MIX Magazine March 2010 by Mix Magazine

March ’10 10 Portlands Portland’s Magazine of Food + Drink

Barrels make good beer Barista, the sequel Savoring Salem Good Burgundy has a price Portland’s wonderful West End

OUR FRENCH ISSUE Sous vide smack-down

How to make a vrai soufﬂé Portland eats with a French accent

MARCH ‘10

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A Touch of Paris… In The Heart of Downtown Portland

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As a food editor, I’m always in pursuit of the new — what’s the next thing we all need to eat, drink, cook, buy, look at, obsess over? The perpetual hunting can be fun on a professional level, but on a personal level, I tend to stick to what I learned years ago at cooking school in Paris. Not because I’m unimaginative, but because I find it impossible to get bored with the food you can produce with a few classic techniques, some beat-up but decent equipment and a world of exquisite ingredients, which seem to practically fall from the sky in our area. That’s why I love our French issue — Seth Lorinczi’s piece on the French roots of the Portland restaurant scene (Page 24) reminds us that everything old is new again … even Gabriel Rucker’s Foie Gras Candy Cap Jam Sandwich (which I’m eating in the photo — it’s drippy) is a riff on a common-at-French-receptions slice of foie gras terrine on a piece of brioche. In our piece on sous vide cooking, however, Hank Sawtelle does show us that there’s something new. And bordering on lunatic, I thought, until I tasted the short ribs he cooked in our “Sous vide smack-down” (Page 18).

Hours: Monday - Thursday 11a - 1a Friday & Saturday 11a - 3a Sunday 11a - Midnig ht

Different, but yum. And lest we go thirsty, Jim Gullo introduces us to five women winemakers (Page 36) who’ve got their roots in France but their vines in Oregon (plus one “imposter”). Katherine Cole delivers the sobering truth that in the semi-affordable range of under $30, you’ll get a nice enough real Burgundy, but it may not be the wine of your dreams (Page 45). And in further praise of classic technique, do take a look at our soufflé story (Page 41). Follow our step-by-step (photographer Mike Davis said he was channeling 1950s Good Housekeeping) and your results will be impressive, even if you’re a new cook. Try it, and then write me to tell me how it turned out.

We Op en for Br unch at 8a on Sunday Happy Hour 3-6p Dai ly

626 SW Park Ave Por tland, OR 97205 503 236 3036

Martha Holmberg, editor marthaholmberg@news.oregonian.com PHOTOGRAPH By BeTH NAKAMuRA

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mARCH’10 18 SOUS VIDE SmACK-DOWN We host a cook-off that pits mad science against 100 years of French grandmothers.

24 PORTLAND COOKS

WITH A FRENCH ACCENT A tribute to the cuisine that was local-seasonalsustainable before any of that was cool.

36 NORTHWEST WINES,

WITH A FRENCH TWIST Meet five French female winemakers (plus one American who seems French) who now call Oregon chez moi.

41 HOW TO mAKE

A SOUFFLÉ Even a timid cook can master the art of this iconic French dish.

IN EVERy ISSUE 11 STARTERS Short shots and tasty bits 15 WALKABOUT Sample what the new West End of downtown has to offer

45 SELECTS Pinot noir from Burgundy — in our price range — is indeed the heartbreak grape

49 EAT HERE Salem at last serves up some capital fare

53 PUB CRAWL Sour beers are sweet

56 SCENE What to eat where ON THE COVER: Louisa Neumann and her traditional braised beef go head to head with Hank Sawtelle’s sous-vide version. Shot at Robert Reynolds Chefs Studio, thechefstudio.com. PHOTOGRAPH BY LEE EMMERT

mIXPDX.COm mIX is now 10 issues a year! It’s easy to subscribe online — go to mIXPDX.COm and click on “subscribe.” you can also find past articles, restaurant reviews and all our recipes at mixpdx.com, so get clicking and start eating.

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Hank Sawtelle is a recovering attorney who’s a freelance writer and cooking instructor in Portland. His engineering degree, which seemed like an expensive waste at the time, finally came in handy for understanding the science behind cooking sous vide (Page 18). In his free time he cooks pancakes to order for his daughter, including pink food coloring and/or Cheerios mixed in by request. He is a columnist for culinate.com and blogs about sous vide cooking at sousvidejones.com.

Katherine Cole is the wine columnist for the FOODday section of The Oregonian as well as for MIX (Page 45). She is currently at work on a book on biodynamic wine for Oregon State University Press. The Burgundies she loves most are completely out of her price range.

Seth Lorinczi is a cook, writer and musician who loves to work at the intersections of food and history. “Researching this piece (Page 24) was a real treat. I spoke with chefs and restaurateurs who blazed a bold and uncertain trail in a small town that’s largely disappeared. Their doing so helped create the Portland in which we love to live and eat.”

“I grew up thinking I was Italian because family friends were very Italian. It rubbed off, I figured. Now, after this assignment (Pages 24 and 41), I’m French. At least I hope some of the assignment rubbed off on me. I’ve been working on the accent, the humor, the ability to make people feel at home. Oh, and making the food.” When he’s not humming “La Marseillaise,” Mike Davis — the former photo editor of MIX — works as an independent editor and photographer; see his work at michaelddavis.com.

The first thing out of Lee Emmert’s mouth when we asked him to shoot our sous vide story this month (Page 18) was, “Yes, but only if you title it Su Vida Loca, because I think that’d be funny … and I’m too busy to get involved in anything right now unless I have complete creative control … that is, unless there’s free food.” (We hired him anyway.) Emmert’s work has appeared in Time, Fast Company, Forbes and many other publications. He just finished shooting a 15-image story for The Wall Street Journal’s weekend edition profiling Portland band Pink Martini. Emmert teaches at the University of Oregon and just launched an online visual storytelling magazine that can be found at ImmuneMedia.com.

OTHER CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Ben Brink, karen Brooks, John Foyston, Jim Gullo, ivy manninG OTHER CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS/ ILLUSTRATORS Ben Brink, Jamie Francis, Beth nakamura, motoya nakamura, molly norris (illustration), randy l. rasmussen

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starters wha’?

The Imaginarium of Dr. Lightner Portland, land of the low-key, has jumped onto the avant-garde playing field behind the original cooking of Castagna’s 29-year-old Matt Lightner, fresh from the trenches of Mugaritz, one of Spain’s temples of molecular gastronomy. We recently peeked into Lightner’s science kit and found some wild ideas about cake and ice cream, which he assembles like a crazy salad.

Chicory Cake With Oranges, Sorrel Granita and Pine Ice Cream

1. Lightner’s Mo: Use one

flavor element in multiple ways. Here it’s citrus, and he finds notes in surprising places: in sorrel’s acidity, pine needles’ floral notes. He adds segments from several kinds of orange for color and intensity. The chicory? “It’s compatible with orange, a little bitter, a little dark. Reminds me of coffee and orange cream.” Clearly he’s drinking something better than we are in the morning.

2. no, it’s not loofah! These

sponge blobs are coffee-flavored chicory cake — and shockingly light. Lightner learned the technique at El Bulli, the leader of Spain’s surrealist cooking movement: Pour the batter into a whipped cream canister, hit it with cold gas (which makes it super airy), then bake in … a microwave! The fast, high heat is what makes it work.

PHoToGRAPH By STEPHAnIE yAo

“There’s loads of craic to be had in Portland’s Irish pubs.” — Ivy Manning,

— By KAREn BRooKS

p14

Word of the day:

3. Sorrel granita —

think sour apple Jolly Rancher meets Hawaiian shave ice. What you wish wheat grass tasted like.

4. Another reason to

save old growth. Lightner clipped off some Douglas fir, then cooked the needles with eggs and cream, “just enough to catch the vapors,” before turning it all into super-creamy pine ice cream with a faint resinous flavor.

5. These flavor-popping orange chips made

from tangelo juice and gel, dehydrated on parchment paper until brittle and translucent, taste more Starburst even than Starburst.

tyrosemiophile p12

to do March March 1

We’re wired, not tired March is National Caffeine Awareness Month. While the organizers’ intent is to highlight our overdependence on caffeine, here’s what we know: We love 11 coffee! We’ll raise our awareness at Ristretto Roasters. ristrettoroasters.com

Castagna, 1752 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd. 503-231-7373, castagnarestaurant.com

something to read / a book that wears a beret It might as well be wearing a beret, and smoking a Gauloises, too. This big (480 pages), exuberant (the cover is puffy!) cookbook is both seriously chic (oh, the typefaces!) and slightly loony at the same time. Its groovy matte-finish pages are full of in-your-face gorgeous food shots, photos of French farmers, cheesemakers, cooks, butchers, people in hairnets, shopkeepers, funky line drawings and recipe titles

such as “Long Live Innards!,” “Moo, Baa, oink” and “What Lovely Vegetables!” Although there are sections on frogs and snails (the latter titled “The Gastropod Sends you Its Greetings”), most of the 299 recipes are for straightforward country fare that would taste delicious when cooked in our own Portland kitchens. French Feasts, by Stéphane Reynaud, Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $40, 480 pages.

March 6

What cooks here stays here These days Sin City is about epicurean indulgence as well as blackjack and showgirls. In Good Taste offers a couples-only cooking class, re-creating dishes by Alain Ducasse, Joel Robuchon, Wolfgang Puck, Tom Colicchio and Charlie Palmer — all superstar chefs with Las Vegas outposts. ingoodtastestore.com

more to do

starterscont. to do cont.

what he said

March 14

Burn, baby, burn!

Two drink minimum

It’s a calorie-burning inferno with the 32nd annual Shamrock Run, the unofficial start of the running season. Expect 21,000 hearty souls to take to Portland’s streets, rain or shine. There are rewards at the finish line: Free Widmer Brothers beer and a bowl of hearty salmon chowder from Stanford’s. shamrockrunportland.com

It’s a coffee shop built to look great in the dark, when the wired crowd is looking to wind down with a beer. not just any beer, mind you. not just the hottest, and certainly not the most obvious. This brew list aims to be as carefully considered as farm-direct coffee beans and served in a setting that caters to people equally obsessive about both. Say hello to the soon-to-open Barista, a spinoff of the defining Pearl District coffee bar from northwest barista competition champ — and one-time home brewer — Billy Wilson. Barista is for … “Beer-loving coffee people. The majority of people who like high-quality coffee also like high-quality beer. If you’re really selective about coffee, you’re super picky about beer. I love beer. I drink more beer than coffee.”

Beer philosophy: “nothing standard. I’m a beer enthusiast, not a connoisseur, not a critic. I drink my fair share, and I know what I like. We’ll have a couple rotating taps and bottles, too. Hub and Upright are the kind of guys I’m looking for: small and local, taking chances, some fun, funky stuff. I love ninkasi’s Total Domination, from Eugene, a red ale that’s not as hoppy or dry as other ales — it’s fuller, sweeter, but not sweet.” Why you won’t find PBR at Barista: “I don’t like it. I don’t care how cold it is. But I’m not a beer snob. I like Pacifico. It’s good Mexican beer.” On beer vs. wine: “Beer is more accessible. Wine is out of the tax bracket for service-industry folks. And yet the same people who say wine is too expensive will spend a lot of money on a good whiskey. I’m a whiskey

March 17

Step away from the green beer Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day the sane way — at home with corned beef takeout from Kenny & Zuke’s Delicatessen ($12.75 a pound) and a glass of your favorite Irish stout. Download songs by the Irish Tenors to listen to while you’re eating. kennyandzukes.com March 20 guy, too. But it’s a big speed bump to learn wine. It’s intimidating, a rabbit hole.”

Barista 1725 n.E. Alberta St. 539 n.W. 13th Ave. (Pearl District)

Essential Portland watering hole: “The way people come to Barista to talk with us coffee geeks, I’m that guy at Saraveza (1004 n. Killingsworth St., 503-206-4252). I’m getting a big education there. They have the best bartenders in Portland.” Position on coffee-flavored stouts: “They’re awesome. Coffee pairs wonderfully with that sweet, malty stout character. no names named, but we’ve got something brewing with a local company … Barista Stout. It’s going to happen, even if I have to brew it myself.” — KAREn BRooKS PHoToGRAPH By RoSS WILLIAM HAMILTon

Winter’s over! Welcome spring! What better way to mark the change of seasons than a visit to the first day of the Saturday Portland Farmers Market at Portland State University? Produce pickings may be slim at first, but look for great mushrooms, root veggies and delicious natural honey. portlandfarmersmarket.org March 25

Flowers and flautas It’s the perfect day trip. Head south on I-5 to Woodburn’s 25th annual Tulip Fest, then head into downtown to Luis’s Taqueria, one of the best taco shops in a town that’s overrun with them. woodenshoe.com Luis’ Taqueria: 523 Front St.

March 28

package tour Who knew that the history of Western Civilization could be found on a box of cheese? A box of Camembert, that is, whose labels over the years have featured scenes of what the French consider significant: Pierrot (a beloved character who’s even more annoying than a mime because he wears pajamas and a ruffly collar), bourgeois bon vivants, race cars, Sputnik, even a UFo. These slices of bloomy-rinded, runny French culture are super collectible, at flea markets and online sites such as antiquesdiva.com. There’s even a name for people who collect them: tyrosemiophiles, which sounds more like the name of the bacteria that ferments the cheese. — IMAGES FRoM “MADE In FRAnCE,” REED DARMon, 2009, CHRonICLE BooKS

Life after Gourmet Find out what former Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl has in the works now that the magazine’s kaput. Could she possibly revive her disguises from her restaurant critic days? Her talk as part of the Portland Arts & Lectures Series hints that a new book could be on the horizon. literary-arts.org

starterscont. We’re all Irish on St. Patrick’s day

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There’s loads of craic (pronounced CRACK) — or “good times” in Irish — to be had in Portland’s Irish pubs. But before you head out, here are a few pointers to make you seem more Dubliner than tourist. you could start with Guinness; after all, it is the no. 1 stout in the world. But don’t miss out on Murphy’s Irish Stout, another authentic stout, brewed in Cork, that has a bit more edge and richness. If a pint of plain is too much for you, try a Half and Half: half a glass of Harp lager topped with Guinness. (And don’t call it a Black and Tan, which refers to the Royal Irish Constabulary forces that quashed the revolution in Ireland in the 1920s.) For an even lighter pint, try a Black Velvet: half Guinness, half Champagne. Contrary to popular belief, it’s common to serve Guinness cold, even in Ireland. If stouts aren’t your cup of tea, you needn’t settle for a Bud Light. Instead, order a Smithwick’s (pronounced SMITH-icks … forget the “w”), the no. 1 ale in Ireland. Another crisp Irish brew worth seeking out is Magner’s Original Irish Cider (called Bulmer’s in Ireland). normally served over ice, it’s not nearly as sweet as the more common Strongbow British cider. Mix any cider with lager 50-50 and you’re sipping a Snake Bite; sub cider for lemony soda and you’ve got a Shandy. And finally, if the gent or colleen sitting next to you at the pub raises a glass and says “Slainte!” (SLAHn-chuh), don’t worry, they haven’t sneezed. They’re simply saying “cheers” in Irish. If they look at you and say “Póg mo Thóin,” well, that’s another thing entirely … — IVy MAnnInG

EAT THIS NOW The Chinese people are gobbling down those rather yellow buns being hustled around with the dim sum at ocean City on Southeast 82nd — should I raise my hand? yes! no need to fear the golden egg custard bun. This subtly sweet Cantonese bun is made with egg yolks, milk, butter and maybe a few other ingredients that don’t translate into English. The shell has a bit of a crust and then you’re chomping down into the slightly gooey, creamy interior that is definitely foreign (if you’re not Chinese, like my wife) but not shocking. Be brave. — BEn BRInK

ocean City 3016 S.E. 82nd Ave. 503-771-2299

walkabout

[ Portland’s West End ] decade ago, Portland’s West End was a gritty collection of rundown apartment buildings and empty storefronts. Left behind in the 1970s push for urban renewal that transformed the waterfront and the east side of downtown, the neighborhood had few shops or restaurants and was known mostly for its concentration of dive bars and a 24-hour Safeway that was a magnet for late-night characters. That crazy Safeway, though, ushered in a new era when it closed its dilapidated old store and became the ground-floor anchor of the Museum Place development in 2003. Soon high-rise condos and apartments changed the West End’s skyline, with the most-distinctive looking — the sleek Indigo building with wind turbines on its rooftop — being completed just last year. Big changes have happened at street level, too, with empty storefronts becoming delicious additions to the city’s food menu.

By granT BuTLEr PhoTograPhy By jaMIE francIS

for a Walkabout survey of the West End’s changes, start on Southwest Stark Street between 10th and 11th avenues. This single block is emblematic of the area’s evolution. on the north end there’s the fish grotto restaurant, which has been around since 1891 but only last year got a major renovation in its look and menu. next door, there’s a gay dance club that once bore the ominous name “The Brig” but now is the friendlier-sounding red cap garage. next, there’s the all-digital Living room Theaters, a place for sipping cocktails and watching arty fare in the space that was the cavernous gay party zone Panorama. on Stark’s south end, the

blocklong clyde hotel has been reborn as the trendy ace hotel, with the restaurants Kenny & Zuke’s Delicatessen and clyde common in spaces that also were gay bars. In between, there’s an outpost of Portland’s iconic 1 Stumptown Coffee Roasters, the perfect spot for fueling up before a West End tour. Baristas make lattes with perfect palm-frond patterns in the steamed milk, served in ceramic cups adorned with gold horseshoes and the phrase “good Luck.” The pastry case is perfection, with a sampling of just about everything made by nuvrei Pastries, easily a contender for the best bakery in town. grab a crunchy cookie or a chocolate-filled

walkabout / west end cont.

16 3

croissant, then perch on a stool by the big picture window and watch the dapper foot traffic stroll by. When you’re ready, hit the pavement and head one block south, where you’ll find a building that still bears a large painted mural for the long-defunct Dinihanian & Sons rug merchants but is now home to 2 Vinopolis Wine Shop, with downtown’s largest selection of bottles, with more than 2,000 wines. you’ll find plenty of hard-to-find california and northwest wines. and you’ll also find great deals on deeply discounted cases — prices are so crazy they call their specials “a case of Vinsanity” — all with clever tasting notes. Extraordinary wine shouldn’t be served in humdrum glassware, so head a few blocks southwest to the intersection of Southwest alder for contact information, see shop, Page 60

Street and 12th avenue and the gorgeous housewares shop 3 Canoe, where you can find greenish-gray canada Wine glasses, which were designed in midcentury Denmark to evoke the beautiful curves found in nature. If your style’s more geometric, there are deeply angular Essence White Wine glasses, with long, thin stems and not a whiff of retro-kitsch. heading farther south you cross the light-rail tracks and enter an unofficial Little India. The venerable India house at 11th and Morrison anchors a stretch of international restaurants with flavors from Mexico and the Middle East creating a lunchtime melting pot. nearby, on a surface parking lot at 12th and alder, you’ll find warring Indian food trucks with surprisingly similar names — India chaat house and Bombay chaat house — and

menus. a bitter divorce is the root of the side-by-side vegetarian businesses, with one wagon bearing the ironic sign “This is not a food cart. It’s where food is made with love.” If you want spite, you’ll have to order it on the side. for a less-acrimonious meal, head to 4 East India Co. Grill & Bar, a dining room that’s so smartly appointed you’d never guess it was once the home to the Bike gallery. at lunchtime, there’s a four-course feast for $15.95 that includes pakoras, grilled fish or tandoori lamb chops, a special curry and desserts like mango cheesecake or chai pots de crème. More international (and less expensive) lunch options can be found farther south in the West End on Southwest jefferson between 12th and 13th avenues. The blocklong building that once housed the

Western culinary Institute before its 2003 move into the galleria now is home to an interesting mix of tiny spots serving american, Italian, Mexican and asian fare. one of the best is 5 Chef Naoko Bento Cafe, a japanese spot with seating for about a dozen diners, who pack the place for pristine grilled fish and teriyaki chicken. The food here is clean and understated, with the ingredients doing their own talking with simple preparations that emphasize direct flavors. The strip’s latest arrival, 6 Thai Chili Jam, takes the opposite approach, with its spicy panang and red curry sauces that can turn everything from pumpkins to prawns into symphonies of fire. heading back north, there are two final West End stops that are absolute musts. first, drop into the

SW. BuRNSIdE ST.

alongside germanic schnitzels, spätzle and homemade bratwurst. Don’t miss his tarte flambé, a classic alsatian “pizza” topped with crème fraîche, chives, smoked bacon and caramelized onions … a starter that’s perfect for sharing over a glass of — what else? — grüner Veltliner, made from an austrian grape that dates to the roman Empire. It’s a fitting end to a day on the West End — enjoying a wine with history, in a part of town where history is being made. £

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newest hot spot, 8 Grüner, which opened at 12th and alder at the very end of 2009, chef christopher Israel offers his take on alpineEuropean cuisine, and it’s the latest testament to his range in the kitchen. In the 1990s, Israel created incredible Italian dishes at legendary Zefiro. Then he switched gears, guiding the pan-asian flavors of Zefiro’s sister restaurant, Saucebox. just to prove that there’s nothing he can’t cook, Israel incorporated Eastern European and austrian flavors into the menu when he was the initial chef at northwest’s 23hoyt, which during his tenure was one of the city’s very best restaurants. now some of the robust dishes that were Israel signatures at 23hoyt — most notably hungarian braised beef short ribs — stand

glorious chocolate shop 7 Cacao. This boutique just off of Burnside Street on Southwest 13th is filled with the best chocolate bars, truffles and caramels from around the world. confused by all the options? The staff will ask you what sort of chocolate you like and steer you toward something to suit. Before leaving, you must experience the drinking chocolate — intense little shots of thick molten chocolate that range from cinnamon-milk chocolate to dark chocolate spiked with smoked paprika, ginger and cayenne, with a touch of coconut milk to soften things a bit. you can sample several in $2 shots or opt for a small cup for $4. you’ll never go back to Swiss Miss again. But you will want to discover Swiss chris. at the West End’s

ST.

SouS vide Smack-down

Why are chefs — and some geeky home cooks — so enthralled with cooking in a plastic bag? What’s wrong with a good old-fashioned pot? Writer and self-described “sous vide nerd” Hank Sawtelle (at left) isn’t afraid to have a taste-off against French-trained cook Louisa Neumann. By HaNk SaWteLLe Photography by Lee emmert

Some of the most delicious food in the world

is being cooked inside a sealed plastic bag. at least that’s my opinion, but I’m part of a small but growing breed of enthusiast: the sous vide nerd. With sous vide (pronounced sue VeeD; French for “under vacuum”), chefs can cook sealed food in electronically controlled water baths at relatively low temperatures, often for a long time … as in cooking something for days. the outcome: texture and flavor that can’t be achieved with traditional methods. In the right hands, the result is enchanting, such as a tough chuck roast that takes on the buttery texture of medium-rare tenderloin. It’s almost like magic. But not everyone is a fan. too trendy, too clinical, say the traditionalists. and too many plastic bags, temperature probes and blinking lights. What’s wrong with making duck confit the old-fashioned way? that’s what mIX editor martha Holmberg asked, anyway, when I confessed to my own obsession with sous vide. Yeah, tender short ribs after three days in a circulator at 140 degrees sound great, but how about a Dutch oven and a rainy afternoon, she asked? It seemed a smack-down was in order. But before we ask you readers to take sides, I think you need to learn a bit more about sous vide … and about me. If there’s a way to do something — anything — with a gadget, I’m on board. Why limit myself to a toothbrush when I can use an electronic sonic tooth cleaning system? You get the idea. So when an early midlife crisis led me to culinary school and an apprenticeship in chef Wylie Dufresne’s high-tech kitchen at wd-50 in New York, I got hooked. Between peeling crates of onions and mincing shallots in the muggy basement prep kitchen, I filled my notebook with sous vide cooking times and temperatures for various foods. Developed in France in the 1970s

HaNk SaWteLLe’S SOUS VIDe SLOW-COOkeD CHIPOtLe SHOrt rIBS aND SOUS VIDe GarLIC-CHIVe POtatOeS as a way to reduce moisture loss and improve quality in large-scale food production (such as remote catering), the sous vide method caught on with european restaurant chefs. In the past decade, a growing number of american chefs have gotten on board as well, most notably thomas keller of the French Laundry and Per Se, who wrote the sous vide cookbook “Under Pressure.” Like kids with new toys, many chefs played with them too much at first, cooking everything sous vide that would fit into a water bath and dropping gleeful references into their menus. It seems every episode of “top Chef” includes a sous vide attempt, with varying levels of success. But sous vide cooking is finding

a comfort zone in american restaurant kitchens, including in Portland. recently at ten01, one of two immersion circulators could be seen in the open kitchen during dinner service, with delicate fish dishes being cooked sous vide to order. another circulator in the back worked overtime on tougher proteins. Former ten01 chef Benjamin Parks explains: “I like the way ingredients penetrate the meat over time with sous vide. For example, a little bit of fresh horseradish juice in the bag gives every slice of roast beef a clean, tart flavor.” David Siegel, chef/owner at Belly timber, has tried, and ultimately rejected, sous vide cooking in a number of traditional dishes. He always ended up preferring the traditional version. But he does

use the sous vide method to transform tough pork shoulder into tender but flavorful “chops,” a feat that can’t be accomplished by braising. “rather than pitting science against tradition, I prefer to marry the two,” he says. So as the infatuation dies down, chefs are applying the technique when it makes sense and not advertising it unless curious diners ask. If the food tastes great, who cares how it was cooked? Well, the health department sort of cares. Sous vide cooking requires some unique food-safety precautions, and the novelty of it has put health departments in unfamiliar territory. Vacuum-sealing food creates a potentially perfect environment for botulism-toxin-generating bacteria, which thrive in the

So now, to the smack-down

In the sous vide corner — me, obviously. In the traditional, nostalgia-laden, Dutch-oven-hugging corner — my friend, Portland caterer and cooking instructor Louisa Neumann. Louisa’s a great cook, and she literally didn’t know how to spell “sous vide” before my challenge, so she’s a worthy opponent.

The ground rules: We each cook beef short ribs and Yukon Gold potatoes; we limit ourselves to a shortlist of other ingredients and seasonings. I wanted to fairly evaluate the differences in the techniques, not find out who could add more truffles or foie gras to the plate.

LOUISa NeUmaNN’S BraISeD CHIPOtLe BeeF SHOrt rIBS aND POtatO aLIGOt absence of oxygen at certain temperatures. this might be great news for botox-injection clinics, but not for restaurants. this means cooking temperatures must be sufficiently high. but, equally important, cooked foods that are not served immediately must be rapidly chilled. after wd-50, I returned to Portland determined to figure out sous vide cooking at home, but I faced two profound obstacles: 1) the high price of the equipment, and 2) convincing my wife to let me bring it into the kitchen. at $3,000 for a professional vacuum sealer and $1,000 for a precision water-temperature controller (called an “immersion circulator”), restaurant-grade equipment was out of the question. So I dusted off an old Foodsaver home vacuum sealer

and searched the Web for advice on building my own temperature controller. (and if you still think sous vide is just for the fringe element, Google it: at last count, the term “sous vide” got 2,640,000 results.) It turned out there was a company making affordable controllers for home sous vide geeks. I bought one for $130 and combined it with an electric hot plate and a small stockpot as a cooking vessel. the controller has a probe to measure the temperature of the cooking water, and a relay to turn the hot plate on or off as necessary to maintain the desired temperature. the pricing issue solved, I turned to appeasing my wife with really good food, such as perfectly fried chicken (precooked sous vide to maintain moisture and avoid any pink

underdone surprises near the bone) and “two-speed duck” — legs cooked well-done and breasts medium-rare, both briefly crisped in a cast-iron skillet before serving. this worked fine for a while, but I eventually outgrew my single sous vide rig. How was I supposed to cook fennel bulbs in bacon fat at 185 degrees for an hour when I had yak short ribs going at 140 degrees for two days? the solution: a crude industrial heating and cooling controller (about $80) coupled to an old rice cooker (free on Freecycle.org), with the whole mess hidden in the garage. I knew I’d reached full-blown obsession when I was sautéing some vegetables in a pan one day and my 4-year-old daughter asked me, “Daddy, why are you cooking that not-sous-vide?”

The TasTers: Hank Sawtelle, the writer, and the sous vide side of this smack-down Louisa Neumann, a Frenchtrained cooking teacher and the Le Creuset-hugging side of this smack-down Martha Holmberg, mIX editor, who also learned to cook in France and occasionally embraces her enameled Dutch oven Ken Rubin, academic director of the art Institute of Portland’s culinary school (and the person who graciously loaned us the space for the smack-down), chef and culinary anthropologist; theoretically, he’s unbiased Lee Emmert, the photographer and a curious eater Tom Gonzales, photo assistant and hungry guy with a good palate The resulTs: It was kinda weird, but we pretty much liked both dishes equally. Hmm, was this smack-down rigged? No, honestly, it was just that the dishes were distinctively different from each other, but both delightfully edible. to say which one we like best would be like asking which is better, chocolate ice cream or chocolate cake?

Hank: If it’s rainy and cold outside, I’ll want the braise. But the sous vide short ribs are tender and beefy — like filet mignon, only in its wildest dreams. Louisa: Hank’s short ribs were really impressive. But sous vide is cooking at arm’s length — the cook doesn’t seem necessary since there’s no browning, deglazing, sauce-building. It’s also much less of a sensory experience; no sizzling, bubbling, wafting aromas. “Cooking” without those things should go by another name! Hundreds of years of French culinary tradition is good enough for me. Martha: the color of the sous vide ribs is exquisite, and the texture is like steak — how is that possible with gnarly ol’ short ribs? I’m finding that I’m devouring as much of this aligot and braise as I can, however. But hey, try a combo bite: put some braising sauce on a bite of sous vide beef — that’s killer. Lee: In her potatoes, the gruyère is great. the texture is like glue. Which sounds bad, but I’m a glue-eater. Tom: the presentation of the sous vide potatoes was mysterious and not at all natural, but that made eating them better. the braised beef melts as you eat it. It tastes like mom’s food. the sous vide beef tastes and feels like it came fresh off the stove, and the chili kick is great. Ken: We don’t have a language to describe sous vide food, because we don’t have an emotional attachment to it yet. It’s delicious, but you don’t wake up in the middle of the night and crave it. But we’ll develop that. Hank: my daughter craves it.

So is it really about the gadgets, or is sous vide a better way to cook? 22

at wd-50 I learned that the advantage of sous vide is temperature control. With a technique such as roasting, when you want to cook meat to 130 degrees, you subject it to much-higher temperatures (say a 350-degree oven), and try to guess when to remove it from the heat (allowing for carryover cooking, of course). If you’re lucky and/or good, most of the roast will be near the target temperature at serving time. With sous vide, the entire roast is brought to precisely 130 degrees, with no guessing. Before serving, the meat can be pan-seared for an attractive appearance and exterior texture. temperature and time can be manipulated to play more interesting tricks. For example, using sous vide, you can prepare short ribs (which are usually a tough cut that requires braising) so they are medium-rare and as tender as filet mignon by cooking them for a long time (up to several days) at a lower temperature until the connective tissue yields, but the meat remains pink and firm. this is sous vide cooking at its best — transforming food in a way that isn’t possible with other techniques. But it’s not a magic wand. as thomas keller explains in “Under Pressure”: “the degree of precision sous vide allows is extraordinary, but you still have to know how to cook.”

SOUS VIDe Or . . .

Sous Vide Slow-Cooked Chipotle Short ribs

Sous Vide GarlicChive Potatoes

SerVeS 4

For the ribs:

For the garlic/chive butter:

3 pounds beef short ribs, bones and thick silverskin removed

2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

1 tablespoon kosher salt

½ pound unsalted butter, clarified

1 tablespoon ground chipotle chile

1 bunch chives (about 1 ounce), a few reserved for garnish

1 teaspoon garlic powder

For the potatoes:

1 teaspoon onion powder ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

4 medium-to-large Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into ¾- to 1-inch dice

¼ cup rendered bacon fat, warm

2 tablespoons kosher salt

For the sauce:

For the cheese crisps:

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

4 ounces gruyère and or cantal cheese, shredded

¼ onion, roughly diced 2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped ½ canned chipotle chile in adobo sauce, seeded and roughly chopped ½ teaspoon whole cumin seed 1 cup beef demi-glace (or 2 cups rich beef stock reduced by half) ¼ cup tomato paste 1 bay leaf Set up a water bath at 131 degrees. Sprinkle ribs with salt, chipotle, garlic powder, onion powder and pepper. Add to 1 to 2 cooking bags in an even layer. Add bacon fat and vacuum seal bags. Cook at 131 degrees for at least 12 and up to 24 hours. For the sauce, heat the vegetable oil over mediumlow heat in a small saucepan; add the onion and garlic and cook until soft and translucent, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the chipotle, cumin, demi-glace, tomato paste and bay leaf. Simmer, covered, for 10 minutes on low heat. Strain through a fine mesh strainer. To serve, remove ribs from bags. Sear outer surfaces briefly in a cast-iron or French steel pan on high heat. Slice each rib into 3 to 4 slices and serve warm with sauce. — From Hank Sawtelle

Heat a water bath to 180 degrees. Heat oven to 300 degrees. Heat the garlic in the clarified butter over medium heat in a saucepan until it begins to bubble. Remove from heat and let steep. Purée the chives thoroughly in a food processor. Add to the clarified butter/garlic mixture, mix well and steep for 10 minutes. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve. Sprinkle potatoes with salt and vacuum seal in 1 to 2 bags with most of the garlic/ chive butter (reserve about 2 tablespoons of the butter for serving). Cook at 180 degrees for 2 hours. While potatoes cook, spread cheese on a silicone baking mat and bake on a baking sheet at 300 degrees until crisp, about 20 to 30 minutes. Remove cheese from baking mat and place on a rack to cool. Blot any grease with paper towels. Break cheese crisps into small (1-inch) pieces. If you like, finely slice remaining chives for garnish. Remove potatoes from bag and place briefly on a paper towel to drain. Make a small pile of potato cubes on each plate, and top with reserved garlic-chive butter, cheese crisps, sliced chives and the short ribs. Serve warm. — From Hank Sawtelle

NOt SOUS VIDe

Braised Chipotle Beef Short ribs SerVeS 4

3 pounds beef short ribs, trimmed of fat 1 teaspoon kosher salt ½ teaspoon ground black pepper 2 tablespoons vegetable oil or rendered bacon fat

aligot

(Potato and Cheese Purée) SerVeS 6

2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes (4 to 6 medium), peeled, cut into ½-inch-thick slices, rinsed well and drained Kosher salt 6 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 medium onion, diced

2 medium garlic cloves, minced (about 2 teaspoons)

2 tablespoons chopped garlic

1 to 1½ cups heavy cream or crème fraîche

½ teaspoon ground cumin

8 ounces gruyère, cantal or well-aged sharp cheddar cheese, grated (about 2 cups)

½ to 1 cup beef stock, plus more to thin the sauce 1 (14-ounce) can diced tomatoes ½ canned chipotle chile in adobo sauce, seeded and finely chopped 1 bay leaf Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Pat short ribs dry with a paper towel and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Heat a large Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed, ovenproof pan over medium-high heat and add the vegetable oil. When oil is shimmering, add the short ribs, in batches if necessary, and brown on all sides, about 8 minutes total. Transfer the ribs to a plate and set aside. Reduce heat to medium. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of the fat in the pan. Add the onions and cook gently until softened but not brown, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and the cumin and cook until fragrant, less than 1 minute. Deglaze the pan with the beef stock, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom. Add the tomatoes, chipotle and bay leaf. Bring liquid to a boil. Return short ribs to the pan and cover tightly. Transfer from the stovetop to the oven. Cook covered, stirring every 30 minutes, until the meat is tender and pulling away from the bone. If the cooking liquid is evaporating too rapidly, add some beef stock to thin it. Total cooking time will be 1½ to 2 hours. When ribs are cooked, transfer them to a serving dish. If necessary, return the pan to the stove and reduce the liquid to a sauce consistency over high heat. Serve with the sauce over the aligot, or over polenta, mashed potatoes or refried beans. — From Phyllis Petrilli

2 tablespoons milk, or more to loosen potatoes if necessary Ground white pepper Place potatoes in large saucepan; add water to cover by 1 inch and add 1 tablespoon salt, top with a lid and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until potatoes are very tender when pierced with a knife, 15 to 20 minutes. Drain potatoes. Transfer potatoes to food processor; dry the saucepan. To the potatoes in the food processor, add butter, garlic and 1 teaspoon salt. Pulse until butter is melted and incorporated into potatoes, about 10 one-second pulses. Add 1 cup heavy cream and continue to process until potatoes are smooth, about 20 seconds, scraping down sides halfway through. (Note: If you want to prepare aligot ahead, stop at this point, spread the purée back in the saucepan, pour a thin layer of cream on top, and leave the pan in a water bath to keep warm for up to 1 hour.) To finish, return potato mixture to saucepan and set over medium heat. With a wooden spoon, beat the cheese into the purée a handful at a time. Continue beating constantly until the mixture pulls from the sides of the pan and forms long elastic ribbons when it falls from the spoon, 7 to 10 minutes. If it seems dry, add milk 1 tablespoon at time. Add pepper to taste. Serve at once, using scissors to cut the strings of cheese as you serve. (If left to stand, aligot becomes very heavy, so serve right away.) — Adapted from Anne Willan’s “The Country Cooking of France”

Cafe chairs, a real-life French chef, steak-frites — three ingredients that are part of the delicious casual French cooking scene in Portland.

The recipe for the Northwest’s cuisine is written in French

French country cooking was local-seasonal-sustainable long before — like centuries before — Portlanders got the message .

By SeTh LoriNczi Photography by Mike DaviS recipe photography by BeTh NakaMUra

oregonian / 1987 / 1979

SMaLL-PLaTe iTaLiaN? over it. Japanese salary-man bar? Done. eastern europeanthemed cocktails? check. Sooner or later, it seems, we’ll have tasted every cuisine imaginable. We’re all for trendy, but it can get exhausting. and while this ever-changing roster may keep our palates busy, it means that last year’s tastes are kicked

to the curb like last year’s hummingbird tongues. in truth, some trends aren’t destined for glory (hungarian blood-sausage cookery, anyone?), but there’s one that has so shaped our way of eating that, 30 years since it transformed — some say gave birth to — the Northwest’s food scene, it’s practically invisible. We’re talking, of course, about the

^ L’Auberge, 1969-2002 < Le Cuisinier, 1980-88

French lesson

Portland wasn’t always a haven for Francophilic chefs. Not that long ago, French food in Portland was mostly limited to “fine dining” establishments serving stuffy and unseasonal food to intimidated diners. Lest you long for the good old days, here’s a glance at the way French dining in Portland used to be. Portlanders, awed chefs and aspir1970s ing winemakers such as ken Wright, French food is typified by stiff, russ raney and John Paul. Schaefer, formal — and very expensive — in a radical move, sometimes brings restaurants such as the couch Street in vegetables and herbs from his Fish house, where teams of whiteown garden. receives high praise jacketed servers lift the silver domes covering your table’s entrees in unison. from James Beard himself, in a 1981 eugene register-Guard column a few upstarts, energized by (though Beard, in a bit of gender Julia child’s “Mastering the art confusion, calls the restaurant of French cooking” and the emer“La cuisinier”). gence of modern (that is to say, backward-looking) French restaurants such as chez Panisse, sense the 1980s possibility of a local, French-inspired French food enters the modern age, cuisine based on seasonality and bal- propelled by the popularity of nouance. These include cathy Whims, velle cuisine, a lighter, more seasonal then at Genoa (and now chef-owner cooking style. Portland mainstays at Nostrana), and karl Schaefer, an such as L’omelette and L’auberge eager cooking-school graduate. enjoy long runs and national in 1980, Schaefer opens Le acclaim, but the region has yet to cuisinier at the “dangerous” develop its own food culture. That location of 13th and West Burnwill arrive in the next decade in the side. The tiny restaurant (above) is a form of transplanted French and milestone in the city’s culinary devel- French-trained chefs such as vitaly opment, bringing together curious Paley and Philippe Boulot.

hearty, resourceful and gloriously earthbound cooking of regional France. French country cooking, for all its diversity — and all its Frenchness — is deceptively simple: Use the ingredients close at hand. Treat them with care and respect. Make them taste like themselves. in the old days, the French cooked this way because that’s how life was, especially in the pre-industrial era. Food preservation was more than a way to justify that handsome shelf arrayed with canning jars — cooking by the seasons was not something to write in chalk on your blackboard menu, it was a necessity. French cooks followed the calendar to a T, perfecting ways to dry, ferment and otherwise transform perishable food into something that would last through a season — fortunately, it was usually something delicious. Fall’s bounty of apples became cider and calvados, easily stored fuel against a bitter winter. cabbage was saved as sauerkraut, and late summer’s humble dried beans reappeared in glorious coldweather dishes like cassoulet. Milk became aged cheese, and the family’s hog became jambon, rillettes et sauscissons. But as rural life in France became like modern life anywhere, the cuisine progressed from simple subsistence cookery to a powerful, deeply held symbol of identity: I am what I eat. As my food comes from this land, so do I. Luckily for us, France has no monopoly on agricultural bounty. The Willamette valley provides a rich blend of field, forest and vineyard, with the rivers and ocean joining in the feast. over the past couple of decades, a handful of French and French-inspired chefs have noticed that, and in doing so, they not only enriched our city, they created a whole new — or is that old? — style of cooking.

The Pioneer PhiLiPPe BoULoT has a youthful demeanor that suggests he’s still just a farm boy from the village of vimont in Normandy. But looks can deceive. he trained in Paris with Joël robuchon, the most influential post-nouvelle cuisine chef (in other words, a superstar), and then he earned fame cooking in highprofile New York restaurants.

PHILIPPE BOULOT: Perhaps contrary to the image of the snooty guy in a starched white jacket and tall toque, a lot of real French chefs are as at home in field and stream as they are in front of a stove. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all about the best ingredients, which is one reason Boulot moved to Oregon. An avid fisherman, hunter and forager, you could say he begins his mise en place out in the wild.

PASCAL SAUTON: Look at this man and tell us he’s anything but French — while Sauton claims his restaurant, Carafe, isn’t strictly authentic Parisian cooking, his Gallic gesture proves that he’s an authentic Parisian. His rootsy, earthy cooking balances tradition with local ingredients. (But you’ll still feel like you’re in the Marais with one bite of his steak-frites, shown on the opening pages.)

GABRIEL RUCKER: We know he can find it on a map, but you won’t see France stamped anywhere in his passport. Rucker’s never been to France or even been trained in French cooking, but he somehow channels the gutsy, earthbound soul of the French countryside … Gascony in particular, the heart of foie gras country.

Portland, it seems, was something of a sidestep. he had visited Portland with his wife, a native oregonian, and sensed the possibilities: a unique climate and wine culture, coupled with a striking lack of demand for the pretensions of haute cuisine. “i wanted to identify the Northwest, in a culinary sense,” he says now. “of course, others had the same idea: Greg higgins, cory Schrieber, the folks at zefiro, vitaly Paley.” Boulot took command of the kitchen at Portland’s heathman hotel in 1994. There were at first a few raised eyebrows at Boulot’s “New York French,” his love of travel and his unabashed talent for self-promotion (“Not many chefs did that then,” he admits), but it all added up to raising the profile of Northwest cuisine, as did his signature dishes, such as halibut confit à la barrigoule and wild salmon niçoise.

The Traditionalist So if Boulot’s cooking was French food clad in Pacific Northwest Gore-Tex, whatever happened to traditional French cooking, the plain-spoken cuisine of bistros and brasseries? ask that question in Portland, and “go to Pascal” is the response. That would be PaScaL SaUToN, chef-owner of carafe, a tile-floored, red-banquetted, glass-walled bistro that straddles the line between a reproduction of a Parisian cafe and an homage to one. “We ‘aged’ the restaurant,” said Sauton. “We poured coffee on the floor, put a few rips in the banquettes.” But while the restaurant looks the part, Sauton is careful to stress that it’s not a replica. “We are traditional, but we are not authentic,” the Paris-born chef says, meaning that the food isn’t

constrained to one region: “Parisians steal from everyone!” Sauton may say his food isn’t authentically French, but there’ s certainly no sense of inauthenticity in his escargot cloaked in a fierce garlic-andbutter-bath, or the perfectly sumptuous packet of wine-braised oxtail flanked by chanterelles and last-of-the-season corn. everything on the plate exudes a “just so” quality, a practiced ease that’s equal parts skill and reverence.

The Maverick “reverence” isn’t the first word that comes to mind upon meeting the lanky and impressively tattooed chef of Le Pigeon, GaBrieL rUcker. if carafe is the slightly buttoned-down Parisian bistro, Le Pigeon is its punkedout stepchild, with rucker pairing

“I’ve never been to France. I had the Escoffier book, but my cat peed on it the day I got it.”

— GaBrieL rUcker

PhiLiPPe BoULoT:

oil-Poached Salmon With Bay Shrimp, Whipped Potatoes and Snow Peas ServeS 6

Potatoes: 2 pounds russet potatoes (about 4 large potatoes), peeled and cut in half 2 to 3 cloves garlic ½ cup heavy cream ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus 1 tablespoon (divided) kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper 1 cup cooked, peeled bay shrimp, rinsed Salmon: about 6 cups inexpensive olive oil 1 head garlic, cut in half 1 4-inch sprig fresh rosemary 1 4-inch sprig fresh thyme 6 salmon fillets, about 7 ounces each 1 pound snow peas, julienned Make the potatoes: Put the potatoes and garlic cloves in a large pot of salted water and bring to a boil; cook until very tender, about 20 minutes. heat the heavy cream. Drain the potatoes and pass them and the garlic through a food mill; if you don’t have a food mill, use the paddle attachment of a stand mixer or a hand mixer to mash the potatoes and garlic, adding the cream as you mash. continue to mash, adding the ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil a little at a time, incorporating fully after each addition. Taste and season with salt and pepper; fold in the shrimp. keep warm.

Cook the salmon:

braised pork with dates and tongue or, famously, throwing bacon into desserts. “People definitely think we’re French,” he says with a shrug, “but i’ve never been to France. i had the escoffier book (‘Le Guide culinaire,’ one of the sacred texts of French cuisine), but my cat peed on it the day i got it.” But for all rucker’s insouciance, his restaurant is deeply bound to the traditions of French cooking. in rucker’s hands, beef bourguignon becomes a joltingly carnal exploration of the richness, the depth and the history of this historic dish. From the chef ’s impressive technique and control of his ingredients to the very name of the place, Le

Pigeon is a deeply Francophilic endeavor. “our wine list is totally French,” rucker admits. Totally French indeed. Whether expressed through a pristine piece of chinook, a soulful braise of chicken or a weird and wonderful frenzy of pork in all its forms, the principle is the same: we eat the food from our local farms and oceans, ingredients are what really make the dish, and those ingredients nourish a longing deeper than just a craving for the next “it” food. The French have known this all along, and happily, now we do, too. and so we embroider on our recycled organic hemp throw pillow: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Pour the olive oil into a saucepan and add the garlic, rosemary and thyme. heat the oil to 180 degrees (check with an instant-read thermometer). Gently place the salmon fillets in a large skillet and strain the warm olive oil (to remove the herbs and garlic) over the fish. add more plain olive oil to cover, if necessary. Poach salmon in the oil over medium-low (keep the oil at 180 degrees) until just barely pink in the center, about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, heat a small sauté pan over high heat, add the remaining tablespoon of extravirgin olive oil. When the pan is hot, sauté the snow peas until just crisp-tender; season with salt and pepper to taste. Put a nice mound of the potatoes in the center of each plate. Put the salmon on top and garnish with a handful of snow peas; serve immediately.

PaScaL SaUToN

Poulet cocotte Grand-Mère ServeS 4

16 smallish cippolini onions or 1 pound pearl onions 1 medium free-range chicken cut into 8 pieces kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper about 1 cup flour ¼ cup vegetable oil ¼ pound smoked bacon, diced ½ pound fresh seasonal mushrooms, cut into bite-size pieces if large 1 cup pinot noir or other medium-bodied red wine ½ cup canned peeled or crushed tomatoes 2 tablespoons butter 2 cups homemade or low-sodium canned chicken broth 1½ tablespoons flour ¼ cup water Bring a small pot of salted water to a boil. add the onions to the boiling water and simmer gently for 10 minutes; drain. When cool enough to handle, peel the onions, using a paring knife to help. Season the chicken pieces well with salt and pepper and dredge lightly in flour (you should end up with some left over; discard it). heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. cook the drained and peeled onions until they’re nicely browned, about 7 minutes, stirring once or twice, then transfer to a plate or bowl. carefully place the chicken in the skillet and sear it on all sides until lightly browned (you may have to do this in two batches if the skillet isn’t large enough to hold all the chicken pieces at once). Transfer the chicken to a bowl or plate.

W W W. B A B E T T E S F. C O M

2 0 8 N. W. 1 3 T H A V E N U E , P O R T L A N D

heat a Dutch oven or deep sauté pan that’s large enough to hold all the chicken over medium-high heat (if using the skillet from earlier, wipe out any burned flour). add the bacon and sauté until crisp, stirring from time to time to prevent burning. add the mushrooms and cook for a few minutes until they are shiny and lightly browned. add the wine, reduce by half (about 5 minutes), then add the tomatoes, crushing them with the back of a spoon, the butter and the chicken broth. raise the heat and bring to a boil. add the chicken pieces and cover; adjust the heat to a nice simmer. cook on very low heat until the chicken is completely tender when you poke it with a knife in a few places, 30 to 45 minutes. Let sit for about 10 minutes, then transfer the chicken, bacon, mushrooms and onions to a serving platter and keep warm; skim off any fat from the sauce. Bring the sauce to a boil; whisk together the flour and water until you have a smooth paste, then whisk it into the pan sauce, a little at a time. reduce heat to a simmer and cool until the sauce is nicely thickened and the floury taste is cooked out, 3 to 4 minutes. Just before serving, carefully skim off the layer of fat on the top of the casserole. Taste and add salt or pepper if needed, then pour over the chicken. Serve with egg noodles, mashed potatoes or polenta.

GaBrieL rUcker

chanterelle Mushroom Soup and Foie Gras candy cap Jam Sandwich ServeS 6

Soup: 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter 1 yellow onion, sliced 3 cloves garlic, minced 1 tablespoon chopped fresh sage 2 pounds cleaned chanterelle mushrooms 1 cup cream sherry 3 cups homemade or low-sodium chicken broth 1 small parsnip, peeled and chopped 3 tablespoons maple syrup 2 teaspoons kosher salt, or to taste Mushroom jam: 2 ounces dried candy cap or porcini mushrooms 1 shallot, sliced 1 clove garlic ½ cup cream sherry 1½ cups water ¼ cup (½ stick) unsalted butter 1½ tablespoons brown sugar 1 tablespoon maple syrup Foie gras sandwiches: 6 slices foie gras au torchon, about 6 ounces (available at chop Butchery & charcuterie and Pastaworks; call for availability) 12 slices white sandwich bread cut into twelve 3-inch circles (with a biscuit cutter; freeze the rest for bread crumbs) 6 tablespoons melted butter Make the soup: Put the butter, onion, garlic and sage in a large, heavy-based pot. add the chanterelles and cook over medium heat until the mushrooms have released their liquid, about 10 minutes. add the sherry and cook on high heat to concentrate, about 5 minutes. add the chicken broth and bring to a boil. add the parsnip, cover, and reduce to a simmer. Simmer slowly for one hour. remove from the heat, let cool 20 minutes, and then purée in blender. add the maple syrup and then season with salt. Make the jam: Put the dried mushrooms, shallot, garlic, sherry, water, butter, brown sugar and maple syrup in a medium stainless steel pot. cook over low heat until all liquid has evaporated, taking care that you don’t let anything burn. Purée in a food processor. To make the sandwiches and serve: heat the soup and divide into 6 portions (unlike in the picture, cappuccino cups are a good size for serving because the soup is intense). Place one slice of foie gras au torchon on each of the six bread rounds; add one teaspoon of mushroom jam and top with another bread round. Brush the bread with the melted butter and sauté in a hot skillet on both sides until golden brown and the foie gras is starting to soften, but not melt too much. Place sandwich with soup and serve.

Oregon wines,with a French twist Some of the best wines coming out of Oregon soil are made by winemakers with roots in the terroir of the Old World. And the winemakers just happen to be women. By jIM GullO IlluSTRATIONS By MOlly NORRIS

ut alors, what’s the deal? The word for wine may be masculine in French — le vin — but there’s an awful lot of feminine winemaking going on in Oregon. Several talented French women now call Oregon chez moi, thanks to our ability to grow world-class pinot noir grapes and the connections that have been made between the Willamette Valley and Burgundy. Some pull off bicontinental careers commuting between dual winemaking jobs in France and wineries in Dundee and the Columbia River Gorge; others have made Oregon their homes and are raising families here as they oversee Franco-American joint ventures or run their own wineries. But no dilettantes in this group: les femmes get down and dirty in the vineyards, and then are up to their elbows in tanks and barrels as they collectively bring great Old World techniques to our very new wine industry. We air-kiss them on both cheeks and say Bienvenues en Oregon.

The Prodigy Alexandrine Roy, 29, Phelps Creek Vineyards

“I really make wine with my soul,” said Alexandrine Roy. It was the week before Christmas and she had stopped off in Oregon from her native Gevrey-Chambertin in Burgundy on the way to a Hawaiian vacation. Good thing, too: Her precious six barrels of estate-grown pinot noir that would become her third vintage of Cuvée Alexandrine pinot noir were still in a stainless-steel holding tank, awaiting barreling. She tasted the fermented juice with Rich Cushman, who oversees the rest of Phelps Creek’s wines, and made a decision: less new oak and more 2-year-old barrels. “I’m looking mostly for balance,” she explained. “I cherish the deepness, which really expresses the terroir. The keys are balance, purity and finesse.” In France, Roy makes wine with her father at Domaine Marc Roy, begun by her greatgrandfather Victor Roy and which now produces some 20,000 bottles from grapes that fall just below Grand and Premier Cru designations. She began working the crush there when she was 15. She first came to Oregon in 2004 to attend the International Pinot Noir Conference, and three years later met Bob Morus, the owner of Phelps Creek Vineyards, who offered her a consultancy on the spot. “He fell in love with my wines,” she said. Her pinot noir has become the highest-rated bottle at the winery, and a pinot noir rosé that she produced last year was given the name “Fleur de Roy” and was a hit. At home she rides motorcycles and is hailed as a new generation of Burgundian winemaker, but here it’s all work and no bikes. “I come for the harvest and two or three more times during the year, but I have nobody to ride with here,” she said. Winemaking, she added, is all the fun she needs in Hood River. “It’s really magical, and I never get tired of it.”

The Canadienne

Isabelle Meunier, 36, Evening Land

The Beaujolais Nouvelle Delphine Gladhart, 34, Winter’s Hill Vineyards

Talk about the mysterious alchemy of wine: A childhood boarding school in Beaujolais, a chance job at the lemelson Winery in Carlton right after the 9/11 attacks, and the elusive chemistry of amour all conspired to bring Delphine née Risso Gladhart to little Dundee, where she is the winemaker of family-run Winter’s Hill Vineyard. “I was a city girl,” she says with a smile from the chilly, concrete-floor office and lab of the winery, where she oversees the production of some 2,500 cases of pinot noir and another thousand of pinot gris and rosé. She was born in lyons but attended a boarding school in Beaujolais as a teenager. There, she had her first introduction to wine, working the vendange (harvest) and having a ball. “It was just nice,” she said. “Boarding with the winemakers, snacks in the vineyards, a big celebration when the grapes were picked. I just loved it.” She studied laboratory science, but wine kept calling, and in 2001, a friend offered a short-term job in the Willamette Valley. “If I don’t do it now, I never will,” she recalls thinking. “It was my first time in the States.” She arrived here three days after the 9/11 attacks and took a cab all the way from PDX to Carlton. There she met Russell Gladhart, whose parents, Peter and Emily, had inherited a family estate in Dundee, just down the road from Domaine Serene, that had once been a turkey farm. Fast-forward eight years, past wine jobs for Russell and Delphine in New Zealand, a season spent back in France to work a Nuits St. Georges crush (and meet her family), marriage and the birth of daughter Orianne, who is now 2½, and planting a vineyard. Now, Russell works the tasting room, Delphine makes the wine, the turkey farm provides the grapes and something about her French background supplies a knack for making good wine that has begun to trump her analytical, lab-tech side. “I’ve come to discover that there’s a lot to do with the feeling of it,” she says. “I’m trusting my instincts more.”

French Canadian by birth, she has spent most of her adult life in France before moving to Oregon in 2007 to oversee the Evening land winemaking for Burgundian star vintner Dominique lafon. “I was a lover of pinot noir, so it was natural to go to the birthplace of pinot noir because I spoke the language,” she says of her move to Burgundy. “I didn’t even speak English until I was in my 20s.” Now, from her home in Carlton, Isabelle’s commute to Salem passes the Seven Springs Vineyard in the Eola-Amity Hills district that supplies the grapes for Evening land’s rich, earthy, mineral-laden pinot noirs and chardonnays. The vineyard is so prominent to the strategy of the winery that its name dominates the label of the 2007 pinot noir, which cracked Wine Spectator’s top-100 list and has established Evening land as a rising star. Their ultra-premium Summum wine, whose 75-case output was priced at $150 a bottle, was snapped up and sold out in a month to oenophiles and investors when it was released last April. “The goal is to be definitely more estate-driven,” she said. “We’re working with one of the best vineyards on the West Coast. We strive for lots of delicacy; we don’t want huge wines, but we want complex wines that will go well with food.” Besides working in Burgundy, Isabelle has made wine in New Zealand and in her native Canada on a pinot noir project in Ontario, but Oregon now feels like home. She and husband Andrew Davis, a winemaker at Argyle, are expecting their first child this spring. 37

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The Equestriennes Véronique Drouhin-Boss, 47, Domaine Drouhin Oregon, and Isabelle Dutartre, 48, DePonte Cellars/1789 Wines “We met in a horse-jumping competition; I didn’t know that her father was my boss,” said Isabelle Dutartre of meeting Véronique Drouhin-Boss for the first time, 26 years ago in Burgundy. The two women became fast friends, and their adult lives and careers have intersected over wine ever since, all the way from Beaune to Dundee. “Isabelle is one of my oldest and best friends,” said Véronique. “We worked together for 10 years and had our kids at roughly the same time. I see her more now than when she was in the south of France.” Véronique splits her time between her Burgundian home, where she is co-winemaker at Maison joseph Drouhin, the influential producer of many Grand and Premier Crus Burgundies and Chablis that was established by her great-grandfather and remains family owned and operated, and Oregon, where she is head winemaker at Dundee’s Domaine Drouhin Oregon. Her three teenage children, Arthur, laurène and louise, supplied the names for DDO’s top pinot noirs and chardonnay. Isabelle, who began working at MjD as a 21-year-old intern, followed Véronique to Oregon in 1989; worked side by side with her in Oregon and Beaune for many years; and, after a stint of making wine barrels in the south of France, became the head winemaker at DePonte Cellars, just down the street from DDO, in 2001. This year she bottled her first vintage of her own

— 1789 Wines, a label that wryly reflects her own personal revolution, when, as a single mother of three, she relocated her family from France (“Even the dog!”) to McMinnville. Her ’07 pinot noir sourced from Chehalem Valley fruit is soft and elegant, displaying a technique for subtlety and finesse that runs through both women’s wines. “It’s like my fourth child,” said Isabelle about the new brand. “It’s the first time I’ve done the whole process from start to finish, including the labeling and marketing.” Both women were inspired and owe debts of gratitude to laurence jobard, a woman who was named winemaker at MjD in 1976 and held the position for 30 years before retiring. “She was like a second mother to me,” said Isabelle. “She taught me everything I know.” The style they inherited is strong on coaxing flavors and terroir elements out of the grapes, light on delivering big alcohol and barrel characteristics in their wines. “Our style is not too much extraction,” said Véronique when she was in Dundee overseeing the 2009 crush. “We’re going for finesse.” The horses have gone (“For 20 years, I had my horse,” sighs Isabelle), but the friendship remains. When we met with Isabelle in December, she was excited to be heading off to New york for a girls’ weekend with Véronique. “I can’t wait! ” said Isabelle. “It will be my first time there!” She laughed and poured another glass of her 1789 pinot noir. “The friendships that you make when you’re younger are different,” she said. “More special.”

The Honorable Mention Remy Drabkin, 28, Remy Wines

look, it’s not Remy’s fault that everyone thinks she’s French, even though she was born and raised in McMinnville and her excellent Remy Wines — which are beginning to make “Best Wines in the Northwest” lists — are made from varietals such as sangiovese, syrah and lagrein. She got her Gallic surname from greatgrandfather Remi, who was Belgian, and even though she tried to attend wine school in Beaune when she was 17, it didn’t work out. “My French wasn’t good enough,” she says. “I left after four months.” Still, Remy’s passion for wine is as deep as any Frenchwoman’s. “When I was 7 years old, I said I wanted to be a winemaker,” she recalls. “I worked my first harvest at 13.” She learned her skills not in Dijon but in Pittsburgh, where she worked in an Italian neighborhood where everyone made their own wine in the basement. Returning to Oregon, she launched Remy Wines in 2006 and has not looked back. “I love what I do,” she said. “It’s a tremendous amount of fun. I don’t mind being cold, wet, dirty, and clean up a lot.” £

Here’s the way to

soufﬂé An icon of lA cuisine frAnçAise, A soufflé is ActuAlly AmAzingly eAsy to mAke but will nonetHeless mAke you feel like A genius

by mArtHA Holmberg Photography by mike dAvis

How wonderful that one of the most impressive dishes in the french repertoire can be thrown together using ingredients you probably have in your kitchen right this minute. Soufflé au fromage — as in “cheese soufﬂé” — is so delicious and, if you pay attention to just a few details, really easy to whip up … literally. the method shown here is the basis for most savory soufﬂés, so get good at this one, then start riffing on your own variations. the full recipe is at the end of this piece; the photos are the significant moments.

you don’t need a real soufﬂé dish, but you do need a straight-sided, roundish baking dish. brush the inside with melted butter.

your soufﬂé base is a béchamel sauce: you whisk melted butter and ﬂour together, cook it a bit (that's called a roux), whisk in milk until smooth, then simmer till lovely and creamy.

we’re making cheese soufﬂé, so use assertive cheese and lots of it. but let it melt over very low heat.

soufﬂés use separated eggs — the yolks are stirred in to enrich the béchamel, and the whites …

… get whipped until they’re voluptuous and billowy, but still softish, so they droop when you lift the whisk.

Here’s the trick: first fold only some of the whites into the liquidy cheese sauce, to make it lighter, thicker and easier to …

… fold into the rest of the whites. now you can gradually, delicately fold the lightened sauce back into the main batch of whites, and then pour into your soufﬂé dish.

simply cheese soufﬂé Makes 4 to 6 servings

this soufflé is quite cheesy but also highrising, by virtue of an extra egg white. if by some miracle you have leftovers, cold cheese soufflé and a few spoonfuls of salsa make a great breakfast. you can make the base a day ahead and refrigerate it, but don’t add the yolks. Just reheat it gently to loosen it before whisking them in. unsalted butter to grease soufflé molds, plus 3 tablespoons 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour 1½ cups milk ½ teaspoon kosher salt ⁄8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Pinch cayenne pepper Pinch freshly grated or ground nutmeg 1½ cups lightly packed grated extra-sharp aged cheddar (6 ounces) ¼ cup finely grated fresh Parmigianoreggiano 6 egg yolks 7 egg whites

Heat the oven to 375 degrees. generously butter the bottom and sides of an 8-cup soufﬂé mold (or use two 4-cup molds, as we did in the photos). in a medium saucepan, melt the 3 tablespoons butter over medium heat, add the ﬂour and whisk until smooth. Pour in the milk, whisking constantly, and whisk until completely smooth (if you do get lumps that won’t go away, you can put the sauce through a fine-mesh strainer). bring the sauce to a very gentle boil and cook, whisking frequently, for 2 to 3 minutes; it should be quite thick at this point. Add the salt, pepper, cayenne and nutmeg, then turn the heat to low and add the cheeses. whisk until completely melted. taste the sauce for seasoning — it should be very highly seasoned and very cheesy to stand up to the bland eggs. stir the egg yolks into the sauce until blended and set aside. in a large bowl, whip the egg whites, slowly at first until they’re

quite foamy, and then increase the speed (make sure the bowl is totally grease-free; use a whisk or an electric mixer) . whip until they are thick and pillowy, and until definite — though still soft and droopy — peaks form. Put a big scoop of whites into the cheese sauce and carefully fold the two together. continue adding whites and folding them into the sauce, scooping from the bottom of the pan and just gently rolling the mixtures together to preserve as much volume as possible, until all

the whites are added. don’t worry about blending every last streak of white. gently pour the soufflé batter into the buttered mold and put it in the heated oven. cook until the soufflé is very high, deep golden brown on the top and still shakes but doesn’t seem liquidy inside, 22 to 30 minutes. you can double-check by inserting a thin-bladed knife into the center of the soufflé. show off the towering beauty and then let it cool slightly (it will deflate) before scooping and serving. £

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selects/value burgundy

[ A decent price buys you a decent wine . . . but not more than that ]

e all do it: We grumble about the price of pinot noir. How is it that $20 buys you a bottle that’s merely quaffable? Why must a good local pinot cost between $30 and $45 these days, and the top stuff be priced at $60 and up? Sure, we’ve heard the excuses: Pinot noir is difficult to grow and susceptible to disease. It’s delicate and must be handled with kid gloves. It has to be pruned back to produce lower yields in order to make fine wine. And so on. But these, we thought, surely must be New World problems. The Burgundians, who have been growing pinot noir in the same plots for centuries, aren’t paying off bank loans on overpriced vineyard purchases and new winery construction. They’ve been doing this for long enough that they must be able to make wine in their sleep. So while Burgundy is where we turn for take-our-breath-away pinot noir, this region should also be the source for weeknight wine as well. Right?

By KATHeRINe Cole PHoTogRAPHy By BeTH NAKAmuRA

CHANGING OUR TUNE Alas, when we recently gathered up 25 red wines in the $15 to $30 price spectrum, we learned that this is not a sweet spot for Burgundy. With one exception, the entries ranging from $15 to the low $20s curled our toes. Astringent with green tannins, they tasted as though they were made from pressed juice, or that last bit of liquid that’s extracted from the pomace at the bottom of the tank, tasting of bitter skins, stems and seeds. once we emerged from these unpleasant depths, we found the remainder of our selection to be, in martha Holmberg’s words, “homogenous.” In fact, they were so boringly similar that we had trouble getting excited about any one of them. “The appellation system in France really makes sense,” mimi martin pointed out. “If you buy a Bourgogne rouge, you know exactly what you are going to get.”

SERVE IT with STELLA WILD BOAR NUGGETS

selects /value burgundy cont.

B Y C HRIS C ARRIKER , E XECUTIVE C HEF, THE G ILT C LUB, P ORTLAND 1 lb pancetta, diced 4 lb wild boar shoulder, cubed 2 T ground coriander 2 T juniper berries, crushed Kosher salt and black pepper 6 cloves garlic 1 large yellow onion, chopped ½ lb shallots, julienned Zest and juice of one orange 1 cup red wine 2 qts pork stock Vegetable oil for frying 5 cups all purpose flour A few eggs whisked w/water and salt 5 cups finely ground bread crumbs

Brown pancetta in a large heavy pot on medium, about 10 min. Reserve, leaving fat in the pot. Toss boar with coriander, juniper, salt and pepper to taste, then add to pot and brown well; remove. Add garlic, onion, shallots and cook until soft and richly browned. Add orange juice, zest and wine, simmer until reduced by half. Add pancetta and boar back to pan, pour in stock and add water to just cover meat. Cover the pan, simmer until fork tender, about 2 hours. Strain, then pulse the meat and vegetables in a food processor. Taste and season with salt and pepper. Spread mixture in a pan in a thick layer, cover with plastic wrap and place another pan on top; put some weight on the pan to compact the layer of meat. Refrigerate overnight. Heat vegetable oil in a large pot or deep-fryer to 350°F. Scoop the meat into small balls, then roll in flour, dip in beaten egg, then roll in crumbs. Deep-fry until evenly browned on the outside and heated through. Drain on paper towels and salt once more. Serve right away.

STELLA

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But for $30, we would rather be surprised than placated. Which is why the 2006 François gay et Fils ladoix caught our attention. Sourced from a littleknown appellation just steps from the glamorous grand cru appellation of Corton, this wine had character; it changed dramatically as it sat in the glass. We also found one basic Joseph Drouhin that pleased our palates for closer to $20. All told, we selected three winning wines, then ran out of things to say. For our group, this marked an all-time low: usually we settle upon four to six winners and get caught up in lengthy, animated discussions about how much we love each one. Sigh. YES, BUT … Now, to be fair, pinot noir is the most fickle and changeable grape in the Vitis vinifera kingdom. We realize that the very premise of our blind tastings for mIX — sniffing and spitting over a short time period — doesn’t do any wine justice, let alone pinot, which can taste different depending on the day that you pop the cork on the bottle. That said, we tasted 25 wines. The chances of all but three of them being “closed,” or temporarily off their game, are statistically impossible. even if you’re a believer in the school of thought — popular in Burgundy — that says that wine tastes dramatically different depending on the phase the moon happens to be in, this wouldn’t explain our uninteresting evening, since we happened to time our tasting for a propitious “fruit” day. There just isn’t enough depth in this category to convince us that red Bourgogne is a wine for drinking on a nightly basis. We understand now why they call it the heartbreak grape, because at $20, Burgundy breaks our hearts (most of the time).

PANelISTS Darryl Joannides proprietor, Cork: A Bottle Shop Mimi Martin co-owner, The Wine and Spirit Archive educational center wineandspiritarchive.com Martha Holmberg editor, mIX magazine Grant Butler critic at large, The oregonian and mIX magazine Katherine Cole wine columnist, The oregonian and mIX magazine

WHAT GIVES? We’ve all had magical experiences with Burgundy in the past: That dreamy tasting at the International Pinot Noir Celebration, that special wine opened on a special occasion. When we can afford to spend at least $75 for a bottle, fine Burgundy typically transports us to tears of joy. But for $30 or less, we found ourselves shedding tears of another kind. “This tasting tonight really confirmed my own bias toward pinot noir made in a New World style,” grant Butler concluded at the end of the evening. “A lot of these wines were oK, but I would be really disappointed if I paid $30 and came home and tasted this.” So we’re all agreed: We will now happily pay $20 to $25 for a bottle of simple oregon pinot noir. No complaints. But the next time we’re feeling flush, will we run out and spend $100 on our favorite Volnay? you betcha. For where to buy, see shop, Page 60

 on-lIne eXtra: For a quick tour of burgundian classifications (is a premier cru better than a grand cru?), go to

mIXpdX.com

THE WINNING WINES our three winners all hailed from the Côte d’or, Burgundy’s bastion of quality reds consisting of the Côte de Beaune, the Côte de Nuits and their various sub-appellations. A SIMPLE WINE FOR SIMPLE TIMES 2006 Domaine Taupenot-Merme Passetoutgrain ($16) We expected our bargain wine to be a simple Bourgogne rouge; instead, it was a passetoutgrain, a blend of pinot noir and gamay noir grapes with a deep ruby color that set it apart from its peers. like a gamay from Beaujolais, this wine was fruity and approachable, with bright notes of cranberry, raspberry and blackberry on a soft, round palate. Traditionally, passetoutgrains were referred to as “the poor man’s pinot” because Burgundian maisons would bestow these simple wines upon their vineyard workers as liquid compensation. With producers like Taupenot-merme starting to take this blend seriously, it looks to us like passetoutgrain might be the best value in Burgundy. (Note: Another passetoutgrain, from Domaine michel laFarge, also caught our attention, but we didn’t deem it worth its $26 price tag.) RELIABLE AS RAIN 2007 Joseph Drouhin Côte de BeauneVillages ($22) No discussion of Burgundy is complete without mention of Joseph Drouhin. This negociant house purchases grapes from growers throughout the region in addition to managing its own domaine; the result is a portfolio so broad that you can find the Drouhin label in just about any store that sells Burgundy. (And Willamette Valley pinot noir, for that matter, thanks to the family’s local outpost, Domaine Drouhin oregon.) There’s nothing fancy about Côte de Beaune-Villages, a regional appellation that encompasses 16 villages; consider it the equivalent of a local winery’s generic “Willamette Valley Pinot Noir.” But we found this wine to be pleasingly brambly, with an interesting tangy quality — I detected crab apple; mimi martin identified it as rhubarb — that piqued our interest at this price range. SLEEPER HIT 2006 François Gay et Fils Ladoix ($30) Visit www.francoisgay.com and you’ll find … the Web site of a former Swiss bodybuilding champion, now a personal trainer and an outspoken proponent of drug-free, “natural” muscle-making. Well, post pump-up, that François gay surely would appreciate this François gay’s delightful and undoubtedly natural beverage made at his Chorey-les-Beaune winery, ja. located in the shadow of its more glamorous neighbor, Aloxe-Corton, ladoix is one of those delicious discoveries: unknown, and thus inexpensive. The northernmost communal appellation in the Côte de Beaune, bordering the Côte de Nuits, it sits at the base of the revered grand-cru hill of Corton and boasts its own premier-cru-ranked vineyards. This, a basic ladoix, hints at its noble breeding. We found it to be smooth and supple, with earthy complexity and, as Darryl Joannides pointed out, notes of rose petals and cherries. most of us had never tasted a ladoix until now; we hope word doesn’t get out so that we can continue to afford it.

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eat here / salem

[ The Capital City has dinner plans for you ] uring the late ’80s and early ’90s, I lived and worked in Salem. I ate there, too, but rarely took much joy in it. There was a decent Tex-Mex spot, a superb Thai restaurant and an overpriced special occasion spot that served a delicious spicy cioppino. Beyond that, it was mostly chains and mediocre homegrown spots. Dining out in the capital had all the excitement of a legislative subcommittee hearing. Even today, Salem has a lingering rep as a culinary wasteland. But there is good food to be found, I am here to testify. Spring’s a great time to visit — cherry blossoms create a symphony of pink, showing why Salem is nicknamed the Cherry City. Add some cherrychocolate cookies and a cherry milkshake into the mix, and you’ve got a tasty day trip.

Start your visit with a late-morning drop-in at downtown’s Cascade Baking Co., housed in one of the city’s oldest buildings. The pastry case is filled with tempting almond twirls and thick brownies, but the real find are the marionberry scones, at once crisp and chewy and studded with the unique-to-Oregon cane berry that takes its name from Marion County. On weekends, you can munch and sip coffee while live jazz heats things up. Other days, classical music fills the bright shop while bakers usher loaves of pugliese, ciabatta and focaccia out of the brick oven. Grab a loaf for munching on later while hitting a few Salem-area wineries. Half a block to the west of the bakery is Salem’s Riverfront Park, a 1990s urban renewal project

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that transformed the site of a Boise Cascade mill into a 23acre greenspace on the banks of the Willamette River. you can take a twirl on the historic carousel or stop at the A.C. Gilbert Discovery Village, a children’s museum named after the Salem man who created the Erector Set. Or just loop through the ¾ -mile walking path, which winds through the park past the open-air amphitheater and along the blackberry-vine covered embankment. That walk should fuel your appetite, so head for lunch at Word of Mouth Neighborhood Bistro, a few blocks east of the Capitol Mall. longtime restaurateurs Steve and Becky Mucha opened this cafe in late 2008, and word spread quickly about

the high-quality, from-scratch cooking. Breakfasts and weekend brunch here are enormously popular, so expect long waits for the prime rib hash or the crème brûlée french toast. It’s easier to get in for lunch or dinner, when you’ll find sandwiches (made with bread from Cascade Baking Co.) like the Cordon Bleu, with a poundedthin chicken breast that’s breaded in panko crumbs, then fried crisp and served with ham and melted Swiss cheese. If you’re a burger-and-fries type, don’t miss the Bistro Burger, made out of ground Angus beef, buffalo and pork, and studded with roasted garlic. This is the hamburger turned into art. For dessert, head back downtown to Court Street Dairy

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Court Street Dairy lunch Lunch, a Salem institution since 1929. At lunchtime, politicians and lobbyists fill booths in a room that screams history. The walls are covered with old photos showing vintage cars, long-gone storefronts and stained glass windows depicting the state’s first two Capitol buildings — both destroyed by fire. Grab a stool at the wrap-around counter and order one of the old-fashioned, pharmacy-style milkshakes, made with Hamilton Beach mixers, which whir and hum as they transform vanilla ice cream and cherry syrup into a thick-flowing cascade of pink that echoes the blossoms outside. One shake runs a pricey $4, but it’s big enough for two or three people to share. Finish one by yourself, and you’re headed for a sugar coma. In the afternoon, head across the Willamette and you’ll find a concentration of interesting wineries — St. Innocent, Bethel Heights, Cristom and Witness Tree, among others (you can customize your wine tour at oregonwine.org). If you want to stay in town, you can check out a matinee at one of Salem’s tastiest new arrivals: Cinebarre. This is the latest food/movie venture by a north Carolina film presenter that’s making slow inroads into the northwest. The old downtown Regal Movieland closed last year and was spruced up significantly with new seats and the addition of a full

kitchen. While watching the latest Hollywood blockbuster, you can order beer and wine, plus an array of movie snacks, all with punny moviethemed names (the Soylent Greens and Romaine Holiday salads, lord of the Onion Rings, Some like It Hot Wings), all served while the movie progresses. Wrap up your Salem sojourn at La Capitale Brasserie, a year-old French restaurant that takes its name from the old Capital Theater, an ornate vaudeville and movie house that was torn down a decade ago to make way for a surface parking lot. The Capital’s spirit lives on in the building next door, where chef David Rosales serves a sophisticated menu of French bistro standards. Start with crispy parsnip ribbons, paperthin strips of fried, sweet root vegetables, plus a selection of artisan cheese. There’s an Alsatian tarte flambé, with homemade sausage and red pepper, and a large bowl of heaped-high mussels topped with a haystack of shoestring fries. Prices are modest, with lots of dishes under $20 and most appetizers below $10. When I lived in Salem, this is just the sort of spot I longed for but never found. now it’s the excuse I need for heading south. The Cherry City and its new food finds are calling. £

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pubcrawl

[ Wine barrels share their good germs to make sweet sour beer ] By JohN FoyStoN photoGRaphy By RoSS william hamiltoN

f you’ve toured breweries or know a brewer, you know they usually work in loud, bright, hard-edged rooms of concrete and stainless steel, wading rubber-booted through streams of steaming water as they sanitize lines, tanks and fittings or fill kettles. But when Cascade Brewing’s Ron Gansberg tastes and blends one of his bottled specialty beers, he works in the dim, dry, oaky cloister of his barrel-aging room surrounded by silence and a hundred huge barrels that once held wine, port, sherry or whiskey. Beers such as his Sang Noir are made of a dozen base beers, aged for different amounts of time in separate barrels and blended together for bottling.

armed with a tasting glass and an amazing memory, Gansberg prowls his racks of aging beers, tasting and pondering. Seized by inspiration, he unsheaths a multi-tool from his back pocket, unfurls it into a pair of pliers and twists open the wooden stopper of yet another keg, adding another new flavor and layer to the beer he’s building in his mind. “Each barrel is a different possibility,” Gansberg says. “Each has its own personality and character, and different types of barrels have general characteristics that make them especially suitable for certain beers. a lot is still a mystery, but we’re beginning to look at the history and flavor intrinsic to each barrel — certain bacteria become resident in each barrel and create different flavors. when we master that, it’ll allow us to further nuance our beers.”

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pubcrawl cont. a bottle of beer — even Cascade’s 750 ml Champagnestyle bottle — that sells for almost $20 is pricey by most standards. But to see the care with which Gansberg tends his barrels and ages his beers; to watch him choose and blend stocks to achieve the perfect mix for bottling; and to taste the dimensional complexity of beers such as the Vine, Kriek, apricot ale (all made with hundreds of pounds of fresh fruit: grapes, cherries and apricots, respectively), Vlad the imp aler or Bourbonic plague is to realize that Cascade’s specialty beers are raving bargains and appealing to beer and wine aficionados alike. “Sour beers certainly broaden the flavor spectrum,” Gansberg says, “and they should interest adventurous wine drinkers and beer drinkers both, because the beers are a sort of middle ground.” Gansberg started brewing sour beers five years ago when he wearied of the pacific Northwest hops race, that tendency of oregon brewers to take perhaps too great advantage of our bounty of locally grown, world-class hops and try to brew the hoppiest beer — in flavor and aroma — possible. Gansberg instead became interested in sour beers such as Flemish ales, which often acquire their tartness through aging in barrels with resident lactobacillus colonies, and his stock of barrels has since grown from four to more than 300. “Sour beers intrigued me because it hadn’t been done often in portland before,” he says, “and it offered the opportunity to age the beer in oak barrels, which was the thing i loved most about my years of working in a winery — i found working with barrels to be a romantic part of the industry.” he worked in wineries before signing on with Bridgeport Brewing in 1986. he later helped open art larrance’s Raccoon lodge, the Raleigh hills brewpub where Gansberg has been brewmaster for more than a decade. Until recently, that’s where he tended to his growing library of barrels, but in october, larrance bought a 7,000-square-foot former produce warehouse at 935 S.E. Belmont St. there they’ll open the Cascade Brewing Barrel house, which will introduce portland to Cascade Brewing’s specialty sour beers, which recently won gold and silver medals in the wood-aged and sour beer

when Ron Gansberg of Cascade Brewing worked in a winery, he developed an affection for the barrels: “i found working with barrels to be a romantic part of the industry.” he’s using that experience now in his barrel-aged brews inspired by sour beers such as Flemish ales.

Cascade specialty ales are available in 750 ml Champagne bottles at good bottle shops such as Belmont Station, 4500 S.E. Stark St.; Raccoon lodge Brewpub, 7424 S.w. Beaverton-hillsdale highway; and the soon-to-open Cascade Brewing Barrel house, 935 S.E. Belmont St. Because they are seasonal, small-batch beers, availability changes constantly.

 See a list of our picks on miXpDX.Com category at the prestigious 2009 Great american Beer Festival. “i’d love to be open in april,” larrance says, “which depends on construction and getting the tasting room finished and inspected. But the building is functional right now because we’re aging 200 barrels in the barrel room and we have 500 cases of the apricot ale in the bottle-conditioning room.” Both are excited to be part of the beercentric bustle of closein Southeast. they’re just a block away from the Green Dragon, and within blocks of more than a dozen pubs and bars and a couple of distilleries. though the odometer reads just 7.5 miles on the drive from the Raccoon lodge to the new Barrel house, they acknowledge that the new place is miles away from the family-friendly-to-a-fault suburban brewpub in Raleigh hills, which will continue as it is. Cascade Brewing will still brew at the westside location, too, but all barrel aging and blending has moved to the Barrel house. “we won’t have a hood or deep fryers in the kitchen,” said larrance, and “there won’t be lottery games or hard liquor because you can get all that within a couple of blocks.” instead, there’ll be a simple menu featuring local foods:

artisan cheese plates; sandwiches made from meat grilled out front; hummus plates and vegetarian options. the Barrel house will feature weekly tappings when Gansberg or a pubster uses a mallet to whang a brass tap into selected wooden casks of aged sour beers, which will poke right through a hole in the cooler wall. there’ll be a complete line of taps featuring the other beers that Gansberg and brewer Curtis Bain make at the Raleigh hills brewery. there’ll be room for 140 or so in the tasting room, plus the Belmont Street frontage — now a parking lot — will be given over to seating and tables for a hundred during the fine months, with lots of room for bike parking. Gansberg sees the Barrel house as a way to celebrate the beers of Cascade Brewing and highlight the brand to portlanders, who previously knew only of the Raccoon lodge; and it’ll become sour/tart beer central in Beervana — a place where visiting brewers will be welcome to set up kegs and hold tastings and other events. But the real soul of the place can be found in the former walk-in cooler that takes nearly a quarter of the building. Now kept at room temperature, the newly commissioned barrel room is a quiet, warm home for row upon row of oak barrels, where beers age and change in the cozy ecosystem of each barrel’s colony of bacteria — lactobacillus or acetobacter. “it’s a lot of work, i’ll admit it,” he says. “it means a lot of time testing and tasting, but i’m willing to do that, to spend a lot of time in the barrel room with a glass in my hand — and maybe a cot in the aisle.”

G R E A T

Escapes

a sour brew primer

How beer sours: there are several microbes that will sour beer, including lactobacillus (which creates lactic acid and also sours milk) and acetobacter, which produces acetic acid. these can be added as cultures, or the beer can be fermented with Brettanomyces, which many brewers regard as the evil twin of common beer yeasts. Brett sours beer and also produces the “horse blanket” aroma that marks many a great Belgian beer, but the prospects of cross-contamination in a production brewery make many brewers shy away. Barrel aging: the microbes that sour beer love old oak barrels, so barrel aging is a good way to make tart beer, especially as barrels are reused and their microbial colonies flourish. that said, not all sour beers are barrel aged, nor are all oakaged beers sour or tart. Historic precedents: Belgian brewers have traditionally made more sour beers than anyone. Sour styles include unblended lambics that ferment in oak barrels in Belgium’s Senne Valley. Brewers add fruit to develop tart framboise (raspberry) and krieks (cherry), to name just two tangy options. Gueuzes blend three consecutive lambic vintages to balance flavors, minimize astringency and create carbonation. Flanders red ales can be intensely tart. Berliner weisses aren’t Belgian,

but they are light wheat beers and they are tart, so much so that they’re often served with a dollop of raspberry or woodruff syrup.

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Trend watch: Craft brewers are increasingly experimenting with sour and barrel-aged styles, because they’re an inventive lot and wont to chafe at the harness of having to keep pub serving tanks full of the standard porters, stouts, pale ales and goldens that fill most pints. Such ales ferment in a week and are usually ready for serving in a couple of weeks. By contrast, making an oak-aged sour ale is a journey that can last months or years and involve the arcane arts of cellarmaster and master blender to yield a finished beer.

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Several other oregon brewers have made sour beers, including alan Sprints at Hair of the dog, deschutes with the Dissident, Van havig at rock Bottom Brewery and Jason mcadams, who made a nice Flanders Red at roots Organic Brewing Co. last year. But Gansberg, larrance and Cascade Brewing have devoted a significant chunk of time, energy and — now, with the new Barrel house — resources to artisanal sour beers.

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Our picks for what to eat where

COMPILED BY Grant Butler CONTRIBuTORS Grant Butler Karen Brooks Seth Lorinczi Roger Porter David Sarasohn Amy Wang

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Ararat Bakery & Restaurant 5716 S.E. 92nd Ave. 503-235-5526 “unpromising” is probably the kindest descriptor for this marble-walled mausoleum, its dimly lit dining room uncannily evocative of Soviet-era gloom. The patrons, of which there are typically few, are of similar vintage and origin. You could be excused for harboring low expectations or even turning to flee, but those who stay are rewarded by a very authentic — and very tasty — survey of the foods of the former Soviet union and beyond (“Ararat” is the iconic mountain of Armenia). The somewhat disheveled buffet table (the only service option offered) holds a fascinating array of foods not often seen by those outside Portland’s Russian community: cabbage and sweet peppers stuffed with savory

minced beef; salty, slightly chewy fried sauerkraut with onions and carrots (about as close as you’ll get to vegetarian cuisine here); steaming-hot borscht; and plof, a rice pilaf originally from uzbekistan. Curiously, the weakest link in the chain is the sliced white and brown breads, baked on the premises. Du Kuh Bee 12590 S.W. First St., Beaverton 503-643-5388 Walk into Du Kuh Bee, take one of four stools at the counter and watch Frank Fong go to work. From the soft dough he’s made mere hours earlier, he cuts off a few strips, stretches them to arm’s length and then, one at a time, tosses them like a cowboy ready to launch a lasso, spinning the noodle to give it pliancy, elasticity and bounce. Next he plunges ribbon after ribbon into a pot of boiling water, fishes them out, and into a pan of sizzling oil they go. Soon you have a platter of the freshest, chewiest, most addictive thick and slurpy noodles imaginable, unlike anything you’ve experienced at other Portland-area Asian restaurants. Aside from the noodles, which may also come with chicken, squid or shrimp, the next-best things at Du Kuh Bee (“lucky” in Korean) are the barbecued dishes. The beef ribs are nothing like what we Americans are used to. Instead of long, curved bones, these are thin, flat pieces of meat, smoked over a charPHOTOGRAPH BY MIKE DAVIS

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scene

Du Kuh Bee coal grill without sauce and then smothered in grilled onions. Ping 102 N.W. Fourth Ave. 503-229-7464 pingpdx.com It has the soul of the 1917 Hung Far Low Building, the look of a Japanese drinking club and the green sensibility of indie Portland. It pays respect to Chinatown’s past but looks to the future with food, art and design from local cultures all over Asia. But mostly, as customers sit at the sleek counter inhaling pork bone tea, Vietnamese short ribs and black sesame ice cream under a light sculpture that evokes a kimono sash, Ping feels exciting: the most daring, challenging, intriguing restaurant to open in some time. With Ping, chef Andy Ricker — already a star with Pok Pok — shares another page from his food journal. These grilled skewers, buns and noodles are the simple but fascinating foods he eats during his ongoing travels. The menu draws significantly from Singapore and Malaysia, with some rare discoveries from China, like ju pa bao, a sublimely brined pork chop on a tiny, buttery bun. In a restaurant scene focused on Northwest food, Ping has cracked open new dishes, a different way to eat. Yuki & Song 4240 N.E. 122nd Ave. 503-256-5555 “The Best and Most Authentic Japanese Restaurant in Oregon” reads the sign on the door. “Horsefeathers!” reads the thought bubble over your head.

Even in a restaurant genre — the Ethnic Strip-Mall Joint — fraught with low achievers, Yuki & Song looks unpromising. But this unassuming family joint, plastered with hand-drawn signage and messages, really is authentic, serving excellent Japanese lunch-counter classics with homemade flair. The menu features crisply fried proteins such as pork tonkatsu (an indigenous take on “cutlet”). Favorites like teriyaki and bulgoki (a Korean import of marinated, grilled beef) benefit from careful preparation — sauces and marinades are homemade — and attention to detail. And those rightly fearful of low-rent sushi purveyors will be doubly surprised at the fresh and savory raw fish selection.

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Forward thinking kitchens where the garden’s bounty plays more than a supporting role. The Red & Black Cafe 400 S.E. 12th Ave. 503-231-3899 myspace.com/redandblackcafe If you’re trying to eat less meat — or you’ve eliminated it altogether — you need to know this vegan cafe. The Red & Black offers an array of dishes loaded with flavor and nutrition. And since it’s collectively owned by the people who work there, having a meal here feels like being part of a community experience. Who knew power to the people could taste so good? Breakfasts feature cornmeal waffles that can be dressed up sweet ($4.75) or given a savory spin with salsa and avocado ($6.50). Plus there’s bagel sandwiches like the Hedonist, with Tofutti cream cheese, apple slices and tempeh bacon ($4.50). The rest of the day there’s great vegan chili ($2.75 for a cup, $4 for a bowl) that’s studded with red and black beans and corn kernels, and comes with blue corn chips. The Black Dragon Noodles are coated with Thai-style peanut sauce and come with cilantro, carrots and lime. Even better is the braised kale tossed with beans and quinoa with a sprinkling of paprika, to which you add tofu, tempeh or avocado for an additional buck.

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www.cottonwoodwinery.com

Springtime is Brunchtime! 58

scene Red Onion 1123 N.W. 23rd Ave. 503-208-2634 Red Onion is Dang Boonyakamol’s third explosion in the Portland area — first at Cha Ba Thai on Sandy Boulevard several years ago and, until recently, at the impressive Dang’s Thai Kitchen in Lake Oswego. Dang’s greatest strength is working with textures, making them turn out the way they should and setting different ones against each other in the same dish. His crispy dishes are seriously crispy — a specialty dating back to Cha Ba — and in the most crowded, chili-laced stir-fries, his wide array of vegetables never turn into casserole casualties. While there’s plenty of meat on the menu, with seafood playing a starring role, it’s easy to substitute tofu for any of the proteins. Generally, service is warm and endearing, as benign as the bronze Buddhas lining the walls, gazing out through the picture windows. Prices are also friendly; virtually all dishes are under $15, with appetizers topping out at $8, and substantial portion sizes should be borne in mind when ordering.

On the cheap Places where stretching your dollars is easy — and tasty.

Sunday Brunch 10am to 3pm

Lunch Mon-Fri 11am-2:30pm, Dinner Mon-Sat 5pm-10:30pm Reservations and menu at www.aquarivaportland.com

0470 SW Hamilton Ct. | Portland, OR | 97239 | 503.802.5850

“Beef cheeks so tender that a good hard stare would cause them to fall apart.”- Bon Apetit

Open every night for dinner. For reservations call 503.546.8796. 738 E Burnside St.

Delicious Texas Pit BBQ & Catering 6750 S.W. Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway 503-292-2724 Crazy, isn’t it, that intersection of Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway and Oleson and Scholls Ferry roads? Breathe. Keep your hands on the steering wheel. And focus. Because if you get through that intersection in one piece, you can reward yourself with a stop at the nearby Delicious Texas Pit BBQ for some good slow-smoked grill grub. A classic lineup: brisket, chicken, pulled pork, ribs, Texas rope sausage and tri-tip, for starters. Sides include corn on the cob, fried okra, macaroni and potato salads, mustard/turnip greens and Texasstyle beans. The meats are available either as sandwiches starting at $8 or as plate lunches and dinners starting at $8 for one meat and two sides. “One meat,” by the way, includes enough protein to satisfy two typical appetites. Don’t miss the

take-home desserts, which include a peach cobbler ($6) that’ll roll your eyes right back into your head. Gusto Bistro & Marketplace 467 Third St., Lake Oswego 503-635-3151 gustomarketplace.com In Italian, the word “gusto” means “taste.” In English, though, it’s more about squeezing out the very zest of life. Both interpretations apply at this Lake Oswego bistro and gourmet shop, where you can find an array of salads, hot and cold sandwiches, and homemade, seasonal soups. Portions are generous, so lighter appetites should gravitate toward the $4 small salads, such as mesclun with figs, warm peaches and prosciutto or a chopped salad with salami and garbanzos. If you can’t decide, sample three salads for $9. Sandwiches come either whole ($8) or by the half ($5); there’s a warm sandwich stuffed with apple slices and asiago and Manchego cheeses, or a classic cold Italian with prosciutto, fontina and Genoa salami. It’s hard to beat the $8 daily special, which includes dishes like a chanterelle mushroom quiche or a Moorish chicken pie (phyllo sheets stuffed with diced chicken, toasted pine nuts and raisins), plus a green salad. Lorenzo’s Ristorante Italiano 3807 N. Mississippi Ave. 503-284-6200 This nearly perfect facsimile of a casual Italian eatery delivers nearly perfect Italian fare. In sticking to its guns — expertly prepared pastas, vivid salads and high-grade cheeses and cured meats — Lorenzo’s reminds us of what we loved about Italy’s food in the first place. Flashier purveyors of Italian fare can be found around the Portland area, but Lorenzo’s displays an enviable ease with this most elemental of cuisines. Like several other Portland chefs, proprietor Lorenzo Daliana downshifted from cooking stints at high-profile restaurants like Higgins and Zefiro to open his own joint, and his deliberately low-key endeavor scores with dishes like fluffy baked spinach gnocchi ($9) and a tart arugula “Caesar” with chewy grilled ricotta salata ($3.50/$7). On cooler days, heartier dishes like thick casarecci noodles with a sausage ragu ($13) reward with slow-burning warmth.

Cacao

high five hot chocolate It’s not your mom’s Swiss Miss, not by a long shot. In Portland, hot chocolate ingredients are now carefully sourced and dressed to kill because of a new generation of chocolatiers who take their sipping seriously. The best sips are made with real chocolate (often single-origin) and highly personal touches, from flavor waves of cayenne and coconut milk to a surprising finish of Hawaiian smoked salt. — DANIELLE CENTONI Alma Chocolate: Sarah Hart and her crew are always tinkering with crave-worthy chocolate flavors and pitch-perfect baked goods, a sure sign of creative minds at work. The hot chocolate menu is no exception, with no fewer than 10 variations on hand, none made with syrups, so flavors are true and balanced instead of tooth-achingly sweet. Try the orange hot chocolate, fashioned from a melted chocolate bar embedded with tiny bits of dried orange peel; or the ear-warming Carmelita ($3.50), a not-too-sweet drink spiked with Alma’s own habanero caramel sauce and hand-shaken cream. 140 N.E. 28th Ave. 503-517-0262 almachocolate.com Cacao: It makes sense that a shop specializing in high-end chocolate bars would take hot chocolates seriously. So seriously that you can order a flight of them ($6), just like wine. This sampler brings together the shop’s three exquisitely thick drinking chocolates in diminutive demitasse cups: frothy cinnamonmilk chocolate; intense, complex dark chocolate; and dark chocolate spiked with smoked paprika, ginger, cayenne and coconut milk. 414 S.W. 13th Ave. 503-241-0656 712 S.W. Salmon St. (at The Heathman) 503-274-9510 cacaodrinkchocolate.com Coffeehouse Northwest: When you order hot chocolate here ($5), you’ll likely be asked: “Have you had it here before?” That’s because these baristas are as impressively nerdy about their cocoa as they are about their coffee. The owners spent five months trying different chocolates and salts until they found their ideal combination. The winners? Venezuelan dark chocolate from renowned French chocolatier Michel Cluizel

and just enough Portuguese sea salt to round out the flavor. The two are added to milk, steamed into frothy thickness and served freckled with cocoa powder. Rich, balanced and complex, it occupies that welcome middle ground between ultra-intense drinking chocolate and standard hot cocoa. 1951 W. Burnside St. 503-248-2133 coffeehousenorthwest.com Pix Patisserie: From a Francophile patisserie comes a hot chocolate that is positively ooh la la (and still flowing after midnight on weekends). The creamy “Coco Chanel” — with just the right amount of sweet and rich — is the little black dress of hot cocoas: tasteful, elegant and perfect for any occasion ($2.25). But the chocolat chaud ($5) is the mink of drinks: plush, velvety and rich. This is true European-style drinking chocolate, more indulgent than intense, and so thick you can almost eat with a spoon. 3402 S.E. Division St. 503-232-4407 3901 N. Williams Ave. 503-282-6539 pixpatisserie.com The Sugar Cube: Food-cart maven Kir Jensen has a genius way of turning childhood sweets into thoroughly adult desserts. Her luscious hot chocolate is no different. Jensen starts with retro Ovaltine chocolate malt powder, then adds singleorigin Venezuelan milk chocolate, fresh-whipped cream and an inspired garnish of smoked Hawaiian sea salt ($5). “I thought the smoked Hawaiian sea salt was the perfect balance with the milk chocolate,” Jensen says. We couldn’t agree more. 4237 N. Mississippi Ave. (at Mississippi Marketplace) thesugarcubepdx.com £ PHOTOGRAPH BY MOTOYA NAKAMuRA

Everything you need for the perfect game room. Your best choice for home recreation equipment. Pool table sales and service, poker tables and supplies, bars and barstools, lighting art and accessories. Serving the Portland and Vancouver metro areas and beyond. Great prices on top brands every day. Stop in and see how beautiful and affordable top quality name brand equipment can be.

BILLIARDS & MORE The Game Room Store 9385 SW Greenburg Rd. Tigard

For the win.

503-245-2100

Near Washington Square

www.billiardsandmore.com

www.MelroseVineyards.com 885 Melqua Rd., Roseburg, OR 97471

Lunch, Dinner Tues. 4-9 Wed. -Sun 11am-10pm

Catering & Custom Smoking (you bring it, we smoke it)

mokehouse S s ’ y a Cl

2932 SE Division St, Portland • 503-235-4755

Rated “Clucktacular” —Grant Butler, A&E

Best

shop

In Portland!

Sandwiches & Salads, too. 12 Homemade Sauces Now two Locations: 1708 E. Burnside Ave. 503.230.WING (9464) 4225 N. Interstate Ave. 503.280.WING (9464)

w w w.por tlandwings.com

Easter in the Umpqua Valley at Henry Estate Winery APRIL APRI APR RIL 3-4, 3 4 11am 1 11 - 6pm 6

Bring the family for live music, new wine ds Easter ass e a releases, wine discounts, adult & kids ner egg hunt, and traditional ham dinner

www.HenryEstate.com m

1.800.782.2686

• Authentic Belgian Ales this Spring • • Heated Outdoor Seating • • Coming Soon: Liquor and our 22 oz. bottles of beer •

832 N. Beech (a ( t Mi Miss ssis ss issi is sipp si ppi) pp i)) • 503.281.7708

wood oven pizza - pasta - fine wines

Simple Authentic Italian

Dinner & Cocktails from 5pm Tuesday-Saturday - Happy Hour 4:30-Close

We’ve gathered some names and numbers of places to find the good stuff in this issue. The products may also be available from other local stores and online sources.

15 WALKABOUT

45 SELECTS/BURGUNDY

Stumptown Coffee Roasters 1026 S.W. Stark St. 503-224-9060 stumptowncoffee.com Vinopolis Wine Shop 1025 S.W. Washington St. 503-223-6002 vinopoliswineshop.com Canoe 1036 S.W. Alder St. 503-889-8545 canoeonline.net East India Co. Grill & Bar 821 S.W. 11th Ave. 503-227-8815 eastindiacopdx.com Thai Chili Jam 1239 S.W. Jefferson St. 503-274-8424 thaichilijam.com Chef Naoko Bento Cafe 1237 S.W. Jefferson St. 503-227-4136 chefnaoko.com Cacao 414 S.W. 13th Ave. 503-241-0656 cacaodrinkchocolate.com Grüner 537 S.W. 12th Ave. 503-241-7163 grunerpdx.com

A SIMPLE WINE FOR SIMPLE TIMES

pHOTOGRApH BY JAMiE FRANCiS

closed mondays

Reservations & Catering 503-297-0360 www.LaPrimaPortland.com 4775 sw 77th ave, portland, or 97225 · In Raleigh Hills

Now’s your chance to get MORE OF MIX. We’ve expanded to 10 issues a year! Get them all, for just $19.95, by subscribing at MIXPDX.COM or calling 503-221-8240.

2006 Domaine Taupenot-Merme Passetoutgrain ($16) Garrison’s Fine Wines 1401 S.E. Morrison St. garrisonsfinewines.com New Seasons Market Concordia, Orenco Station, Raleigh Hills and Seven Corners locations newseasonsmarket.com Vinopolis 1025 S.W. Washington St. 503-223-6002 vinopoliswineshop.com RELIABLE AS RAIN 2007 Joseph Drouhin Côte de Beaune-Villages ($22) Liner & Elsen 2222 N.W. Quimby St. 503-241-9463 linerandelsen.com Wizer’s Oswego Foods 330 First St. 503-636-1414 wizers.com SLEEPER HIT 2006 François Gay et Fils Ladoix ($30) Warning: This wine is in low stock. You may find François Gay et Fils 2007 wines on store shelves. Cork, A Bottle Shop 2901 N.E. Alberta St. 503-281-2675 corkwineshop.com Great Wine Buys 1515 N.E. Broadway 503-287-2897 Liner & Elsen (see above)

Enjoy an evening with

75 of Oregonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best

chefs, winemakers, brewers and mixologists who are joining together to end childhood hunger.

Portland, Oregon

April 26 th 2010 Luxe Autohaus | 17 th & NE Glisan 100% of ticket and auction revenue help to end childhood hunger. Locally benefiting: Oregon Food Bank, Oregon Hunger Task Force, St. Vincent de Paul Food Programs, Klamath-Lake Counties Food Bank Tickets starting at just $75 for endless tastes. Tickets are limited. Go to www.portlandtaste.org