Jerked Chicken Tacos with Mango-Chipotle-Vanilla Salsa

I don't guess it comes as any surprise that we eat a lot of tacos here at the casa. I love street food and a tacos are a big part of that for me. You can find a taco truck anywhere out here. I'm always thinking of new taco ideas just to shake things up and this week I decided to make jerked chicken tacos.

Jerked Chicken Tacos with Mango-Chipotle-Vanilla Salsa

You can see the tacos above in the photo. They also got some slaw on them before we ate them, but I wanted to photograph them without the slaw so you could see how attractive the mango salsa is with its contrasting flecks of chipotle. There's a recipe for the salsa at the end of this post.

Jerk Paste Ingredients

I'm a big fan of jerked chicken (pork and goat too!) and I like to make it even though I don't have any pimiento wood over which to smoke the chicken. We used to mimic this at the restaurant by adding allspice berries to the wood chips when we were smoking the meat. At home, I skip this step.

Jerk paste varies from person to person as do most things in life, but all versions are good. The one time that I wanted a habanero or Scotch bonnet pepper from my store, they don't have it. So I substituted serrano instead. Serranos have straight ahead heat and lack the apricot fruitiness of a good habanero or Scotch bonnet, but what's a guy to do?

My paste consists of ginger, shallots, green onions, serranos with seeds, fresh thyme, and lots of freshly ground allspice. After mincing everything by hand, I let the food processor combine everything and then I finished the paste to taste with some salt and equal parts of brown sugar and vinegar.

Shallots are not super traditional in jerk paste, while garlic is obligatory. I find that shallots help bulk out the paste and they turn plenty garlicky when puréed in the food process or blender.

Boneless Chicken Thighs in Jerk Paste

I skinned and deboned a bunch of chicken thighs (saving the bones and skin for stock) and covered the thighs in jerk paste. They stayed in the refrigerator overnight.

Jerked Chicken on the Grill

If I had the right set up, I'd love to smoke my chicken low and slow, but alas, I am limited to my grill. Still, it gives great flavor to the chicken, just not quite the traditional flavor.

Mango-Chipotle-Vanilla Salsa

To accompany the jerked chicken on our tacos, I made a spicy mango salsa. The unique thing about this salsa is something that I stumbled onto while playing with mango salsa years ago at the restaurant: vanilla is a haunting dance partner for mango. We used vanilla beans at the restaurant; at home, all I have is extract, good quality extract to be sure. I don't use enough vanilla to warrant purchasing beans. We bought them buy the half kilo at the restaurant and would use a dozen or more beans a week, mostly in flavoring desserts, but sometimes in more savory applications such as this salsa:

1 large very ripe mango
2 chipotles en adobo
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup agave nectar
1/4 cup rice vinegar

2 cups water 

few drops of vanilla extract

Put all the ingredients in the blender except the vanilla and process until smooth. Season to taste with salt (which will help pop the vanilla). Then add vanilla a few seeds or drops at a time until you are happy with the flavor. But remember, too much vanilla is too much: go easy. If your mango was not very ripe, you may need more sugar to balance the sauce. I would use brown sugar. You could also use lime juice in place of the milder rice vinegar for a more tropical effect, but for this salsa I prefer the milder less puckery rice vinegar.

Osso Buco for Ann's Birthday

I'm way behind in posting this, but I've been busy building a new shelf/bookcase for the kitchen and doing the design work for a new wine bar in our living room.

Months ago in the summer, I saw some beef shanks on closeout at the grocery store and bought a couple for the freezer for cooler weather. Osso buco is not something I really crave when it is warm out, but just let the cool fall weather set in and I am game.

Osso Buco on Polenta

We have really been watching what we eat trying to lose our COVID babies and have had some luck, down something like a collective 22 pounds. I promised myself and Ann that damn the diet, we were celebrating for her birthday as a reward for being so disciplined. Enter osso buco on polenta.

The Shank, 2-1/2 pounds

Here is the shank from the store. This is not a high-quality portion, but the price was very right. This one weighed in at over 2-1/2 pounds on the scale, but the vast majority is marrowless bone. You can't see the back side which is nearly all bone and no meat. Still, I managed to get 12 ounces of meat from the shank, enough to feed the two of us. A piece of shank such as this will never give you a photo-worthy, restaurant-style portion of osso buco with a nice marrow bone in the center, but it tastes no different and is plenty good enough for home cooking.

Browning the Shank

I started by dusting the shank with salt, pepper, and Wondra flour and then browning both sides in a nearly oil free heavy-bottomed pan. Notice the fond, the browned build-up on the bottom of the pan. This is a very good thing.

Soffrito in the Pan with Rosemary

Once the shank was browned, I removed it to the crock pot and added my soffrito and a branch of rosemary to the pan. Don't hate me, I put a bushel or more of rosemary in the compost bin this year after pruning. Rosemary grows like a weed here. The soffrito is celery, carrot, and leek, in roughly equal proportions: one leek, two carrots, two stalks of celery. In the photo, I have cleared away the soffrito in the center of the pan so that you can see the fond. This is where the flavor is.

Adding White Wine, Tomato, and Basil

Once the vegetables started going limp, I added a splash of dry white wine, call it a half a cup, to the pan and using a wooden spatula, carefully scraped all the bits of the fond off the bottom of the pan so that it can contribute its flavor to the dish. In went a 28-ounce can of peeled and diced tomatoes in juice, a handful of basil (still in bloom), and call it a teaspoon of salt.

Shank and Soffrito in the Crock Pot

I let everything cook together for about five minutes and then transferred it all to the crock pot, one of my favorite braising devices. Talk about easy: set it and forget it!

7 Hours Later

We went about our day and came back to the braise towards dinner time. See how wonderfully brown everything is: that's exactly what you're aiming for. I removed the herbs from the sauce, separated the meat from the bones and gristle, recombined the meat and the sauce, and seasoned to taste.

Meanwhile, I had a pan of polenta cooking. I have devised a no-worry means of cooking polenta that I discussed in an earlier post. This method eliminates almost all of the stirring and makes delightful polenta. I plated the deconstructed osso buco over the polenta as you see in the very first photo.

Pregame on the Porch with McKinlay Pinot Noir

The weather in early October is always a crap shoot in that we are on the cusp of our rainy season, but today our weather was delightful to the point where we shared a bottle of McKinlay Pinot Noir on the front porch before going in to dinner as it got dark and cool. This is a relatively unknown local bottle in the Burgundian style with restrained fruit and gobs of mouthwatering acid.

With only twelve ounces of beef and only cooking a half a cup of cornmeal for polenta, we managed to both eat decadently but with sensible portion sizes. This osso buco was a great splurge for us.

Chicken Paillards with Artichoke Piccata

I've said it before and no doubt I will say it again. I don't really like flavorless, cottony chicken breasts. But Ann asks me to buy them for her for some of her recipes because they are a low fat, high quality protein. I get it, but I'd rather eat fewer thighs than more breast.

I got home from the store the other day bearing her chicken breasts and I was starving and looking for something other than leftovers for lunch. I decided to cook one of the chicken breasts and make it flavorful. It's a rare day when I actually cook lunch.

Chicken with Artichoke Piccata

Chicken breasts are so huge anymore than they are nearly impossible to flatten so that they cook evenly. Even cooking is essential with low-fat chicken breasts: you do not want any overcooked meat that is stringy and tough.

Paillard: Split, Pounded Chicken Breast

To help with this, I create what we call in the trade paillards ("pie yarr") by slicing the breasts in half into equally thick portions, then flattening them to even thickness. To flatten each paillard, I cover it with a piece of film and then using a heavy frying pan (my black steel French pan called a poêle) I gently pound the chicken breast out to even thickness. It takes a little practice to flatten chicken breasts without tearing them and to get them to even thickness. It helps to start in the center and work your way out to the edge, just like making a flatbread such as naan or pita.

Cook Until the Breast Turns White all Around the Edge

When I am frying a protein, I put it show side down in the pan and I do not move it until I am ready to flip it. This will give the best color for the show side, something that is important in restaurant presentation, but not so much at home. Still, old habits die hard. When you are cooking any protein, you are going to cook it longer on the show side than the flip side. Because the protein is cold throughout, it takes longer to warm the protein to the center when cooking the show side than it does to cook the flip side when the protein is already warm.

When you are cooking a protein, you are watching as the bottom side cooks. You will see the flesh turn from translucent to opaque all around the edge. When the opaque layer starts to move towards the upper surface, you will know that it is time to flip the protein.

In the photo above, the upper paillard is just about ready to flip. The lower one is not. You cannot see any white chicken on the righthand side where it is the thickest.

Build the Sauce After Flipping Show Side Up

After flipping the chicken paillards, I start to build the pan sauce. In goes a clove of garlic to cook for a few seconds, followed by a tablespoon of capers and a little caper brine. Next in go two cups of quartered artichoke hearts and the juice of half of a lemon.

Just as the chicken gets cooked all the way through, remove them from the pan. Over time, you will learn to feel with your fingers when a chicken breast has cooked all the way through. If in doubt, cut a slit in it with a knife and check visually. Remove the chicken from the pan and bring the sauce down as tight as you want, then stir in two tablespoons of chopped Italian parsley and plate.

In the restaurant, we would probably finish the sauce with a pat of butter, but at home, we are not trying to consume all those extra calories.

Chicken Paillards with Artichoke Piccata

The procedure for this dish is detailed above. This is a recap for two servings.

2 flattened chicken breast paillards

salt and pepper

olive oil

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tablespoon nonpareil capers and brine

2 cups quartered cooked artichoke hearts

juice of half a lemon

2 tablespoons minced Italian parsley

Season the paillards with salt and pepper. Film a skillet with olive oil and sear on high heat until half-cooked.

Flip and add garlic to the pan. Let the garlic cook for a few moments so that it is not raw.

Add capers, artichokes, and lemon juice in quick succession.

Remove the chicken when done. Reduce the sauce as necessary. Add parsley and plate.

Kitchen Basics: Cutting Boards

I recently replaced my ancient cutting board. This is a notable event in that I don't willingly part with good gear, especially gear that has served me well. Kitchenware is not like electronics and so many things in our lives today: it does not become technically obsolete and need to be replaced. Often, the older gear is better than what you can buy today.

My cutting board is something that I use each day, multiple times a day. I often take it for granted. But as I realized when I replaced it with a new board, I had a decent amount of unexpected attachment to it. I'm not super sentimental, but that cutting board and I have been through a lot together and parting with it was cause for some reflection.

Out with the Old

During college when I was broke, I made my first cutting board by recycling an old pine chair bottom. Being a very soft wood subject to rot and staining, pine was largely unsuitable for a cutting board, but it served me until I had some income and could replace it.

I replaced that oddly-shaped pine board some 30 years ago with a thick polyethylene one, the one in the photo above, then quite state-of-the-art and especially difficult to find. Part of my attachment to that board has to do with finding it. Back then, there was no web, no Amazon, and no kitchenware store in every town. Buying restaurant quality gear took a lot of effort, even in a town the size of Washington DC where I lived.

I ended up finding the polyethylene cutting board in New York City on one of my trips up there for business. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the best place to buy kitchenware on the East Coast and perhaps in the country was in midtown Manhattan, just a couple blocks off of Park Avenue. I made it a priority to stop at Bridge Kitchenware on E. 52nd Street every visit to the City.

The owner, Fred Bridge, was a renowned grump. Though he was brusque and efficient in his use of words, he was always tolerant of my questions. His wife Carolyn always seemed more chipper and was usually to be seen somewhere in the store, which had things piled on top of things between things behind other things. Fred had an encyclopedic knowledge not only of esoteric kitchenware, but of where everything was stashed.

The cutting board that I bought in NYC and schlepped all the way back to DC (either on a plane or on the train, I forget) served me well over the years, about 30 of them in fact. But over time, the soft polyethylene developed deep knife wounds that harbored mildew and would stain beyond my ability to bleach it white again. You can see the residual chipotle stain in the upper right quadrant of the board. For these reasons, the then-state-of-the-art soft polyethylene has largely been replaced by harder high-density polyethylene (HDPE).

In with the New

Ultimately, it was the mildew that damned the board to the recycling bin in favor of not one, but four new boards.

The impetus to replace my old friend came from cooking again. After a 2-year hiatus from cooking after I hung up my chef coat, I find myself back in the kitchen a lot. And I'm finding some joy in cooking, something that I thought might never come back, the rigors of restaurant life possibly having killed it forever. But since I retired in May, some of that old desire and passion is coming back, tempered by the desire to spend as much time with my wife as possible and to cook within the limitations of a home kitchen.

And so with renewed purpose, I am making some changes to my home kitchenware in favor of more restaurant-typical gear to which I am accustomed, such as color-coded cutting boards.

Although I am accustomed to HDPE plastic boards in the professional kitchen, I chose a wooden teak board as the primary board for my home kitchen, mainly as an olive branch to my wife.

Ann has this thing about items being on the counter. While I am comfortable having all my gear out and within easy reach like it was in the restaurant, she wants a leaner, cleaner, less industrial look for our home kitchen, and who can blame her? Because I use the cutting board all the time, I would never put it away and that would rankle her. Extending the olive branch, I decided to go with a board that is also a work of art. If it is going to remain on the counter, at least it can look nice, hence the decision to go back to a wooden board.

Ever since working in a professional kitchen, I have been concerned about food safety and cross contamination. With my previous cutting board, I had to be very careful when prepping vegetables and chicken to prep the chicken last, after all the vegetables, and to sanitize the cutting board well when done. We just don't need salmonellosis because of inadvertent cross contamination.

To help with food safety, I also bought three color-coded HDPE boards sized such that they will fit in my dishwasher. After I use them, they go directly into the high-temperature dishwasher. Now, I can forget all about using tons of bleach to sanitize the boards. The plastic boards are also small enough to get stored in the pantry until I need them, which really is not that often as our diet is not based around meat.

I use each of the four boards for food that must be cooked to different temperatures. The teak board is for vegetables and most ready-to-eat foods. The blue board is for seafood, the red for meat, and the yellow for chicken. In this way, I will never have to prep vegetables and chicken on the same board again. And if we have a guest to the house with a seafood allergy, I can guarantee that I will never have sliced scallops on the teak board on which I prepped the ingredients for our salad.

This piece of mind comes at minimal expense: each of the colored boards was about $6 at a restaurant supply house. And in 2020, FedEx brought them straight to my house for a minimal fee. No more schlepping them back from New York City!

The teak board is still so new that I am not used to the feel of my knife on it: wood feels different than plastic. The new board is taller and so I am holding my knife a half inch higher, which feels a bit weird, but not so weird as transitioning from restaurant kitchen counter height to home kitchen counter height. And the new board is louder than the old. Still, in a few thousand cuts, we'll become acquainted and make some new memories.

Chickpea and Roasted Butternut Squash Chili

Every now and again, I come up with a dish that is truly wonderful. I can only take credit for the execution, but not the idea. In point of fact, Ann asked me to make her chili with chickpeas and butternut squash, so I grabbed a decent-sized squash on my last trip to the farmers market. This recipe is a definite keeper. We really enjoyed it.

Chickpea and Roasted Butternut Squash Chili

This dish comes together in minutes once you have roasted the butternut squash, which you can do well in advance, even a day or two.

Roast Squash Until Caramelized

The trick to working with butternut squash is to concentrate its flavor by removing a lot of the water that it contains, otherwise it is pretty boring and will just dilute your dish. And fresh squash like I was working with are wetter than squash that have overwintered. Don't be shy about roasting your squash until it takes on good color as you can see above. This took an hour in a hot (400F) oven. I did a post earlier on how to cube butternut squash, if you need a refresher.

When roasting squash, patience is your friend, but be certain to toss the squash every 15 minutes or so such that all sides get a chance to cook. I cooked these on a dry sheet tray because I didn't want to add additional fat, but tossing the squash in a little oil before roasting will help them caramelize.

Chili Veg: Poblano, Onion, Cilantro Stems, Garlic

Sautéed Veg with Chili Spices

Start your chili by sautéeing the onion, poblano, garlic, and cilantro stems. If you read my recipes, you will see that I always call for sautéeing cilantro stems in the mix. The stems are more flavorful than the leaves and they are well suited to a mirepoix or soffrito. Please don't throw them away.

Once the onions have turned translucent, add the cumin and chile powder and cook for a minute or two before adding the water, roasted squash, and chickpeas.

Cook for about 10 minutes, season to taste, and serve. You can make yours as dry or as wet as you like. I decided to make this version fairly dry as I was not serving it over anything to sop up the broth.

Chickpea and Butternut Squash Chili

The procedure is outlined above, but I will recap it below. For four portions, use the quantities below. It takes a lot of squash. Because squash is mainly water, it is going to shrink a lot during cooking.

1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
1 large poblano, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced

stems of one bunch of cilantro, minced 

1 tablespoon freshly ground cumin
1 ounce ground mild chile (I use Numex)
1 quart water or vegetable stock
3 pounds of butternut squash cubes, roasted
3 pounds of cooked chickpeas
salt to taste

Film a large pan with oil and sauté the onion, poblano, garlic, and cilantro until the onion is translucent, about five minutes.

Add the cumin and chile powder and cook for another minute or so to get rid of the raw flavors of the spices.

Add the water, roasted squash, and chickpeas and cook for about 10 minutes at a simmer to let all the flavors come together.

Season and serve.

Kitchen Basics: Cubing Butternut Squash

When you want cubes of winter squash for a dish, go for butternut because of its high yield (flesh to seed ratio) and its ease of handling. Because winter squashes are hard, they are difficult to cube, so most of the oddly shaped ones end up baked, with the cooked flesh scooped out with a spoon. Butternut is the easiest of all to cut because the neck is smooth and solid flesh. Still, without a plan, they can be difficult to work with. Here are the basics of cubing a butternut.

1. Cut out the Neck

For butternut squash that you are going to cube, try to buy ones with necks that are roughly the same diameter from the top down to the bell. Cut off the top where the squash attaches to the vine, cutting straight across. Likewise, on the other end slice straight through to cut off the bell that contains the seeds. Reserve the bell for soup or some other application. It is good squash, but because of its shape, it will not cube well.

2. Peel the Neck

Stand the neck vertically and using a knife (serrated works wonders for this), peel off the rind in strips.

3. Slice off a Slab to Make a Stable Base

The trick to safely cutting any odd-shaped foodstuff is to make yourself a flat, stable base that you can lay on your cutting board. A flat surface will not rock when you cut. This is critical with hard foods such as winter squash where you are going to have to use a little muscle to make the cut.

In the photo, you see that I took a slab off the side. The safest way to make this cut is with the neck standing vertically. If you try to make it with the squash laying horizontally on the cutting board, be very careful that it does not rock.

4-5. Slab and Cut into Strips

Rotate the barrel of the squash so that the now-flat side is down against the cutting board. Continue to cut it into slabs the width of the cubes that you want to make.

Once you have cut the squash into slabs, cut each slab into strips the width of the cubes that you want to make. Once you get the hang of it and are confident about your knife work, you can stack two or three slabs before cutting strips, as long as the stacked slabs are stable and do not rock.

6. Cut into Cubes

The last step is to gather as many strips as you feel comfortable cutting at one time and make the final cuts to turn them into cubes.

Grilled Vegetable Tacos

From late summer to early fall when the garden vegetables are rolling in is a great time to take advantage of your grill to make vegetable tacos.

Grilled Vegetable Tacos

Not only are grilled vegetable tacos pretty healthy for you, they take on a meaty flavor from the grill smoke, especially if you dress them with a bit of smoky, spicy chipotle adobo. I don't know of anyone who would turn down one of these delicious tacos simply because they contain no meat. I could nosh them all day long.

Taco Vegetables

I've used a bunch of different vegetables this summer for tacos including yellow and green summer squash, eggplant, peppers, and onions. This batch was yellow straightneck squash, gray zucchini, a corno di toro-style pepper, and onion. The batch prior to this was yellow crookneck squash, onions, kousa (Lebanese) squash, and graffiti eggplants. Use whatever vegetables you happen to have.

Grilling Vegetables

For my tacos, while the vegetables are grilling, I cut up a tomato or two and add it to a bowl with a good amount of cilantro leaves. Once the vegetables are nicely charred, I chop them and add them to the tomatoes and cilantro, along with a couple tablespoons of spicy chipotle adobo. I give them a good season with salt and pepper and serve them on warmed tortillas with a sprinkle of cotija cheese.

Do Your Onions Fall Apart on the Grill?

Perfectly Grilled Onion

If you're bothered by the onions on your grill falling apart and falling through the grill bars or just making a mess on the grill, you can short-circuit this by running a skewer through the onion slabs as you see above. It really helps if you use flat skewers rather than round ones; the onions won't spin on flat skewers.

Mussels Steamed with Leeks and Mustard

Ann and I love mussels. They make a wonderful and easy-to-cook meal that never fails to satisfy us. I picked up about three pounds, a generous meal for two, a couple weeks back. We had them the night we got back from our coast run to Cannon Beach, a night on which I did not feel like cooking anything intricate after driving for four hours or so.

Mussels Steamed with Leeks and Mustard

Scrubbed and Debearded Blue Mussels

The mussels that I bought are wild blue mussels from Washington State. The woman at the seafood shop told me the area from which they came, but I promptly forgot. I have served thousands of pounds of mussels in my life, half farmed and half wild. While some people swear by one or the other, I don't know that there is that much difference between the two, all other things being equal.

I do know that at the restaurant, I switched from rope-grown Prince Edward Island (PEI) mussels to wild Cape Cods one winter when the Canadian farms were iced in, this on top of decreasing size and increasing price of the PEIs. I found that the larger wild mussels from Cape Cod were a lot tastier than the smaller PEIs and three or four dollars a bag cheaper.

A downside to wild mussels is that they are generally dirtier and have more beard than farmed mussels, increasing the labor needed to clean them. This particular batch of mussels was the hardest to clean that I have ever experienced.

Cleaning Mussels

Here is what you need to know to store and clean mussels:

Mussels are alive and they need oxygen to remain alive. You should never eat a dead mussel. To store mussels, put a layer of ice in a container and put the mussels uncovered on top of the ice. I put the ice in a plastic bag to keep the mussels from being submerged in all that fresh water. Drape a wet towel over the mussels and keep it wet.

You can store mussels as long as they remain alive. You will lose a fraction of the mussels each day until they are all dead and the longer you store them, the more that die each day, so plan to use them quickly. At the restaurant, mussels were delivered three days a week.

A dead mussel will not close, so the first thing I do is to dump the mussels in a big bowl of fresh water. The live mussels will automatically close. In fact, any mussel that is floating, you know is alive. It's the ones on the bottom of the bowl that you must investigate.

I use a kitchen towel (fortunately, they're cheap!) to clean mussels, starting with the floaters. Wipe any mud, grit, and other detritus off the shell.

Next comes removing the beard, if any. Farmed mussels will often be clean enough to cook without further cleaning, but wild mussels are generally going to have formidable beards, the fibers that they use to anchor themselves to rocks, pilings, and so forth. Using the towel for grip, grasp the beard firmly and pull the beard down towards the hinge end.

Look at the very bottom photo in this post if you are confused about which end I mean. If you imagine that an open mussel is a butterfly with rounded wings at the top and a narrow body at the bottom, you want to pull the beard towards the narrow end (on the right in the photo).

Once you get to the mussels that are not floating, if they are closed tight, they're OK. If they are open or partially open, pull them out and tap them on the counter. If they are alive, they will close in response to being tapped. Discard any that do not close.

After cooking, do not serve any mussel that has not opened.

Leeks, Dijon-style Mustard, White Wine

After cleaning my batch of mussels, I wanted to cook them very simply. The first thing I saw in the refrigerator was a leek, so I grabbed it, a bottle of dry white wine, and a jar of Dijon-style mustard. In the pan in which I was going to steam the mussels, I sautéed the cleaned leek in a touch of canola oil until translucent, then stirred in a couple of big spoonsful of mustard. Then I splashed the pot with a scant half a cup of white wine and stirred everything well.

You do not need to add much wine at all. The mussels are full of juices that will add to the wine and create a lot of broth, that delicious nectar that is the whole reason for steaming mussels. Sure, the mussels are fabulous, but the broth is incredible and the best part of the meal, especially with some good crusty bread.

We worked so hard to make exquisite broth at the restaurant and it pained me to no end when diners would return their bowls to the kitchen full of broth. Don't be like them. Don't make your chef mad. The broth is the best part, especially if the cook slipped in a tablespoon of butter before plating!

Mussels Ready to Steam

Cover the Mussels

Once you put the mussels in the pan, cover it to steam the mussels. Mussels vary in cooking time: the larger they are, the longer they take, but even so, they cook quickly. Check every minute or two until the mussels are open. When the bulk of the mussels are open, discard any that failed to open; they're probably dead.

Notice my ghetto lid on the mussels. We always cooked individual orders of mussels in a standard skillet with another inverted over it for a domed lid. I don't know too many restaurants that purchase lids for their pans. There's always aluminum foil, a sheet tray, or another pan that will make an impromptu lid. If I recall correctly, I owned two stock pot lids for about 15 stockpots and perhaps 50 skillets.

This is a long way of saying that when buying pans, you should not spring for the matching lids. Moreover, you should never buy pans in sets: they're going to sell you stuff you absolutely do not need, like bunches of lids that will collect dust somewhere.

Et Voilà! A Perfect Steamed Mussel

These mussels with a leek, some mustard, and a splash of white wine made a tremendous dinner. Despite being the filthiest mussels I have ever encountered, they were among the very best in flavor that I have ever eaten. Good on you Washington State!

Canon Beach and Ecola State Park, OR

People here in the Pacific Northwest are insane about great coffee, and like great beer, we have a lot of great coffee. Ann and I fit right in. We're not the coffee nerds that wax poetic about the virtues of the Chemex versus the French press: those types bore us. However, we are the types who insist on great coffee every morning and who go to reasonable lengths to get that coffee.

Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach

Getting our most recent supply led us back to Sleepy Monk Coffee Roasters in Cannon Beach and to Ecola State Park which we had not visited since 2013 for our honeymoon. Ordinarily, every few weeks, we do the mail order thing and Sleepy Monk sends their great coffee to us. Now that I am retired, we have been trying to get to the coast once a week, so I suggested to Ann that we drive up to Cannon Beach and pick up the order at the shop.

Cannon Beach isn't a gimme in terms of visiting from McMinnville. The drive is pretty much two hours each way, and though it is a pretty drive, getting there and back sucks up half a day. Still, driving out Highway 26 as it slashes through 100+ foot Doug Firs growing right to the roadside is worth the investment now and again.

In terms of great beach towns that I have visited, Cannon Beach is at the top of my list. Every beach town has a different vibe, but the great ones stand out from the rest by having this real sense of je ne sais quoi that attracts me to them. I've been to beach towns in every state that has beaches including Michigan. At the top of my list for very different reasons are Bar Harbor, ME; Cape May, NJ; Carmel, CA; Kennebunkport, ME; Manteo, NC; and Chincoteague, VA. As great as those towns and others that I have not mentioned are, none top Cannon Beach, OR, our local quaint beach town. 

Our Haul: Coffee Beans from Sleepy Monk

Enjoying a Great Cup of Dark Roast

We first fell in love with Sleepy Monk when we stayed in Cannon Beach in 2013. We loved everything about the place from the quirky décor to the friendly staff to the great coffee to the amazing baked goods. It is no wonder that there was a line out the door into the street when we arrived.

Things have changed with COVID. Gone is the charming indoor seating and now there is additional outdoor seating that wasn't always there. You now go in the front door to order at the counter and exit out the side door where you wait for your order. We had called in our bean order so that it was pre-packed and with two cups of dark roast drip coffee, there wasn't any wait for the espresso machine. Our order was ready by the time we paid.

Over the years, we have tried a lot of their coffees and when tasted blind, we always gravitate to a single-origin dark-roast bean that they call Dark Guatemalan. That was the order that we picked up. Their daily dark roast was different, their Monastery Blend, which made a good break from our daily dose of Dark Guatemalan. We sat out on the front porch and drank our coffee; Ann ordered herself a bacon and blue cheese scone. I didn't have any, but I can attest that they are extraordinary.

Haystack Rock

Although we hoped for beautiful blue skies, it was not to be. The weather on the coast is always unpredictable. It was gray all day, sometimes lighter, sometimes darker, and sometimes spitting mist. Gray skies didn't stop us from crossing the street and walking a couple miles on the beach. We had parked in the public parking lot right next to Sleepy Monk. Beach access is directly across the street from the parking lot.

I was hopeful that we might have low tide while we were in the area so that we could walk right up to the base of Haystack Rock and maybe see some tide pool life. A glance at a tide chart the night before showed that it was never to be. Low tide was at 7:30 in the morning, so it was coming in the whole time we were on the beach. Still, we got a lot closer to the 235-foot high basalt monolith than we had last time we were here. I definitely want to go back at low tide when the puffins are nesting on the upper grassy slope on the north side. They are gone now, post nesting.

Annie Checking out the Surf

Stillish Life with Cormorant

Surf Getting Up

If You Have to Ask the Price, ...

Mutual Photography

Shooting at the Base of Haystack Rock

Surfer Taking Advantage of the Growing Surf

When we first hit the beach the surf was a little higher than average with 3- to 4-foot breakers. As the tide came in, we noticed the swells were getting higher. We encountered a couple of surfers who told us as they were getting ready to head out into the ocean that bigger waves were imminent. We watched the surfers take advantage of a rip to ferry themselves out near the rocks where we could see them catch some higher waves, in the 6- to 8-foot range. Later in the afternoon off Indian Beach, we would watch 12- to 15-foot breakers come pounding in, pretty unusual surf conditions for early fall, but nothing for winter surf.

Fishing for Surfperch

Curious Western Gull

Immature Western Gull Doing a Certified Funky Chicken Walk

"A Duck out of Water"—Pelagic Cormorant Doing the Silly Walk

Divebombed by an Osprey

There's not a lot of bird life on the Oregon beaches, but we had a few interesting moments. A curious Western Gull kept close to us for a good while, perhaps looking for a handout, but wary enough to stay 15 yards away. In what could have been outtakes from a Monty Python skit, a young Western Gull walked right by us, head down, butt up, and feathers intentionally ruffled, while a goofy Pelagic Cormorant waddled comically nearby. An Osprey cruised the surf line, diving to the water every now and again, once just off my shoulder.

Foam Coming In on the Rising Tide

After we finished our walk on the beach, it was noon and I was really hungry, not partaking of breakfast at Sleepy Monk as Ann did. I hadn't had a beer in nearly a month and decided that one would be really tasty with my lunch. Although there is an outpost of Pelican Brewing in Cannon Beach not a block from where we parked, Pelican Brewing is our Pacific City standby. I wanted to try something different. On our way into town, we had seen Public Coast Brewing, a business that did not exist the last time we came to Cannon Beach.

Quick Pit Stop for Lunch at Public Coast Brewing

Bland, Tasteless Fish Tacos

Two minutes after leaving the car park, we arrived at Public Coast. It was a proper fustercluck. Apparently, everything is counter service, but there was nobody to greet guests at the door and explain that, so there was a knot of people milling around the foyer waiting for someone to seat them, while the employees stood around apparently not caring.

The ordering process was clunky, with one person ringing up the order, then leaving the register for long periods to pour the beers, then coming back, while the rest of the employees stood around apparently not caring.

I ordered a beer and fish tacos. When the counterperson handed me a beeper/pager device and told me that they would bring the food to me, I let her know that we would be outside, if they had any difficulty finding us.

A few sips later on my hazy, which was a fine beer but not one I will remember, a young lady approached with my order of fish tacos. In passing, she mentioned that they were for someone else, even though there was nobody else outside. Two minutes later she came back and after telling me that they were indeed my tacos, she said, "You have the wrong pager." Really? No, I had exactly the pager I was given and the lackadaisical counterperson put the wrong number on the check, apparently not caring.

She set a beautiful plate of tacos on my table. The beauty, alas, was only skin deep. The fish was bland, probably just what the average customer wants. The slaw too was bland, mainly just raw vegetables with no discernable dressing. The whole point of slaw on fish tacos, especially those made with fried fish, is to have a tangy foil for the fatty fish. I hoped that the salsa with the fish might provide some life, but no. It too was flat. The most flavorful thing on the dish was the sour cream drizzle on top.

Bummer. This was an abject lesson in how not to run a restaurant. I can't think of a reason to visit Public Coast again.

Asters Blooming Everywhere in Cannon Beach

Gorgeous Hips on Roses

Ecola State Park

We left the brewpub and a few minutes later we arrived at Ecola State Park after frustratingly following a large woman driving a minivan in front of us down the twisty entrance road. Given the Georgia license plates, I am sure that she was a tourist and nervous about the twists, but really there is no excuse for driving 7 miles per hour in a 25 mph zone.

Haystack Rock from Ecola Point

Looking South Towards Cannon Beach

Looking Down Crescent Beach Towards Cannon Beach

One of the Rocks off Ecola Point

Tillie Very Faint Today

Ecola Point is generally a good place to view the Tillamook Head Lighthouse, known more familiarly as Terrible Tillie. Because of the fog and mist, we did not have much of a clear view. While we were at Ecola Point, I noticed that the trail that was closed in 2013 is still closed and the trail headed south towards Waterfall Creek has also been closed for landslides, a fact of the shore geography.

Lot of Films Shot at Ecola State Park

The Selfie Queen

Do You Keep Your Cougar on a Leash?

As we were leaving Ecola Point to head to Indian Beach and Indian Point, we stopped at the kiosk to pay our $5 entrance fee, there being no employees at the entrance booth on the way in. As we neared Indian Beach, we saw the parking lot very full, the big and increasing surf drawing a lot of surfers. I had hoped that we might hike past Indian Point to Tillamook Head, the closest point to Tillie, but that was not in the cards.

What Wind? The Camera is Vertical

Looking South Over Indian Beach

Never Seen So Many Woolly Bears in My Life

I Cannot Get Enough Fall Asters

The Indian Beach parking lot was way too crowded with way too many people not wearing masks and so we left pretty hastily. With our coffee haul safely in the truck, we wound slowly out of the park and started the longish drive back to McMinnville.