And now for something a little lighter.

I know my voice has been absent from this blog lately. I know that you have missed my cheerful wit and sharp insight. I have not followed through with my New Year's resolution to "post every two weeks" and I am sorry for it. But, I have good reason.

My mouth was too full.

The combination of weekly baking, a food-focused trip to Seattle, the river of chocolate that always seems to flow from Halloween through Memorial Day, and Easter weekend itself - which consisted mostly of eating chocolate, making sweet dough, eating resulting Easter bread and topping things off with yet more chocolate - has been a recipe for a stomachache. Driving home after Easter at my parents' house, with one hand on the wheel and the other buried in a bag of chocolate, I was all too happy to second P's motion that we eat lightly in the coming week. When he brought to the table what is, in my opinion, the ultimate sandwich, I began to look forward to our ritual cleansing.

Despite what one might think, after such gluttony, the P & A detox diet is never a tasteless or particularly spare affair. When I reach my breaking point, I want something simple and relatively light, but with plenty of flavor...just flavor that isn't quite so rich. Often, we turn to our repertoire of basic meals: homemade tomato sauce, braised chard with tofu (do not be fooled - this dish is neither flat, nor flavorless), bibimbop, or, perhaps my very favorite, bánh mì.

Bánh mì sprung out of French colonialism in Indochina and marries traditionally French ingredients like baguette, pâté and mayonnaise with elements from southeast Asian cooking, like cilantro and fish sauce. This combination produces what may be the perfect sandwich - the rich, salty flavors of meat and fish sauce are cut by the tangy brightness of the cilantro and pickled carrots and all is enveloped by soft, chewy, crusty baguette.

My first taste of bánh mì came a few years ago, when P and I ventured out to the small, nondescript, strip mall PDX eatery that is Cali Sandwiches. Cali Sandwiches had been recommended in the Willamette Week Cheap Eats Guide as offering tangy, rich and delicious sandwiches for under three dollars. As we were then poor college students with appetites far larger than our wallets would allow, this sounded like a pretty good deal. I cannot remember which bánh mì I ordered (common options are the aforementioned pate, chicken, pork and egg), but I do know that this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

If you need another reason to try bánh mì (but, really?? you need another?), I give you this: it is incredibly easy to make. We like to make a pseudo-vegetarian version (vegetarian in all but the fish sauce...), with tofu instead of meat, but you can do as you choose - it is the condiments that make this sandwich. Normally, we marinate the tofu and then broil it, but this last week we fried the tofu instead and it was better than ever. What's that? Anything fried should not count as part of a detox diet, you say? Well, it's a good thing I am too stalwart to be swayed by my peers.

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P & A Bánh Mì Chay
(has a certain ring to it, no?)

I feel a little ridiculous posting a recipe for this, because, well, it's a sandwich. There isn't much to it. But, since I haven't written in awhile, I thought I should probably add something to fill out my post.

Last time, we added a bit of carrot and beet salad (recipe from Chocolate and Zucchini), which gave the sandwich an earthy layer (from the beets), a tangy garlic zing, and messy drops of beet juice. Delicious.

1/3 cup peanut or vegetable oil (for frying)
1 pound tofu, cut into rectangles 1/2 inch thickness
1 baguette
1 bunch cilantro
1 small container pickled carrots and jalapenos (we tend to go for the small Herdez cans of carrots and jalapenos, but you can try any brand of pickled vegetables you like, or make your own!)
fish sauce mayonnaise (below) or plain mayonnaise
sweet chile sauce

Fish Sauce Mayonnaise
Combine four parts mayonnaise with one part fish sauce. (This proportion is pretty loose and is based largely on our love of fish sauce. Add the fish sauce to taste and, if you really can't stand the stuff, leave it out. P would probably say otherwise.)

Fry the tofu in the oil until browned on all sides, then remove the tofu and set aside (setting these on paper towel helps drain away excess oil). Layer the ingredients on the baguette, beginning with mayonnaise and finishing with a dollop of the sweet chile sauce (See? I told you this sandwich was all about the condiments).

[If you're looking to make an entirely vegetarian version, omit the fish sauce and maybe try frying the tofu in coconut oil or adding a splash or two of chili oil as the tofu fries. If you're looking for something a little less wholesome, look no further than the bánh mì at Momofuku Ssam Bar in New York for a little inspiration. And yes, we plan to go there when we visit the city in a few weeks.]

professionalism, pt. 2

When we woke in the morning, we found out that a continental breakfast was available (take note, Portland Ace...), and while we had already been planning on two other breakfasts, how could we resist adorable little bags of granola? Consider it a warm-up, like stretching before a long run.
Across the street from the Ace, there just happened to be a nice little French country kitchen of a bakery, Macrina Cafe. A and I shared a slice of their squash harvest bread and a big onion bialy. The squash harvest bread was a really well done sweet spice bread with a perfect, dense sponginess and crisp pumpkin seeds on the crust. I wouldn't say the bialy was quite as good - the onions were mostly undercooked - but every so often their was great salty bite of the sweet dough with the poppy seeds and a bit of slightly-charred onion. Clearly we hadn't had enough for breakfast.

Which is why we dutifully walked the five blocks to Top Pot, a Seattle staple for doughnuts that neither of us had tried before. Now Top Pot is undeniably stylish. It has a sort of streamlined, American glory days aesthetic with lots of stylized diner finishes. These are the sorts of doughnuts you'd be served on a train like this one. But A and I are tough doughnut critics, mainly because we don't like doughnuts. Why did we go to a doughnut shop, you ask? Well, the way we ate in Seattle leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Point being: if I'm having a doughnut, it better be amazing. I am a strict devotee of the yeast doughnut over cake or old-fashioned varieties, which can be far too dense or sickly sweet. Like a good Southern yeast roll, they should have an almost marshmallow-like airiness. Top Pot mostly makes cake doughnuts, and the maple glazed that I had, while better than most, had an odd citrusy taste and none of that rich sugar rush of maple flavor. A's cinnamon-sugar doughnut on the other hand was pretty close to perfection. It was fluffy and subtle and didn't leave us (after two prior breakfasts) feeling leaden.

We already knew where we were headed for lunch, but it was only a little after 11 and we'd just finished a pile of pastries. After about five seconds of debate over whether we should do something non-food related, we decided to just "scope out" our lunch choice, having heard stories of epic waits. Good thing we did. We reached Salumi around 11:45, only to find a line halfway around the corner from the storefront. Apart from the two schmoes who decided to park themselves in the postage-stamp sized window to eat their sandwiches in front of a hungrily waiting crowd, the 45 minute wait wasn't unpleasant and was made palatable by plates of salami passed through the crowd. And it is some damn tasty salami.


After retiring from Boeing, Armandino Batali (Mario Batali's father) decided he'd go to Italy and apprentice himself at a master salumeria, before returning to Seattle to make some of the best dry-cured meats in the US. If you can find them where you live (Steve's Cheese, Foster & Dobbes, or City Market in PDX), you need to try the finocchiona for a classic flavor and the mole for a sense of some of the new-school cures they are using. Recently, their house porchetta sandwich was named one of the best sandwiches in the country by Esquire, so we knew we'd have to try that. Then, because we are suckers for seasonal specials, we also got a cinnamon pork butt sandwich, which was too bad because the fat was a little rubbery and we really should gone for one salami sandwich. But let's focus on the good: the porchetta was unbelievable. It was also as long as my forearm. Once we tasted the braised pork shoulder along with the stewed peppers and the sharp parsley and garlic aioli that was slathered on the bun, we knew which sandwich was the standout. For how succulent it was, I can't imagine how any one person could finish a whole one. A and I had to tackle the porchetta together, forsaking the poor pork butt, and we still felt sick. Perhaps it had something to do with the three breakfast stops?

When you are bursting at the seams from overeating, what's the best thing to do in Seattle? Food related shopping. Not able to consider another bite of food, we decided to consider some of the cookbooks at Elliott Bay, a very charming store down in the old part of town. And after that? We went shopping for seasonings. At World Spice Merchants just below the Pike Place Market, we picked up a few unusual spices (the szechuan pepper may just warrant its own post) and took in the aromas. The strong smells were doubly appealing because throughout all of these wanderings, we were staggering around the city with the remains of a sandwich the size of our head in a paper bag. We were probably attracting flies. Now, I don't know if it was just the prolonged exposure to the sandwich or if all of our meals were just finally catching up with us, but we definitely hit our low point right around the time we decided to grab some food for the road home.

Trekking up the street to Capitol Hill (damn, does Seattle put Portland's topography to shame), we very quickly felt like we'd reached our limit. So, when we reached Baguette Box, we agreed that we wouldn't eat whatever we got until we were well on our way home. We even ordered "lite" - opting for the coconut-marinated tofu bahn-mi.

And then we ordered a side of truffle fries and ate them all before we made it back to our car.

I know what you are thinking, and it is 100% true: we know how to take care of business. Seriously, though, these fries were superlatively good. They were some of the simplest fries either of us had ever had - thick-cut and hefty - and the potato, truffle, and sea salt flavors all balanced out so as to heighten each other taste. And don't worry; when we eventually had the sandwich (we did actually wait a few hours), it was as tangy, spicy, creamy and savory as a good bahn-mi should be.

All in all, it was a funny trip to Seattle. I can't remember the last time I visited and stayed in the downtown the whole time. But, for that matter, I can't remember the last time I had three breakfasts and multiple sandwich-centric meals on one day.

professionalism.

That one word. That is what makes this blog run.

Sure, amateur food blogging seems glamorous - the dinner parties, the exotic ingredients, the gourmet meals at hip restaurants. But these surface appearances are far from the seedy reality of being up to your elbows in polenta at 11 o'clock at night. When we went up to Seattle last weekend, we changed our plans at the last minute to only spend one day in the city instead of two. Your average carefree vacationer would have resigned themselves to missing a few of their intended sights, but what did we have to do? We said to ourselves, "P & A, you planned out two days of food to try, but you'll only be in town for 24 hours, how will you choose what tastes to skip?" And we answered ourselves confidently, "We won't. Too many depend on us to let something like 'time' get in the way of eating. We will have multiple meals if that is what it takes. We could not live with ourselves otherwise." We do it for you, America.

That is a very truthful account of how we make decisions; our choices are largely dictated by our stomachs and often involve imaginary dialogue with ourselves. And, that is a very truthful account of how we nearly made ourselves sick in Seattle.

Truth be told, we didn't head up to Seattle for the food; we went for a Magnetic Fields show, which just might have been a life-changing event for A, who has a love of Stephin Merritt that borders on obsession. The show was really just great - if you can track them down live, it is worth the effort. In concert, they perform everything acoustic, lending this chamber-pop-sort-of-feel to their cynical and darkly romantic lyrics. Fantastic.

It was close to midnight after their encore, we still hadn't had anything to eat in town, and we only had about 18 hours before we would head back to Portland to catch a friend's art opening. We knew it was time to get started in on the food, and luckily for us, a chic late-night Italian place (with housemade pastas, no less) was around the corner from our hotel. At Tavolata, we clearly irritated the bartender who had been hoping his night would wind to a close, but we were shortly reinforced by more couples looking for a bite after the concert. I had a nice, round barbera to drink, and A had an interesting red that smelled like eucalyptus and cherries (yes, like a Ricola). The olive oil we had was delicious and reminded us of the fresh winter oils we'd had in Italy - peppery and green tasting. I'd read something recently about the importance of really premium olive oil making you cough - this was maybe a one-cough oil, but still full of flavor. A went for the squid and olive garganelli, a hand-rolled pasta that looks like a confused penne. The sauce was buttery and so tangy - everything you want in a great tomato base. I went for the spring nettle ravioli, since I have been anxiously awaiting the start of the farmer's markets and all of the wild plants that it brings. The noodles were sublime and the lemony filling brought out a nice aromatic quality to the nettle's bitter green taste.

[I'm getting long-winded. Like I said, we ate a lot. This sucker's getting split into two posts... Also, as I'm writing this, I'm listening to NPR's great coverage of SXSW - go check it out, Carrie Brownstein's blogging is hilarious.]

things that make me feel smart

Science, eh? See, we have other interests besides food. Yeah, I know that it was food-related science news, but my point remains the same: we are very well-rounded people. Right? In fact, while we mainly concern ourselves with our stomachs on this site, A and I have voracious appetites for ideas and learning. Dorrrrky. See, we were very into school. Probably too into it; probably to the exclusion of having lives when we were in college. I love immersing myself in reading about a subject, beginning to see all of the relations and overlaps, and crafting my own arguments about it all. Frequently, I find myself compiling website links and book lists and articles for a paper that is coalescing in my mind. Then I realize that people don't just write papers for fun and that this impulse probably puts me in a very lonely category of geeks.

The problem is that these inclinations are harder to satisfy once you've left school, so where do I turn for the reassuring embrace of fellow geeks? The internet, of course! Outside of academia, where else is there a community eager to hazard their conjectures about big ideas and future societies? Nowhere, and for good reason: they'd get beaten up.

Given the space-theme of the recent kimchi post (and in an attempt prove that there is a hipster angle to all this), I thought I'd start off with my favorite blogger for astronomy, astrology, cosmology and science fiction - UNIVERSE. Claire L. Evans writes about cults, crypto-zoology, modernism, pseudo-science, and Carl Sagan (a lot), she makes up one-half of YACHT (see? still cool.), and gives artsy power-point presentations/concerts at places like Rhizome at the New Museum.


For a good sense of the sort of mind-bending, cosmic and comic things she posts and links to, here is a run-down of some of my recent favorites:

• A bit of back-story, myth-debunking, and "remember this crazy stuff!?" on cyronic preservation
• Link to a robot zoo in Portugal
• Super-duo Charles and Ray Eames, their theory of design, the role of the quotidian, and their forays into science for IBM.
• Space smells like arc welding
• A story on tripped-out cosmological theories from the NY Times
• And this.

It is embarrassing enough that I snorted coffee laughing at that. It is even more embarrassing that I've posted it here. Now I probably will get beaten up.