Chicken and Sugar Snap Fried Rice

Fried rice is one of my favorite foods and over the decades, I've made a lot of versions. Just because the dish originated in Asia does not mean that fried rice has to follow an Asian flavor model. I made the following with leftover grilled chicken, sugar snaps, dill, chives, and lemon zest. The fresh herbs I threw in at the last second before plating. Then I zested a lemon on top. It was delicious

Chicken and Sugar Snap Fried Rice
with Dill, Chives, and Lemon Zest

Speaking of grilled chicken, Ann found a marinade that she wanted me to use consisting of onion, parsley, garlic, lemon zest, salt, pepper, and oil, all blended. After making this marinade, I realized that it is almost identical to the way I make jerk paste for chicken. My jerk paste is made from shallots, green onions, a Scotch bonnet pepper, allspice, fresh thyme, and oil. Aside from the flavoring, the idea of blending onions or shallots is pretty much identical.

Grilled Chicken

Seafood Supper

Without a doubt, seafood is one of our favorite food groups and last night I made a couple of seafood dishes that I'd like to remember, hence this post. Sadly, I have cooked so many dishes in my life and professional career that I have forgotten more than I remember. Seafood features much less frequently in our diet than we would like, because despite being only 3-1/2 hours from the coast, good seafood is really hard to come by out here in the high desert. Believe it or not, our best source of seafood is often Costco. That's kind of hard to admit for a chef who used to buy directly from the boats, but it's true if a little sad.

John and Heidi came over for dinner last night and we all gathered around the kitchen island to eat. We had really hoped to at least have appetizers if not dinner out in the courtyard around the firepit. But wouldn't you know that it rained, albeit lightly, for the first time since spring? And after some really warm and smoky summer days of late, there was a marked chill in the air and way more humidity than we are accustomed to. Is fall here already on the last day of August? For goodness sake, it just finished snowing on the 19th of June!

Goat Cheese Crostini with Pink Shrimp and Fennel Pollen

Summer here in Oregon is pink shrimp season. Though these tiny shrimp are harvested in the ocean close to shore, they are often called Bay Shrimp. They are netted, then cooked and peeled and are available pretty reliably through the summer. I have been trying to find ways to work with them, an opportunity that I have not had before this summer. Last time, I made them into delicious shrimp cakes. This time, I made them into a quick salad to sit atop crostini.

The crostini are topped with a schmear of softened goat cheese and pink shrimp seasoned with a really great olive oil, lemon zest, salt, and fennel pollen. After I put these delicious appetizers together, I drizzled them with more olive oil, salt, and fennel pollen, then topped each with a fennel frond.

Roasted Steelhead Trout on Fines Herbes Israeli Couscous

I really love the marriage of fish with fines herbes, so I put the two of them together in this dish. Fines herbes is an herb mix used in classic French cooking with seafood, poultry, and other very light proteins. The canonical mix is parsley, chives, tarragon, and chervil, but I use whatever I happen to have on hand. This time the herbs would be Italian parsley, tarragon, and dill. Why is chervil so hard to find? I used it quite a bit at the restaurant, but I had to grow my own.

I boiled the couscous to almost done, then drained and mixed it with a steelhead cream sauce to finish cooking. Just as the pasta was finishing, I added sugar snaps (mange-touts) cut into one centimeter lengths, a big mound of finely chopped herbs, and a quick grating of pecorino romano. The steelhead cream sauce I made by cooking two minced shallots in butter, then adding a quarter cup of brined capers and roughly a quarter pound of diced steelhead trim leftover from portioning the fish. After the fish cooked a bit, I added a pint of cream and let it reduce by half. I made the sauce ahead and rewarmed it before adding to the couscous.

After roasting the fish, each portion went onto a bed of the couscous (which intentionally mimics the look and feel of risotto) and I topped each with a dollop of saffron aïoli and a dill sprig.

Hummus

Why is hummus so expensive at the store? When you can make a quart of hummus for $2, even in these inflated times, in five minutes, flavored the way that you want it, why would you buy pre-prepared hummus from the store?

Hummus with Sweet Peppers, Sugar Snaps, and
Roasted Broccoli and Sprouting Cauliflower

At the farmers market in McMinnville last week during our two-day quick trip to the Willamette Valley to see old friends and to do some shopping for wine, fish, and veggies that are unavailable in Central Oregon, we went to the Even Pull Farm stand. This is a farm that I have been doing business with for a long time and I love their products. We really miss being able to shop with them on a weekly basis.

Long story short, I spied several bunches of sprouting cauliflower on the back shelf and asked for two of them to go home with us. The loose heads with tiny florets used to be the secondary shoots that would grow around where the main head was removed, but any longer, seed companies are producing plants whose main crop are these cauliflowers that look more like broccolini in form than cauliflower.

I decided to roast this cauliflower with some broccoli from the fridge, but what to serve them with? As we move fully into spring in early June, the days are getting warmer, some up into the 70s, and with that warmer weather, we are starting to crave more summer-like foods. Spurred by a conversation that we had at dinner the night before with Dyce and Rob, I decided to make a small batch of hummus and serve it with the roasted veggies and also raw veggies that we need to consume before departing this week for Alabama to see my father, who is quite unwell.

Quick Hummus

I really feel awkward writing down a recipe for hummus when it is really something like soup. Everyone makes it to his or her own taste and it is all good. Still, I do understand that people do like to have a recipe to work from and so I offer this one, using a slug of roasted sesame oil rather than tahini. I just don't have the room in my fridge to keep tahini on hand, so I substitute a bit of sesame oil and it works well for me. The following recipe yields about a quart and is flavored as I like it, with olives and lots of spicy sambal oelek.

3 15.5 ounce cans chickpeas, drained
1 tablespoon roasted sesame oil
1 cup pimiento-stuffed manzanilla olives, drained
1/4 cup sambal oelek (I like it spicy)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
juice of two lemons
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

Add all the ingredients to a food processor and blend until smooth. For a smoother product, you can rub the chickpeas between your hands to remove the outer husks, but this then starts to become work and is no longer a quick recipe. Sambal oelek is an Indonesian spicy chile sauce that is readily available at most grocery stores. Huy Fong, the maker of our most famous Sriracha sauce, is the brand you want.

Taste for seasoning and adjust as you see fit. You may require more sesame oil, olive oil, lemon juice, sambal, or salt to make it taste like you want.

Halibut Cheeks with Spring Vegetables

While we love living in the exquisite beauty of Bend, Oregon, it is not without its issues. Among the biggest issues for foodies like Ann and me is the lack of foodstuffs: we're not near the ocean and we live in a very arid area that is not conducive to a lot of agriculture.

Halibut Cheeks with Spring Vegetables

Last week, we returned to McMinnville over in the Willamette Valley, a lush agricultural region close to the ocean, and where we lived before moving to Bend to be closer to the mountains and areas to hike. We took advantage of our trip to visit the McMinnville Farmers Market, a wholesale produce outlet, and our favorite fish market. We also stocked up on Willamette Valley wines while we were there.

One happy result of the trip is that we returned to Bend with halibut cheeks, asparagus, and sugar snaps. I resolved to cook all three items and finish them in a white wine, caper, and butter sauce.

Wondra-Coated Halibut Cheeks Cooking

Vegetables Cooked Separately from Fish

Before starting to cook the fish, I bought a pot of water to a boil in which to briefly cook both the asparagus and sugar snaps to doneness. Cooking each vegetable separately is a bit of labor, but it ensures that each one is done correctly because each vegetable has a different optimal cooking time. Another reason for cooking them separately is that if I cooked them in the same pan with the fish at the same time that I made the pan sauce using white wine, the acid in the wine would turn the brilliant green vegetables a boring and drab olive color.

Once I started cooking the fish, I started poaching the vegetables, sugar snaps first, asparagus next. When the asparagus was done, the fish and sauce was done and I mixed the lot in bowl before serving.

The halibut cheeks got a thin coat of Wondra flour seasoned with salt before going into a skillet. I turned them when they were half done, about three minutes, and after just a minute on the second side, I added a half a cup of dry white wine and a big spoonful of capers in brine to the pan. While the fish finished up, the wine reduced and also thickened just a bit as a result of the flour on the fish.

Finally, I removed the fish from the pan and reduced the liquid over high flame for just a few more seconds. After turning off the flame, I stirred in about three tablespoons of cold butter in small cubes and gently whisked them into the sauce, making effectively a beurre blanc.

The result was a dish as good and as simple as you can find in any bistro anywhere.

A Fish out of Water

We're all creatures of habit for the most part, aren't we?

I know I am. When I get in the kitchen, I expect things to be in a certain location and when they are not, it throws my game off.

Off my game is how I felt the first time trying to cook in our new kitchen, a fish out of water.

A simple case in point: in our last two kitchens, the knives lived in a knife block on the counter next to the cutting board, easily within reach when needed. Trying to declutter our new island, I purchased an in-drawer knife block that lives in the righthand island drawer. After years of reaching for knives on top of the counter, now they're hidden away in a drawer, neither good nor bad, just different, a confounding of muscle memory.

And so it went while cooking in the new kitchen for the first time last week. Things were not where my body thought they ought to be based on muscle memory, despite when designing the kitchen, my visualizing the new location of the items that we most often use. Visualization is part and parcel of my being: every night at the restaurant, when I was actively cooking as opposed to expediting, I would cook (my part of) each dish in my head while standing at my station, ensuring that each tool and ingredient was exactly where I expected it. Efficiency is, after all, born of familiarity and organization.

Despite all the time that I spent visualizing where things would go in the new kitchen, that did not mean that I had considered everything, or that everything would fit where I thought it should go, or even that my body would automatically reach for something where it was hiding. Cooking the first meal in this kitchen reminded me of cooking as a guest chef in somebody else's restaurant. I would always feel a bit helpless in not knowing where anything was. I'm sure if you've ever cooked at somebody else's house, you can relate.

Though it was awkward reaching for the salt, a tasting spoon, or a towel and not finding it right away, it was still a blast to finally cook a meal after a month and a half with no kitchen, even if I had no clue how to work the stove controls. It won't take long to build new habits and muscle memory in our new kitchen and I am looking forward to no longer feeling like a fish on dry land.

Arugula, Tomatoes, Goat Cheese, and Marcona Almonds
with Tomato-Hazelnut Vinaigrette

Pasta with Chicken Confit and Sugar Snaps in Garlic-Thyme Cream;
Crispy Chicken Skin

Brebirousse d'Argental Cheese with Persimmons,
Chipotle-Tangerine Marmalade, and Rosemary Caramel

Cold Dish for a Hot Day

Ahi Tataki on Salad of Sugar Snaps, Tomatoes, and Corn

What to eat on a very hot day? Something cold and fresh. This salad really hit the spot and represents everything I have learned as a chef about simplicity and letting ingredients shine.

I knew I hit the mark when Ann asked the question on eating the salad, "What did you do to this?" I replied "Nothing." When you have ingredients this fresh and high quality, you don't have to do a thing. Learning this lesson has taken decades.

A new trick for an old chef. I have learned (perhaps re-learned) this summer that if you put a quick blister on sugar snaps, you can coax the peas into a deliciousness that tops even their totally raw state. Very many sugar snaps have never even made it home this spring from the farmers market, having been snacked by Ann and me on the walk home. That's how delicious they are totally raw.

To make them even better, I heat a pan over blazing heat, generally on the grill outside. Just as I'm ready to cook, a touch of oil (in this case, sesame) goes into the pan, and then the peas go in to sit for a few seconds to char the pods a bit, and then are tossed with a sprinkle of salt until the pods go from raw green to bright green all over, a minute or so. The result is still nearly raw (certainly the peas inside the pods remain raw) and beguilingly delicious.

The salad in the photo above adds halved small tomatoes and raw shaved corn. On top of this are slices of tuna that I seared in the cast iron pan after the peas came out. A sprinkle of really good salt finishes the dish. Sublime.

The Girls Do Oregon

I haven't had much time or will to update the blog for the past few months. Play time has been on hold: we're in a brand new house with zero landscaping and all my spare time is devoted to planning and planting the yard, which is coming along nicely. Last week was a welcome break to our yardwork routine: my daughters Lillie and Ellie came to visit us in Oregon, their first visit to Oregon and to the West Coast.

Unfortunately, their flight into PDX arrived at 10am, meaning we had to battle Portland rush hour traffic to get to the airport. We live about 38 miles as the crow flies from the airport and the drive took just over two hours. What a non-drive!

What do you do with first timers to Portland, especially young ladies who eat like they're starving all the time?

Day 1

Naturally, they wanted to go to Voodoo Doughnuts, so we drove back into downtown to the Voodoo Doughnuts just off 3rd and Burnside. At 11am, there wasn't much of a line. I'm not a doughnut fan at all, but the girls have always been and both of them got some concoction covered in Oreos, sugar on sugar. I didn't hear any complaints and the doughnuts disappeared pronto. My take is that Voodoo is more hype than substance, but they seemed happy.

Lillie Does Voodoo Doughnuts

While the girls were stuffing doughnuts in their faces, we walked up 3rd to Washington to the food cart pod there where I knew I wanted to eat at Stretch the Noodle, well known among food cart cognoscenti for their hand-stretched noodles. We walked right up and placed our order from the five-item menu, three dishes for the four of us, and we still had plenty of leftovers even after making pigs of ourselves at the shelf-table alongside the cart.

Stretching the Dough for Noodles

Although at 11:30am we could just walk right up and place our order at the window, there were several people on the sidewalk ahead of us who had already ordered. I would guess that it took about ten minutes for our order to be up. That gave Lillie plenty of time to tell us all about the medical school in Philadelphia to which she has been accepted and where she will start in July.

Chow Mian

We ordered our two noodle dishes spicy and spicy they were, almost too spicy for Ellie. You can see the healthy amount of chile oil on top of the noodle soup below. An equal amount is mixed in with the chow mian above. Chow mian means stir-fried noodles and as you can see in the photo above, ours was a fantastic mix of fresh vegetables and noodles, a far cry from the so-called chow mien that you see in Americanized Chinese restaurants.

La Mian

Noodles in soup is one of my favorite meals ever and this bowl did not disappoint me. The noodles are on the bottom with a deep beef broth and chunks of chuck ladled over. On top are cilantro, green onions, a healthy amount of chile oil, peanuts, and a pickled radish or mustard of some sort. La mian is the term for hand-pulled noodles but could also mean spicy noodles, and in this case, the noodles were righteously spicy. Isn't it wonderful to ask for something to be spicy and actually get it?

Pork and Shrimp Dumplings

The pork and shrimp dumpling were about as good as any I have had, doused in black vinegar, chile oil, and green onions. The food at Stretch the Noodle is stupid cheap and stupid delicious. Definitely a must-do when in Portland.

Lompoc Brewing

Leaving downtown Portland, we headed east across the Willamette River on the I-405 over to Lompoc Brewing in a pretty hip neighborhood over on N. Williams Avenue. And much to our good fortune, beers are $3 on Wednesdays, usually $5.50. Of all the gazillions of breweries in Portland, we chose Lompoc because they make one of Ann's favorite porters, Lomporter. I had a seasonal IPA called Straight Outta Lompton. Lillie had a red ale and Ellie, not much of a beer fan, ended up with a cider.

We made the trip back from Portland via 26 and 217 through the heart of Nike country to 99W and back to McMinnville, where we spent the afternoon on the porch. After I woke from a nap (I had been feeling poorly all day), the girls were way into our stash of Pinot Gris. There was much mirth and laughter on the porch as I rejoined them. Silly girls!

Dinner was a pot of pinto beans that I had put in the crock pot before we left for the airport in the morning and bed time was early, especially with the girls being on east coast time.

Day 2

Wednesday, given the less pretty weather forecast than Thursday, we opted for going to the coast and doing the Three Capes Scenic Loop, from Cape Meares in the north near Tillamook, passing Cape Lookout in the middle, to Cape Kiwanda in the south just at Pacific City.

We started the day with eggs at the house and then dropped in to the winery so that the girls could see the bottling line in action, it being day three of a marathon 4-day bottling stretch. For our road trip, we all got coffee at The Common Cup in Amity, before heading back over to highway 18 to the coast. The drive afforded the girls the chance to see what an agricultural area the Willamette Valley is: blueberry fields, hayfields, walnut orchards, filbert orchards, chestnut groves, and mile after mile of grass seed fields, this being the grass seed capital of the country.

The Three Co-Conspirators

We drove out to Grand Ronde where we encountered a bit of rain as we headed up into the Coastal Range and the Siuslaw National Forest where the girls really got a look at old growth forest for the first time. We picked up 101 at Hebo and headed north to Tillamook, turning due west on 1st St. and drove out to the Cape Meares Lighthouse.

Cape Meares Looking South

Posing in Front of Oceanside

The Very Calm Surf at Oceanside

Sitka Spruce Forest Meets the Pacific

Cliffs at Cape Meares

Looking Down to the Lighthouse

Distinctive Red and White Fresnel Lens

While the girls were looking about, I got a chance to look at some of the local vegetation.

Gaultheria shallon in Full Bloom

Hairy Manzanita, Arctostaphylos columbiana

Everywhere we looked, Cow Parsnip was in full bloom. Experts are divided about whether it is poisonous to humans. I am not going to be a guinea pig. I like the tableau of Equisetum (horse tail), Sitka spruce, Cow Parsnip, and Manroot in the photo below.

Cow Parsnip, Heracleum maximum

I had to double take walking along some of the cliffside paths as I saw what appeared to be cucumber or gourd vines clambering over the other foliage. I didn't quite recognize the foliage and I certainly didn't recognize the bloom, but the family heritage was unmistakable. It didn't take long with my wildflower guide to name these vines as Coastal Manroot, sometimes called Bitter Cucumber. They apparently have massive tuberous roots that resemble people and their appendages. Who knew?

Coastal Manroot, Marah oreganus

Roses Blooming in Profusion

Once we crossed the Coastal Range and entered west-side forest, every clearing and roadside was painted in long streaks of fuchsia Digitalis purpurea. The massive stands of them put those in my own garden to shame.

Digitalis purpurea

After viewing the lighthouse at Cape Meares, we backtracked through Oceanside and Netarts to Cape Lookout. We had thought to walk out to the point of the cape, but at 2.5 miles round trip, it didn't fit our time budget. I was also feeling very poorly. It's on our list to hike some day.

Cape Lookout Behind Us

Lone Fisherman

Three Arches Rocks and Cape Meares
in the Distance

Continuing our trek further south to Cape Kiwanda, the third of the three capes on our loop tour, we crossed through the dunes at Sand Lake, arriving quickly at Pacific City in dire need of both food and gas. Our plan had been to eat lunch at the flagship Pelican Brewing location in Pacific City. The brewpub is pretty much the first thing you come to on the beach in Pacific City, where we found about 8 school buses full of high schoolers from McMinnville High School on a last days of school field trip. Fortunately, they were packing up to leave when we arrived.

IPA? Why yes please!

Annie's Burger, Onion Rings, and Stout

Post Lunch Behind Pelican Brewing

Lillie was all excited to get her feet in the Pacific Ocean for the first time, so after lunch we headed out back of the brewery and walked down to Cape Kiwanda.

Haystack Rock in Pacific City

Goofing

Exploring at Low Tide

Annie Like a Kid Again

Cape Kiwanda

Cape Kiwanda Skyline

The Girls Had to Climb the Massive Dune

Up Top

Coming Back Down the Steep Dune Face

After finishing up playing on the beach and on the dunes, we headed back to the car to gas up and head back to McMinnville.

Day 3

Thursday was the girls' final day with us before heading back to Virginia. We wanted to show them a bit of McMinnville and hopefully take them up into the Dundee Hills where they could see Mount Hood. They had great views of it when they flew in on Tuesday and while we were in Portland, we were also able to show them Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams.

Our day started leisurely with breakfast at Community Plate, a local lunch and breakfast icon in downtown McMinnville. After breakfast, we wandered around downtown McMinnville and ultimately arrived at the Farmers Market, where we scored a few things, some strawberries and some sugar snaps.

Latte at Community Plate

Although the weather was less overcast on Thursday than on Wednesday, there wasn't much hope of seeing Mt. Hood as we headed up into the Dundee Hills. As we arrived at Red Ridge Farm and Durant Vineyards, it was clear that we would not see the big volcano some 70 miles due east of us at all, not even a glimpse. It's a shame; on a clear day, the snowcapped peak glows.

Chardonnay at Red Ridge Farm

Back at home, Lillie was begging me to make a risotto for dinner and I obliged with this very simple saffron and sugar snap version.

Saffron and Sugar Snap Risotto

Day 4

Friday was a slow morning as the girls got ready to go to the airport. We didn't need to leave until 10:30, so we missed the bulk of traffic and made it to PDX in good time. After our sad goodbyes, we were in need of solace, so we chose to visit Ecliptic Brewing in north Portland right near Lompoc. We chose it because they make Capella Porter, also one of Ann's favorites.

Juicy IPA

Beet and Goat Cheese Grilled Cheese

We watched Ronaldo score his third goal of the World Cup match to draw Portugal with Spain 3-all while we sampled Ecliptic beers and ate what would prove to be very good food for a brew pub, reminiscent of the great food we had at Snake River Brewing in Jackson Hole, WY. As a result, Ann has tasked me with replicating and bettering the beet and goat cheese grilled cheese that she ate.

So ends the saga of the girls making a joint trip to the west coast to see us. It may be a very long time until that happens again, now that med school is upon us.