Dear friends, fellow bloggers, and readers. Thank you for making my first year of blogging so fun. Your comments mean a lot to me. To cap off the New Year I am bundling up and heading out into the Maine night with friends. Who knows what the new decade will bring, but I am ready for it. Big hugs and full glasses of champagne to you all.
Every great once in a while I will hear about a great program on television and add it to my Netflix queue. A few snippets from some favorites, where the creative forces of Hollywood got together and got it just right.
Deadwood
First Ladies Detective Agency
Big Love
The Wire - single best scripted scene ever on television
I am just finishing up the fantastic book Devil in the Kitchen: Sex, Pain, Madness, and the Making of a Great Chef by Marco Pierre White. The first British chef to win three Michelin stars the book is surprisingly fresh, intelligent and authentic. He seems to hold nothing back, including his throwing of cheese and risotto.
What I have stacked on my bedside table:
A Lost Lady by Willa Cather, one of my favorite writers.
Women With Men by Richard Ford. I found his book The Sportswriter so whacky and brilliant I am reading another of his novels.
Ancedotes of Destiny and Ehrengard by Isak Dinesen
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. If you have not already, read her Pulitzer Prize winning short story collection Interpreter of Maladies. It is gorgeous.
Any good reads you think I should add to my stack? I would love to know.
Random Order Coffeehouse & Bakery - for Stumptown coffee drinks, cocktails, and pies made from scratch with flakey buttery crusts. The Chocolate Cream and Brandied Pear w/ Dark Chocolate and Candied Ginger Streusel looked amazing!!
Clyde Common at the Ace Hotel - you know you are going to get a tasty drink when the cocktail menu includes four kinds of absinthe and a page of whiskeys. Happy Hour (3 - 6:00 p.m.) appetizers include french fries with harissa, popcorn with pimenton, and a grilled baguette with nutella. I plan to reserve a room at the Ace the next time I am in Portland. The rooms are reasonably priced, simple, and the hotel is convenient to the Pearl District. I walked the few blocks from Powell’s Books to the hotel’s cafe while waiting to meet friends at the Common. The hotel in true Portland/hipster style provides bikes free of charge to guests.
Por Que No Taqueria has deliciously fresh salads and bowls. I did not try the tacos, but they looked good.
Ken’s Artisan Pizza - Molly Wizenberg recommended this restaurant, and I am so grateful. The place was packed with a line practically out the door. However, the bar (where we wanted to sit anyway) was first come first serve so we jumped in after only a 15 minute wait during which a happy waitress brought us our drinks. It was great to see Ken (the namesake) behind the bar, serving customers, and helping out wherever he was needed. The wood-fired oven churning out pizzas is in an open kitchen in the middle of the restaurant. We enjoyed the Wood Oven Roasted Vegetable Plate (generous plate of three veg combinations depending on the season) and the Squash Pizza (seasonal) with sheeps’ milk feta and butternut squash. Delicious! I was baking cookies later that night for a party so we did not allow ourselves any of the desserts, which included Apple and Dried Cherry Crumble with Toasted Almond Gelato. Clearly Ken and crew know what they are doing, and the two dishes split between us was more than big enough to share.
My last night in town started at Le Bistro Montage (I indulged in frog legs and vegetarian jambalaya). Kir Wine Bar (new and already popular, relaxed and intimate, mostly European wines, the French seeming proprietor was absolutely lovely sharing her Pandora station selection Slavic Soul Party, and educating us on Malbec wines). Finally on to Beaker and Flask for wine and goat cheese. I left promising myself I would sample their cocktails during my next visit. These three venues provided the perfect combination of Portland’s funkiest environments with menus featuring fresh sourced ingredients.
I have always been a beer gal. While appreciating fine wine and spirits, an ice cold one on tap satisfies. A stout, which most bars carry, is my beer of preference.
Supposedly Oregon leads the nation in breweries per capita. I cannot verify that, but I can testify that Portland seemed to me every bit the poster child for beer Sonoma is for wine. Oregonians, I will also tell you do a fine job at crafting some delicious beers. Deschutes Brewery’s seasonal brew Jubelale, available October through December, is my favorite.
Brewer John Abraham describes Jubelale as having “a spiced nose, with hints of citrus, brown sugar and pine. Flavors of chocolate, molasses, dates, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves stand out against the caramel backbone from the 1,400 pounds of medium and dark crystal malt.” That sounds about right.
One of Deschutes Brewery’s earliest beers, Black Butte Porter, a dark beer with chocolate and crystal malts is also very good.
A Deschutes girl at heart
Rogue Ales has been a favorite since I discovered their Chocolate Stout a few months ago. I loved their packaging and the names of the (many) different flavors. While in Portland one of my friends took me to their Distillery where I sampled a few beers and fell for their Shakespeare Oatmeal Stout.
Unfortunately I do not know any watering holes in Maine serving Rogue or Deschutes, but I will be looking for their labels the next time I am at a liquor store. Fortunately as well, Maine brewers hold their own pretty well with classy options such as Peak Organic’s Pomegranate Wheat Ale with Acai.
One of the best parts of visiting Oregon was the train ride my friend and I took from Portland up the coast to Seattle. She asked for seats on the water side so we could take in the views of the Columbia River Gorge. Wow! Most of the 3 1/2 hour trip I spent with my nose pressed to the glass looking at the scenery.
In Seattle we stayed at the Alexis, where I would stay again. The concierge was so nice (he just finished reading and was raving about Michael Pollan’s book Omnivore’s Dilemma) and helpful. The hotel is only a few blocks from Pike Place Market, where I picked up a few holiday gifts and two bags of delicious cherries. With no chocolate to be found at the Market, I got a cup of soy hot cocoa and sampled chocolates at the nearby shop Chocolate Box.
For dinner we ate at Delancey, Molly Wizenberg and her husband Brandon Petit’s restaurant in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. Molly’s blog Orangette has been a daily read for me since friends told me about it a year or so ago. Her book A Homemade Life belongs on your nightstand with a large slice of homemade chocolate cake and a cup of tea. She is a great writer, and it turns out a truly great restauranteur (as is her husband). I had read waits at Delancey average 45 minutes to two hours on the weekend. Fortunately our wait was only long enough for a beer with the locals at a low key bar across the street where others on the Delancey wait list were also biding their time. When I go back (there is no “if” involved with Delancey) I will wait and wait as need be. The wood-fired Romana pizza was delicious with the perfect number of anchovies and bit of chile oil providing an unexpected and pleasant kick. I think wood-fired bread in any form is one of my favorite foods. I know chocolate chip cookies are, I will be honest I could survive on a desert island with them. Say what you will I don’t care, I love them simple and extravagant like the way Molly makes them at Delancey with pieces of Bittersweet Ghiradelli Chocolate, locally sourced flour, and topped with gray salt. The first cookie I had I made the mistake of offering to share (in advance, because lord knows one bite and I would never have made that offer). I shared, sort of - my dining companion may offer a varied slant on the experience. Upon finishing the cookie I thought I was going to cry, I mean who has a reaction like that? Me, that is what an excellent chocolate chip cookie will do to me. Since tissues were not available I ordered another to go. Maybe it was how much I loved her book (she writes a lot about her father, their shared love of food, Paris, her father passing…I lost my father who gave me the gift of food a little over three years ago and some days the feeling is as new and raw as it was in the months after he passed). Another spot on dessert/comfort dish served at Delancey is their Meyer Lemon Budino with candied pistachios, anise caramel, and sable cookie. My friend has told several people about that one, while I am still focused on the cookie. I will be making those this week with the gray salt I picked up the next day back in Ballard at the new gourmet food shop Savour.
Bottom photo of Delancey’s Bittersweet chocolate chip cookie with gray salt by Serious Eats.
