Happy Bendiversary!

[Ed note: so I started this post on February 11, never expecting that I would shatter my left foot on the 15th in a freak accident and here it is already the first of April before I'm feeling up to working at the computer again.]

Time is flying right by! It struck me a couple weeks back that we were quickly coming up on the first anniversary of our moving to Bend on February 10, 2022 from our prior home in McMinnville, closing a year that zoomed by at warp speed. I thought we should celebrate if for no other reason than we don't do enough celebrating in our busy lives. And time is flying right by!

Here's to a Year in Bend!

I asked Ann if she would have a date with me on the 10th to celebrate moving. Her immediate acceptance was never in question! I planned a stay-home date without telling Ann, because we have a brand new kitchen in our house to celebrate. I thought that celebrating by making a nice dinner at home and having a date at our new kitchen counter would be both fitting and appropriate. 

At first, I let Ann believe that we were going to a restaurant, but there was no way that I could pull off a meal in the kitchen and still maintain the ruse of going out. A day or two before, I told her what my plan was and enlisted her help in making the island counter look nice. To that end, I bought a bunch of spider mums and Siberian iris and arranged them. Ann set our places at the counter.

All Set for the Two of Us

Ann Taking the Shot Above

In thinking about what to make for our celebration, I recalled that recently Ann has been pinging me about making coq au vin, a dish that she has never had before (incredible, if I may say so). This got me planning a French-inspired menu for our celebration. French food is something that I am well versed in and certainly classic French technique underpinned nearly everything that we did at the restaurant.

Even if we desired to dine out, there is no French restaurant at all in this part of Central Oregon. And besides, I don't get the urge to get in the kitchen and cook much any more, so I wanted to strike while the proverbial iron was hot and make a delightful rendition of coq au vin for Ann.

I planned a simple menu of tartines, coq au vin, and cheese (which we never got around to eating, so filling was dinner). Tartines are a classic component of the apéro, the French happy hour and are typically small open-faced sandwiches. And the difference between a tartine and a canapé is in the eye of the beholder. To me, a canapé is much more of a one-biter and a tartine is slightly larger. YMMV.

Tartines of Mousse Truffée, Cornichons, Dill, and Lemon Zest

For tartines, I thought they should be slightly decadent and worthy of a celebration, so I stopped by our high-end grocery store for a locally baked baguette and a block of mousse truffée, truffled foie gras mousse. Rounding out the toppings are split cornichons, sprigs of dill, lemon zest, and a sprinkle of my very best salt. The result: simple, elegant, and terribly easy to make.

To accompany them, I opened a bottle of Champagne, a great non-vintage blend with both red and white notes. The nutty raspberry notes from the red fruit (Pinot noir and Pinot meunier) work well with the foie gras while the lemony acidity from the Chardonnay really help cut through the fat. 

Champagne: The Celebratory Drink of Choice

For our plat principal, our main course, I made an upscale coq au vin. Coq au vin and its many variations are a classic of French country cooking, traditionally a tough old rooster (coq) braised to tenderness in wine (vin). The wine varies depending on the region of France, to wit: coq au champagne from the Champagne, coq au riesling from Alsace, coq au vin jaune from the Jura, coq au chambertin from Bourgogne, etc.

While I have fond memories of sitting in a tiny, homey, low-ceilinged café in Fleurie chatting away waiting for our Bresse hen to braise to tenderness in a bath of Beaujolais, because of its humble origins, coq au vin is not a dish found in too many higher end French restaurants. By extension, I never made it at my restaurant: it would not have sold, being too homey and not chi chi enough for fine dining. Pity that.

Traditionally, a whole chicken is cut up, browned, and braised with white mushrooms, pork belly lardons, onions, carrots, red wine, and often a good slug of Cognac. Once the chicken is tender, the braising liquid is thickened with beurre manié, a flour and butter mixture.

While I have cooked it just so, these days, my fine dining chef instincts kick in, especially for a celebration and I deviate slightly from the canonical recipe. I think the food gods will allow this liberty because I have paid my dues in over 40 years of making the dish.

I start deviating with the chicken. It was traditionally made from an old and tough yard bird, but that has morphed into using younger Bresse hens, at least in more upscale places. In any case, the bird is cut into pieces and cooked and served on the bone.

In America at least (I cannot speak for France), the chicken quality is poor and the white breast meat is almost uniformly terrible. I would rather eat nothing than breast meat and so I only use thighs for their succulent and tender meat. And in this particular case, I deboned the thighs and halved them, wanting to do a nice presentation and to avoid having to deal with bones at the table.

Most high-end versions use whole tiny onions; I prefer whole small shallots. Because of the slight garlic undertone of the shallots, I forego any garlic. Instead of plain pork belly, I have a great fondness for using American smoked bacon if for no other reason that it plays so well against red Burgundy and Beaujolais. I really do not care for white mushrooms, the mushroom used in the classic preparation, the mushroom that the French call champignons de Paris. And so, I use rehydrated dried porcini to amp the earthiness of the dish.

Happy Bendiversary!

Coq au Vin on Puff Pastry

I Use Shallots Rather Than Onions

The Pot Ready for Braising

I really did enjoy making this dish for Ann and spending the last year in Bend with her!

Eiffel Tower Cafe, Leesburg VA

Sunday, we didn't have any plans until the theater at Shenandoah University at 7pm and Ann wanted to go to brunch, so she looked into a bunch of places and decided she'd like to visit the Eiffel Tower Café in Leesburg, a place that we've never been to together before.

Owner Madeleine Sosnitsky was working the floor while we were there and in between her rounds at other tables, we got to chat with her a little about the business, about exactly how unglamorous and how demanding that it really is, and about how hard it is to find good employees. That was a little more shop talk than I wanted, but when two restaurant owners get together, shop talk will ensue.

Barreyres Always Makes a Good Value Red

We were seated at a table for two in the very comfortable dining room, with its many pictures of the namesake tower and light peach walls, and had to ask for the wine list. Apparently, so few people order off the wine list as to make the list a special request. The wine list is extremely small, so it took no time to narrow down to one of the handful of red wines on offer, a 2010 Haut-Médoc from Château Barreyres, well known for producing typical wines at good prices.


Calmar Provençale

Ann ordered first courses for us: squid provençale and mousseline of duck liver. Both were well done though I wonder if the duck mousseline was made in house.

Mousseline of Duck Liver

Ann surprised me by ordering the bavette (flank steak) and ordering it rare. She's a medium rare kind of girl generally, but she fessed up later that she was worried it would be overcooked. Not to worry, the steak was cooked perfectly as ordered. The fries were decent, but I prefer honest, house-cut potatoes to the coated commercial fries that we were served. That's just me: I want to know that my fries were once potatoes.


Bavette Frites

Me, I wasn't intrigued by any of the main dishes on the menu, so I just ordered merguez frites because I have a soft spot for merguez. This merguez didn't do it for me though: it was cooked to the point where it was tough and dry. And laying in a pool of demiglace didn't help either. Lamb sausage and veal demi: that's a mixed metaphor if I ever tasted one.

Merguez Frites

Our server brought around a dessert tray of desserts that looked industrially made and though I don't usually order dessert, I did want an excuse to linger over coffee, so I ordered a slice of the pear tart, forgetting that my wife doesn't like pears. Sorry, baby!

Tarte aux Poires

I like the well-appointed restaurant, the food is decent, Madeleine is charming, and the prices are extremely reasonable.

Honeymoon: The Painted Lady, Newberg OR

Thursday May 2, Newberg OR

After a morning tasting wine and a killer lunch at Nick's Italian Café in McMinnville, we spent the afternoon at the B&B where I got in a nice long and much needed nap before we headed down the hill once again into downtown Newberg where we ate at the restaurant that is by most accounts the top-rated one in the Willamette Valley, The Painted Lady. Chef Paul Bachand from Recipe had booked our table for us the night before and The Painted Lady texted me to confirm early in the day on Thursday and I let them know that I was a visiting fine dining chef and I just wanted them to cook for us.


Clean, Spare Dining Room

So when we arrived at the lovingly restored but very tiny Victorian wood-frame house situated on a corner lot behind a white picket fence and were seated in the very nicely appointed, but not over the top, dining room, it was no surprise that food just started coming out of the kitchen. Other tables seated near us were just getting going as well and they were getting the menus and the spiel from the service staff and I could see some of them wondering why we were getting different treatment. All it takes is a phone call.

Before we get into the food, a few comments about the restaurant and the staff. Once the sun set, the dining room was too dark for me to see most of what I was eating and the older I get the more light I seem to need. I don't mind dim lights, but when I have to use my cellphone to illuminate a plate to see the fantastic artwork on it, I call that too dark. I'm not faulting the restaurant on this choice, because that's how they have chosen to do things. I choose differently in my own restaurant. And you will see from the limited number and poor quality of photos how dark it was. I didn't bother to take any photos knowing they wouldn't be any good anyway.

The service was impeccable. I can remember exactly once in the whole 3-1/2 hours we dined at The Painted Lady that an empty wine glass stayed on the table for a minute longer than it should have (according to their service model; me, I could not care less if that glass stays there all night as long as it doesn't get in my way) and that's when every server on the floor was putting plates down at an 8-top nearby. Impeccable. New glassware and a totally new set of silverware with each course and everything about the service was silky smooth and polished.

The service was impersonal. We tried to crack through the starched reserve of some of the servers and we did elicit a smile or two from time to time, but they work from the model that they are servers, they do what you need, and they don't interact any more than necessary with the guests. This is a very old school European model that many of the very high end restaurants in the US aspire to and at The Painted Lady, they succeed very well.

But that's not what I want! I want personality and character from the staff and something that tells me that they are having fun at what they do. I want a server that comes to the table and exclaims, "This dish is freaking awesome; you are so going to love it!" I want to see pride without arrogance on the faces of the service staff, pride that comes from knowing that they are serving an amazing product and providing a unique experience. The service at The Painted Lady was not robotic, but it wasn't charismatic either.

The wines selected for our food were impeccable as well. I really appreciated the selection and variety of local wines that were paired with our dinner. As a chef who pairs wines with each dish on his menu, I can say to The Painted Lady, "Job very well done!" Thank you for introducing me to Walter Scott wines from Eola-Amity Hills, a tiny producer of exceptional wines.

And finally about the food. I sit here at the keyboard and I can tick off several dishes that got my chef juices flowing during the course of our stay in Oregon: the nettle gnocchi and the radishes at Thistle, the potato-nettle pizza at Nick's, and the laap at Pok Pok (to be discussed later in this series). But there was no one memorable dish for me at The Painted Lady. To be sure, I remember the scallop in the scallop crudo for being so sweet and fresh and I remember Ann's chocolate dessert for being so over the top, but the food didn't leave any lasting impression other than it was very high quality and very well presented.

This probably says more about me than it says about the restaurant and Chef Allen Routt, who spent a few minutes with us after dinner, when I learned that he is no stranger to this part of the world, having cooked a stint on the line at the Inn at Little Washington and also having worked for the late Jean-Louis Palladin. This says that I like more direct dishes that are mainly ingredient-driven and perhaps more rustic as a result than I like impeccably executed dishes that are more chef- and technique-driven.

Amuses: Fava Hummus on Papadum, Gougères, and ???

Chef's Trio: Salmon Tartare, Breaded Quail Egg; Goat Mousse on Cheese Straw

Oysters and Lardons

Crabmeat, Caviar, Delicious Curried Soup

Nettle Ravioli, Parsnip Puree, Summer Truffles

I'm a chef and I use truffles all the time. They rarely excite me.

Scallop Crudo, Avocado, Crispy Salmon Skin, Dashi Sphere

This dish got Ann to asking about the dashi sphere but spherification and reverse spherification techniques are not dinnertime conversation for anyone save super nerdy chefs. I played with all this some years ago, but it's just not me or my thing; however, this was probably the dish that I liked best.

Mini Margarita Slushie Intermezzo

You can see from the light of the votive in the intermezzo photo that it is just too dark in the dining room to take pictures. This votive was all the light we had! It's a pity because there are a lot more beautifully presented dishes that you can't see.

Missing are a ling cod dish, a salmon dish (that salmon was super well cooked), a foie gras course (foie doesn't impress me unless you bring out a terrine of it, a loaf of crusty bread, some great wine, and we all sit around getting fat, dumb, and happy!), a beef tenderloin (excellent flavor) dish, a venison dish, a small cheese course, and Ann's chocolate fantasy that was too big for four people. I wish you could have seen the amount of labor that went into that one dish. Chocolate is not my thing, but my hat is off to the person that conceived of and plated that dish.