Gangster of Food

So let’s say you live in a city with a lot of bars, and you want to open another one. What would you do? Open another smoky dive in which 20 somethings could acclimate themselves to adult society? A fancy beer haven with the ambience of an office depot? A hipster den, replete with hummus and Bulleit bourbon (the milk and honey of the edgy crowd)? Oh, how about a third floor dance complex for out-of- town “white hats” and the slutty little things that love them? Any of these ventures would provide a steady stream of low- investment, easily- managed income to just about any sleazeball in the country who’s willing to show his sallow, sagging, dirty little face around the place once a month or so. They have two class of prey:  the old and stupid, and the young and ignorant (and probably stupid) .

Why pay $4.75 American for a pint of the same beer that’s available in every convenience store and supermarket in the city? “To meet members of the opposite sex, gangster, to impress them with our sophistication and prowess”. This is not enough, especially for the married among us. I expect something special from a bar.

I want atmosphere. “Lived in” is nice, as is “bizarre”. But the seating needs to be comfortable, and preferably leave me with a similar point of view to that which I had while standing. Simply fancy is not good enough, unless it’s really fancy and has character. Like the Maria Cristina in San Sebastian. If your going to be fancy, I want to feel a little mentally uncomfortable. The fancy bars here are a bit of a joke in that, if your fleece is expensive enough, you’ll fit right in. Now I’m just wearing a flannel amongst the nouveau riche which is only mildly amusing.

But mostly what I want is a truly knowledgeable selection of drinks. By which I definitively do not mean a collection of cocktails made with major brand liquors. A bottle of Grey Goose and some Lillet Blanc doth not a cocktelier make. I don’t care if you have the hoppiest IPA from Vancouver BC to Salinas nor that you make your own “bitters”. Here’s a hint: bitters should actually be bitter, if you infuse vanilla pods into grain alcohol, that’s just a liqueur.

A competent, thoughtful selection of esoteric liqueuers from the farthest flung corners of Europe is a reason to go out. Especially when they come at a reasonable price. If you refuse to pollute or cheapen them by mixing them into clever little “creations” and referring to yourself as a “mixologist”, then we’re speaking the same language. Unfortunately, that sassy little hussy that Mr. nine to five just picked up from behind the counter at the tea shop is not in accordance with my views, hence the demise of Apotheke. Really the best bar in the city for a time. Zwack Unicum, Chartreuse (several varieties), Rip Van Winkle 15 year; they had it all. Not to mention a selection of esoteric, yet delicious draft beers not to be found elsewhere in the city. I like to think that the Pearl District location was their downfall, but I know better. That place wouldn’t have fit in anywhere in Portland.

And now it’s gone. So where to drink? Where to take the friends? Higgins has a nice selection of bottles, but it’s a little pricey for just any old night. Pix, well chosen beers, wines and liquors, they even got the Rip Van Winkle. But it is always so incredibly crowded, totally understaffed and just hipster, hipster, hipster. Enter Saraveza.

My new favorite bar is smartly located in an underserved neighborhood and right next to Portland Community College (these people are savvy) and has just the right mix of up and downscale. Best of all, its never busy when I go in. Even at night one can find a seat. The selection is thoughtful, the service is friendly and the food is good and best of all, it’s  American.

Saraveza serves about eight beers on tap and countless more in bottles. the selection rotates often and usually features a couple of European brews in addition to the obligatory Northwestern IPA and pales. Resin covered bottle cap mosaics in the tabletops, dark wood and lots of really truly vintage midwestern beer paraphenalia make up the decor. The tables sit at bar height, which is what I like, but they got a handful of chairs that are ridiculously uncomfortable (hope you all see this) like they’re just broken. The food though.

The speciality of the house is the pasty. An Upper -Midwest staple, it is essentially a savory turnover. Think mom’s potroast, only wrapped in shortcrust. This they serve with a doctored up bottle of Heinz chili sauce and some house-made pickles, and some ambitious pickles at that (maybe balance the acid little more please?). They also got deviled eggs, the whites being pickled, chex mix, summer sausage with cheese and crackers (just like home) and a trio of Old Country Meats sausages with mustard. Not my favorite sausages in town, but better than most.

So what’s so special? Nothing, except it’s thoughful and that’s rare. And by thoughtful I don’t mean really ambitious or super- creative or niche- driven. I mean details are almost effortlessly orchestrated to give an overall  impression of ease and abundance. No need for homemade “bitters” when you got beer and atmosphere.

Another thing that’s real hip is offal. Well, hip in the, “I had some at Babbo” sense. Not hip in the, “come on over, I got some kidneys on the Brinkman and some Valpolicella in the cellar” sort of sense. That is to say that, for the very, very intrepid foodie, offal is okay if it’s been given a good going over by a professional kitchen, sanctified by the hand of a culinary deity, served in the minutest of portions and cloaked with some other, more benign foodstuff. This is a crying shame.

Not that I’m a great offal cook myself, I do a few things right and I’m a little scared of say, chicken intestines. But that’s just cultural conditioning and that’s just what needs to be undone. Especially if we want to call ourselves cooks, or conscientious omnivores, or logically consistent people.

As far as cooking is concerned, offal is the only group of ingredients that consistently and inherently requires thought and consideration in it’s preparation. As Thomas Keller proclaims in The French Laundry Cookbook:

It’s easy to cook a fillet mignon, or to sauté a piece of trout, serve it with browned butter à la meunière,  and call yourself a chef. But that’s not really cooking. That’s heating. Preparing tripe however, is a transcendental act: to take what is normally thrown away and, with skill and knowledge, turn it into something exquisite.

In his customarily prosaic fashion.

But only in recent times, in this country, has offal had the distinction of being an amuse bouche for the jaded palate. In nearly every other meat- eating society on earth, offal is on the table. Even Jews and Muslims with their squeamishness’ about blood and bottom feeding, eat offal. So what is the fucking hang up?

In my short career as a meat- cutter/ manager, I got an unrestrained, firsthand and unwelcome view of American’s relationship with meat. “Can you pull the skin off that and cut it into 67 one quarter by five eighth inch cubes? that’s what it says in my recipe”; “Um, I’ll have one boneless, skinless chicken breast. Can you put that in a plastic bag and wrap it?”. Or one of my very favorites:

“Hi, do you sell rabbit?”

“Well yes we do mam, it’s right over here.”

“Oh my god, it’s true, you do sell rabbit.”

Me smiling, oblivious, “yep, we sure do. How many would you like?”

“I don’t want any, rabbits aren’t food, they’re pets and that is inhumane and disgusting. I can’t believe you people sell this. You need to take those off the shelf. I belong to an organization….”

“I’ll go get the manager.”

This conversation took place before I was the manager, thank the good lord for something. I could go on and on but that isn’t the point. The point is, oh wait, I have one more that needs telling.

When my brother and I were catering, we scored a demonstration at the local farmers’ market. We had been making pies for the local wine bar and I had rendered out a 25 pound case of leaf lard and canned it for the purpose of making real, traditional pie crust. So we decided to make a strawberry/ rhubarb pie. We made two: one all butter, one butter and lard. I suppose you would have had to be there to imagine all the “ewe!”’s and “no way!”’s (it seriously sounded like a classroom of kindergartners being asked to eat a pile of dead rats) when my brother bravely solicited the crowd, “so who likes lard?”. Apparently not the denizens of the farmers market. Only in America, as Eddie Murphy would say.

So we have established that modern (or are they post-modern? or “after-modern”) Americans, especially in Portland, really hate every part of the animal except the loins and breasts (avian dark meat and mammalian shoulders are quickly being relegated to the category of “variety cuts” as well). And even these lilly white extravagances are regarded with suspicion, like an envelope, lacking a return mailing address, full of a mysterious white powder. And Portlanders think of themselves as environmentalists.

The energy inefficiency of raising animals for food is well documented. And although there are arguments to be made for an alternative system of animal husbandry as an ethical, aesthetically pleasing and efficient way to feed the burgeoning population of increasingly affluent top tier heterotrophs, waste is inexcusable. And waste is precisely what we do when we disregard about 20% of every pig we slaughter and maybe %10 of every cow (those figures are approximate educated guesses, it’s unreal how many greyhounds one must consume before any useful information can be pried from the internet). A pig apparently yields, on average, about 73% muscle meat. Maybe 5% of the rest is digestive contents, and the rest is edible. Seriously, most of this food is thrown away, fed to animals (like livestock) or shipped to China.

It’s especially repulsive when one considers that as recently as the 1960’s offal was considered perfectly acceptable family fare, but by the 1980’s that had all changed. Can you imagine the Seavers sitting down to a nice platter of boiled tongue with horseradish sauce? Yet, as recently as 1972 James Beard was rhapsodizing the glories of skewered lamb kidneys. Which are delicious by the way.

What you do is cut the kidneys (which must be fresh) through the middle lengthwise. That is to say, along the inside split of the kidney bean (you’ll know what I mean when you have them in hand). Remove the white stringy stuff that’s in there with a sharp knife (yes offals do take a little skill) and then cut the halves into half or thirds if they’re large. Soak these pieces in water for a few hours (or milk if your loaded), then drain and pat dry. Cut some mushrooms (Crimini or, if you got ‘em, Porcini, Chanterelles, Morels or any other firm, large, flavorful fungi) into quarters or halves depending on size. Some good bacon will be threaded onto a skewer, intertwined with alternating layers of mushroom and kidney chunks. The bacon should wrap half way around each skewered piece of kidney or mushroom. Season this well and grill carefully (so as not to set fire to the bacon) for 10 minutes or so, while basting alternately with a mixture of white wine and mustard, and melted butter,  until the mushrooms are soft and the kidneys are crispy outside, just pink inside. Serve forth with a salad of endives and radishes, and some good bread.  This is how we eat.

If you don’t do it first, restaurants will beat you to the punch. You’re probably okay with that, but you shouldn’t be. When I began my career as a white trash line cook, flank steak was about $3 a pound. Then London Broil got trendy, no wait, it was already totally trendy, then every two bit hack of a cookbook author in the country published a recipe for flank steak, the Great American Marketing Machine went to work, now you’d be lucky to get a pound of stringy, fussy meat for under $12. So don’t wait for others to tell you, just forge ahead. You’ll already be competing with the dogs.

Marrow is people food. Have you ever eaten Osso Bucco? It literally means “bone hole” (don’t you laugh) and refers to the fact that the real treat, the raison d’être of this dish is the little spot of marrow in the middle of the bone, and it should be served with a little tiny fork so you can get it out of there. But how often does that happen? Just ask for a little fork and one gets a reaction ranging from bemusement to utter confusion. Fortunately marrow bones are still relatively cheap, easy to prepare, and can be enjoyed on their own.

The french classic of bone marrow with snails is pretty good, but a little fussy and rich. I like the suggestion of Fergus Henderson, to serve them with toast, salt and a simple salad of parsley, shallot and capers dressed in olive oil and lemon. Cooking them is simple. Have the butcher cut them into 2 to 3 inch lengths (and make sure he’s only giving you bones with a lot of marrow, he thinks it doesn’t matter because you’re going to feed it to the dogs) rinse them off, and roast them in a 450 oven for 15-20 minutes or until the marrow is just soft all the way through, use a skewer. Don’t overcook, as the marrow will just turn to liquid and run out the ends. If you want to get really fancy, the New Professional Chef would have you soak them in a bowl of cold salted water for a few hours to draw out the blood and any “impurities”, then you can apparently push the marrow right out of the bone. Good stuff to garnish a steak with.

Chicken and turkey offals are about the only offals commonly available. Increasingly, these are seen on the menus at trendy izakayas skewered and broiled. I even at some skewered chicken butts at Ping, they were disappointing. As a red blooded Midwesterner, I’m partial to fried livers. As a fussy contemporary epicure, I got a certain method.

Chicken livers, to my mind, need soaking. Salted water works, salted milk is even better. I rinse the livers first, then I soak them for about 12 hours or overnight. Drain, pat them dry and season generously with salt and especially pepper, and roll them in a 50/50 mixture of rice flour and AP flour (rice flour helps make everything fried, crispier). Immediately upon dusting them, shallow fry them in a cast iron skillet, preferably in lard. They cook pretty quick, so you can cook them at a fairly high temperature, just don’t let the oil burn. the livers should be brown and exceptionally crisp on the outside, just a hint of rosiness on the inside. No, I cannot explain why it’s okay to eat chicken livers less than totally gray all the way through. I just know that I can, to cook them any more results in a dry, crumbly mess that is best served to the cat. These I serve forth with a spicy cocktail sauce. In the Midwest, and even out here, chicken livers are generally, flabby and limp and served with ketchup, appealing only to the die- hard who is probably more interested in proving their authenticity, or their virility, than in enjoying their food.

The overarching theme here, as you may have noticed, is soaking. Not all offal needs a soaking, mainly just the internal organs, especially those that process waste. This tames the often strong flavors. and removes much of the bloodiness. On the other hand, aficionados like Fergus Henderson and rustics like Angelo Pellegrini waste little time or flavor with such niceties. I leave it to you. If, however, you choose to bring home a nice boneless, skinless chicken breast for dinner tonight, I want you to think about all that flavorful, delicious skin and bone that, thanks to your squeamish contemporary sensibilities, is being rendered into soap, machine lubricant, pet food, candles, cosmetics and livestock feed right now. Turns out that, on some level, even the industrial complex abhors waste.

Preparing lamb’s kidneys. In reading order: a fresh pile of kidneys, where to cut into them from, the opened kidney showing the white stuff to be removed (there’s a little more under the pale flesh), soaking in a milk brine.

I just got my first negative feedback and I am so excited. Yuppiedouche@Gmail.com suggests that, “You’re an idiot”. I want my fans and detractors alike to know that I am open to criticism and suggestions. But speaking of ground-hugging detritivores, I finally found some Verpa bohemica!

Apparently, the metabolism of this fungus is still not well understood but, according to mushroomexpert.com it is suspected that it is both saprophytic and mycorrhizal at different stages of its life. Saprophytic means detritivore. The meaning of mycorrhizal is fully discussed elswhere on this website. It belongs to the family Morchellaceae  (morel family) and subdivision Ascomycotina  (spores born in sacs called asci, for our purposes however these are all the “weird” looking mushrooms) . So despite the claims to the contrary, the Verpa is closely related to the morel.

For the longest time I, along with everyone I know, labored along under the illusion that this was a poisonous mushroom. All “false morels” are supposed to be poisonous. According to David Arora’s “Mushrooms Demystified” the Verpa bohemica should be consumed rarely, in small quantities, with caution, if at all. And I would certainly recommend that you treat it as if it were of “unknown edibility” the first time you try it, as prudence would dictate. Not all people are able to consume all mushrooms. I would, however, never have thought to gather this one for the table if it weren’t for the fact that last year, a bad year for morels here in the Willamette Valley, it started popping up in farmer’s markets and restaurants started buying it. At first, I was shocked. Then one day I asked one of the more well-known commercial mushroom harvesting outfits at the farmer’s market about it as I didn’t see any at his table; morels were becoming more ubiquitous at this point. His response, “more people get sick from Morels than from Verpa”, and he seemed none to happy that I had questioned the integrity of commercial mushroom harvesters. So this year, cooks started putting up pictures on my facebook club “Pacific Northwest Mycological Club” of their Verpa harvests and saying, “the flavor is like a morel” and I thought, “I’m gonna go get me some of them”. And so I did.

We (Leona and I) found them growing under some cottonwood trees near the Columbia River, amongst a tangle of Himalayan Blackberry. As so often happens with these things, all the easy- to- get- to ones trailside had already been gone over by a very thorough individual with a sharp knife. Of course it was pouring and I was in flip- flops, my boots having previously gotten thoroughly soaked.

Prudence advises us to try new mushrooms with caution, whether or not they have a reputation. David Arora advises us to always cook all members of Morchellaceae. So I did. I split it down the middle lengthwise and cooked it in a cast iron skillet over a high flame. A little oil to prevent sticking and a little salt to move things along. This is true of most cookery and most mushroom cookery, salt at the beginning of the process, this draws out the water which is necessary for the vegetable to really begin cooking. The mushroom first turns flaccid, this is not a sign to stop cooking, one must be brave and forge ahead. When the mushroom has released moist of it’s excess water, which takes a while as it is between 80 and 90% water, then it will begin to brown. Many people tell me about how they don’t like this or that mushroom because it “tastes like slugs” or is “too slimy”, as if they alone do not enjoy the consistency of raw gastropod. The rest of us just relish it. The problem is in the cookery. It is not a young snap pea, nor a stalk of asparagus. The fungi are more closely related to meat, both in flavor and tissue makeup, than they are to tender spring vegetables. Sure, a Porcini may be consumed raw, as may a meadow mushroom, Agaricus campestris but Cantherellus, Hydnum (hedgehog), Pleurotus (oyster), Verpa are best hammered as they say in the professional kitchen.

The next evening I roasted them with garlic (garlic added at the end of the process) and served them forth with our usual salad: curly endives tossed in garlic/anchovy/red wine vinaigrette and dusted with a generous blizzard of parmigiano. This was good. The next evening however, grilled next to a simply seasoned fryer, was not so good. Robin was over too and no one finished their mushrooms, they tasted… spoiled. Like decay. So, my recommendation is to eat your Verpas fresh.

This concludes my tirade on mushroom cookery. If you would like to know more I suugest reading Angelo Pellegrini’s epilogue to the 1970’s edition of The Savory Wild Mushroom. Especially the part where he rages that “the mushroom hunter rises at dawn and wears his shirt inside out. To ask why is to ask why fire burns.” That part always cracks me up.

And if you have some constructive criticism, I’d love to hear it. If you want to talk shit on the internet under an assumed name, tell me where we can meet, it’ll be like an online date. And you can talk shit to my face.

I hate going out to dinner in this town. Rarely am I surprised or even incredibly impressed. More often than not, I get let down. I had a rule for a while wherein there were only about six “fancy” restaurants that we were allowed to eat at. I won’t mention what they were.

But then one of them let me down terribly. I had taken a bunch of cooks there for dinner and everything was sub-par. Then there was Syun, mentioned in my previous post, which more than impressed, and it wasn’t on my list. Now another place that I had added to my “canon” let me down. This time I wasn’t with restaurant people and that was, in some ways, worse. Worse because they weren’t tasting the mistakes and foibles of execution and recognizing exactly what went wrong where, they were simply underwhelmed. Especially because the chef in question has gotten so much press. I think Food and Wine called him, “The Prince of Modern Gastronomy” and the New York Times raved, “The Prometheus of Portland”. I think they overstated the case.

To be perfectly fair I had only eaten at Le Pigeon once before and the food was good. The atmosphere was good too. So it really had no place in my little canon. But I really believed in the place for its seeming lack of pretension and its willingness to experiment. We had a linguine with pickled pigs ears and I appreciated the playfulness. This time the menu seemed a little more straightforward, but there were some things that grabbed my attention.

So we started with a grilled romaine salad with salt cod, pine nuts and sherry vinegar marinated red onions. This would have been great, the lettuce was nicely grilled, the pinenuts well toasted, the onions sweet and tart (although I didn’t really get the sherry, maybe too much sugar?), and the salt cod nonexistent. I literally don’t think there was any salt cod. But there were other things on the table and I got too caught up in the moment to think to send it back. Who needs salt cod when you have sweetbreads and lamb trio?

The sweetbreads were great. Fried crisp and served up with quartered, slightly sauteéd grapes, some pancetta, a little friseé and red onion salad and some nice big slices of oregon black truffle. I only wished it were bigger. But good critics don’t complain about portion sizes, so I won’t here either. I just miss the way it was in Donostia in Spain, where sweetbreads came sliced thin, fried crisp, and piled high on a grease-paper lined basket with lemon and ailoli. That’s living.

The lamb was where things really started to go downhill for me. The dish was advertised as ribs, belly and tongue. The ribs were dry and oversalted, not to mention bland. The belly came in the form of rillete, which was also over-seasoned yet bland, not to mention fatty even by the standards of belly rillete. And the tongue, which drew my eye to the dish in the first place, failed to satisfy not only on the above scores (bland, salty,) but also by virtue of it’s long axperience as a diembodied organ. Offal can be cured or pickled and be great, this was neither. Maybe somebody forgot the pink salt.

For dinner I got braised pork (shoulder, jowl?) served atop a mound of excellent polenta, coated with sauce naturel and covered with a nice flurry of parmegiano. The pork was burnt. Not over-carmelized. It wasn’t just the fond. The meat itself was bitter as a coffe bean with that aroma that comes if you’ve ever tried to toast a tortilla on an elctric burner. I couldn’t finish it, and I was hungry. So I moved over to Leona’s plate, rabbit with english peas, pancetta and Raclette.

This one was pretty good. The peas were delicious. Who doesn’t like Raclette? Pancetta is a food group in my house (or it would be if anybody in this town would proffer a decent log, besides Todd, who doesn’t make enough). The rabbit itself was a little, je ne sais quoi; plain, dry? But after my encounter with the pork, Leona was lucky I left the bones. Sauce would have helped this one, the Raclette was unfortunately just a semi-melted chunk in the bottom of the earthenware dish. But the aesthetic was true, a rustic ensemble of simple, hearty lapin garni.

We had some great wines including a refosco from vigne de zamo, 2006 I think. The price, $40.00, not too bad. This one was a little dense and chewy but still with those nice refined Italian tannins that make it go so well with food or, for that matter, drunken revelry.

I don’t want to say that I don’t recommend this restaurant. The atmosphere is nice, the prices right, and the food playful and sometimes spot on. I just hate having my expectations shattered. It was probably just an off night. But I figure, if you got your picture on the cover of Food and Wine, the food should blow little old me away on a balls-to-the-wall shit night with no dishwasher and a new pantry cook.

In the late 19th century, the german forester A.B. Frank described the relationship between fungi, specifically truffles, and the trees that they associate with. The work was undertaken in the hopes that truffles could be cultivated and the Germans could live happily ever after, knee- deep in truffles. Although things did not work out this way as so often happens, the story has come full circle, back to food.
Most seed –bearing plants in the wild, and quite a few of the sporulating type, satisfy at least some of their nutrient needs through mycorrhizal relationships. The “fungus root” is, for many genera, absolutely essential to normal growth and development. All of which comes as no surprise to OMS members. Our hobby depends largely on the fact that trees depend on fungus, and that fungus produces large, beautiful and delicious mushrooms for us to admire, collect and eat. Tuberales, Boletus, Cantherellus, Tricholoma, Russulas and Lactarius are all woodland mushrooms that exist primarily for their association with the “higher” plant life (i.e. trees). As it turns out, our vegetable plants also rely on fungal relationships to thrive.
These fungi live their entire lives underground and do not produce large fruit bodies themselves. They cannot even live without a plant host, yet they are not parasitic. They are the Arbuscular Mycorrhizae and they can go a long way towards maximizing your organic garden’s production of strong roots and lush foliage.
Arbucular mycorrhizae are endomycorrhizae meaning that they interface inside of the plants root inside its cells in contrast with the ectomycorrhizae, also known as sheathing mycorrhiza, which commonly associate with trees and do their business through the cell walls. Arbuscular approximately means “little tree”, so named because of the form the fungus takes inside the root cell approximates a silver maple.
The relationship is, as the kids say, complicated. At it’s most basic however the plant gives up a portion of photosynthesized carbohydrates in return for nitrogen, phosphorous, certain trace minerals, protection from certain toxic substances such as some heavy metals, and more water than it would be able to absorb otherwise, which renders the plant more drought resistant. The fungus is able to provide these benefits by increasing the surface area and reach of the plant’s root system and, by virtue of its unique fungal metabolism, make phosphorous, normally a “pathchy”, insoluble and inaccessible nutrient, available to the plant. Mycorrhizal fungus has also been found to be the source of glomalin, an as yet little understood exudate that holds soil together and therefore contributes to its tilth, an inexact description of a soil’s texture.
Mycorrhizal inoculation is possibly best utilized by the home gardener in an “organic” system. Studies have shown that “slow release” of nitrogen and modest application of rock phosphorous is preferable for cultivation of relationships between plants and fungi, presumably because the plant is “encouraged” to form the relationship in order to get what it needs. In field-  trials of habitat restoration performed by Tim Meikle and Michael Amaranthus this type of fertilization regime boosted colonization rates from a 0- 20% range to a 16-  20% range. Outplanting success, measured by seedling survival rates was increased from a maximum of 60% for seedlings under “traditional fertigation” to a minimum of 65% in the heavily inoculated seedlings under the “alternative fertilization” regime. Compost and seed meal are examples of amendments which release nitrogen slowly as they degrade. Conventional fertilizers generally provide nutrients in a highly soluble form that plants can readily utilize without a mycorrhizal intermediary.
Commercial mycorrhizal innoculant comes in various forms and preparations.  Straight spore preparations are the most common and most highly recommended as they are highly shelf-stable and most versatile. A powder form can be dusted on seeds when starting, mixed with water for a drench, used as a side dressing, mixed into potting soil or starting mix, used as a root dip, or mixed into soil when transplanting or outplanting. Soils or composts containing mycelia or spores are not recommended, not only for their high cost but also their lack of versatility and possible problems concerning the viability of the inoculant.
Perrenial plants, once inoculated, will continue to be colonized by the fungus season after season. An annual garden bed that is only lightly or not at all tilled will possibly continue to harbor spores and mycelium year after year although heavier colonization rates could probably be achieved by freshly inoculating each seasons annual vegetables. A long established, organically maintained and untilled or lightly tilled garden bed will likely already have a diverse and healthy population of mycorrhizal fungus and benefits from additional inputs may be less dramatic. However inoculation is not a binary relationship, there is a matter of degree of root colonization, which I suspect is especially true when short- season annual crops are concerned.
Although the research on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus is less than absolutely definitive and the science is still relatively young, most of the available evidence points toward a clear- cut plant benefit from these relationships. Soil degradation through physical disturbance, contamination, erosion, over- fertilization and imprudent application of agricultural chemicals is a reality not only in agricultural settings but in our home gardens as well. Many sites could probably benefit from a deliberate bolstering of the below- ground fungal populations.

Nettles are trendy. A bag weighing less than a pound costs about $4 at the farmers’ market. And they’re a dirty roadside weed. It takes maybe 5 minutes to pick a pound, less probably for a “professional” nettle forager, they’re common as grass, and you don’t even have to leave the city limits to find a patch. Yet people gladly line up at the farmers’ market and pay good money for them. But why pick on the farmers’ market? Those people sell a necessity. Nettles are also marketed in pill form, and people buy dried powdered weeds in softgel caplets.

Weeds are trendy. New Seasons and other high-end groceries market dandelion greens. I can think of little more useless than the twist tie that holds together a bunch of dandelion greens. Not to mention the agricultural space expended to grow dandelions. Here in my house, we eat dandelions. Prepared in the manner of my German forbears, tossed with hot bacon fat, apple cider vinegar, sugar, onions and salt. Despite the bacon, they still need a little salt.

We don’t buy them, we pull them out of the garden so as to make room for cultivated plants that, truth be told, are considerably more delicious. As you can well imagine, we don’t buy our nettles either. Those, we make into soup. Leona wants us to put them to other, more imaginative, uses but I only like them as soup. A gratin might work, and my brother makes nettle pesto which, as he has informed me, is called pesto d’ortica and is an Italian classic and is delicious. But, as an American, soup is what you’re supposed to make with them. Apparently, a soup of nettles is a traditional spring restorative, the winter having been relatively free of fresh vegetables and nettles being one of the very first plants to brave the lasts frosts of spring. They are also incredibly nutritious. The sting of nettles is supposed to have evolved because the plant is so nutrient dense, without it, foraging animals would have foraged it away long ago.

The way to make nettle soup is to bring a quantity of heavily salted water to the boil and blanch the greens in it. Heavily means like seawater or brine. Almost too salty to like. After blanching they lose their sting. Sauteé some onions (a lot, always a lot of onions) and some garlic with a few bay leaves in a heavy pot until they’re done then add the blanched nettles and sauteé them too. Sauteé it until it looks good enough to eat all by itself, then add chicken stock. The stock should of course be homemade and good, if it’s not, you’re on your own. Add a dash of  cayenne, not enough to make it spicy, this isn’t Indian food, just enough to add the fruit. Simmer this mess briefly, maybe twenty minutes, then pureé with an immersion blender if at all possible. Lacking an immersion blender, immediately postpone dinner while you run to sur la table to purchase one. Season the soup with salt, black pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice and serve forth with finely sliced chives and, if you like, a dollop of creme fraîche. If, after all the trouble you’ve gone through making stock and picking nettles, you purchase creme fraîche, you will be very disappointed in yourself, and I will share in your disapointment.

the soup, prior to immersion blending.

Claytonia siberica is another good weed. Maybe it’s the best weed. Occasionally it can be found at fancy restaurants in our area as a garnish or a little side salad. It’s also known as miner’s lettuce and is sweet and succulent. It’ll probably be at New Seasons pretty soon. I dress it lightly with vinaigrette of white wine vinegar and/or lemon, much more destroys its subtle tenderness. And I salt them. Of course they get salted.

Salt and wild vegetables are as inseparable to cuisine sauvage as balsamic vinegar is to the mesclun at the table of the yuppie neophyte. Salt tames the weediness. It extracts the muddiness. According to my brother, even Pacific Northwestern fiddleheads are edible if they’re blanched in properly salted water. To me, they taste of the swampy mud they rise from.

To the professional, this comes as no surprise. Restaurant kitchens go through enormous quantities of salt. Green vegetables need salt and lots of it. Pasta needs salt. Potatoes need salt. Meat, Fish, Poultry, Butter, Mushrooms need salt. Many food writers, the type that write for the food day weekly section in the newspaper, like to point to the importance of salt in whatever little class of food they’ve been assigned to that week, “Most people are afraid of cooking fish, but fish just needs a little salt and a lot of love”, or equivalent drivel. But this is different. Wild greens are almost completely unpalatable without sufficient salt. Not not just salt at any time, salt at the right time. If your nettle blanching water is under-seasoned, you will never rid your soup of the flavors of dirt and weeds. Likewise, dandelions need previously salted meat, then a little more to be delicious.

Don’t buy weeds, frugality is trendy. Save your money for salt, whose virtues are timeless.

Claytonia siberica

Some zip codes just aren’t hip enough for critical review. 97220 in the Parkrose neighborhood, home of The German Bakery, is one of those.

The unassuming storefront on Sandy Boulevard could do more to showcase the array of central european delights that await the intrepid germanophile. Long overshadowed by their far more popular competitor, Edelweiss, in the considerably trendier 97202 area code; the plucky volksdeutsche out there in no hipster land toil away at their jaegerbrot, marzipan, and their baerentatze in relative obscurity. Two glass display cases are filled with rolls, cookies and impossibly beautiful pastries. Behind the counter hangs another glass case filled (well, mostly empty past noon) with house baked- rye and white flour breads.

Not ready to venture beyond the motherly embrace of inner southeast Portland for a couple of pastries and some marzipan cookies? The Bakery just happens to be connected to The Bavarian Sausage Company whose main location is in the true hinterlands of Tigard. The selection ranges from 18-inch long thuringer bratwurst to dinner franks and spicy beer sausage. No New Seasons’ “loose-lean-ground meat seasoned with a haphazard quantity of spice dust, and placed in the general vicinity of a pig’s intestine.” These are the real Bavarian deal. The seasoning could, to my mind, be a little more forward but that’s probably just the Cincinnati in me talking. The sausages have snap and the smoke (on those that are) is just right.

When Leona and I go, we’re usually heading out of town to do some hiking and we want something that we can eat cold on rolls (the laugenwecke, pretzel rolls, are delicious). So we go for the cold cuts and cheese. Head cheese comes in a couple of incantations and it’s delicious. Lyoner, Black Forest Ham and Westphalian ham, like the less-aged German version of prosciutto are also on display and well executed. Bavarian mustard, gherkins, pickled beets, saurkraut, and various other, stranger, German condiments fill a couple of shelves. Butterkaese is one cheese you should stop living without. The variety they carry here appears to be a mass market example but it’s incredibly satisfying nonetheless. As the name implies, it tastes like butter, but its a semi- soft cow’s milk cheese that’s aged for about a month. What could be nicer with a liter of hellesbier?  Nothing, that’s what.

Speaking of beer, they’ve got about thirty labels, mostly mass market stuff, but a couple of treats, and they serve breakfast and lunch.

Breakfast, referred to simply as “German Breakfast” consists of a variety of cold cuts, some butterkaese, a selction of rolls (usually plain seeming “milk rolls”), butter, apricot jam, and a soft boiled egg. Perfect. Lunch, I have yet to try. I will only mention here that they serve a dish called rouladen which is a stuffed, stewed beef roll, pork chops, and stuffed cabbage. I believe that they serve these with a selection of sides, like german potato salad.

There are other misfit restaurants that I intend to bring to you in the very near future. Following the example of gastronomes like Calvin Trillin and Jane and Michael Stern one can find a plethora of great, authentic eateries that survive not through fanfare, deep pockets, and critical reviews, but through the loyal patronage of a loyal clientelle. The original intent of those authors, which has now been largely perverted on the websites chowhound.com and roadfood.com, was to showcase regional American institutions, places that fed generations of people the sort of familiar fare that they truly, earnestly desired. What today we refer to, sometimes derisively, other times simply condescendingly, as comfort food. The problem is that as the generation that frequents these institutions dies off or retires to Florida, their offspring do not step up to take their places. They go either the way of Safeway, Wal Mart, and Wendy’s or the way of Whole Foods, Trader Joes and Toro Bravo (not to pick on that restaurant per se, but you know what I mean, don’t act like you don’t).  The problem is, to my mind, especially keen in the area of retail food. American butchers, bakers and greengrocers are practically extinct. The trades themselves are going fast as well, considering that at the average American supermarket they train people only as “meat cutters” as opposed to butchers (most actually only train them to be “meat wrappers”), the bread is generally of low quality and often made from mixes, and the deli counter is more a showcase of the travesties of modern industrial food supply than a display of proudly crafted artisan goods.

If urban young people continue to ignore these institutions they will disappear. With them will go a large chunk of our awareness of our past and America will continue to be regarded in some circles (europeans, trendy American “foodies”) as lacking a serious food culture.

I haven’t eaten this well since San Sebastian feasts of chuleton and pinxos de foie gras. I don’t know what took me so long to get out to Syun Izakaya in Hillsboro, except for the fact that it’s out in Hillsboro, but I can hardly wait to get back. I’ve of course been hearing about this joint for years, Syun is amazing, Syun has the biggest sake selection on the west coast, Syun is the reason to go to hillsboro (otherwise known largely for its subdivisions and its migrant farm worker population), but I could never justify the trip.

It’s not that I don’t like Japanese food. On the contrary it is, to my mind, one of the few cuisines worth going out for. Japanese food is not part of my repetoire and I know enough about the accomplishment of Japanese chefs to keep me from trying to learn it. I’ll stick with what I understand intuitively, and all of the Pan-asian, world beat, globalist, multi-culti numskulls with their little bamboo mats and their ridiculously expensive Damascus steel japanese cutlery and their Far Eastern spiritualism can flounder about in half- hearted, unapologetic ignorance. Problematically, I also generally reserve judgement on cuisines of the far east because I’m so unfamiliar with their paradigms and standards.

Of course bad fish is bad fish in just about any language (although I feel sure that there must be some culture that absolutely revels in the ammoniac aroma of 12 day old prawns), fermented sauces notwithstanding. And sometimes deliciousness likewise knows no cultural, political, or gustatory bounds. Syun presents just such a revelation.

We started with some fried smelt, simple, perfectly fresh, not a trace of the fish fat rancidity that usually haunts the littler fishes of the sea. Just dusted with flour and pan-fried and served with a wedge of lemon. We also had what was described as a raw beef salad. A strip of loin meat (striploin?) had been previously seasoned and lightly seared on all sides then sliced down thinly and served over a bed of mixed greens dressed with some sort of miso-soy dressing and the whole thing showered with little dollops of exceptionally mild fresh grated horseradish. This was the least impressive dish we had, and it was close to phenomenal. We got a little plate of japanese pickles, delicious all around. Especially a log of pickled daikon (the waiter gave it another name that designated its stage of maturity), that had been cut open and laid flat, like a pork loin for stuffing, then filled with shiso leaves and rolled back up and sliced into little pinwheel rounds. Impressively exotic. The real triumph however, possibly of the entire meal, was an appetizer called Narutoyaki. I’ll obviously be the first to admit that I am an ignoramous about all things “asian” (more about how much I detest that designation later) but I had never heard of it. Neither Shisuo Suji (Japanese Cooking) nor Charmaine Solomon (Encyclopedia of Asian Food) nor even the great wise Google of the Internets makes any mention of the dish . How sorry my life has been till now. Thin sliced beef (sirloin?) pounded, seasoned and seared to medium or so, was tossed with an abundance of thin sliced yellow onions and dried bonito flakes and a deeply savory dressing that included the collected juices of the beef and apparently some fermented soy product or another. Truly a revelation.

We moved on to Miso soup. nothing much to say. Then on to what, from our western perspective, serves as the main course in a japanese restaurant, massive amounts of raw fish in all mannner of artsy-cutesy presentations. I had my first otoro, fatty tuna belly, and I was… underwhelmed. It’s just fatty, really fatty and it tastes like little more than creamy fat, like lard of the sea. I noticed that more than one person at the table gave each bite a good double dipping in their soy/wasabi dish (I know your not really supposed to do this but if you want a keen awareness of and attention to japanese protocol and etiquette, your definitely reading the wrong blog). On the plus side, I suspect that the wasabi was real and fresh. Very subtle, not like that scorching, palate excoriating mustard explosion one usually is forced to desecrate one’s aquatic megafauna with.

The sashimi was excellent. Lacking the training, knowledge or adjectives to describe the subtleties of great raw fish I’ll just mention my personal highlights. The uni which we were informed was flown all the way from japan (so much for local seasonal etc…, I believe that much of the seafood here was flown from the far corners of the globe, In this case it was carbon well expended), was unlike any I (or any of us) had ever tasted. Better than slurping it right out of the shell that sunny day on a Corsican beach (sorry Jean and Doug, that oursin had its own virtues that I will never forget). It was like Butter of the Sea, not a trace of iodine, subtley shellfishy, like a cold creamed scallop. Speaking of scallops, sliced thinly, layered with even thinner slices of blanched lemon. The bitter-sour of the lemon waging an adorable battle with that bivalve’s rich plumpness.

I need to mention the rice. We got bowls of warm white rice, nishiki was the variety,

to accompany our sashimi platter and, although I hear you accusing me of employing precious hyperbole (and just plain being precious), it was poetic. I’ve read of the pleasures of eating plain rice in far eastern literature class and I’ve scoffed. I don’t scoff no more. This rice was sticky and glutinous, but not like the “sticky rice” you get in thai restaurants, more like rissoto, but softer, finer and although of a short grain variety, the grains were thinner than those plump nuggets of rissoto. It was unseasoned and its perfume, not bold, not floral, just sweet, slightly earthy, and somehow “human”, drifted through.

Of course, we were still hungry, so we got rolls. The finest being tempura prawns rolled up with rice and topped with grilled unagi eel and drizzled with sweet teriyaki sauce. This reminded me, somehow, of fresh fried donuts. A savory far eastern donut. The combination of the slightly oily, incredibly crispy and sweet prawns, the aforementioned rice and the rich, sweet teriyaki sauce harmonized to create, in my mind, the illusion that I was eating not the end result of a three hundred year evolution of Japanese court ccuisine but the modern Japanese equivalent of the donut holes that my mother used to fry on the exceptional sunday morning of my youth. Incredible.

I kegged my Altbier this morning and I’m still attempting to figure out force carbonation. The “shaking it around on the floor until the damn thing stops making noise” method is not, in my very amateur opinion, the best way to go about it. One brewing website speaks of a certain “patient method” which involves hooking the CO₂ up to the “out” nozzle on the keg, setting your pressure regulator according to a chart that converts pressure to “volumes” (a term that I imagine implies the number of times a unit of space is filled with the quantity of gas that said unit would encompass under normal circumstances) turning the gas on and throwing (or carefully placing) the whole getup in the fridge for 48 hours. I guess we’ll see on Saturday.

The impatient method was, of course, initially appealing to me because I’m impatient, especially when it comes to beer, or wine, or booze. But it’s shortcomings soon became apparent. First I tried it with the pressure at about 15 psi and let it sit overnight. But it was a little to flat so I tried it again, this time at 30 psi. It was still a little flat after another 12 hours or so, but only because of the fact that it shot out of the nozzle with such outrageous ferocity that it was difficult to hold the glass at the proper angle for a good pour. It was kinetically equivalent to the little girl in the excorcist projectile vomiting.

More importantly, the fizz just wasn’t right. Like the way a good pint has equal carbonation from the top to the bottom and the bubbles are fine and start from the bottom of the glass and trace a bead all the up.

But enough about that beer, it’s gone anyway, to the consternation of my friend Rob who was, rightfully, a part owner. The Alt will be delicious. It’s just the little Charlie Papazian extract recipe and it’s real simple with only one 60 minute hop addition. It turned out dry on the palate (even with a TG of 1018) and with just enough dark toasted malt to keep it interesting but without its tasting like a medieval breakfast.

Don’t worry, have a homebrew.

Update 3/30/09:

Tried the beer on 3/28/09 at my party. Still too flat so I cranked the pressure up to close to 12 PSI, today it’s damn near perfect. Rick, I hear you about priming, I just like the way mechanically carbonated beer tastes. The carbonation seems to dilute the beer a little and priming never gets enough foam in it for my liking, I’ve got that American palate.