Vanessa Barrington

Food Orgies I’ve Lived Through: Oyster Bliss and IACP in Portland

 

You'd think it was the holidays judging by how much I’ve been eating. It’s a little weird when the forced austerity of tax time collides with not-to-be-missed eating opportunities. Credit card bills and elastic-waist pants are usually the result.  No regrets here because hey, this is just how I roll now. Living in the moment and all that.

 

I attended my first ever Kermit Lynch party on Saturday the 17 followed by 4 days of gorging on all manner of both street food and fine restaurant eats in Portland.

   

 

Oyster Bliss is all about oysters, homemade sausages by Chris Lee and Samin Nosrat, wine by  Kermit Lynch and desserts by Café Fanny, along with plenty of sun, friends, and music. It was a blast drinking buckets of rose, chewing on sausages, slurping oysters and laughing with friends and tablemates. It’s tough to spend a Saturday afternoon like that because it’s too tempting to continue the debauchery. Luckily I’ve reached the age of reason and spent the late afternoon and early evening napping.

 

Fanny's strawberry rhubarb tart

Fanny's Chocolate Pave

 Barely recovered from the oyster party, Tuesday I arrived in Portland and proceeded to eat my way through town. I had plenty of good company and made countless new friends. Here are a few of the pictorial highlights.

 

The dreamiest coffee ever from the sweetest 200 square foot storefront.
 

Porchetta sandwich from The People's Pig Cart. Yowza!
 

Ziba's pitas: like my grandma's strudel only savory with cheese and lamb and Ajvar!
 

 

Poutine from Spudnik
 

I've had some pretty sorry examples of Korean tacos. This was not one of them.
 

Ok so I probably didn't really need to eat Texas toast grilled cheese with hamburger.
 

Cutest shack ever
 

My roomie Amy's Schnitzelwich from Tabor. She was nice enough to share. It was a textural wonderland.
 

Civilized lunch with new friends Laiko Bahrs, Maura Sell, Brona Cosgrave, and Patrice Savery at Pasta Works.
 

Green garlic soup!
 

farmers market pizza!
 

Much to my surprise, I walked into the Chronicle Books party and there was my book cover all blown (and grown) up and looking gorgeous. I had to get a happy shot. It's blurry but too fun not to include.

In closing, the conference was inspiring, exhausting, exhilerating and magical this year. The best ever. Everyone I met, famous or not, was kind, engaging, friendly, and helpful. It felt like one big giant love fest and sharing sphere. It made me feel like anything is possible and we’ll all get where we are going by helping one another. And you know what? I believe we really will. I don’t know if it’s the new economy or Portland itself but the conference felt like one big happy family. Maybe I just had “city of the roses”-colored glasses on, but I don’t think so. I think it was real.

The Prospector in Twain Harte: Certified Napoletana Pizza

I don’t usually write about restaurants because everybody else does, and usually, when I’m dining out, I want to be fully present with my dining companions and the food and don’t want to take photos and notes. I have to make an exception here because The Prospector Forno Rustica is pretty out-of-the-ordinary and has not received much press.

I’m quite sure I would never know about this place if my family didn’t live in the Sierra Foothills near the town of Twain Harte, where The Prospector is located. Hell, most people I know have never heard of Twain Harte . Even if you visited Twain Harte and saw this restaurant, you’d likely pass it by, not knowing what a treasure you had just missed. Honestly, I’m not sure owner Robert Martin even cares. I get the feeling he likes operating what amounts to a sort of underground restaurant right out in the open.

Though everything is strictly legal, I say underground because the place looks like a tourist pizza joint— a place where you take the kids for gloppy, cheesy, saucy, rubbery pizza after playing mini golf at the course next door. In fact, I’ve heard that kids aren’t even allowed in the restaurant and this is NOT kid pizza (though they'd like it too). It’s honest-to-god certified Napoletana pizza from a wood-fired oven.

It’s a quirky place. For starters, there’s no stove, so everything is made in the oven. So it’s really about the pizza. But the night we went there was a simple pasta on the menu—rolled out before our very eyes, boiled in a big pot in the oven and sautéed in a skillet on the edge of the oven’s hellishly hot maw. There may or may not be salad on the menu. There wasn’t any the night we went.

It’s also about the wine. A large collection of retail priced foreign and domestic bottles. Honestly I was focused on the pizza and didn’t look into the wine at all, just poured myself a glass of something tasty and Italian from the bottles lined up on the counter. Wish I’d looked a little harder because judging from this interview with the owner in The Sierra Mountain Times, there are probably some well-priced treasures there, as a wine bar was really the original business plan.

There’s no table service. You order at the counter, pour your own wine (the glasses are helpfully marked), get your own water, table settings etc. and then settle in to watch the pizza artists at work. The pizzas are brought out one at a time by the chefs. You’ll need to order 1 per person or try another menu item because they aren’t large. What can I say? The pizza was perfection. Crisp, thin, blistered crust with structure and chewiness. Great toppings, judiciously applied. Nice combinations. We had a white pizza with prosciutto, basil, and roasted onions, and a red one with spicy salami and fresh mozzarella (made in-house, I believe).

We enjoyed a fresh pasta with mushrooms, olive oil, and Parmesan--simple and perfect. In fact, the first pasta was discarded as not good enough before it even made it to the table, and remade by the owner/chef. We watched him do it. Sorry about the bad photos. It was a little too dark.

If you’re curious and you’re not about to make it to Twain Harte anytime soon, you can go to the Prospector pizza webcam (it’s usually running during dinner service) and watch the masters at work. Honestly though, it’s kind of like watching paint dry between orders, but fascinating, as there’s sort of a wild west Slow Food vibe going on there. Oh, and you can follow The Prospector on Twitter, naturally.

Magic Pumpkins: Pumpkin Pie and Pumpkin Cream Cheese Bread

I bought one of Annabelle’s magic white pumpkins on her recommendation. She said they were the best for pie. I always believe her. Even though I never make pumpkin pie (I always have the Thanksgiving guests bring it so I can concentrate on the savories) I thought I might as well give it a whirl.

I cut into it and I couldn’t believe the otherworldly day-glo quality of the flesh. And the beautiful line of pale green between white and orange. I couldn’t stop gazing. But into the oven it went in a glass casserole dish with a half-inch of water, covered in foil. I baked it until soft (about 30 minutes). It looked stringy but I scooped it into the food processor and gave it a whirl and it became a flawlessly smooth puree.

 
Then I made pie from the Jimtown Store Cookbook. It’s a wonderfully robust pie, not at all insipid. Filled with dark brown sugar, molasses and spices, including black pepper. Fantastic!

Then I froze some of the puree until this week and decided to make pumpkin bread. I’ve never made pumpkin bread before either, but I’ve eaten a lot of it. I like the kind with a cream cheese layer, so I Iooked around for recipes and found this one. But I wanted the quality of my bread to be robust, like the pie, so I made the recipe my own by adding more spices, molasses, dark brown sugar and a pecan streusel on top. It turned out great.

Here’s my version:

Pumpkin Bread:

1 cup pecans

1 cup butter , plus more for pans

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Pinch of allspice

A few grindings of black pepper

4 large eggs

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

1 cup dark brown sugar, lightly packed (divided)

1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree

1 tablespoon molasses

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract


Cream Cheese Filling:

8 ounces package cream cheese

1/2 cup granulated white sugar

2 large eggs

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

2 tablespoons all purpose flour


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and toast the pecans for 5 minutes. Set aside to cool. Meanwhile, melt the butter and set it aside to cool. Butter and lightly flour two  9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pans. Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and black pepper. Set aside.

In another large bowl, whisk the eggs until lightly beaten. Add the granulated sugar, 3/4 cup of the brown sugar, and melted butter and whisk until blended.  Whisk or stir in the pumpkin puree, molasses, and vanilla extract.

Make the cream cheese filling:
In a food processor, process the cream cheese until smooth, add the sugar and process until blended and smooth. Add the eggs one at a time, processing just until incorporated, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula.  Add the flour and vanilla extract and process briefly.

Add the flour/spice mixture to the pumpkin mixture and stir just until the ingredients are combined, without overmixing.

Put one-quarter of the pumpkin batter into the two loaf pans, spreading it evenly. Top each one with one-half of the cream cheese filling.  Top the cream cheese with the remaining pumpkin batter.

Chop the nuts coarsely and toss with the remaining 1/4 cup brown sugar. Sprinkle evenly over the top of each loaf pan.

Bake the breads for about 60-80 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

Place pans on a wire rack and let cool for about 10 minutes before removing breads.

Give one away and keep one! Or freeze one.

Flatbread with Za’atar (the herb not the spice mix)

One of my favorite farmers, Annabelle of La Tercera Farm made her seasonal return to the Berkeley Farmers’ Market a couple of Saturdays ago. I’m always happy to see her because she grows really great shelling and dried beans, wonderful hard squash and exotic Italian heirloom greens. Plus I love chatting with her.

Annabelle also keeps me from becoming jaded. Being in the food business and living in the East Bay within biking distance of nearly a market a day and many fine restaurants it would be easy to think that there’s nothing new under the sun. But that’s not true. Annabelle always has at least one item that is completely new to me.

That week it was bunches of intensely fragrant herbs labeled Za’atar. This is the fresh green herb that the spice mix Za’atar is named for. It’s not something you see around here. It looks and smells a little like a member of the thyme family but the leaves are dusky colored and velvety like sage. This bunch was flowering so it had a spicy floral aroma and a pungent, slightly mentholated flavor. The flowers are much stronger than the leaves. Let’s just say it’s not a timid herb.

I asked Annabelle what to do with it and she said: “pound it with olive oil and make flatbread” Annabelle speaks with such authority you’ll likely find yourself following her directives without questioning.

I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never made flatbread before. I make pizza all the time and both flour and corn tortillas—which of course are all types of flatbread, but I’ve never made anything I’d actually call flatbread.

I started with a recipe for Tandoor-baked Bread in an old Indian cookbook I’ve never used and added baking soda and yogurt, omitted the egg that was called for and replaced some of the white flour with wheat flour.

1 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup plain yogurt
2 tablespoons olive oil

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add liquid ingredients and stir with a fork to form a soft dough. Knead in the bowl for 3 to 4 minutes. Let rest for 20 minutes, covered with a towel.

Meanwhile heat a pizza stone in a 500 degree oven.

Pound about 2 tablespoons of fresh za’atar with garlic, salt, olive oil, and Aleppo pepper and set it aside. (You could always do this with thyme, oregano, parsley, or whatever)

Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces and, working one at a time, roll out the each piece into a round about 1/4 inch thick, brush with the olive oil za’atar mixture, sprinkle with a little coarse salt, and place gently on the pizza stone. Bake until brown and bubbling, keeping the hot breads wrapped in a clean towel while you finish cooking the others. I can’t remember how long the baking time was, but it wasn’t long. The bread came out light, flaky, and crisp, like a delicate pita. We ate it with tomato-cucumber salad, lentils and Toulouse sausage from Fatted Calf. Nobody complained.

Scenes from a Photo Shoot

Toast shot

Ok, so the book is pretty much done. All that remains is copyediting, galleys, and other little details. Directly on the heels of turning in the manuscript, we went right into shooting the photos.

We did it with a crew of 4 plus me over 5 long days right here at the house. It was fun, intense, and a very exhausting. Kind of like catering a 5 day party.

But it paid off and we got some gorgeous shots. Here's a little photo essay of mine documenting a few of the moments. These, of course, are not Sara Remington's photos but mine on my little Sony Cyber-shot. But my photos do benefit from the food and prop styling of Nani Steele and Kami Bremyer respectively. Props also go to Sara (of course) and Stacy Ventura, fab photo assistant. Thanks Ladies! While I'm thanking. Thanks also to Emunah, Rachel, Haven, and Susan for all your help during the shoot and to all the parents and kids who modeled at the picnic. You know who you are.
Sourdough Buckwheat Pancakes with Caramelized Apples

Donut Run from Dynamo Donuts. Oh Yeah!

Tofu Soup with Homemade Kimchi

Kami with Root Beer Day 5

Sustainable Seafood Stew with Meyer Lemon Parsley Aioli (not pictured)

Sara and Nani valiantly trying to make brown cookies with browner filling look appetizing

Let's celebrate! It's a wrap!

A Photo Essay from the Grain Chapter

I'm all out of words. Three weeks to manuscript and I don't feel like writing. So here are some photos taken over the last few months.

This is the wood-burning Alan Scott oven at Headlands Center for the Arts. My friend Eduardo Morell has generously shared his sourdough bread baking skills and methods with me for my new book. This is a photo of Eduardo at work on a Friday night before the Saturday Berkeley farmers' market.
 
This is a loaf of sourdough half wheat shaped with Eduardo at his house the day we adapted his recipe down for the home cook. Baked at my house. It turned out perfect!

Preshape phase of my Cornmeal Pumpkinseed loaf developed on my own from my starter with Eduardo's method. This bread is superlative toasted!

Rolling out a flour tortilla.

Action shot!

The tortilla in the pan just after flipping. Look at those nice air pockets!

The tortillas made into a quesadilla with homemade cheese and salsa. These were great. Light, crisp, great texture and flavor from a small amount of whole wheat flour. Wonderful the next day with butter and cinnamon sugar. No more store-bought flour tortillas full of additives!

Parmesan-Poppyseed Crackers. Easier than pie!

Whole Wheat Sesame Crackers: I wasn't trying to knock off my favorite Ak-Maks but it seems I did.

Something to Relish

I'm rarely compelled to blog about a product, but here's an exception. I found this at The Pasta Shop in Berkeley just as they were building the new display. They found it at the Unfancy Food Show in Brooklyn. I was smitten by the packaging first and that's about as far as it would have gone if the nice man hadn't offered me a taste. (they make beautiful pickles too but at a higher price point). As it was, $6.99 was my gateway to a brand new addiction. The brothers McClure do indeed know what they are doing, which puts me in a pickle because now I need to figure out how to make my own version. How hard can it be? cucumbers, vinegar, water, salt, peppers (jalapenos?), garlic, dill. I think it will take awhile before I can make such a perfect relish, but I'm going to try.

And what have we adorned with this lovely little relish? Crazy sounding, but we put it on salami pizza. It works to cut the richness in the same way that pepperoncini works on a salami sandwich. What other plans do we have? Lots! Hot dogs, sausages, chicken salad and tuna salad sandwiches, bowls of pinto beans, tacos, pulled pork sandwiches. I don't know. It kind of sounds like I'm going to have to up my meat consumption temporarily or think of some vegetarian ideas. Send yours along please. 'Scuse me, I've got to go buy some Mc Clure's pickles now.

Homemade Tortillas and Fish Tacos

Ever since I moved to the East Bay away from my beloved La Palma, I haven’t been able to find good tortillas. Read the labels at most grocery stores and you’ll find that tortillas contain all manner of unpleasant and unneeded (except for shelf life) ingredients. They should only contain three things: Corn, lime, and salt. Even Mi Tierra, the Latin American store on San Pablo I frequent, carries only one brand without additives and they just aren’t very good.

I’m sure someone in Oakland makes good tortillas, but they aren’t on my usual circuit and I haven’t found them yet, so rather than drive myself crazy, I decided I’d start making my own. With a lightweight and cheap metal tortilla press, a bag of regular old Maseca masa, and a cast iron pan, it’s easy to do. I’ve been doing it regularly and it honestly only takes about 10 to 15 minutes to make fresh, hot tortillas for 2 or 4 people.

I learned the technique from the women I worked in the kitchen with at the Jimtown Store and I follow the directions on the masa package for the quantities. If you try this, it’s likely your first few batches won’t be perfect because it takes practice and a feel for the masa and temperature of the pan, but you’ll still have fresh, hot tortillas, and how can that be a bad thing?

Once you form the tortillas on your press between a sheet of thick plastic (like a split plastic produce bag rather than plastic wrap) you lay each one down gently like this on your hot cast iron pan or comal. You can experiment with the thickness. Once it sets and starts to brown, flip it.

Once the second side is set and starts to develop nice brown spots, flip it again and (here's the technique you won't learn on the bag of masa flour) tap gently all over the tortilla with your fingertips. This creates little air pockets in the tortillas as they cook, producing light, not leaden tortillas. You'll see the air pockets rise up as you do this. Remove the tortilla to a clean towel and wrap it. Stack them up as you finish the batch, keeping them covered.

Fish Tacos: Grilled rock fish seasoned lightly with toasted cumin, salt, pepper, smoky paprika. Green salsa from this recipe, cabbage, black beans, radishes, and a quick saute of summer squash and onions with feta.

Pizza from a Wild Starter

I’ve been experimenting with pizza from a wild starter. I couldn’t find any recipes anywhere so I decided to just try it and see how it worked. I had a feeling I wouldn’t get enough rise without a bit of yeast so I used just a tiny amount for insurance. Not sure if it made any difference. The next time I tried it with a 1/2 teaspoon and it rose a lot, but the pizza was better with the 1/4 teaspoon. Next time I’ll go cold turkey and try it without any yeast. 

The topping are asparagus, spring onions, and fresh Pecorino
The photo below has prosciutto, mozzarella, blue cheese, and arugula lightly dressed with good olive oil.

Makes 2 pizzas

1/4 teaspoon yeast
1 tablespoon warm water plus another approximately quarter cup
1 cup starter
3 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil.

Mix together the yeast and 1 tablespoon warm water until yeast is dissolved. Add starter, flour, salt, and olive oil, and start to mix. Add water until the dough is pliable but not sticky. Continue to mix. Turn out onto a floured work surface and knead for 10 minutes. Cover and put in a warm place and let rise for 3 hours. Punch down and divide into 2 balls. Let rest. Roll and stretch out to desired thinness, top, and bake at 500 on a stone until brown and crisp.