Table & Travel

Yes, these are the first two toma­toes to ripen in our gar­den this sum­mer and it’s already late-August! The weather was pretty unsea­son­able this spring, cold and rainy. I started the veg­etable seeds inside under grow-lights on March 15 and when I planted them out­side in the gar­den two months later, the tomato plants were only about three inches tall. On May 23, a week after we arrived in Italy, I saw that the low was 30 degrees—thought the plants would all be toast, but most of them made it. When we arrived back in Reno on June 7 though, every­thing looked pathetic and it took more than a month for things to really get growing.

Every­thing is in full swing now, how­ever. Here’s the gar­den today; on the bot­tom left, Padron pep­pers and egg­plant, mid­dle, squash and beans, the rest are all heir­loom tomato plants, thirty-three of them.

These beau­ties will go into one of my favorite sand­wiches, made with let­tuce, toma­toes, and hum­mus. The one I made today fea­tured Trader Joe’s Mediter­ranean Hum­mus, but­ter let­tuce, and the toms, on sour­dough bread—messy, but delish!

Last week, Vicki and I spent a cou­ple of days in Sonoma County, one of our very favorite areas. Orig­i­nally this was a busi­ness trip for Vicki, but her Thurs­day appoint­ment can­celled, giv­ing us a free day. The trip was quite a whirlwind—we man­aged to pack in a great deal of good din­ing, shop­ping, and other fun in about thirty-six hours.

 We arrived at our Santa Rosa Hotel on Wednes­day evening and imme­di­ately started look­ing for a place to have din­ner. I have a Yelp iPhone app that lists restau­rants nearby, so we chose Monti’s Rotis­serie and Bar, just a 5 minute drive away. Located in an upscale shop­ping cen­ter, the restau­rant has a large open floor plan, but enough dividers to also give din­ers some pri­vacy. The menu is sub­stan­tial and wide rang­ing, every­thing from pizza to sand­wiches, house-made char­cu­terie, fish and meats. Hav­ing a hard time mak­ing up our minds we ended up with a cornucopia—flavorful Cala­mari Frito Misto, Kumo­moto oys­ters, and Crab Stuffed Dev­iled eggs started us off, fol­lowed by my Spit Roasted Ful­ton Val­ley Farms Chicken with sautéed spinach, pine nuts, and pre­served lemon, and Vicki’s Spinach and Shrimp Salad with bacon, goat cheese, dates, almonds, and pancetta vinai­grette. Well-prepared, with great fla­vors, it was a fab­u­lous meal to start us off on our Sonoma adven­ture.
 

Next morn­ing we awoke to the won­der­ful chill of foggy skies, North­ern California’s nat­ural air con­di­tion­ing. We headed out early for Dierk’s Park­side Café, touted as one of Santa Rosa’s best break­fast places. Dierk’s has all the usual egg dishes and a few sur­prises like Sonoma Duck Con­fit with potato hash and a Warm Poached Egg Salad. I chose the morn­ing omelette spe­cial with prawns, mush­rooms, and goat cheese, served with per­fectly cooked shred­ded hash browns—superb! Dierk’s offers great food in an unpre­ten­tious atmos­phere. It’s def­i­nitely a local’s place, we had a cou­ple of build­ing con­trac­tors sit­ting at the table next to us and two guys across the room who arrived in a less-than-new-and-shiny Ford pickup.
 

After break­fast, we headed through beau­ti­ful green vine­yards and lovely hills of the Val­ley of the Moon to the town of Sonoma. We made our way around the town square, stop­ping and shop­ping, Vicki find­ing a scarf and I, a Sonoma ball cap (never enough caps). We wan­dered into a well-stocked kitchen store, emerg­ing with a French tomato knife and a com­pact pic­nic bas­ket. There are numer­ous shops on the square, includ­ing a large book­store and an art gallery with the work of local artists; the busy tourist infor­ma­tion cen­ter is in the town’s old Carnegie Library build­ing.
 

It was a lovely to see all this, but shop­ping was mak­ing us hun­gry and it was get­ting close to lunchtime! Son­dra Bernstein’s restau­rant, the girl & the fig, serves French-American cui­sine and is a trib­ute to local ingre­di­ents, which are found through­out the menu. Decid­ing to have a light lunch, I started with the heir­loom radishes, anchovy but­ter and grey sea salt. The radishes, from the restaurant’s own gar­den, were crunchy and fla­vor­ful; Vicki’s cold potato and saf­fron soup was out­stand­ing, with great tex­ture and a lovely yel­low color. Her sub­se­quent dish was a piece of smoked hal­ibut served with a Span­ish radish ter­rine, house pick­les and a toasted baguette, all used to make delight­ful lit­tle open-face sand­wich bites. My grilled local sar­dines, with roasted red onions, pars­ley & caper salad, red wine vinai­grette, was sim­ply a mar­velous meld­ing of Mediter­ranean fla­vors. Our light dessert of plum and orange sor­bet was just that until we dis­cov­ered that under­neath the edi­ble cookie bowl it was served in was a pool of deli­cious choco­late! We accom­pa­nied our lunch was glasses of Miner Fam­ily Viog­nier, which had nice fruit and min­eral fla­vor.
 

On our way back to Santa Rosa, we stopped at B. R. Cohn Win­ery, which is perched on a hill a few miles north of Sonoma on High­way 12. Bruce Cohn, the long­time man­ager of the Dooby Broth­ers, has been grow­ing and sell­ing grapes on his 90-acre Olive Hill Estate Vine­yards since 1974. In 1984 he estab­lished his own win­ery and along with cre­at­ing award-winning Caber­net, he has led efforts to reestab­lish the mak­ing of pre­mium olive oil in Sonoma County. It has cer­tainly paid off, as we tasted and bought a very fla­vor­ful bot­tle of unfil­tered extra vir­gin oil.

Return­ing to Santa Rosa in mid-afternoon, we decided to take in the Sonoma County Fair, which was being held just near our hotel. It’s a big affair, last­ing a day shy of two weeks, and fea­tures lots of exhibits, rides, and horse rac­ing. We got there just before the last two races and after watch­ing the first, we decided to place a wager, con­fi­dent that we’d go home big-winners. Well …
 

Vicki’s a horse woman and enjoyed meet­ing all the thor­ough­bred horses in their stalls at the Fair, we were even asked if we wanted to pur­chase one.  I just wanted to see farm ani­mals and there were plenty of them, cows, sheep, pigs, goats, rab­bits, and chick­ens, plenty of good humanely raised meat on the hoof and paw.
 

We cel­e­brated our anniver­sary with din­ner at Zazu, a restau­rant that empha­sizes local, sus­tain­able food and wine. We had a fan­tas­tic din­ner there last March and were anx­ious to return. The restau­rant, which bills itself a road­house, is located on the Old Guerneville Road on the out­skirts of Santa Rosa. When we arrived, the action was in full swing and we were seated at a nar­row table in the mid­dle of the restau­rant. The wine list is rather pricey and we were dis­ap­pointed they didn’t have the won­der­ful house Pinot Noir we had on our pre­vi­ous visit, so selected another. For our main courses Vicki had the hanger steak and I had a lamb “clump.” I’m not sure what that is, but it was a very fla­vor­ful cut, cooked nice and rare. It was accom­pa­nied by a dish of farro, greens, and goat cheese—nice to see farro on restau­rant menus these days. Vicki raved about her steak, per­fectly cooked and very tasty. This is a really won­der­ful restau­rant, inno­v­a­tive, with a great menu. The only down­side for me, how­ever, was the noise, which was almost deaf­en­ing.  A large party sit­ting directly behind me was talk­ing so loud that it was very distracting—perhaps that’s the “road­house” atmos­phere. We’ll def­i­nitely return, but next time we’ll ask for a win­dow table.

 When it comes to food and wine in the Sonoma area, I feel like a kid-in-a-candy-store, there are just so many incred­i­ble choices. Even though Sonoma wines rival the best in Cal­i­for­nia, I find the area much more com­fort­able area than the Napa Val­ley, a lit­tle less pre­ten­tious, and a lit­tle more local feel­ing. As we drove by beau­ti­ful fields and lovely vine­yards, I dreamed about a lit­tle house on an acre where we could grow veg­eta­bles and flow­ers to our heart’s content.

Vicki and I have been cook­ing quite a bit since we arrived at our cot­tage in Chi­anti. As usual, numer­ous food-buying trips have cre­ated a log-jam in our lit­tle refrig­er­a­tor, not to men­tion the counter tops. We love the Iper-Coop in Mon­te­varchi, which is large, even by Amer­i­can stan­dards, and car­ries food, house­hold items, clothes, and elec­tronic items. I sup­pose in some ways it’s like Wal­mart, but with­out the stigma, as it is member-owned.

I found a copy of Mar­cella Hazan’s won­der­ful book, The Clas­sic Ital­ian Cook­book, on the book­shelf here and have been delv­ing into it with some reg­u­lar­ity. Mar­cella is con­sid­ered the first icon of Ital­ian cook­ing in the mod­ern era, and is fre­quently called the “Julia Child” of Ital­ian cook­ing. The book was first pub­lished by Harper & Row in 1973, but the author was very dis­pleased with its poor dis­tri­b­u­tion, so she bought the rights back and at the sug­ges­tion of Julia Child, offered the book to Alfred A. Knopf, which pub­lished its edi­tion in 1976. The book remains in print and has gone through numer­ous reprintings.

Last week we stopped at the butcher (macel­le­ria) in Mon­te­varchi and bought a beau­ti­ful veal roast, which the butcher trimmed and tied. I used it to make Vitello Ton­nato, a clas­sic dish with ori­gins in Lom­bardy and Piedmont—Vicki has been rav­ing about it ever since she tasted it.

The roast is braised for a cou­ple hours then sliced and lay­ered in a dish with a sauce of home­made may­on­naise, tuna, anchovies, capers and lemon juice.  It sits for twenty-four hours to develop fla­vor, then is served cold as an antipasto or sum­mer buf­fet dish. It will keep in the fridge for sev­eral days and makes won­der­ful sand­wiches. Always use the best Ital­ian tuna in olive oil; high-quality Amer­i­can ver­sions are now com­ing on the mar­ket, try Dave’s Gourmet Alba­core from Santa Cruz, CA.

Adapted from The Clas­sic Ital­ian Cook­book: The Art of Ital­ian Cook­ing and the Ital­ian Art of Eat­ing by Mar­cella Hazan. NY: Harper & Row, 1973.

2–2 1/2 lb. piece lean bone­less veal, prefer­ably top round, firmly tied
1 medium car­rot
1 stick cel­ery, with­out leaves
4 sprigs Ital­ian pars­ley
1 bay leaf

Home­made may­on­naise made with 2 egg yolks, 1/2 pint olive oil, 2–3 tblsp lemon juice
7 oz. tinned Ital­ian or Amer­i­can alba­core tuna, (high qual­ity), packed in olive oil
5 flat anchovie fil­lets
1/2 pint olive oil
3 table­spoons lemon juice
3 table­spoons capers
Salt, if necessary

In a pot just large enough to hold the veal, add the veal roast, veg­eta­bles, and water to cover. Remove the veal, set aside, and bring the water to a boil. Return the veal to the pot and boil again, then reduce the heat to sim­mer and cover. Keep at a gen­tle sim­mer for 2 to 2 1/2 hours. Remove from the heat and let cool in the broth.

Pre­pare the may­on­naise accord­ing to stan­dard meth­ods, either whisk­ing by hand or in a blender or food proces­sor. Set aside.

Add the tuna and the other remain­ing ingre­di­ents to a blender and blend until creamy—it may still retain a min­i­mal amount of chunk­i­ness. Fold this into the may­on­naise and taste to see if salt is needed.

When the veal is cold, remove it from the broth and cut it into thin 1/4 in. slices. Smear the bot­tom of a serv­ing dish with some of the tuna sauce and place down the veal slices in a sin­gle layer. Cover the layer with sauce and con­tinue this process until all the veal is cov­ered with sauce.

Cover the dish tightly with plas­tic wrap and refrig­er­ate for 24 hours. To serve, layer the veal slices and sauce in a sin­gle line on a serv­ing plat­ter and gar­nish with lemon slices, olive slices, whole capers, chopped and whole pars­ley leaves.

This dish will keep nicely for a week, refrig­er­ated. Place the left­overs between slices of crusty bread and serve with a nice green salad and vinaigrette.

Some­times we’ll go a long way to expe­ri­ence great food. For some time, Vicki and I planned to spend the day in Naples while stay­ing in Rome on the first leg of this year’s this trip to Italy. Excel­lent Ital­ian train ser­vice pro­vides an easy trip from Roma to Napoli, trav­el­ing through beau­ti­ful, rural coun­try­side with an occa­sional glimpse of the sea. So last week, after a quick cab ride to Rome Ter­mini from our apart­ment, we boarded a regional train—one way, 21 Euro—and two hours later dis­em­barked at Napoli Centrale.

Our main goal was to dine on world-class pizza, which for us meant a visit to Da Michele, described by many to be the “sacred tem­ple of pizza.” We first read about the place in Eliz­a­beth Gilbert’s book, Eat, Pray, Love, where she describes a visit to Da Michele with a friend and loved the pizza so much they each had two!

Leav­ing the crowded train sta­tion, we got our bear­ings and headed up the Corso Umberto toward our des­ti­na­tion. Naples has an insane chaotic atmos­phere, peo­ple crowd­ing the streets and traf­fic everywhere—speeding cars and motor­cy­cles dri­ving at break­neck speed, run­ning red lights and attempt­ing to mow down any pedes­tri­ans silly enough to try to cross the street on a green cross­walk light. The side­walks were clut­tered with ven­dors, Need sun­glasses, a designer purse, or per­haps a cap with Italia on it? How about an iPhone?, “Sure buddy, we’ll take a two, is the war­ranty included?”

After a few min­utes, a right turn and there it was, Da Michele—shockingly with­out the line and long wait we thought would be inevitable. We entered and found a table in the small room with a high ceil­ing and a wood-fired oven in the cor­ner. Posted on the wall, the menu offers only two piz­zas, Mar­guerita and Mari­nara, each with three vari­a­tions of each.

We both ordered the Mar­guerita with “doppia” extra moz­zarella, which arrived from within five min­utes, the top­ping glis­ten­ing with oil, the crust with the char­ac­ter­is­tic burnt edges from the super hot, wood-fired oven. The taste was glo­ri­ous, the crust medium thin and filled with air bub­bles, crisp on the out­side and chewy within. Our con­sen­sus was yes, this was the best pizza we’ve ever had, per­fectly cooked with exquis­ite fla­vor. The basis is a crust made with double-0 pizza flour; the pie is cov­ered with a sauce made daily San Marzano toma­toes; fresh moz­zarella, basil com­plete the top­pings, then the pizza is cooked in a 700 degree wood oven for 1 — 1 1/2 minutes.

We left the restau­rant happy and ful­filled. Our bill was 13 euro for two exquis­ite pizze, a litre of water and a coke.

Vicki and I had a lovely stay in Rome. After a long and unevent­ful flight from San Fran­cisco, we arrived at our apart­ment in the old Jew­ish ghetto area on Tues­day after­noon. We napped until early evening then headed off to Papa’s, our favorite lit­tle bar on the Via dell’ Orso. Anthony, the owner, greeted us warmly and we were soon seated at a table on the nar­row lit­tle street. We order two Negroni, cock­tails made with gin, Cam­pari, and sweet ver­mouth, which arrived with small bowls of snacks. Papas’ is sim­i­lar to many other small bars in Rome serv­ing drinks and food and here, all the cook­ing and drink mix­ing is done in a kitchen/bar area no more than ten feet long by six feet.

After cock­tails we even­tu­ally ordered din­ner, pizza for Vicki and chicken breast with arti­choke for Bob, and a lovely lit­tle red wine from Puglia. Walk­ing back to our apart­ment we stopped for a drink at the Campo de’ Fiori, which was now trans­formed into a major gath­er­ing place for tourists, stu­dents, and locals, who were eat­ing, drink­ing and gen­er­ally tak­ing in the loud and excit­ing atmosphere.

Every­day our morn­ing began on the Campo with Pizza Bianca from the Forno and cof­fee at Bar 36. It is won­der­ful to get there early enough to watch the daily mar­ket being set up. As we sat and drank our cap­puc­ci­nos, the fruit and veg­etable ven­dor in front us of was busy trim­ming, peel­ing, and chop­ping veg­eta­bles, which they would be sell­ing for the next six hours. The fresh­est pro­duce, flow­ers, spices, fish, cheese, and cured meats are offered here, along with Roma/Italia cloth­ing, jew­elry, and many house­hold items. The mar­ket, open every day except Sun­day, has existed on the Campo for hun­dreds of years. It’s a joy to walk among the stalls and look at fresh sustainably-raised pro­duce, much of which was picked the pre­vi­ous day.

On Wednes­day morn­ing we saw a stun­ning exhi­bi­tion of paint­ings by Car­avag­gio, which we had been greatly antic­i­pa­tion. This was fol­lowed by lunch at the Oste­ria Margutta, a favorite restau­rant of ours located on a street of the same name that was once the loca­tion of Fed­erico Fellini’s home.

Evening found us back at the Campo where we had drinks and excel­lent snacks at lovely lit­tle bar on Via del Biss­cione. Always hunt­ing for great pizza, we later found our­selves at Pizze­ria Fiammetta near the Largo Argentina where Vicki had an out­stand­ing pizza with greens, pork sausage, and moz­zarella, and I had an equally good Mar­guerita. The rec­om­men­da­tion I’d found for this place on Chow hadn’t let us down.

On Fri­day, our final day in Rome we decided to go to St. Peter’s Basil­ica, which we hadn’t vis­ited in a cou­ple of years—good idea, bad tim­ing. The place was a mob scene, Rome seems over-populated with tourists this year and I think most of them were there, as the line to get into the basil­ica stretched around half the obelisk. So, we decided that if St. Pete’s was unavail­able, per­haps we should trot off to lunch—brilliant! Vicki had a review of a restau­rant near the Pan­theon, so off we went, stop­ping at a charm­ing lit­tle anti­quar­ian book­shop along the way. Located on Via del Sem­i­nario, La Sagres­tia is just a cou­ple blocks from the Pan­theon, which that day, had a sea of peo­ple in its piazza. We were han­ker­ing for arti­chokes and were pleased to see a pile of them being pre­pared near the kitchen as we entered. For starters, Vicki had Pizza For­tu­nado, a thin crust, cov­ered with moz­zarella, zuc­chini flow­ers, and anchovies. Hav­ing just had the best pizza of our lives the day before in Naples, this one was a close sec­ond. I had fet­tuc­cine with car­ciofi and von­gole, per­fectly cooked pasta stud­ded with arti­choke and clam pieces in a deli­cious sauce. These were fol­lowed by Car­ciofi Guida, the tra­di­tional Roman Jew­ish fried arti­choke, served spread out like a flower—exquisite!

I’m sorry this is our first post since we arrived in Rome, unex­pect­edly, the apart­ment we rented didn’t have a wire­less con­nec­tion, as had been adver­tised. After eight stays in Roma, we’ve yet to find an apart­ment we really love—yes, quite a prob­lem, I know.

We did have a won­der­ful stay there, how­ever, good weather, great food, a stun­ning Car­avag­gio exhi­bi­tion, and a side trip to Naples. I’ll have some indi­vid­ual posts about Rome over the next few days.

Now we’re in Tus­cany region of Chi­anti at the lit­tle cot­tage we love so dearly. We had a won­der­ful reunion with our friends Bob and Ally, our land­lords, who live adja­cent to the cot­tage, Podere La Rota. We had din­ner with them last evening at a pizze­ria in nearby Ter­ran­uova Bra­ci­olini. This is the best pizza place they’ve found yet, fab­u­lous Neapoli­tan style pizze and three bot­tles of  Rosso de Mon­tal­cino wine made for a won­der­ful, laugh-filled night.

Today, we’re off with Ally to Mon­ti­varchi to shop. It’s won­der­ful to go with some­one who speaks Italian—we’ll stop at the organic mar­ket, among other places.

Ciao!

Canned tuna was a sta­ple in our house when I was grow­ing up and tuna sand­wiches have always been a favorite of mine. We always had cans of Stark­ist, packed in oil, that mom would mix with may­on­naise and spread on white bread for sand­wiches. As the mer­cury prob­lem raised its head, these sand­wiches became more occa­sional and I switched to the tuna packed in water and later the bags that seem to have a fresher tast­ing produce.

 The best, or at least most mem­o­rable tuna sand­wich I ever had, was in 2004 in the Ital­ian vil­lage of Rosia. Vicki and I had been out explor­ing and stopped at a restaurant/bar in this lit­tle town to have a snack. We decided to order a tuna sand­wich, “sand­wich de tonno,” which was pre­pared for us by a very chatty lady behind the bar who enjoyed using her halt­ing Eng­lish on the Amer­i­cans. The results were fan­tas­tic, large pieces of tuna on focac­cia, drip­ping with olive oil and pun­gent with the fla­vor of capers. We still talk about that won­der­ful sandwich.

Recently the Food & Wine sec­tion of the Sun­day San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle had sub­stan­tial arti­cle on tuna salad, which pre­sented var­i­ous styles and recipes. I decided to try the Fen­nel  & White Bean Tuna salad, which was made of of fen­nel, onion, and oil-packed tuna, mixed with may­on­naise, white beans, and a splash of red wine vine­gar. It was really excel­lent, crunchy and creamy at the same time, with a nice blend of fla­vors and a lit­tle kick from the red wine vine­gar and the capers I added. I went well with the slices of Whole Food’s sour dough.

I bought most of the fix­ings for the tuna salad at Whole Foods. I was look­ing for a can of Dave’s Gourmet alba­core, which had led the pack in a tuna-packed-in-oil tast­ing in the Chronicle’s F&W sec­tion last Novem­ber. Unfor­tu­nately, they didn’t have any so I set­tled on a Sicil­ian import, Flott Solid Light Tuna in pure olive oil. I found it a lit­tle heavy and would like to try the same recipe again with Dave’s.

Fen­nel & White Bean Tuna Salad

Serves 2 to 4, or enough for 4 sandwiches

Crunch comes from fen­nel and red onions in this Italian-inspired tuna salad. Serve it on toasted coun­try bread or over a pile of lightly-dressed arugula.

2 (5-ounce) cans oil-packed white tuna
1/3 cup small-diced fen­nel
1/3 cup small-diced red onion
1 table­spoon capers, drained
3 table­spoons minced pars­ley
1/2 cup canneds­mall can­nellini beans, rinsed and drained
1/3 cup may­on­naise
1 table­spoon red wine vine­gar, + more to taste
– Kosher salt and ground black pep­per, to taste

Drain the tuna, and flake lightly with a fork in a bowl. Add the fen­nel, onion, pars­ley, capers, and beans and gen­tly mix. Fold in the may­on­naise and red wine vine­gar until well com­bined, then sea­son to taste with salt and pep­per. Add more vine­gar if desired. Refrig­er­ate until ready to serve.

Port­land is a food town! Vicki and I trav­elled to this Ore­gon city in Jan­u­ary where I was the meet­ing of the Col­lege Book Art Asso­ci­a­tion. We arrived on Thurs­day, Jan­u­ary 7, and began a string of fab­u­lous meals in this town filled with out­stand­ing restaurants.

On Thurs­day evening we found a lit­tle Ital­ian trat­to­ria called Ris­torante Roma, it’s located in a rather non­de­script build­ing on a busy Port­land street, but the small restau­rant is filled with art­work and has lovely lit­tle tables with white table cloths and red accents. We had an excel­lent meal, which took us back to Rome; Vicki had Pap­pardelle Funghi e Sal­ci­c­cia, pasta with mush­rooms and sausage; I dined on Ravi­oli all’Astiche; crab and arti­choke ravi­oli with a lob­ster cream sauce—divine!

The fol­low­ing morn­ing we headed out to find a place for break­fast, but were stopped in our tracks by the falling rain. We had, of course, left the umbrel­las in our room. So we dove into the Drag­on­fish Asian Café, the restau­rant in our hotel build­ing, where I had an tasty and well-presented Shoyu omelet filled with tomato, aspara­gus, shi­itake mush­rooms, scal­lions, bell pep­per and mon­terey jack cheese.

Later that day I had a lunch meet­ing with two col­leagues at Sandoval’s Café and Can­tina, near the Ore­gon Col­lege of Art & Craft cam­pus. I was warned that it wasn’t the best Mex­i­can food in Port­land, but hey, it isn’t the worst either. I had a veg­gie tostada and it was great, loaded with good, fresh ingredients.

On Fri­day evening we had a real din­ing expe­ri­ence. A mem­ber of our steer­ing com­mit­tee had dined with writer Barry Lopez and his wife the pre­vi­ous evening and Barry had rec­om­mended Sim­pat­ica, in Portland’s east side. On Fri­day and Sat­ur­day evenings at din­ers arrive at Simpatica’s din­ing hall, walk­ing down to a win­dowed base­ment room where they seated at a long wooden table that holds about twenty-four peo­ple. At seven-thirty, they are wel­comed by the owner/chef, who explains what the prix fixe din­ner will be. Our four-course menu that night con­sisted of a starter of grilled cala­mari with roasted cau­li­flower, capers lemon and pars­ley; a salad of win­ter endive pear salad with warm pancetta dress­ing; a main course of braised pork shoul­der with fen­nel and tomato brood over savory grilled polenta; and a dessert of olive oil cake with orange mar­malade and Chan­tilly cream. Each course was accom­pa­nied by a wine cho­sen to match the food. Whew! The din­ner was superb, unques­tion­ably  the best we had in Portland.

While I was at the con­fer­ence, Vicki was explor­ing down­town Port­land, going to art stores and of course, Powell’s Books. All that walk­ing gave her a good appetite, so on Thurs­day, she had lunch at Clyde Com­mon, a “Euro­pean Style Tav­ern” located in the Ace Hotel. She had a lovely salad with farro, cau­li­flower, pome­gran­ate, wal­nut, herbs, and radic­chio. The next day she took her mid­day meal at the Port­land insti­tu­tion, Jake’s Grill, where she had an excel­lent pan-seared rex sole with bay shrimp.

The main part of the con­fer­ence ended on Sat­ur­day, so that evening a dozen of us headed to Jake’s Famous Craw­fish, for an evening of drinks, wine, and seafood. Vicki and I started with a half-dozen lus­cious Quilcene oys­ters, which were briny, with a nice salty tang. Vicki’s main course was one of her favorites, Petrale Sole Parme­san, pan-seared, with lemon, but­ter, and capers. I had Colum­bia River stur­geon, a fla­vor­ful and moist piece of grilled fish, served with a Dijon black pep­per­corn, basil butter—wonderful!

I had a board meet­ing on Sun­day morn­ing, then met Vicki at the hotel. Our plan was to hop-in-the-car and get out-of-town, but, what the heck, we decided to have one more meal before we left Port­land. We decided to head over a cou­ple blocks to the Heath­man Hotel, where we’d had an out­stand­ing brunch a cou­ple of years ago. The Heath­man was built in 1927 and is on the National Reg­is­ter. The kitchen and inno­v­a­tive menu, which fea­tures sea­sonal North­west ingre­di­ents, is over­seen by Exec­u­tive Chef Philippe Boulot, win­ner of the 2001 James Beard Award for Excellence—best Chef of the Pacific North­west. Even though we’d be dri­ving soon, we decided to share Bloody Heath­man, a tasty and spicy ver­sion of the Bloody Mary. We started our brunch with Roasted Pear and Cabecou  Feuille —warm pep­pered goat cheese grilled in a chest­nut leaf arugula and pome­gran­ate reduc­tion, toasted almonds. The tex­tures were won­der­ful, and the grilled goat cheese divine. Vicki decided to have the Smoked Salmon Hash, which had a crispy crust and was topped with two per­fectly poached eggs. I hadn’t had enough seafood yet either, so decided on the Hang­town Fry. The egg and veg­etable wrapped oys­ters were fried per­fectly, with a crisp outer-coating and a creamy cen­ter, yum! It was served with excel­lent fried pota­toes. This was an out­stand­ing way to end our visit to Port­land, one of the great food cities of the West.

Click here to view a Google Map show­ing all the restau­rants men­tioned above.

Ris­torante Roma
622 SW 12th Ave.
Port­land, OR 97205
503.241.2692
www.ristoranteromaportland.com

Drag­on­fish Asian Café
909 SW Park Avenue
Port­land, OR
(In the Para­mount Hotel)
503.243.5991
www.dragonfishcafe.com

Sandoval’s Café and Can­tina
460 SW Miller Road
Port­land, OR 97225
503–292-2128
 http://www.sandovalspdx.com/

Sim­pat­ica Din­ing Hall
828 SE Ash Street
Port­land, OR 97214
503.235‑1600
http://simpaticacatering.com

Clyde Com­mon
1014 SW Stark Street
Port­land, OR 97205
(In the Ace Hotel build­ing)
503.228.3333
www.clydecommon.com

Jake’s Grill
611 SW Tenth Avenue
Port­land, OR 97205
503.220.1850
http://www.mccormickandschmicks.com/locations/portland-oregon/portland-oregon/swtenthave.aspx

Jake’s Famous Craw­fish
401 SW 12th Ave.
SW Stark (cross street)
Port­land, OR 97205
503.226.1419
http://www.mccormickandschmicks.com/Locations/portland-oregon/portland-oregon/SW12thAve.aspx

The Heath­man Restau­rant and Bar
1001 SW Broad­way
Port­land, OR 97205
503.790.7752
www.heathmanrestaurantandbar.com

We had a lovely Thanks­giv­ing din­ner with Vicki’s fam­ily at her mother’s house. Vicki really out­did her­self this year, mak­ing three fab­u­lous desserts and a won­der­ful salad. She made the salad based on one we had at Soizic Bistro in Oak­land, where we recently had an out­stand­ing din­ner. It includes frisee let­tuce lay­ered with roasted acorn squash, pro­sciutto, and pome­gran­ate seeds. It is sprin­kled with feta cheese and served with kale pesto and a vinai­grette. Won­der­ful fla­vors and texture!

One of the three desserts she made was a pecan pie that uses rum and honey. It was deli­cious, crunchy and sweet, out­stand­ing with whipped cream. The recipe sug­gests using Lyle’s Golden Syrup, which is a good alter­na­tive for the evil corn syrup. It’s made in Eng­land from cane sugar and has a nice golden color; avail­able from Amazon.com.

Pecan Pie

Adapted from John Thorne’s “Best-Ever Pecan Pie” recipe, found in the book, Clas­sic Home Desserts

Home-made pie dough for 1 crust, or frozen pie dough
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup Lyle’s Golden Syrup
2 table­spoons com­plex honey (laven­der, herbed, etc.)
1 table­spoon maple syrup
1 table­spoon dark rum
3/4 stick unsalted but­ter, soft­ened
3 eggs (at room temp.)
1/2 tea­spoon vanilla
1/4 tea­spoon salt
2 cups bro­ken pecans

Pre­heat oven to 350 degrees F. Fol­low direc­tions for home-made dough (i.e.: roll out, fit to but­tered 9-inch pan, trim edges and chill), or remove your froze crust from the fridge.

In large saucepan, com­bine sugar, Golden Syrup, honey, maple syrup, rum, and but­ter over medium heat. Let mix­ture come to a boil for a minute, scrap­ing down sides. Remove from heat and let cool for 20 minutes.

In a bowl, beat eggs till creamy. Incor­po­rate slowly into the cooled syrup. Stir in the vanilla, pecans and salt.

Pour fill­ing into pie shell and bake in mid­dle or lower rack, and bake for 45 minutes.

Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack.

Serves eight.

Last Octo­ber, food writer Mark Bittman asked read­ers of his New York Times food blog to com­ment on their favorite “under the radar” food blogs. The blog that was cho­sen to be fea­tured first was Alexandra’s Kitchen, the blog of Alexan­dra Stafford, a jour­nal­ist, pho­tog­ra­pher, designer (and cook), who lives in south­ern California.

I really like her blog, it’s well-written, has fab­u­lous pho­tographs, great recipes and is writ­ten by some­one who cares about food. Alexan­dra shops the farmer’s mar­kets, buys grass-fed beef, believes in sus­tain­able food sys­tems, and quotes Michael Pol­lan on her website.

The first of Alexandra’s blogs I was intro­duced to was about Balzano Apple Cake. This peas­ant dessert has its roots in north­ern Italy and was high­lighted in a New York Times arti­cle on Rick Cars­berg and his Seat­tle restau­rant, Lam­preia, where the dish is served with caramel ice cream.

I enjoyed mak­ing this, and fol­lowed her recipe very closely, cook­ing it for an hour. This cake has a lus­cious vanilla taste and a won­der­ful, creamy tex­ture. As Alexan­dra describes the cake’s tex­ture, it’s a cross between a French clo­fouti and a pancake—the best apple pan­cake you ever tasted!

Here’s her recipe, which was adapted from the one that appeared in the NYTimes arti­cle on Rick Carsberg.

Balzano Apple Cake

Source: Adapted from The New York Times 2004
Serves 8

1 stick but­ter, plus more for greas­ing pan
parch­ment paper
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 vanilla bean 

4 Fuji apples
½ cup flour
2 tea­spoons bak­ing pow­der
¼ tea­spoon sea salt such as fleur de sel (or 1/2 tsp. kosher salt)
½ cup milk at room tem­per­a­ture
pow­dered sugar

1. Heat oven to 350ºF. Grease a nine-inch-circle pan with but­ter. Cut a cir­cle of parch­ment paper to fit the bot­tom of the pan and place inside pan. Grease sides of pan and parch­ment round with butter.

2. Melt but­ter in small saucepan. Set aside. Beat together eggs and half of sugar in a bowl. Con­tinue to beat while slowly adding remain­ing sugar until thick — it should form a rib­bon when dropped from spoon.

3. Split vanilla bean in half length­wise. Scrape seeds into the egg-sugar mix­ture and add pod to melted butter.

4. Peel apples and cut straight down around the core into four big chunks. Dis­card the core then slice the apple pieces thinly.

5. Remove vanilla pod from but­ter and dis­card. Stir but­ter into sugar-egg mix­ture. Com­bine flour, salt and bak­ing pow­der, then stir into bat­ter alter­nat­ing with the milk. Stir in apples, coat­ing every piece with bat­ter. Pour bat­ter into pan.

6. Bake for 25 min­utes, then rotate the pan. Bake for 25 to 30 min­utes more, until cake pulls away from pan and is brown on top. Cool for at least 30 min­utes, then cut into wedges sprin­kling each with pow­dered sugar if desired.