Portland Bound

Jeremy and I continue to milk the creamy goodness out of my sabbatical year, this time by heading to Portland for a month. Readers of this blog already know of my deep love of Portland, its food, its shopping, its vibe. Jeremy shares this love, and so here we are, ensconced in a very hipster loft in the heart of the Pearl District. It's supposed to have a spectacular view of Mt. Hood, but it is Portland, so we have yet to see any sign of the mountain.

We drove in yesterday, and after a long day in the car eating nothing but Cheeto Puffs (which we only eat on road trips, I swear), we decided to have a nice meal out. We chose the nearby and well respected Blue Hour, and I have to say I was slightly underwhelmed, or perhaps it was just that, atypically,Jeremy did a better job of ordering. Jeremy's beet salad with watercress and mascapone was delightful -- the cheese added a beautiful creaminess, the beets were earthy and had the perfect amount of chew left in them, and the pepperiness of the watercress added just the right amount of bite. The only problem was that it was under-seasoned; even Jeremy added salt, and he never ever adds salt to things. For our entries, Jeremy ordered roast chicken and mashed potatoes, and they were really good. The chicken was moist, the jus it came with was powerful, and the mashed potatoes held a wonderful cheesy surprise. This is the second really good chicken dish Jeremy has ordered in Portland recently (the other was at Le Pigeon in March), causing me to question my long standing rule never to order chicken in a good restaurant because it is a protein chefs don't respect. I think chefs are starting to show chicken the love it deserves.

I ordered the delightful sounding brown butter gnocchi with vegetable ragu and tempura egg. I'm pretty sure I could make a dish with that description that would slay you, but this . . . eh. First of all, I would like to have a word with the chef about terminology. Gnocchi are akin to pasta, and as such should have some internal structure, a little hint of chew. They should not be miniature mashed potato fritters. My dad used to use up leftover mashed potatoes by coating them in egg and flour and then frying them in butter; they took the place of hash browns in many a breakfast of my childhood. In my memory, they are wonderful, rustic things, crunchy and buttery and creamy. They are not gnocchi, and yet the things that showed up on my plate last night bore more than a passing resemblance. Not bad, just false advertising. Second, ragu refers to a slow cooked meat sauce. A vegetable ragu is already a misnomer, but at the very least it should refer to vegetables that have been combined together with some liquid to form a sauce. It should not refer to dry peas, oven dried tomatoes, and dry sauteed rapini. Notice all of those descriptions involved the word "dry." Their was no sauce. The gnocchi had absorbed any hint of brown butter, and the whole plate was parched.

But, never fear you think, because there is another component: the tempura egg! Surely that will contain lovely, runny, rich yolk that will bring everything together in its loving embrace. It did, for a few bites, but it was just too small and too fried to rescue the entire plate. And they weren't kidding when they said "tempura" -- that term they used with great literalness, and it was just odd. The batter, while crispy and fried and hence good, had nothing to do with the brown butter or the gnocchi. All in all, not, as they would say on Top Chef, a well conceived dish. By the end of the entries, I was exhausted, so we skipped the inviting cheese cart and the desserts and headed home.

Lunch today was another matter entirely. We headed into Chinatown, and a small restaurant that I first spied on a trip several years ago. It has all the markings of a terrible or great Chinese restaurant: absolutely no decor, lots of Chinese and very little English -- the name of the place is actually "Good Taste Restaurant" -- and, best of all, there are lacquered-brown roast ducks and huge hunks of red, glistening char sui hanging in the window. The ducks still have their beaks, poor things! I had the Super Bowl A, which was a punch bowl of rich broth, egg noodles, roast duck, BBQ pork, and pork wontons. I can't believe how close I came to eating every last drop of it. The duck was rich and tender, and the skin was still lightly crispy. The char sui had a surprisingly satisfying sweetness. The wontons were fat and ugly and had a ton of meat in them. Jeremy had char sui over rice, and that too was good. This is the kind of place I dream about finding: small, cheap, filled with people not speaking English but still friendly, and with great food I can't possible make at home or buy in Spokane. Thank you Portland food gods. Oh -- and they sell their duck and pork by the pound to go!

Before we left, our dear friends Heather and Gordon invited us over for dinner, and I offered to bring a salad. Heather accepted, but only on the condition that I didn't buy anything special that I would then have to throw out before we left. Kind, that Heather, and wise. So, I made the salad equivalent of fridge pasta -- you know, the pasta you make by throwing all the odds and ends in your fridge into a pan, the kind that is sometimes good and sometimes really not? As it happened, I had some slightly unusual ingredients to use up, because the night before I had made spring rolls with peanut dipping sauce. That left me with half a bunch of mint and half a can of coconut milk. And so was born Coconut Corn salad, and I have to say, it was good. It was very good. Spicy and fresh and sweet and creamy. Heather asked me for the recipe, so here it is, to the best of my memory:

Coconut Corn Salad

Dressing:
Combine a quarter of a cup of the thick part of a can of coconut milk, half a bunch of mint, a veined and seeded serrano pepper, a pressed garlic clove, a teaspoon of grated fresh ginger, and a tbls of honey into the bowl of a food processor and combine until smooth. Taste for salt and sugar -- mine needed a good pinch of salt. Add the thinner liquid from the coconut milk if it is too thick.

Peel, halve lengthwise, and seed two cucumbers. Slice them thin on a bias (I used a mandolin), toss with a tsp of salt, and set in a strainer over a bowl for half an hour or so. Meanwhile, lightly roast three ears of corn, and slice the kernels off the cob.

When ready to serve, pat the cucumbers dry (no need to rinse them -- the salad needs the salt), toss with the corn and add the dressing to taste. You'll have extra dressing, which I suspect would be great tossed with shrimp, grilled chicken, or any number of things. I would have been sad to throw that elixir away -- thanks Heather for taking the remainder!