Oregon Trail: Idaho

Tomorrow we arrive at our new home in Oregon. We're ten days in at this point and the sightseeing is mainly behind us. We have to get clear across two states in two days. It is 750 miles no matter how you slice it, so we buckled in for a couple of long road days. Still, at 75mph average speed (most of I-84 is posted at 80mph but there are constant construction zones), we did have a little slack in our schedule to get off the highway for a few minutes.

The first thing I noticed was lava. There are lava rocks everywhere and we have driven through a few cuts in lava beds. The rest of the place is flat, dead flat, and I have the distinct impression that there is but a very thin veneer of topsoil over lava beds. I also notice that it is very arid: just about every field has big irrigation rigs. Good thing the Snake River, which keeps getting wider every time we encounter it, has a lot of water.

The ever present irrigation rigs prove to be excellent perches for raptors. We see hundreds if not thousands of raptors. Every fence line and every irrigation rig has at least one if not more raptors perched upon it. Every couple of minutes, we see a kestrel hovering over some prey. As the Snake River came close to the highway, we saw four bald eagles perched right alongside the highway. Remember my U-turn in Wyoming to see two eagles in a tree and my thinking that I might never see such a sight again in my life? Never mind. Life is good.

But the most prominent sight? Potato fields. Mile upon mile upon mile of potato fields. And potato barns. Some are tiny, some are acres and acres under roof, but they all have one thing in common: the lower side walls are insulated with mounded dirt, rigid insulation, or some combination. I have never seen anything like this before, huge above-ground root cellars. Some of the larger warehouses have monster condensing units outside with refrigeration lines going inside. Potatoes are huge business here. We also saw row after row of potato harvesters, giant rolling conveyor belts that loosen the earth, scoop the potatoes and dirt onto an open conveyor that lets the dirt falls through and transports the potatoes to a truck or hopper.

Mustard in Eastern Idaho, A Rare Non-Potato Field

We Agree. Portland Beer in Idaho

Because we had a little slack in our day, we started looking for things along the interstate to amuse us and we quickly latched onto Shoshone Falls on the Snake River at Twin Falls, ID. The pictures we saw on the internet were amazing; they don't call it the Niagara of the West for nothing and at 208 feet high, it's taller than Niagara Falls. And bonus, it is perhaps a 10-minute detour off the highway to get to the park managed by the City of Twin Falls. As we were navigating the back roads to the park, we got a great view of a prairie falcon as it winged right in front of our windshield.

Shoshone Falls. Detour Number One

Snake River at Shoshone Falls

As you can see in the photo below, we didn't see the massive Niagara of the West that is shown in all the photos of the place. Waterflow was restricted to a trickle, the usual state of affairs at this time of year. Still, as a great place to get out of the car and stretch our legs, it was well worth the detour off the highway and the $3 entrance fee.

Where are the 208-Foot Falls?

Looking Downstream of the Falls

Small Waterfall at Park Entrance

Creek Spilling Into Snake River Canyon

Another Trickle

The Main Falls, Just About Dry

Butte Overlooking Canyon

I took leave of Ann to scramble higher on the canyon walls to get a different angle for my shots and at one point when I looked down at her from a couple hundred feet above, I saw this shot of her warming herself in the sun.

Warm Sun, Chilly Morning

Hillside Covered in Gutierrezia sarothrae, Broom Snakeweed

For the last week at least, we have been driving past clematis plants covered in their fuzzy seed heads. This is the first place that I have actually been able to walk up to a plant to see what it was. And to my surprise, it was still blooming, making the identification that much easier.

Clematis Seed Head

Invasive Clematis orientalis, Oriental Clematis

As I was scrambling on the hill sides, I came across a lot of prickly plants blooming pink. I was guessing they were Euphorbias, but that turned out not to be the case. I had no idea that I was looking at Prickly Russian Thistle aka Tumbleweed. It's a pretty undesirable invasive in most of the western US.

Salsola tragus, Prickly Russian Thistle (Tumbleweed)

We all recognize sunflowers when we see them, but when those of us back east see them, it's almost always because they've been planted in somebody's flower bed. And the ones we see are likely highly selected and bred for color, shape, and height. I find it really cool to see the native plants growing in their native habitat. It's fun to be where they grow just naturally. Of course, I am reminded of the vast fields of sunflowers grown as a crop in South Dakota.

Annual Sunflower, Helianthus annuus

After visiting the falls, we headed back to the highway for points west. There wasn't a lot to see along the road at this point, just mile after mile of high desert. West of Twin Falls the land becomes much more rugged and then the interstate dives down inside the Snake River canyon for a while. Off to our north, we had good views of the Sawtooth Range, some 60 miles distant.

About 1pm, we started getting really hungry so we looked for a nearby town. The next town of any size (there's a whole lot of nothing between Twin Falls and Boise) was Mountain Home. We were looking for a sit-down meal to get us out of the car, rather than fast food, of which we were totally sick.

We came across a Singaporean restaurant named Shiok. With visions of Singapore noodles running through my brain, we left the interstate to find the restaurant which is about 15 minutes south of the highway, right near the main gate for Mountain Home AFB. In other words, the restaurant is smack in the middle of nowhere, BFE to be exact. We wondered exactly why such a restaurant would be this far out in nowhere. The Air Force base, we guessed.

Pavement Mirage, Mountain Home ID

The food was well worth the effort. Of the four dishes we ordered, three were really good. Only a hot pot was not good, the worst kind of American-Chinese glop in a dish. We ordered extra Singapore Noodles to take with us for dinner.

Laksa Curry Noodles

Singapore Style Vermicelli

Salt and Pepper Calamari

After lunch we headed to Ontario on the Idaho-Oregon border. This is the point where we needed to decide which route to take across Oregon. We could go through the back country on either US-20 or US-26 or we could continue on I-84 through the Columbia River Gorge. It was the traveling with dogs deal that decided for us. It was tough enough finding a hotel that accepted dogs along the I-84 corridor. Traveling the backroads did not look like a win, so we stayed on I-84 until we came to a town with a hotel that accepted dogs, Baker City OR.

Northeast Oregon. Golden Brown Mountains with Zero Trees

After our dinner of leftovers, we turned in for our final night in a hotel, equally looking forward to our last day on the road and a bit sad that our great adventure was coming quickly to a close.

Recycling

This time of year, the lack of fresh-from-the-garden ingredients and the marginal traffic at the restaurant, punctuated by the hellish crush of Valentine's business always leaves me feeling uninspired about food. I'm not doing awesome food at home or at the restaurant, or at least it doesn't feel that way to me, lacking the ingredients necessary to inspire creativity and just being in survival mode trying to get through Hell Week, er, I mean Valentine's Week. If you've been in the restaurant business, you know what I am talking about. If not, well, count yourself damn lucky.

We were so busy last week that I don't even remember it and I am rolling on 13 days now without a day off. I have some photos of food I did at home, but I can't remember when I cooked it. I do know that Ann went through the freezer and pulled out some odds and ends left over from other kitchen projects. In particular, she pulled out a zip-top bag of chicken thighs and another of marinara leftover from something, probably the meatballs from Bob's funeral reception back in January. I found a rather mangy bunch of rapini in the vegetable drawer that I bought for Mary to enjoy, but she went back home before she could eat it.

Chicken Thighs on Blanched Rapini

What to do with chicken, marinara, and rapini? I decided to braise it all, blanching the rapini and putting in a baking dish, flouring and searing the chicken, and covering the whole with marinara and a sprinkle of cheese. I remember the chicken and the braised rapini being exceptionally delicious, but then, I love braised rapini (and Ann does not).

Under Marinara with a Little Cheese

And of course, even after Carter ate chicken, we still had leftovers of leftovers, so a couple of nights later, I pulled the chicken off the bone, diced some wayward turkey breast from the cooler, and blended the marinara and the rapini. The contents of blender went into a soup pan with water and then once at a boil, in went a bag of egg noodles. Once they were mostly cooked, off the heat it came and I stirred in the pulled chicken and turkey. It was a pretty darn good bowl of soup made from recycled recyclings.

Recycled as Soup with Turkey and Egg Noodles

My grandmother would be proud of my frugality. As a professional chef, my food costs and profits are dependent on getting every bit out of food that I can, so recycling comes easy to me. Bones and roasting juices go into stocks, leftover side dishes into soups, and all manner of vegetable peelings and trimmings go into broth. In an age where so much food is wasted, this seems to be a rare talent.

Thai Vegetable Chow Mein

The usual Monday morning conversation centered around what to make for dinner. No surprise there for a couple of hardcore foodies. We had hung up with a baseline consensus around pho or other rice noodle soup. A few minutes later I get a text from Ann: "Can you do those noodles in a pancake?"

Of course, I thought, but didn't really get to thinking about what to do other than a basic chow mein until much later in the afternoon when I remembered that when I had been weeding in the garden very early in the morning and that I had noticed that we have lots and lots of Thai basil that needed to be used.

From there, it wasn't a big stretch to combine Thai flavors with Chinese technique.

Thai Chow Mein

I decided as long as was mixing metaphors that it wouldn't hurt too bad if the vegetables were a mish-mash too. After work as I was heading home, from the market I collected sugar snaps (ours got pulled out of the garden this past weekend, sadly), an orange pepper, grape tomatoes, a pineapple, a knob of galangal, cilantro, bamboo shoots, and a pound of fresh noodles. From the pantry, I got fish sauce, ground white pepper, and dry roasted peanuts. And from the garden, I got lots of fresh Thai basil and garlic (Chinese) chives.

Flavoring Paste Basics

I made a seasoning paste to flavor the dish with from cilantro stems, galangal (aka kha or Thai ginger), shallots, white pepper, and fish sauce. Fresh galangal is very assertive, much more so than ginger, so I only used a few slices, finely minced, in my seasoning paste.

I fried the noodle cake and removed it to a platter, then I fried the seasoning paste and added the vegetables. After everything was warmed through, I added a few more splashes of fish sauce and tossed in the basil and chives.

A bit of prep work, but easy to execute and delicious!

Singapore Noodles

Yesterday was such a beautiful spring day and I had finished all my Monday paperwork and errands and was home by the civilized hour of 4pm. By 5, it had cooled off enough to move outside and enjoy some Garnacha on the patio. What you see below is a classic Ann-pour. Our glasses are marked with a pour line so that the servers pour a consistent amount for each glass. The bottom of the W logo represents a 5-1/2 ounce pour or a fifth of a bottle. When Ann pours for herself, note how far up on the W logo it comes! Also note last year's parsley bolting to the right of the water bottle in our little garden.
I very rarely get in the mood for any kind of food. I'm a classical omnivore; if it's for dinner, I'm all about it. But yesterday I had Singapore noodles on the brain. By the way, Singapore refers to a style of noodle flavored with Madras curry powder, not a noodle dish that you might find in Singapore. While it's not a dish from Singapore, it's also not an American one either, being more of a pan-Asian fusion dish that is common in Hong Kong. Moreover, it is one of my favorite of favorite noodle dishes.

Below you see the mise for this dish, absent the bean sprouts, thin egg noodles, Madras curry powder, and fish sauce. From the chorizo clockwise you see ginger, garlic, preserved vegetable, green onions, edamame, and cilantro.

Before you go getting all technical on me, I'm going to state that I have had Singapore noodles hundreds of times and I know that they are traditionally made with very thin rice noodles. I also know that the best I ever ate in a crazy good hole in the wall Chinese place was made with wheat noodles like I used here. And chorizo? Yes, chorizo because it was what was in the fridge. Traditionally the dish is made with char siu, Chinese roasted pork. Well, damn it, I didn't feel like making my own char siu, which is the only way to get it around these parts. And, consider the role of the char siu in the dish. It is there for its bright reddish color and for a little punch of flavor. And that's exactly the role of the chorizo in the dish. A thrifty Chinese cook would approve.

The edamame are definitely not traditional either, but you'll find every kind of vegetable garnish known to man in some version somewhere. I was just looking for bright green color and there were edamame in the freezer. Typically, I make the dish with slivered yellow onions, because Madras curry and onions is a match made in heaven, but I had these gorgeous green onions that needed to be used.

In other words, it's my dish and I'll fry if I want to, fry if I want to! All I am saying is relax: noodles, like soup, are a great vehicle for whatever ingredients are at hand.

Below you see the finished dish, a result of sautéeing all the ingredients while the noodles were cooking, adding the drained noodles to the toppings, and finishing to taste with copious amounts of curry powder and fish sauce.

Chinese Egg Noodles

Last night, we had no book at the restaurant and it being a gorgeous day, I said to hell with it and left Tony to handle the kitchen. The day had been crazy warm (over 80 degrees on March 14th) so we could eat outside for the first time in 2012. I figured with it being grilling weather, Wednesday—historically the slowest night of the week, and March (just before the dreaded Madness starts) that I could get home for an evening, and I was right.

I called Ann earlier in the evening to probe offhandedly what she might like for dinner, not letting on that I might be coming home later. In fact, I told her that coming home would be impossible. Devious me! I wanted to surprise her by showing up out of the blue and also making something for dinner that she really wanted.

All the dishes she mentioned were pastas and I knew we had a package of fresh Chinese egg noodles, thinner than but about the same width as taglierini or fettucine, in the fridge that we needed to use. I haven't had pasta—my favorite food—in months as I am slowly working off the winter gut. Actually, the gut didn't come from the winter but from the pasta orgy we had all last summer.

And so here you see our pasta made with all the bits laying around in our refrigerator: rendered pancetta, tomatoes, mashed avocado, thinly sliced garlic, green onion, toasted panko, and sautéed shrimp.

Good? Did I hear you ask if it were good? I made enough to feed four people and we sat on the patio whisking away the pesky fruit flies trying desperately to drown in our 2006 Linden Petit Verdot and we.....ate.....the.....entire.....bowl!

And what a great time it was too, sitting outside on the patio on March 14th, barefoot and wearing shorts and a t-shirt, eating pasta, drinking great wine, not being in my windowless restaurant kitchen, and having great conversation with my best friend!