Portland location, where local vendors and artisans could sell their wares throughout the year. After all, Vancouver, B.C. has its Granville Island Market, Seattle has Pike Place Market, San Francisco has the Ferry Building. These aren't just seasonal farmers' markets--these are essential, year-round parts of each of these cities' economic life.

In an interview today, Paul said he couldn't be more thrilled with the new partnership. He noted that the six-story 511 Building, which was built in 1915 and originally was Portland's downtown post office, was one of the first candidates for the market, but the foundation lacked a use for the upper floors. The next candidate, the Skidmore Fountain area, ran into roadblocks from the city. Union Station, the most recent candidate--and, ironically, the site of a Public Market fundraiser this coming weekend--was determined to be too expensive, with about $40 million in needed seismic upgrades and other improvements.

Paul said the foundation was approached by Melvin "Pete" Mark and Bing Sheldon of SERA Architects about five weeks ago with the news that they were interested in buying the 511 Building and developing the upper stories as rental housing. But they needed a use for the main floor. Voila--a new partnership was born.

Melvin Mark should make a terrific development ally--his privately held company has overseen more than 30 complex development projects involving the federal government, including downtown Portland's Duncan Plaza and the Edith Green Federal Building.

No wonder Paul was smiling today. Joining him for the interview at the Oregon Historical Society was Susan Ungaro, president of New York's James Beard Foundation, who is in Portland overnight in advance of Taste America, a 20th anniversary celebration for the James Beard Foundation that's taking place simultaneously in 20 cities around the U.S. (She'll be in San Francisco tomorrow.)

She explained that the James Beard Foundation board has recently voted to allow Portland to name the eventual public market after James Beard himself. Beard, of course, is not just the patron saint of American seasonal, regional cuisine, he is also Oregon's native son, and he was one of Ron Paul's original inspirations for a Portland Public Market.

With any luck, it won't be another six years before Paul's dream becomes a reality.

The Chef in His Studio

2007-09-24T15:58:00.000-07:00

September is always a beautiful and delicious month in Portland. You can bank on it.

One of things I'll remember about this particular September in Portland is being invited to lunch by Robert Reynolds at his Chef Studio in Southeast Portland.

The Chef Studio is a small, workmanlike space in the rear of the building on SE 28th Avenue that also houses Ken's Artisan Pizza and Masu East (a sushi restaurant).

The Chef Studio is a more-or-less square room with a stove, sink, and counters on one wall, industrial shelving on another, books and art on a third wall, and more shelving on the fourth.

A great big square table sits smack dab in the center, directly under a generous skylight. It's a tossup as to which are the room's best features, the table-and-skylight, or the powder blue stove from France that looks vintage but isn't. (If anything in the room reflected Robert's gentle but driving spirit and his zest for all things Gallic, it was that stove.)

Three of us from Northwest Palate sat and talked with one of Robert's culinary students, a jewelry artist who has somehow come under Robert's spell (I didn't learn how they met exactly). She hopes he'll teach her to work as comfortably with food as she does with glass and metal.

Also in the room was Caroline Rennard, who has spent many years working as a marketing and graphic arts professional. She's always loved food and sees in Reynolds a talented and highly intuitive instructor who doesn't fit the usual niches for teaching the culinary arts. So she's been cooking with him and helping him publicize the two kinds of classes he teaches: evening classes for people who like to cook, and intensive daytime study for people who are already cooking for a living or pretty sure that's what they want to do.

We were there to brainstorm with him, but you'd probably rather know what we ate! I'm happy to oblige, though I regret I was not taking notes on how it all got made.

We all had little bites of crostini (bread from Grand Central) with a simple mixture of mascarpone and creme fraiche.

Our first course was pasta with a cool and savory sauce of uncooked chopped green tomatoes tossed with roasted garlic, capers, a little red onion, and olive oil very lightly flavored with chile pepper. We all sipped a 2004 Oregon Pinot Noir from Hatcher Wineworks.

Our second course was lightly breaded sauteed chicken breasts served with tender golden zucchini cakes and a red pepper coulis. Many clean plates in evidence.

We finished with a slice of blueberry pie, the warm berries just barely held together with a bit of cream, sugar, and flour.

Apart from maybe the mascarpone, there was nothing you couldn't find at the local farmers' market. Certainly not a lot of pomp and flash. Another reminder that trendsetters quickly become "so five minutes ago" while good cooking is forever.

Salish Lodge: My Dinner with Anna

2007-09-06T10:49:00.000-07:00

As promised in my "Starters" column in our September/October issue (on newsstands now; if you don't see it, ask for it), this is the complete tasting menu that my daughter and I devoured in the dining room at Salish Lodge in Snoqualmie, WA. Anna had never before encountered a dinner on this scale of sophistication and sheer caloric intake--she's more of a sushi girl. The evening was my version of "take your daughter to work," you might say.

Our chef for the night was the lodge's Chef de Cuisine Darren McNally, formerly of Campagne and Earth & Ocean in Seattle. Our captain was the very engaging Brett Fallows. Eighteeen-year-old Anna did her best NOT to flirt with him.

Anna had a lovely virgin cocktail of some sort. I restricted myself to two glasses of wine, the first being a bright and stony 2007 Verdad Albarino from Santa Ynez, CA. It went terrifically well with my Salmon "Bacon" and Seared Diver Scallop courses. My second glass was a 2004 Long Shadows Sequel, a Washington Syrah made in partnership with John Duval of Australia's Penfolds. It was inky black in the candlelight, full of intensity, and cast a long shadow indeed over my Kobe tenderloin--but hey, I asked for it.

Salish Lodge & Spa Dining Room, Snoqualmie, WA, August 3, 2007
Roy Breiman - Executive Chef
Darren McNally - Chef de Cuisine
Brett Fallows - Captain

Dinner Menu Gastronomique Number 1 (Anna had this)

Amuse (I confess, I no longer remember what this was, but it involved truffle oil)

Sweet Garlic Bisque
Trumpet royals, thyme flower crème

Dungeness Crab
Fresh hearts of palm, fava beans, English peas, asparagus tips, heirloom cherry tomatoes, “ice wine sorbet”

Culatello prosciutto “Surf & Turf”
Pear carpaccio, Hawaiian blue prawns, micro arugula, aged balsamic volcanic fleur du sel

Slow-baked Alaskan Halibut
White potato mousseline, Cascade morels, white & green asparagus, wild watercress salad

Intermezzo (berry sorbet with fresh marionberries)

Potato-wrapped Kobe Tenderloin
Oxtail summer mushroom risotto, long-stem artichoke “Violet,” umeshu (plum liqueur) syrup

Northwest S’Mores
Homemade marshmallows, hot chocolate “shot”

Mignardises (tiny espresso truffles)

Dinner Menu Gastronomique Number 2 (Angie had this)

Amuse (as above, it involved truffle oil)

“Salmon Bacon”
Brown-sugar-cured and lightly smoked, with young leeks, fava beans, cracked black pepper, and a Pommery mustard emulsion

“Heirloom Tomato Harvest”
Heirloom tomatoes, morel mushrooms, and other locally inspired seasonal vegetables

"Wenatchee Pear Tasting”
Pear “panna cotta,” chilled pear “spritzer,” vanilla-poached pear truffle goat cheese mousse, Champagne gastric

Seared Diver Scallops
Truffle-infused cauliflower, heirloom potato chips, honey mushrooms, hand-formed truffle, sea salt Intermezzo (berry sorbet with fresh marionberries)

Intermezzo (berry sorbet with fresh marionberries)

Potato-wrapped Kobe Tenderloin
Oxtail summer mushroom risotto, long-stem artichoke “Violet,” umeshu syrup

Masquerade of Crèmes Brûlées, with inspired seasonal garnishes

Mignardises (tiny espresso truffles)

The Roaring 20th (Auction of Washington Wines)

2007-08-28T17:53:00.000-07:00

(Thanks to Chris Nishiwaki for this quick report on Washington State's premier wine auction weekend, which took place August 16-18.)

The Auction of Washington Wines, the annual auction benefiting Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center and the Washington Wine Education Foundation, combines some of my biggest passions and interests: education, the well-being of children, the Washington wine industry--and a good party.

Actually, it was several parties, spread out over several days. In 2007, the auction’s 20th year, events included a casual winemaker’s picnic on Thursday, August 16, a dozen intimate winemaker dinners on Friday, August 17, a 5K run and walk in the morning of Saturday, August 18, and the capper, that evening’s Gala Auction.

At Thursday’s picnic, winemakers roamed the grounds of Chateau Ste. Michelle pouring their wines. Mark Ryan McNeilly of Mark Ryan Winery, Chris Gorman of Gorman Winery, Anna Shafer of aMaurice Cellars, David Merfeld of Northstar, Chris Upchurch of DeLille, and Trey Busch of Walla Walla’s new Sleight of Hand Cellars were among the featured winemakers.

The evening also featured a barrel auction of pre-release barrels from eight Washington wineries: Boudreaux Cellars, Col Solare, Côte Bonneville, DeLille Cellars, Dunham Cellars, K Vintners, L’Ecole No. 41, Long Shadows Vintners, Mark Ryan Winery, Matthews Estate, Northstar, and Va Piano Vineyards.

The post-picnic party at DeLille Cellars in Woodinville, WA has become a tradition during the weekend of festivities. Though it is not an official function of the Auction of Washington Wines, patrons look forward to it with great anticipation. This year’s celebration doubled as the annual meeting for the Zino Society, the wine-centric social and professional networking membership group.

I had the good fortune of working at Children’s Hospital and its affiliate, the University of Washington Medical Center, for three years. I also served on the committee for the Auction of Washington Wines for three years. On Friday all those experiences came full circle as I attended a private winemaker dinner, courtesy of Larry Symonds of Mellon Private Asset Management, at the Medina, WA home of Cameron and Linda Myhrvold. Jonathan Zimmer of Lisa Dupar Catering prepared a series of small plates paired with wines from four Washington wineries: Woodward Canyon, L’Ecole No. 41, Reininger, and Three Rivers.

The Myhrvolds’ relationship with Children’s Hospital is a great example of why the Auction of Washington Wines draws so much support, year after year. One of the Myhrvolds’ daughters was a patient of Dr. Richard Ellenbogen at Children’s Hospital many years ago. That daughter is thriving now, thanks in large part to the care she received from Dr. Ellenbogen and his colleagues at Children’s. So moved were the Myhrvolds that they became supporters of Children’s Hospital and the Auction of Washington Wines. In fact, Cameron Myhrvold co-chaired the auction for two years.

This year, in honor of the auction’s 20th year, the overall theme was “The Roaring 20th." The auction indeed was a roaring success, racking up nearly $2 million in proceeds from all the events. The August 16 barrel auction raised a total of $40,000. At the August 18 gala auction, a new BMW convertible sold for $40,000, and the “fund-a-need” portion alone raised a record $623,000.

The largest auction lot? No, it wasn't wine. It was Super Bowl XLII packages for two couples, which were sold to three winning bidders for a grand total of $85,000. --Chris Nishiwaki

Peaches En Regalia

2007-08-02T12:18:00.000-07:00

Is it just that I always order any dish that uses fresh peaches, or do Portland chefs have a soft spot for this succulent summer delight?

In the past week alone, I've enjoyed three delectable peach dishes, two savory and one sweet.

Last Friday I visited Toro Bravo with my friend Peter who lives in Spain, so he could tell me how Toro Bravo's tapas stack up to the genuine article. After a good look at the menu and a taste of three or four dishes, he declared Toro Bravo's fare to be a lot more sophisticated than what he gets in Madrid--it's more like what you'd get in Barcelona. Of course he saw a few items you wouldn't find in Spain at all, like grilled corn with a red pepper sauce...

But I digress from peaches. One of our dishes at Toro Bravo was pork rillettes, served in a little bowl alongside roasted ripe peaches and some housemade grain mustard. Last time I went, this dish was served with red-wine braised cherries, and I'll bet that was good, too. But the peach version, served atop toasted baguette slices, was just plain heaven. The duck-peach-mustard trio replicated Remy's semi-psychedelic vision of what happens when the right ingredients collide, in fact.

(Who's Remy, you ask? He's the rat in the latest Pixar movie, Ratatouille. Great, now I'm identifying with an animated rodent....)

Peach delight number two came on Saturday night, when it was just too hot to even look at a stove. Instead, we drove to Lauro Mediterranean Kitchen. When I saw the appetizer of roasted peach stuffed with goat cheese and wrapped with pancetta and served with arugula. I completely forgot I'd eaten peaches the night before.

Again, yum! The dish arrived with not one but two whole roasted peaches, neatly cut in half, pitted, and filled with fresh soft goat cheese. Full disclosure--the peach I ate was really not ripe, and it took my steak knife to cut it up. And yet it was surprisingly delicious, with a spicy tartness that I couldn't separate from whatever spices were added to it--fresh tellicherry pepper, maybe. And the arugula... I boxed up the other peach and ate it last night. After no more than a minute in the microwave, it revived perfectly. Four days in the fridge had brought the peach and pancetta even more in harmony. I do think this peach was riper than the first one, though.

Finally, Tuesday night was a very special occasion, a welcoming dinner for Randall Grahm, founder of California's Bonny Doon wines. He's chosen Portland as headquarters for his new Pacific Northwest enterprise, Pacific Rim Winemakers, which will produce mostly Riesling from Washington grapes. (Putting his new staff in Portland was a lifestyle decision--they didn't want to live in Eastern Washington or Seattle...in fact the new venture's corporate office is in the same building as the Chesterfield and Rocket in inner East Portland, how's that for Coolsville?).

They held the Pacific Rim dinner in the teahouse at the Portland Classical Chinese Garden, and the meal, catered mostly by Sungari Pearl, was designed to complement Pacific Rim's latest Riesling releases. You're thinking, peaches in Chinese food? No. To match Pacific Rim's Vin de Glaciere (a Riesling dessert wine), we devoured some peach custard tarts from Ken's Artisan Bakery. Sliced mandoline-thin and perfectly ripe with the barest hint of a sugar glaze, the peaches were the very definition of summer.

And now, another digression. Outside the teahouse, Chinese musicians played flutes in a very well attended concert in one of Portland's most beautiful enclosed public spaces, on one of the most beautiful evenings of the year. The Classical Chinese Garden has become a local treasure, and I intend to go back there before the autumn rains descend.

Sated in Sun Valley

2007-06-11T10:16:00.000-07:00

Sun Valley Food and Wine Festival
June 8-10, Sun Valley & Ketchum, ID
Welcome—and thanks!—to this week's guest correspondent, Idaho Statesman restaurant reviewer James Patrick Kelly, who sent in this report:

On Friday, the first day of the festival, I skipped author Jim Harrison’s keynote address to go review a restaurant called Rickshaw in lower downtown Ketchum. My wife and I found refuge from the looming clouds in the restaurant’s stylish Pan-Asian dining room, within view of the sizzling woks and stacked bamboo steamers.

Rickshaw draws inspiration from owner and chef Andreas Heaphy’s trips to Southeast Asia. He emulates the simple food that he eats while in exotic locales like Vietnam and Thailand. It’s essentially street food (served on a plate) with a contemporary attitude. We left happy after munching on colorful interpretations of green papaya salad, star anise-scented pork ribs, and pearl balls (deliciously smoky chicken rolled into sticky rice orbs).

I later heard that Harrison delivered a somewhat dry, sardonic opening address that offered insight into everything from dining abroad to his own bouts with gout—the latter being information I could live without.

Early the next day, after breakfast and a meandering stroll through the incredibly gorgeous Sun Valley Resort, we headed downtown (Ketchum is only one mile away) to start our whirlwind day. We first checked out the Farmer’s Marketplace, a market of local foodstuffs and crafts set up specifically for the festival. This is where I ran into Northwest Palate co-publisher and wine editor Cole Danehower, who was hanging out at Carmela Vineyards’ booth, sadly the only winery from Snake River Valley to appear at the marketplace. I was surprised not to see a showing by Sunny Slope’s Koenig Vineyards, considering that winemaker Greg Koenig grew up in Ketchum.

The rest of the day was spent running between local restaurants, where guest chefs and local chefs put on cooking demonstrations. Celebrity chef Cat Cora showed people how to make Argentinean-style grilled lamb chops (from Lava Lake Lamb in Hailey) with chimichurri sauce and roasted corn on the cob. Cory Schreiber of Portland’s Wildwood Restaurant discussed the nuances of summertime cooking in the Northwest. Cookbook author Katie Chin (above; James Patrick Kelly photo) gave a dissertation on dim sum, making sure everyone in the room left knowing how to make shrimp shumai and other Cantonese-style dumplings.

The bookend to our day was a vintner’s dinner held at Ketchum Grill, where chef Scott Mason prepared a five-course meal paired with wines from Frenchman’s Gulch Winery in Ketchum. Idaho foodstuffs like tangy Rollingstone Chèvre, Golden Reserve beef tenderloin, and locally foraged morels played well with the winery’s unoaked Chardonnay and ripe Merlot.

James Patrick Kelly reviews restaurants for the Idaho Statesman.

Gotta Getta Goetta at TOTN

2007-05-03T16:42:00.000-07:00

I wasn’t happy when Portland’s annual Taste of the Nation moved from the Portland Center for the Performing Arts in 2006 to the gigantic airport lounge that is the Oregon Convention Center.

The Performing Arts Center, with its curving staircases, soaring atrium, and tiers of cherry-stained balconies, was an eminently worthy setting for the glamorous fare that Oregon’s top chefs have always brought to Taste of the Nation. The Convention Center is just a big empty box with carpeting.

However. The ultimate purpose of TOTN is not to please moi but to sell the tickets that raise the money that helps fund local food banks--not just in Portland but in cities all over North America. As this year’s Portland chairwoman, Gina Fleschner, asks, “Any other local venues you know of that can hold 1,300-plus?”

Okay, I’m done kvetching. This was TOTN’s 20th anniversary year in Portland, the crowds came hungry, and the vendors outdid themselves. Here are some of our staff’s favorite tastes, in no particular order:

Asparagus panna cotta with marinated crab and Meyer lemon foam from Chef Tyler Williams at Genoa

Garlicky mushroom caps from Chef John Newman at Newman’s at 988 in Cannon Beach, OR

Slow-roasted Oregon Country Natural beef with marionberry-chipotle ketchup, from Chef Dale Rasmussen at The Resort at the Mountain

Australia’s Roaring 40s blue cheese with New Zealand honey, served by Foster & Dobbs

Cameron Winery’s 2005 Pinot Noir

Salmon tartare on scallion pancakes from Chef John Eisenhart at Pazzo Ristorante

Brandied chicken liver mousse from Chef Brad Root of Roots Restaurant in Camas, WA

Douglas fir and Pinot Noir granita from Chef Leif Eric Benson of Timberline Lodge

Gianduia milkshakes from chefs Kevin Gibson and Gavin Russell of Castagna

Inox Chardonnay (unoaked) from Chehalem winery

Just when I thought I’d get through the evening without tasting anything I’d never heard of, I stumbled on the Simpatica Dining Hall table, where chefs Dave Kreifels and Jason Owen were presenting their housemade goetta topped with chow-chow and served on a little buttermilk biscuit.

Goetta turns out to be a lot like scrapple. It’s a pork-and-beef sausage with cooked oatmeal as a binder. If I’d grown up in Cincinnati, Ohio, I’d have heard of it for sure. Apparently goetta is to Cincinnatians (especially Cincinnatians of German extraction) what beignets and chicory coffee are to the citizens of New Orleans. So says Wikipedia. The chow-chow--a tart and spicy relish--gave this little tidbit some needed character. The biscuit gave it soul. So say I.

I can’t sign off without once more thanking all the hospitality folks who give their time so generously to Taste of the Nation Portland year after year. This year, thanks to urging by Michael Slocum, TOTN Portland’s longtime restaurant coordinator, Northwest Palate agreed to throw TOTN’s first-ever official afterparty. You might say it was a joint 20th anniversary bash. Brand new Bay 13 Restaurant in the Pearl District served as the locale, and Bay 13’s Joe Moreau was a most gracious host. The party was elbow-to-elbow and I haven’t seen that many tats since my last visit to Oddball Studios. Awesome!

Ale, Ale, the Gang's All Here

2007-03-26T17:37:00.000-07:00

Okay, I’m not going to waste any time apologizing for my long absence from this ostensibly weekly (!) blog except to say that I spent January and February editing my 51st issue of Northwest Palate magazine--the March/April issue, which also happens to be the magazine’s 20th anniversary issue. Go to your favorite magazine seller and demand a copy. It’ll be worth it, I promise.

A couple of weeks ago, I tasted Henry Weinhard’s brand new Organic Amber Premium Ale. It was good stuff, and I’ll get back to that in a minute.

In the olden days, Henry’s might have introduced the ale by throwing a media party where various reporters showed up, talked shop with each other, and wolfed down the ale. But in these days of strategic partnerships, a mere party-slash-press conference simply isn’t enough.

Instead, we went over to Western Culinary Institute, the older of two professional cooking colleges in Portland, where we were ushered into a classroom, where chef Stu Stein and students treated us to a demonstration of multiple dishes all using Henry’s Organic Ale as an ingredient. Henry’s had sent along its beer expert David Ryder, the official brewmaster for Miller Brewing (which acquired Henry Weinhard’s in 1999).

Lane PR, the Portland-based public relations firm, issued the invites to this affair. I don’t know whether it was Lane PR that put all the participants together, but I can tell you everybody benefited.

Henry Weinhard benefited because in a beer-conscious town like Portland, it’s not enough to just tell reporters that this is an organic beer--not when your company is part of an international brewing conglomerate. The company needed a little help from Stu Stein, who is, after all, author of The Sustainable Kitchen, a very locally focused, environmentally conscious guy. Bringing Stu’s food into the picture helps position Henry’s Organic Ale as a high-end beer, not PBR or Miller Lite. And it enticed that many more reporters to come and hear Ryder talk about finding the ratio of sweet malt to bitter hops that will appeal to mainstream tastes while not completely antagonizing the hop-happy lovers of microbrews. (And I think he succeeded.)

Western Culinary Institute benefited from hosting the affair, simply by getting reporters into its facility. In spite of, or maybe because of its official affiliation with the Le Cordon Bleu schools, WCI is sometimes perceived as too tradition-bound, and it is getting competition from the Oregon Culinary Institute, which was founded by ex-WCI instructors. Anyway, Stein does some teaching at WCI, so he knows the place.

Stein benefited because he got to remind all the reporters in the room that he’s about to open his brand-new restaurant, Terroir, in Northeast Portland this spring. And he got to give us a preview of his excellent cooking, and show us the right way to cook with beer, which can be tricky.

By the way, I benefited, too--I got something fun to write about in this blog.

And you, dear reader--you get a genuinely good dish to try. The instructions are published below. I saw Stu make it, or at least part of it, and he’s not one of these terribly artistic chefs who is incapable of writing things down. It should actually work when you make it!

By the way, if you’re still confused about what strategic partnerships are--I get them mixed up with co-branding, which is different--remember what Katharine Hepburn said about dance partners Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: She gave him sex appeal; he gave her class. Together, they both looked better.

Ale-Braised Smoked Pork Spare Ribs
Courtesy of Chef Stu Stein, Terroir Restaurant, Portland, OR
Serves 4
Writes Stein, “This dish combines the smoky, rounded fatty and meatiness of pork spare ribs with the slightly spicy, sweet maltiness of Henry’s Organic Ale. The bitter yet refreshing flavor and aroma of the hops serves as a taste bud tonic and adds a final balancing component. The final funky component of sautéed cabbage with the crisp, piquant flavors of onion and horseradish and the bright fresh herbaceous tarragon puts this dish over the top.”

FOR THE SPARE RIBS
Non-GMO vegetable oil
2 pounds smoked pork spare ribs, country style cut from the loin
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1 leek, white part only, cut into 1-inch lengths
1 onion, peeled and diced
1 rib celery, diced
1 sweet, spicy apple (such as Braeburn, Gala or Fuji) peeled, seeded and diced
6 cloves garlic, whole
1 sachet filled with 2 bay leaves, 12 whole black peppercorns, 2 whole cloves, 1 bunch fresh thyme
2 ounces all-purpose flour
3-4cups Henry Weinhard’s Organic Amber Premium Ale
Water or light chicken or pork stock
Kosher salt and cracked black pepper, to taste
Granulated sugar, to taste

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Place a large, ovenproof braising pan over medium-high heat and add enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan. Season the ribs with salt and cracked black pepper. Add the ribs and brown both sides. Remove meat but leave the oil. Add the carrot, leek, onion, celery, apple, garlic and sachet. Cook until lightly brown.

Add the flour and cook, stirring frequently, until a slightly nutty roux is formed. Add the beer, and deglaze by scraping the fond from the bottom of the pan. Return the ribs to the pan and add enough water or stock to just cover the ribs. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, cover and transfer to the oven. Cook until the ribs are tender, approximately 2 1/2 hours.

Remove the ribs and keep warm. Strain the braising liquid and remove the fat. Taste and adjust the seasoning with salt, pepper, and, if necessary, granulated sugar.

FOR THE SAUTÉED CABBAGE
2 tablespoons butter or pork fat
1 small onion, peeled and thinly sliced
1 head green cabbage, leaves blanched, shocked, dried and thinly sliced
1 teaspoon fresh horseradish, finely grated
2 tablespoons fresh tarragon, roughly chopped
Kosher salt & cracked black pepper, to taste
Granulated sugar, to taste
Sea salt for garnishing

Melt the butter or pork fat in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté 5-8 minutes or until just beginning to soften. Add the cabbage and horseradish, season with salt and pepper and cook until both vegetables are soft, approximately an additional 10 minutes. Add the tarragon, taste, and adjust the seasoning. Keep warm.

TO SERVE
Place the sautéed cabbage on a plate. Top with spare ribs and ladle the some of the braising liquid over and around. Top with sea salt.

ADVANCE PREPARATION
Braising the spare ribs several days ahead is not only possible but recommended, to build layers of flavor for a more complete and complex finished dish. Chill them in their braising liquid. When ready to serve, reheat them in their liquid and complete the recipe.

SUBSTITUTIONS /OPTIONS
Ham hocks, pork belly, beef short ribs, or even oxtails can be substituted for the pork spare ribs. The key is to use a rich, somewhat fatty bone-in cut of meat,

Six Meals (For Miney Jabine)

2006-11-27T13:32:00.000-08:00

1. November 10. Wine dinner at the Four Seasons Resort, Whistler, B.C. It’s the weekend of Cornucopia, an annual food-and-wine festival designed to bring in visitors before ski season starts. I sit at the media table. Most of us don’t know each other, but that’s fine--there’s always plenty of shoptalk when reporters get together. At meal’s end, the entire kitchen staff is trotted out for our applause--something like 20 people--almost as many cooks as diners. I forget about my mom for a few hours.

2. November 18. Cheeseburger at the airport. It’s 5pm and I’m waiting to board the red-eye from Portland to Washington, D.C. (with a connection in Phoenix and a stop in Vegas). Do the airlines get kickbacks from airport fast-food joints these days? The demise of in-flight meals sure has been a boon to Burger King, Pizza Hut, and the rest. The burger goes down easy, warm and soft. It’s strictly fuel.

3. November 20. An orderly has just brought in a tray of hospital food. My mother stopped eating two days ago. My sister won’t touch anything on the tray. My dad, forever frugal, lifts the insulated cover off the entrée, takes a bite and pronounces it palatable. Some kind of pasta with chicken and watery zucchini. Me, with my horror of wasting food prepared in good faith (or is that just my cover of virtue for an appetite that never flags?), I take a few bites too.

4. November 22. A day-old cheese sandwich and a glass of sherry. It’s 3am and we four siblings and Dad are assembled in the living room. For the last five days, we’ve all been sleeping by turns, in chairs, on couches, on a mat on the floor. At 1:15am it was all over, but we waited more than an hour for the attending physician to make the declaration. We’ve removed everything from the hospital room except what mattered the most. Two brothers, two sisters, all of us baby boomers, still wondering if we’ve grown up yet. Dad, 81 years old, bone-tired, so grateful for everything.

5. November 22, later in the day. Beef stew and a bottle of Witness Tree Pinot Noir. (In the Chevy Chase liquor store, the owner said he’d be drinking it for Thanksgiving. The name felt right, too.) I’ve gotten a few hours of sleep and it’s the first time I’ve cooked in a week. The stew meat, already braised, came from our beloved neighbor Joanne. All I need to do is cut it up and sear it. I add a couple cups of Dad’s three-week-old jug Merlot, trying to finish off the bottle. Carrots, onions, and potatoes, of course. Just as it’s almost ready--it’s a huge pot for just Dad and my sister and me--another neighbor arrives with three cooked deli chickens and a pasta salad. We thank her profusely and pop them into the fridge for later. As we’re sitting down to eat, my brother returns from the airport with his wife and their two little children. We quickly set more places and open the wine. No one quite knows what to do about Mom’s accustomed seat at the dining table, the one closest to the kitchen. Finally Dad sits in her spot. We all raise our glasses, including the kids with their milk. “To the queen!” says Dad. Bless him.

6. November 23, Thanksgiving. My sister-in-law Jill has the use of her sister’s house, across the Potomac River from our house. Her sister has gone to Ohio for dinner with HER in-laws, but not before grocery shopping before she left town so that Jill could cook us all a dinner. It’s everything Thanksgiving is supposed to be: turkey, sausage stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, pie. A bottle of German Riesling that my cousin had sent us the day before. Before we eat, we take turns giving thanks. My seven-year-old niece has been thinking all day about what she will say. She whispers, I’m thankful grandma didn’t suffer too much. My dad’s eyes are full.

Masala and Momo and Ghee, Oh My!

2006-10-30T13:39:00.000-08:00

Last Friday, I played hooky from editing and attended a five-hour class in Indian cooking at the Oregon Culinary Institute. What a blast! This was an experience I would recommend to anyone who loves food, whether they think they can cook or not. I came home with my own garam masala--a classic mix of Indian spices--and a dozen recipes.

It was 9am when I met up with my classmates at the sleek little restaurant that is the public face of the school (located at 1701 SW Jefferson Street, at the edge of downtown Portland). Our group included Sarah Bagley, Northwest Palate’s art director, who had never even TASTED Indian food (boy, was she in for a treat), Cameron Nagel, the Palate’s founder and publisher (he’s tasted just about everything), and a few other folks. Inside the restaurant, we were introduced to Brian Wilke, OCI’s executive chef and education director, and we all sipped lattes and espressos as we made our way past the restaurant into a classroom that looked just like any other classroom. There we met our Indian cooking instructor, Bikram Vaidya, who is definitely NOT like any other teacher I’ve ever had.

Bikram, who is actually from Kathmandu, Nepal, has a smile as blinding as snow-capped peak. He quickly drew us a map of India and divided it into elevations, from sub-tropical southern India to the temperate mid-section to the high Himalayas. He described how the seasonal progression of monsoon rains affects every aspect of Indian agriculture, from basmati rice to Darjeeling tea. “Seventy percent of the world’s spices come from India,” he declared. No wonder spices are so prevalent in Indian cooking. (And how strange, on reflection, to think that the English, with their bland palates, were the ones to colonize this most flavorful of realms.)

Our classroom time was short and sweet; Brian and Bikram quickly led our group into a big, clean kitchen where cups of fragrant chai awaited each of us. There we met three of OCI’s professional cooking students, who were there for the express purpose of rescuing us from whatever mischief we might get ourselves into.

But it wasn’t time to cook just yet. Instead we were invited to stick our noses into cups of cinnamon, peppercorns, cloves, coriander seeds, cumin, cardomom, nutmeg, turmeric, asafoetida, fenugreek, ginger--all essential flavors in Indian cuisine. And we all tasted from seven cups of spices that had been blended with water, heated to varying temperatures (heat changes the flavors of many spices), and arranged according to their flavors and aromas, from savory to salty to sour to sweet.

Sarah and I were beginning to eye the row of stovetops somewhat nervously, wondering if their restaurant-level BTUs would set fire to our eyebrows. Anxiety quickly gave way to a feeling of power and usefulness once we all actually turned on the gas. Each with our own frying pan, we toasted our own garam masala, India’s basic toasted spice mix. On Bikram’s command, we added each ingredient one at a time: crushed cinnamon, peppercorns, cloves, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, cardamom pods, bay leaves, and nutmeg.

After four or five minutes over the flame, our potions started to smell heavenly, and we transferred them into nice, heavy mortars, picked up our pestles, and began pounding and grinding the mixtures into a potent, golden-brown powder while Bikram egged us on.

(By the way, Brian told us you can get a good, heavy mortar and pestle at good Asian markets for around $20, much cheaper than the glossy catalogue offerings.)

Brian gave us a quick tutorial in how to chop an onion (which warrants a whole class in itself) and then, at last, it was time for each of us to pick a recipe and start cooking. I opted for momos, which consist of ground pork (or lamb or turkey), laced with scallions and spices and wrapped neatly in a pot sticker (gyoza) wrapper.

I must say, food preparation just doesn’t seem like work when you have a cadre of professional students who have already set up your mise en place. (Ah, here’s the ground-up ginger! Ah, here’s the minced garlic!) Bikram showed me how to brush the gyoza wrappers with water, add a bit of seasoned pork, and pinch the wrappers closed in a lovely pinwheel design. And after I had made about 10 momos (with about 40 left to go), one of the students finished my work for me.

With six or eight different dishes being prepared at once, Bikram turned into a whirling dervish, flying from one stovetop to the next, lifting pot lids and taking little tastes of everything. We’d started cooking around 10am and by 1pm, all of us were ravenous. Washing our hands and leaving behind our dirty knives, bowls, cloths, and cutting boards, we reconvened in the restaurant. Our creations miraculously reappeared in serving bowls and in no time we had all served ourselves.

Such an array of colors and flavors! There was Megan’s chicken masala, Lisa’s dal bukara (a humble lentil stew), Sarah’s aloo gobhi (potatoes and cauliflower, cooked in ghee and masala), Cameron’s mutter paneer (diced paneer cheese in a fragrant tomato sauce with peas), my pork momos (which the OCI cooking elves had taken somewhere out of sight and finished in a steamer), and plenty of cumin-flavored basmati rice.

Brian and Bikram sat down with us and we all picked up our forks. Actually, only we guests picked up our forks. Brian and Bikram picked up their food in their right hands (in south Asia, it’s always the right hand, not the left). Said Brian, “Why not eat with my hands? After we’ve taken so much care with our flavors, even that slight bit of a metallic taste from the fork just doesn’t seem right.” Good point, I thought, and anyway, how many chances do we get to eat with our hands in polite company? I put my fork down and didn’t pick it up again.

Naturally, I liked “my” momos the best, especially with fresh mint chutney. But the dish I’m going to make at home? The mutter paneer, if I can just get my hands on some commercial paneer. If necessary, I’ll make the paneer myself--it’s pretty much the same as a farmer’s cheese.

The biggest surprise: Bikram said that although he loves cooking (Brian and Bikram are old friends, and Brian recruited him to teach at OCI), his first love is mountain climbing. Suddenly his altitude map of India made sense, as did his many references to “levels” of flavors and heat. He’s a guy who strives for the heights!

I would recommend a class with Bikram and Brian to anyone. For the complete roster of OCI’s non-professional cooking classes, visit www.oregonculinaryinstitute.com.

Synchronous Toffee Pudding

2006-09-21T08:51:00.000-07:00

So there we sat, lingering over our coffee and dessert (we were in Olea, in Portland’s Pearl District, if you must know), and reminiscing about desserts we’d loved. Cole, the jet-setter at the table, told us he never visits London without going to Rule’s in Covent Garden and ordering the sticky toffee pudding with butterscotch sauce.

“Sticky toffee pudding?” I said. “What’s that?”

Well, sticky toffee pudding is basically a steamed cake with bits of date in it, served warm with toffee sauce or butterscotch sauce (and the difference between toffee and butterscotch, for the record, is that toffee uses white sugar and butterscotch uses brown sugar). It’s a classic British dessert and, all joking about British food aside, it sounds delicious—how can you go wrong with butter and sugar?

Here’s where the synchronicity comes in. The very next morning after our dinner, a PR rep in San Francisco emailed to tell me about the just-named winner of Häagen Dazs’s choose-an-ice-cream-flavor competition. The winner’s name is Judiaann Woo, and her proposed ice cream flavor won out over zillions of other entries. The candidates were narrowed down to 15 finalists, then five, with all the finalists filmed making their pitches for a two-hour special called Scoop! that aired this summer on the Food Network. And Woo’s winning flavor was—you guessed it—sticky toffee pudding.

Woo grew up in the Portland area and graduated from Pacific University in Forest Grove, but moved to New York 10 years ago, where she enrolled in a six-month pastry course at the French Culinary Institute. She’s now the editor of the institute’s website, www.PastryScoop.com, as well as a contributing editor to Food Arts magazine. Obviously, she’s no dessert amateur, and she’s no marketing amateur, either.

On the phone, she told me, “When I heard about the contest, the idea came to mind immediately.” She knew she needed a flavor that would fit into the Häagen-Dazs’ brand image, and that was on its way to becoming a national trend. She’d seen sticky toffee pudding (hereinafter referred to as STP) on the menu at trendy New York spots like Schiller’s (from the proprietors of Balthazar). “I started seeing it in restaurants and by mail order, and Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods had versions of it. What molten chocolate cake was 10 years ago, STP is going to be next year—watch out!”

As for making an STP-flavored ice cream, she knew it would work because the ingredients are familiar and not too complicated. “Some of the other contestants took a kitchen-sink approach,” she said knowingly. “That’s more the Ben & Jerry’s style.” The four other top flavors were caramelized fig and walnut ice cream; toasted coconut sesame brittle ice cream, cannoli ice cream, and mocha malted milkshake ice cream. (And green tea ice cream, which you can already get in Thai restaurants and sushi bars, made it to the top 15.)

Given that Häagen-Dazs is a multi-million dollar business, the top flavors were all subjected to intensive research and taste-testing by focus groups. (“Häagen-Dazs,” by the way, means absolutely nothing, it’s just supposed to sound sort of Scandinavian and upscale. The company is a subsidiary of Dreyer’s Ice Cream.). Woo was not surprised when she learned that her flavor tested strongly from the beginning, though she got worried towards the end of the competition that perhaps it was too close to Häagen-Dazs’ popular Dulce de Leche ice cream.

As for how the actual STP ice cream turned out, she was quite pleased. “It has pieces of the STP cake in it, and swirls of the toffee sauce. They got the texture of the cake just right.” The dates’ flavor is understated, she notes approvingly. “They’re puréed and mixed into the cake batter to bring an indefinable quality to the cake.”

And, yes, I have tasted Häagen-Dazs’ STP ice cream. Though I can’t say I could work my way through a whole pint of it in one sitting—another one of Judiaann Woo’s criteria for a good ice cream flavor—I’m sure I’ll be tasting more of it than is good for me! And I’m sure I’ll be seeing Sticky Toffee Pudding on a Pacific Northwest dessert menu any day now.