How to Have the Best Roadtrip Down to Los Angeles Ever

1. Stay up the night before burning CDs, which they do still sell in those silvery towers. Make sure to include fun themed compilations and the obligatory California playlist. Play them at appropriate times, like when driving through Weed, CA ("Songs About Stones and/or Getting Stoned," of which there are unsurprisingly a lot).
2. Pack hilarious friends, who will keep you in stitches for all ten hours, and make driving through tears of laughter extraordinarily difficult.
3. At rest stops, through some miracle, choose fast food restaurants where the door opens directly into the restroom, and you don't even have to make awkward eye contact with employees from whom you will buy nothing.
4. After ten hours of crazy driving, stop off in San Francisco to walk along Crissy Fields at midnight, see the underbelly of the Golden Gate Bridge, and decide that you're never walking on sand in anything other than boots ever again, because this is the first time you haven't carried a sandcastle back in your shoes.
5. Fall asleep and wake up in a beautiful mansion in Nob Hill with a view of the entire city.
6. Have brunch at Burma Superstar.
7. Die happy.
8. Drive to LA.

More seriously, here is a rundown of two of the best Southeast Asian dishes I've ever had, at a restaurant I've been to three times, once for every time I've been to San Francisco. Actually, I think during one trip, I went twice.

Tea Leaf Salad is presented at the table, like most of the dishes at Burma Superstar, with all of its components separated: Burmese tea leaves, romaine lettuce, tomatoes, dried shrimp, fried garlic, crispy mung beans, peanuts, & sunflower and sesame seeds, all arranged in a square of heartbreaking deliciousness. The server lovingly mixes it at the table and then the salad is inhaled. The tea leaves are from Burma and they're fermented in a secretive way, the secret of which I will discover, and then I will eat nothing but this salad.

We definitely wanted lamb, but we didn't know what kind, but both of our servers recommended the chili lamb. It's Chinese in origin, which is apparent once it comes out doused in fried Szechuan peppers. So good, especially on top of their coconut rice, which puts anything I've had in Portland (and I'm looking at you, Pok Pok) to shame.

Fool's Chocolate Swirl Cake

It comes as no surprise to anyone who has read this blog or heard me rave about my latest chocolate-making experiment that I like to make a lot of crazy things from scratch. Also unsurprising: the first store-bought thing I reconstructed at home was alcoholic. That year for Christmas I handed out bottles of homemade Baileys.

But I am also extraordinarily lazy, and will condense as many bowls as possible into one, and sometimes, if there are dinner parties to be had, I will decide that cocktails work much better if one isn't running around in clouds of flour trying to make a million-dollar dessert an hour before it's supposed to be served. Not that I've done this or anything. Also, it is really difficult to make anything with a cocktail in your hand.

Anything except this cake, that is.

onwards »

Beets Me

Beets, those humble root vegetables, come in a lot of different shapes and colors. There are red beets and white beets, golden beets and rainbow beets, candycane beets and baby beets, and this would all be very Seussian were it not for the existence of an heirloom variety called "Bull's Blood," which is definitely something I want to serve at my next ritual sacrifice.

Then there are what I like to call "Monster Beets."

onwards »

Ferment Me, Baby

On Monday night, I went to see Sandor Katz extol the virtues of fermentation. It wasn't really a lecture and it wasn't really a workshop, since his demonstration consisted of stuffing a pile of already-cut, already-salted vegetables into a mason jar and declaring it sauerkraut. But the man really knows his stuff, and he wants you to know it too! I confess that I might have spent most of the lengthy Q-and-A admiring his impressive arrangement of facial hair, which the internet tells me is called a 'Franz Josef,' but that is only because an anthropology major asked him to expound on the intangible connection between human culture and a culture of bacteria. In any case, I just bought his latest book, The Art of Fermentation, and it's really funny to alternate chapters of this with Faulkner, let me tell you.

All this got me to thinking that my store of kimchi was running tragically low.

onwards »

Chocolate 101: The Trappings of an Addiction

I sat myself down intending to write about one of the dozens of things I've made since school started: kimchi, Burmese eggplant stew, elk and yak short ribs, saffron cookies, a menagerie of canned fruits and vegetables. But the photographs of what I made this weekend overpowered me. I'll get to the rest eventually, maybe when I'm locked in a room with no distractions and my hands tied to the keyboard, well out of reach of the cookie jar.

This Sunday, with no desire to work on my thesis, read Euripidean fiction, or do much of anything else, I decided to make chocolate.

onwards »

Comfort

When I lived in the House of Salt last summer, I cooked eggs. Duck, chicken, quail, goose, turkey. Hard-boiled, soft-boiled, scrambled, slow-poached, fried, en cocette, in quiche, in custard, on Himalayan salt blocks. In ones, in twos, in decadence, in threes. With piles of spinach, with cheese, with mounds of bread, with no accompaniment. With salt. With pepper. Even in brine. There is no way I do not like to eat my eggs. My favorite way to cook eggs, though, is softly.

There are no bells and whistles involved in making soft-cooked eggs, only patience. They're as delicate as they sound, and as simple. Two eggs, broken into a bowl, lightened with drops of milk, whisked. Sprinkled with salt, pepper, stirred gently at low heat for a dozen minutes. I like to stand there, in front of the stovetop, slowly waking up with the yellows as they slowly solidify into glistening mounds. It gives me enough time to think, to process my sleep-heady emotions, to reconcile myself to the world.

onwards »

The Reckoning

Yarrgh, it's been a month! To be fair, that month was full of ten days on the East Coast and then a week-long writing workshop hosted by this little magazine, where I wrote fiction and trebled my reading list. Which accounts for... about half the month. So I'll take a slap on the wrist for two weeks' absence. But I promise you, I've been busy.

The first thing I generally do when I get home is wrestle with my dog, and then wake up the next morning in a museum. Somewhere in there is a metro ride, but I'm generally only semi-conscious for that. I'm terrified of missing out on the Capitol's art scene. Like the jaw-dropping exhibitions I saw at the Smithsonian constellation. Art of Darkness, a collection of Yozo and Katsunori mezzotints. Revisions, the iconoclastic sprawl of Lalla Essaydi's henna. Springtime, nineteen minutes of Jeroen Eisinga being enveloped by a cape of bees. Zodiac and Fragments, two monumental Ai Weiwei sculptures. If only for aesthetic reasons, Zodiac should have its permanent home in the Hirschhorn's rotunda; it sings within that architectural chasm.

onwards »

A Scoopful of Medicine

It is not ice cream weather. It is not even close to ice cream weather. It is curl up in bed with a cup of soup and the entire season of Girls weather. It is listen to Belle and Sebastian while making challah bread weather. It is rub George behind his little kitty ears while listening to Opera 101 on tape weather. It is accepting that I am an old lady at heart and drinking my extremely milky coffee weather. And it is eating a piece of extremely dark chocolate kind of weather.

In way, it's fortunate that Portland has so many rainy days, because chocolate in the summertime is, for me, problematic. First, there's the external temperature. Under the sweltering sun, a bar of the stuff oozes all over the place and I revert suddenly to a five-year-old with no hand-mouth coordination and a smeary (although smiling) face. Then, there's my internal temperature. When it's that hot I'm usually downing an iced drink of some sort, so my mouth is nowhere near 98.6. Instead of merrily melting in my mouth, I bite into a bar of chocolate and I'm left with a mouthful of cacao shrapnel.

onwards »

The Root of Things

Friends, I have discovered heaven. I have a little shot glass of it by my keyboard, and no, it's not what you think it is, and it's not what's pictured above, but those are both proven heavenly flavor combinations. Tomorrow, this nascent god will cogitate for twenty minutes in a machine of miracles and will emerge like a holy butterfly from its cool chrysalis to spread peace and love to the blessèd. And I will tell you how to make your own quart container of heaven. For now, I leave him to coolly meditate in my fridge while we work out our differences, namely, that I tried to put him in a blender. I happen not to have a lid for this blender. I tell you this to let you know only that I write this with bits of chocolate splatter all over me, slightly harrowed by the experience but also salivating. As you will be, too.

But moving on!

I do have a recipe to share with you, although depending on your climate, I'm not sure it's entirely summer-appropriate. If you live in Portland and are privy to our erratic weather patterns (they call it Junuary), there may just come a day in the next few weeks when all you want to do is curl up in two sweaters with a slice of this pie to keep you company. You'll feel all pleased with yourself for 1) turning one of the cheapest vegetables around into a meal that would put Alice Waters to shame, and 2) cooking locally and seasonally in a way that would also put Alice Waters to shame. (Fun fact: when I asked the sous-chef of St Jack what he thought of Chez Panisse, he said, "You mean Cheese Penis?" He has what you might call less than affectionate feelings for a place that charges a fortune for a spear of asparagus.)

onwards »

Farmers Market Fried Rice

Farmers markets are dangerous things. I go in all starry-eyed imagining what kinds of gloriously green produce I'll find, and I leave an hour later all starry-eyed at the thought of how suddenly poor I am. Then I get all weak at the knees thinking how on earth I'm going to eat five pounds of vegetables before it all goes bad, let alone how I'm going to get it all home on my bicycle without tomatoes bouncing down SW Yamhill. Then the thought of bruised tomatoes gets me all to whimpering. Not to mention bruised pedestrians. So my wallet and I are going to have to work out some kind of arrangement where I leave it out of the fun and bring  a set amount of dollar bills with me, because otherwise, well, it's going to be me and a variations in the key of beans and rice.

Last Saturday, I found these white beech mushrooms at my favorite forager's stand. I've gotten maitake, chanterelle, morel, and oyster mushrooms from him before, plus fiddlehead ferns (which I have pickled with great success) and sea beans (which are salty like seaweed and crunchy like asparagus tips). Not to mention the black truffles he gave me for free because I was admiring them with such fervor--flattery gets you everywhere, including into your local mycophiles's good graces.

onwards »

Gastronomy Northwest // Choux-Mi, Choux-My!

We called these "choux-mi" sliders since in Vietnamese banh refers to any kind of bread, and pâté à choux is the specific type we used for the savory portion of our Gastronomy Northwest event. Preparing 400 samples of the little devils was quite enough to do without trying to document it all, so we scheduled the leftovers for a little photoshoot after scouring the kitchen. We might have gone a little crazy, which under the circumstances I'd consider justified.

It's important, when making miniature sliders, to include a variety colors for visual interest, to tilt the tops at rakish angles, and to always, always make choux puns. If you follow these instructions, I guarantee that your success will be a choux in at your next party.

onwards »

Gastronomy Northwest // Black Bread Ice Cream

armies of choux photographed by mi amiga jen

Summers as a college student are wild and crazy. On Friday nights, for example, you might find yourself alone with Klaus Kinski and eighteen pounds of pork, surrounded by eight loaves of Russian black bread, six empty cartons of eggs, and four gallons of half-and-half.

Welcome to catering.

onwards »

Washoku // Leek Miso & Butter

There are a lot of different ways to define balance and an equal number of ways to test it. Some ways are easier to define than others. Physically, for example: jumping a horse, walking a tightrope, holding the warrior pose in yoga without falling on your face. Those are clear to me. Other manifestations, less so--mental balance, for instance, is something I'm still figuring out. Some things I hope never to have to figure out, like the dichotomy of 'work and play,' because I hope to always have a playful approach to my work.

When it comes to food, the differences between notions of balance among cultures are striking. In France, the evening meal follows a fixed pattern--so hallowed it has become an item on the UNESCO World Heritage list. First la salade, then le(s) plat(s) principaux, all of it served with a generous glass of wine; after, fromage, a piece of fruit, and finally, a piece of chocolate or a dessert. In many Southeast Asian countries, most meals are served family style, with plates of raw vegetables, fresh herbs, sauces, and wedges of citrus put on the table so diners can season dishes to their liking. That's the reasoning behind the little dishes of bean sprouts, Thai basil, cilantro, and lime that come out with steaming bowls of phở, or the plates of iced mustard greens served alongside spicy dishes at Pok Pok here in Portland.

onwards »

/uncommons/

I've come to associate summer in Oregon not with heat, but with tempestuousness. This time last year I was building snowmen by the side of Crater Lake. While my parents were here last week, it was Maryland levels of hot. And this week, it's been nothing but showers and two sweater weather. I should probably be sacrificing more goats to the thunder gods.

Yesterday the storms cleared for a gorgeous afternoon of white-rice-plump clouds, the sun as bright as a golden quail yolk resting atop a bed of tobiko, with a slight breeze as crisp as the cool saké served at Bamboo. (I might still be dreaming of that sushi.) I went with a group of the lingering members of /uncommons/, the supper club I'm a part of at Reed, and the planning for our upcoming event menu was accomplished in twenty minutes--we four women were nothing if not efficient. The rest of the evening was an unbroken stream of magical conversation, interspersed with round after round of magical plates: river-fresh nigiri, sweet pork belly steam buns, wagyu brisket so soft it melted on the tongue, inari...the sauce from the 'potato killer' imo koroshi was so fingerlickin' good that we stubbornly kept a piece of yam on the plate so they wouldn't clear the dish and thus rob us of the sauce.

More than anything, though, the night was a reminder of why I'm so grateful to have met these girls in the first place. If I'd never joined /uncommons/--by mere chance, total coincidence, during an alumni event--my life would be so different right now. It seems weird, but it's been a total game-changer to have people around as--and even more--obsessed with cooking as I am; it makes me feel saner by comparison. These people are amazing individuals, and we never would have met were it not for food.

onwards »

Okonomiyaki, As You Like It

When I got back from Paris in January, I moved into a beautiful old Victorian replete with welcoming housemates, an overgrown garden, and two of the best cats in the universe. My attic room was tiny, but I scoured Craigslist for tiny furniture to make it work. I thought I was done, through with boxes and contorting long dressers through narrow doorframes--except last week's heatwave and some domestic musical chairs have sent me packing down a flight of stairs. As I sit in two sweaters in my unfinished new room, snacking on sugar snap peas scooped up in a sweltering daze, those ninety degrees seem a distant memory.

onwards »

Parents, Portland, Le Pigeon

The glorious part about having my parents come to town is that they feed me I can take them to all of these decadent extravagant delicious restaurants. They landed two Saturdays ago from three thousand miles away, delayed by an engine failure that allowed me to dally an extra hour at the Portland farmers market (to which I took them a week later; they were delirious with envy and, perhaps, the strain of lugging seven plants on the handlebars of their borrowed bicycles).

After introducing them to my housemates and my house--which my mother would proceed to spend the next seven days mentally renovating into a four-star establishment and physically restoring to something akin to the condition it was in before being abused by a rotating cast of college characters--I finally dragged them away from inspecting the smoking detectors and up to Lower Burnside for a bar-side meal at Le Pigeon, preceded by perhaps a few too many glasses of wine down the street at Kir. The sommelier was extraordinarily nice: my mother mentioned my never-ending quest to collect enough wine corks to create a board, and he bagged up the night's assortment for me without saying a word. Also, we sampled about a dozen wines and drank our way through six glasses. My favorite by far was Terra Novo, this feisty little biodynamic red wine from Spain.

onwards »

A Sainted Stage

Baby girl's growing up: I finally sucked up my courage last week and went around to all the restaurants in town that I admire, begging for an internship. In the restaurant world, it's called a stage [staʒ], or an apprenticeship, which is historically how chefs got started in France. It's much more rigorous and they start much younger (at, say, twelve; I'm a bit late) on the fairer continent. Stateside stages generally comprise part of a culinary school education; I'm kind of an unusual case in that I'm getting a degree in English, not pastry, and am willing to get kicked around a kitchen not for course credit.

The first restaurant (French) I went to was closed before service, but through the window I saw a pot steaming in the open kitchen. Calling yielded nothing: I decided to email; haven't heard back since. The next restaurant (Italian) was three times the size of the first, gorgeously pine-paneled, and open during the hours after lunch. They were too busy with special events, but the sous-chef encouraged me to check back in a few weeks. The third restaurant (New American) told me to email the chef, who raised his eyebrows at my lack of a culinary school education. The fourth restaurant (Italian) put me on the phone with the chef, who told me to come in the next day; I went in as promised to find he was out with a cold. I left my card and haven't heard back since.

But the fifth restaurant was the charmed one:

Chef Aaron won me over immediately with his enthusiasm: he loved that I was trying this life out through a stage rather than through school and told me to come in on Saturday and bring my knife. When he sat me down that day before service, he didn't sugarcoat the parts of restaurant life that suck: the cuts, the burns, the long hours, losing your social life to the long hours, the low pay and the slow pay-off. To slough through that requires that ever elusive 'passion for food.' It would suck to go through years of culinary school and then realize you didn't have it. Which is what brought me there, to the postage stamp kitchen of a little French restaurant and pâtisserie in Portland.

That night, I started out mostly with my hands in my pockets, getting a feel for how things worked. But within an hour I was shown how to make aioli ("Three months of culinary school in thirty minutes! You wouldn't even see a sauce before that") and cut lemon faces (so called because they artfully disguise, for those with delicate sensibilities, the bulging eyes on the whole trout that gets served). A few hours in I was piping madeleines into molds, plating dishes, and throwing bones full of marrow in the oven. I also learned: that a beef cheek is done when it's tenderly falling apart; how to form quenelles (though I still suck at it); why lamb kidney smells like piss; how not to apologize for aggressively seasoned French fare. When I collected my things from the cellar (c'est comme les caves de Paris) at the end of the night, I did the math and realized I'd stuck around for seven hours.

Today, I went in for a mere three, but I learned how to shuck oysters efficiently, that the way I was taught to cut shallots is called a brunoise, that there is flour in frangipan, and that tempura bacon is a great but dangerous idea (even French restaurants stock soy sauce and sriracha, it turns out). While I was there I also learned that the pastry chef doesn't already have an intern, contrary to my prior assumption, and thus has vacant counter space to her right. So guess who's biking two-and-a-half miles at seven am tomorrow morning to bake croissants? C'est moi.

And I feel pretty great about the prospect.

[all photos from stjackpdx.com; credit to Kim Kolba Photography]

Flashback to Belgium, and an Apologetic Update

Unlike most people, for whom water comprises 60% of their body mass, yours truly is made up of 60% excuses, 20% legitimate reasons for not updating my blog, and after spring break, 20% beer. I am sorry. I will get better: my goal is 60% blog posts and 40% beer.

To this end, I'm committing to a schedule: two updates a week, one on Wednesday, and another on either Friday or Saturday. I only have a little bit of news to report for this semester, most of which involves places I've eaten in Portland and meals I've cooked with Reed's supper club, but lots left unaddressed from the last parts of my semester in Paris.

So sit tight: after I knock out my junior qualifying exam this weekend, regular updates will commence. In the meantime, I suggest you try New Belgium's Bière de Mars, pictured here. It's delicious with Belgian fries and a Croque Madame.