The Portland Pickle

This weekend, get your caffeine fix at the World Forestry Center in Washington Park. Learn how to brew the perfect cup o’ joe, see if your sniffer compares to the experts in the Aroma Challenge, and sip, sip, sip.  The event is part of the ongoing exhibit Coffee: The World in Your Cup which runs into January.

I sat on this one a little too long, sorry. It’s Portland’s first ever “Livestock,” a literary and culinary event ridding the coattails of the Annual Wordstock Festival.  It’s being put on by Watershed Culinary Productions and local food writer Camas Davis, who is soon will launch the Portland Meat Collective.  There is still time to reserve your seat at “the butchery of a pig” on Wednesday night featuring Nostrana Chef Kathy Whims.

You must check this out. The kids styles are my favorite! Good find, Johnny.

What had I been waiting for? It’s taken me months to check out the Cacao chocolate shop in SW Portland.  We popped in last week to try their European style “drinking chocolates”.  A $2 shot of spicy drinking chocolate was the perfect mid afternoon treat for my visiting family.  The superbly informed and friendly staff took us on an educational tour of the store, which features specialty chocolates from around the world.  It’s the perfect place for the chocolate connoisseur or wanna be aficionado.  I was truly impressed.  Fellas, I can’t think of a better ending to a date. But grab a sweater – the temp is kept at a cool 66 degrees to preserve the goods.

* Read more about Cacao in the NYT.

As it turns out, butternut squash and pancetta are a match made in heaven.  I prepared this for a couple cooking classes recently – big smiles and calls for seconds. Using bacon is ok, but go with pancetta if you have a choice.  (It’s that round, slightly spicy Italian bacon you’ve seen at the deli counter.)

The recipe is adapted from the Food Network website, I cannot remember which chef.  Here are a few tips for success:  Have the pancetta sliced 1/4 inch thick, which makes nice cubes once diced; Pan roast instead of oven roast the squash, this gives nice color and texture; Toss the squash gently with the pasta so that the squash retains shape; Don’t forget the pumpkin seeds, they add a nice crunch!

Orecchiette with Pancetta, Butternut Squash + Broccolini

Serves 2

Ingredients

• 2 cups butternut squash, cut into 1/2-inch dice

• Extra-virgin olive oil

• Kosher salt

• 1/2 bunch broccolini or broccoli rabe, tough lower stems removed, cut into thirds

• 3/4 cup pancetta, cut into 1/2-inch dice

• Pinch crushed red pepper

• 2 cups orecchiette

• 1/2 cup grated parmigiana

• 1/4 cup green pumpkin seeds (pepitas), toasted

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Toss the squash with olive oil and salt and place in a single layer on a sheet tray and bake in the oven until soft, about 20 minutes. Remove from oven and reserve.

Bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil. Set up a bowl of well-salted ice water.

Drop the broccoli rabe into the pot of boiling water, swirl it around, remove from the water, and immediately plunge into the salty ice water. Reserve the boiling water to cook the pasta in. Remove the broccoli rabe from the ice water, squeeze out excess water, and reserve.

Coat a large saute pan with olive oil and add the pancetta and crushed red pepper. Bring the pan to a medium heat and cook the pancetta until brown and crispy. When the pancetta is brown and crispy add the roasted squash and about 3/4 cup of the broccolini cooking water. Simmer until the water reduces by half.

Add the orecchiette to the reserved boiling broccoli rabe water and cook until the pasta is al dente, about 1 minute less than the cooking time says on the box.

Remove the pasta from the water and add to the pan with the pancetta and squash. Add the broccolini and about a 1/2 cup of the pasta cooking water. Cook until the water has evaporated and the sauce clings to the pasta. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with the grated parmesan. Toss or stir vigorously.

Divide the pasta between 2 serving dishes, sprinkle with a little more grated parm, and top with toasted green pumpkin seeds.

Huge congratulations to Portland cookbook author and cooking instructor Ivy Manning!  Her second cookbook The Adaptable Feast is enjoying glowing reviews from critics and home cooks alike.  The concept of the book is smart and simple: Recipes designed to satisfy the vegetarians, vegans, and omnivores at your table.  I have to imagine this book was partly written out of necessity since Ivy’s husband is a vegetarian but she is certainly not.  The book is for sale on Amazon. My mom would have appreciated a book like this during my sister’s stint as a vegetarian!

The goods at Clear Creek Distillery.

I’m just wrapping up a fun weekend showing off Portland’s food and drink to my dad and sister.  On the drink side, we hit up a few top wineries in the Willamette Valley.  Pinot noir tastings were excellent at Archery Summit, Winderlea, Domaine Drouhin (tasty chardonnay there, actually) and Penner-Ash.  Tasting the libations at Clear Creek Distillery in NW Portland on Saturday morning left us feeling a little wobbly. Clear Creek is known for its pear brandy but makes around 20 different spirits including a handful of potent clear flavored brandies known as eau-de-vies (pear, apple, kirsch, plum), whiskey, grappa, and flavored liqueurs.

Our tour lasted about 45 minutes with a generous tasting at the end.  Our guide was super knowledgeable and friendly.  It’s a great activity for out of towners and locals alike, plus it’s free!  The most intriguing product was the chartreuse Douglas Fir eau-de-vie, made from springtime Doug Fir buds.  At 90 proof it’s kind of like drinking fire! Check out Clear Creek founder Steve McCarthy’s “A Perfect Pear” article on the New York Times Proof blog.

Every Fall hundreds of thousands of salmon swim up Oregon’s Columbia River from the Pacific Ocean. Yesterday, we were mesmerized by these coho salmon trying to make it over the dam at Eagle Creek in the Columbia River Gorge.

Only the most determined make it past the fisherman, dams, birds, and sea lions to their breeding grounds up any number of tributaries where they will spawn and die. In some places, salmon travel 1,000 miles upstream before reaching the exact place where they were hatched and to continue the cycle.  Very few creatures are able to live in both saltwater and freshwater, not to mention return to the precise stream where they were born.  Amazing, right?

It’s pastry day at the Pickle!  Check out this truly unique opportunity.  For more details and how to sign up click HERE:

What: 3 day pastry workshop at The Robert Reynolds Chefs Studio with master pastry chef Kristen D. Murray.

When: November 10, 11, 12. 9 AM – 3 PM.  Includes lunch.

Where: The Chefs Studio. Located in Portland at SE 2818 Pine St.

You: Ideal students are pastry chefs seeking inspiration and continuing education; cooks interested in crossing over into pastry; and, serious home cooks interested in developing wicked good pastry skills.

Oregonian

The Sugar Cube food cart was on the seen just a few short months last year. Kirsten Jensen, the chef owner, had a cool idea: Make perfect cupcakes and other exquisite desserts and sell them to people on the go.  But the hardships of owning a mobile kitchen became too much and The Cube closed just six months after opening. But now Kirsten is back, set to reopen her cart at the New Mississippi Marketplace in NE.  Will the Amy Winehouse cupcake make a come back?