time off (hardly)

That's right: P & A are hitting the road for a weekend of food-addled wanderlust. Is this a photo of how we pack for a trip? No, it's just one shot of the overwhelming mess that is our recent move. You heard that correctly - we just finished a rapid-fire move across town and we are already leaving the place. Why? Because we're crazy. Crazy for food.

We're setting off on a pseudo-vacation for Labor Day weekend to attend Slow Food Nation. For the past couple of months, we've been managing the blog for the Portland chapter of Slow Food USA, so we will be traveling to San Francisco to listen to speakers on sustainable foodways and to taste as much as we possibly can (all strictly on assignment, of course). We'll be visiting the Victory Gardens, sampling street foods, exploring the market vendors, and participating in guided tastings of the best American artisanal foods. Plus, when we're not at the festival, we'll be eating in San Francisco.

And, immediately after we return, we'll launch ourselves headlong into the Time-Based Art festival. P will be blogging their events for the third year at Urbanhonking.com. The shows at TBA are always challenging, always exciting, and always surprising. This year, there will be more free performances and visual arts than ever before and the line-up for the late night program (THE WORKS) looks awesome.

We're still pouring over the program and making our plans, but as of now, here's who we're stoked about:
Reggie Watts (who'll blow your mind)
Antony and the Johnsons
Jerome Bel explaining contemporary French performance art to traditional Thai dancer Pichet Klunchun
Zidane
Fritz Haeg

So it may be a little quiet around here for a few weeks, but you can always follow along on the Slow Food PDX blog or the PICA TBA blog. Maybe once it is all over, we might actually have the time to see friends again. Or, you know, finish moving in.

freezer dreams

A and I both love seafood, and happen to live around the corner from an exceptional fishmonger. Still, we always end up worried about declining fish populations and balk at the high prices of sustainable choices. Then we end up with a quarter-cup of sustainably-miniature Oregon bay shrimp or four runty sardines. Not exactly dinner.

So when the Iliamna Fish Co. set up an agreement with our CSA farm, Viridian, to offer a salmon share, we signed up before thinking what we'd do with all that fish.

Even after splitting our share with my parents, we still have seven two-foot long planks of frozen fish, bundled in twine. I guess it is time to start thinking up some creative uses for salmon. According to A, our problems did not stem from ordering 25 pounds of frozen salmon, they came from not having a chest freezer. This has been a common refrain around our house for the last few months, as we've packed our freezer more and more full of berries, stock, chickens and freezer jam.

This, I imagine, is what A sees when she sleeps:


Actually, that isn't entirely true; there may be frozen berries and sides of pork leaping over it, as well.

It certainly hasn't helped that some of our friends recently purchased a chest freezer, which they placed in their office, just off of their kitchen. "If they can live with one inside their home," pleads A, "why can't we just fit our own freezer in here?" pointing to where our couch currently resides. I have heard recommendations for placement everywhere from "in the corner" to "in the closet" to, my favorite, "in the bathroom." I think that everywhere A looks in our apartment, she sees a custom-shaped chest freezer ready to be plugged in. I need to stay strong, because our lack of a chest freezer is the only thing keeping A from ordering 65 pounds of slaughtered hog. Not that I'd be entirely opposed to it.

So, how was the salmon? Well, for our inaugural meal, we tried out a recipe from Saveur for
broiled salmon with tarragon, tomatoes, and onions to use up a bunch of our summer ingredients. It was dead simple and incredibly flavorful. The cooling anise flavor of the tarragon and pastis balance perfectly with the tang of the roasted tomatoes. And the salmon (oh!) was firm and deeply-colored and buttery-tasting.

Right now, as I admit what an amazing deal it was to buy all of this salmon, A is probably claiming her first victory. That, and comparing dimensions of chest freezers online with the width of our doorway.

special delivery (from korea).

A's parents just returned from Korea and left this on our table:


















































































Instructions? What am I supposed to do with these?












Mmmmm. It tasted like a cross between marzipan, yellow cake and mochi. Maybe with a hint of burnt toast. Mystery solved.

i love the south

Seriously. In the rose-colored romanticized way, because I don't think I'd actually love it if I lived there. Know why? Humidity.

But A and I both have Southern family (and a few transplant friends), so we've had reason to visit a few times, always enjoying it. Southerners are just some truly charming people, right down to the way A's grandma always used to ask for glasses of "wah-uh." I know there are quite a few un-charming Southerners, but that is the beauty of only living in the South of my imagination; I can have a very selective love affair.

At least when it comes to cuisine, I don't need to be too selective. Biscuits, sweet tea, gumbo, crayfish, mint juleps, fried chicken, red beans & rice, catfish, okra (yes), and some damn fine barbecue. I really can't think of a bad meal I've had in the South - I've even come across some of the best Vietnamese food in my life in New Orleans.

Two segments on a recent episode of Good Food nicely reinforced my Southernphilia

The first is a chat about classic sweet tea with Martha Hall Foose, author of a recent Southern cookbook. Now I love sweet tea, but what really caught my attention was the "mailbox" cocktail that she mentioned. When standing around her rural mailbox waiting for yesterday's newspaper to be delivered, she shares a strong drink and some conversation with her neighbors. There's one word to describe this: "genteel." If there's a second, it's "practical."

(It may take a moment to load. Check here if you can't hear it.)

The second is an interview with Shirley Corriher about White Lily brand flour and the quest for the perfect, pillowy biscuit. I love this conversation - everything from her unyielding devotion to an eccentric name-brand product, to the classic one-upsmanship of who boasts the best biscuits:

(Same goes for this one. Check here.)

I could just about die every time she makes that slurping sound to explain the absorbency of the flour.

So when I got a hankering for some Southern classics (red beans & rice and stewed greens), I turned to the Lee Bros. recipe for skillet cornbread that we've mentioned before. This recipe can not be stopped. I used three kinds of cornmeal we had laying around (including two great heirloom varieties from Ayers Creek), and subbed in soymilk & yogurt since we didn't have any buttermilk on hand. Results? Still delicious. It is easy, versatile, and the perfect foil for some smoky-ham Southern flavors. Plus, if you are wilting greens on the stove and tending a big pot of stew, this tasty bread just goes right in the oven.



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Skillet Cornbread (Adapted from Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook and necessity)

1 T lard or unsalted butter
1 1/2 c stone-ground cornmeal
1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 t sugar
1 large egg
1 1/2 c. whole or lowfat buttermilk (preferably whole) [or 1 c. soy milk and 1/2 c. yogurt if you're scrounging the cupboards like we were]
2 T unsalted butter

1. Preheat the oven to 450. Grease a 12-inch skillet with the lard (or butter), leaving any excess in the pan, and place it in the oven.

2. In a large bowl, sift the dry ingredients together. In a medium bowl, whisk the egg until frothy and then whisk in the buttermilk. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones and mix thoroughly. Melt the butter in a small skillet over low heat, and whisk the butter into the batter.

3. When the fat in the large skillet is smoking, carefully remove the skillet from the oven and swirl the fat around to coat the bottom and sides evenly. Pour the batter into the skillet; it should sizzle alluringly. Bake for 15 minutes, or until the top of the bread is golden brown and the edge has pulled away from the sides of the skillet. Remove from the oven

4. Cut the corn bread into wedges in the skillet and serve hot.