Looking for weekly culinary inspiration? You’ve come to the right place!
Monday:
Polenta Burgers, Roasted Asparagus, Criss-Cut Fries
Tuesday:
Dinner Out
Wednesday:
Chicken Drumsticks with Vinegar Sauce, Herb Rice, Caesar Salad
Thursday:
Pasta with Browned Butter and Mizithra Cheese, Steamed Broccoli, Garlic Bread
Friday:
Chicken Schnitzel, Herb Spaetzle, Green Salad
Bon Appetit!
For awhile now, I’ve been posting our daily menus on Facebook. And to decent fanfare. People seem to love reading what’s gracing our tables each night, so much so, that I’ve been asked by more than a few people to turn this into a weekly blog post. So, without further ado, I’ll be posting “On the Menu this Week” every Monday.
Fall is probably my favorite season for cooking, so I’m glad to be starting this now. As the summer bounty tapers off, it’s replaced by heartier fruits and vegetables that can withstand the elements. One-pot meals are totally de rigeur, and it’s okay for dinner to be a pot of soup with crusty bread. It’s cooler out, so you don’t feel like you’re baking in the kitchen alongside your food. It’s the perfect time to nestle into the kitchen and experiment away.
I should mention this: we don’t eat-in every night, so you may find some holes in the weekly calendar that you have to fill yourself. Personally, I’ve found that by being organized and knowing what we’re doing each week food-wise, we save a lot of money from not impulsively going out to eat. We also save money because our trips to the grocery store are more focused. When you can overlap ingredients from recipe to recipe, you’ll save. Trust me: that whole buying in bigger quantities thing is not without merit.
While I do sometimes make-up recipes, most of what I cook is adapted from my Rachel Ray, Dave Lieberman, Dorie Greenspan, and Betty Crocker cookbooks. I also follow quite a few food blogs, so recipes will often originate from the web too. The recipes are generally simple and don’t require the use of obscure ingredients. If you feel intimidated and would like to follow along from the books, send me a message and I’ll tell you the exact titles so you can buy them. I’ll do my best to post links to the recipes (if available) with each menu.
I hope you enjoy this, and have fun getting more acquainted with your kitchen. As this is a new project, any feedback (for better or worse) is appreciated. Thanks for following along!
One of the many things we’re blessed with in Portland is a bounty of farmer’s markets. There are so many, in fact, that there’s a website dedicated to the different ones held around the city. We had some unusually hot weather for this late in the season this past week, so I knew if I was going to do anything on Saturday (the high was 96), I needed to get it done early. That’s why I decided to go and check-out the Portland State University’s farmer’s market.
As many of you know, I moonlight as a college counselor, so this visit would be 
beneficial two-fold. I’ve often had my kids look-up PSU as a possible college option, however cautioning them that it’s a city campus so they might not have the same college sensation that they would elsewhere. That advice is only sort of true. The college is actually very campusy, and the farmer’s market is held there each Saturday from March through December in the south park blocks.
I hopped on the streetcar and took it directly to the campus. It was so easy and I’m now kicking myself for not having done this sooner. After all, I only have a few months before this market will go into hibernation for awhile. When that happens, where am I going to get the farm fresh eggs I bought? Or the habanero cherry jelly? Or the gorgeous 
yellow heirloom tomato? Not to mention all the sampling I got to do. That was one of my favorite parts. I ate herbs de provence havarti, a variety of charcuterie, red pear, and the freshest goat cheese I’ve ever tasted. It reminded me of my 4-H days when we’d make goat’s milk ice cream in the pens at the fairgrounds.
What are your favorite farmer’s market finds? Brady and I are headed back next weekend so I can show him this not-so-hidden gem in our new home town. With wine tasting, food tasting, and the food carts there to eat from (I finally got to taste Pine State Biscuits), I have a feeling this will become a fall staple rain or shine.
Brady and I are obsessed with @Secretkebab on Twitter. While we’ve yet to use his services, we get a kick out of reading his ridiculous posts marketing Turkish delights that he delivers in NW Portland. Last weekend, we had dinner with friends, and passed around the phone at the table so each person could perform their own version of what his accent must sound like. Even the waiter was dying laughing. Brady thinks this person must be a witty, Jewish kid, because there’s no way someone could be that unintentionally funny. I don’t doubt that the person manning @Secretkebab is the real deal, but I think it’s time to settle the score and find out for sure.
With reviews on Yelp like this:
“So, there we were, leaning against the chainlink fence of the U-Haul rental place in the dark at 30th & Killingsworth. I was absentmindedly fumbling with the wad of cash in my pocket and trying to anticipate what the delivery guy would look like. I hand him $15. He pockets it and shoves a non-descript brown paper bag at me before disappearing into the night. Maitre D. and I walk back to the car feeling like we have a bagful of contraband. We immediately broke into them and were treated to homemade pita bread wrapped around juicy, wood-smoked, medium-rare lamb. Perfectly spiced and incredible.”
it’s hard to imagine the experience would be anything short of magical. His references: magical too. Hashish, boom boom, and ass picnics (whatever those are) have a way of creeping into each Tweet, their inferences neither known nor concerning. If you need a chuckle, follow along.
A bout of 3am sleeplessness last week had me trying to contain my laughter in bed while reading the following Tweet:
“@secretkebab: You call it hookah?! Turkis it is nargile!! I am fill with rose tobacoo hashish and banana skin!! And then I am on the wife!! BOOM BOOM!!”.
So when Brady asked me via BBM earlier, “What am I going to eat while you’re gone?!” (I’m was on a flight to Dallas while I wrote this), I simply replied, “Contact the Turk.” Here’s another hilarious one for posterity:
“@secretkebab: Ask me the wish for the lamb to come kisses nips nips tickel on the face and a man will come!! With kebab for you!! Hello?! HELLO DEER!!”
When I think of chicken, I think of Foster Farms. The bright yellow logo reminds me of shopping at the grocery store with my mom and dad as a child, spacing out in the meat aisle, asking for everything, and often getting shot down. I was invited to be a part of their 2nd annual Fresh Chicken Cooking Contest in Portland as a guest of Jennifer Heigl from Dailyblender.com. We’re Twitter pals, and until yesterday we’d never met face-to-face.I showed up at Le Cordon Bleu early, and found many nice people from Foster Farms and the culinary institute there to greet me. They explained that the contestants (there were five of them) would have approximately 90 minutes to complete their dishes, at which time the judges (there were four of them) would be presented with their plates. At the same time, all of us in the audience would sample each dish recreated by the LCB chefs, and we would have the chance to vote for the People’s Choice Award. Winner winner chicken dinner! Or breakfast. Whatever.
Goat Cheese Polenta (Timmy Baker, Eugene, OR), Hazelnut-Sage Chicken with Ravioli (Mary Lou Cook, Welches, OR), Chicken Mushroom Ragout (Megan Futrell, Hillsboro, OR), Crispy Basil Skinned Chicken Breast with Peach Pink Peppercorn Compote (Russell Kool, Hillsboro, OR), and Stir-Fried Chicken with Walla Walla Onions and Hood River Pears (Deb Stoner, Oak Grove, OR). Each of the contestants were tasked with creating recipes that used local ingredients, and of course, the common thread was Foster Farms chicken. This was the Oregon State finals, and the two winners will go on to join the winners from Washington State (crowned last weekend) and California (crowned next weekend) at the finals at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa, CA.
ingredients, and execution, and each contestant did a wonderful job touching on each category. All of the recipes were easy, and many of the judges commented on that aspect during their explanations. They must have had a hard time deciding, because they deliberated for quite awhile before issuing their decision. Ironically, (I say that because they were both Oregon State contestants last year) Baker and Kool were the cream of the crop. They were the only two repeats in the entire tri-state competition, proving they can bring the heat year-over-year.I never imagined myself devouring chicken dishes at ten o’clock in the morning and liking it, but the event was fabulous and I’m so glad I went. A special shout out to Jennifer Heigl for having me! For me, the winning dish was the Crispy Basil Skinned Chicken Breast with Peach Pink Peppercorn Compote. It’s not really shocking; I’m a sucker for crispy chicken skin morning, noon, or night. 
The compote was tangy, sweet and could stand up on its own, and I’m planning to make a corn meal pound cake to pair it with, as it almost had a dessert-like quality and texture. If you’re interested in any of the recipes from the contest, I’m willing to relinquish them and help you share in the chicken bonanza. Just send me an email. I also have the recipes from the 1st annual competition because I’m just that lucky (thanks Toby!).
Best of luck to the Oregon constituency in Napa at the end of September! If you need someone to pack your knives, carry your whisks, or act as paparazzi, I’m shamelessly offering my services to tagalong. It’s the kind of person I am; a chicken-loving groupie, and I like it that way.
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Wow, looks like this is my first post from our new home city, Portland. So far, we love it up here! The rain has been minimal, we’ve been doing our best to explore places outside the city center, and there are more restaurants than we know what to do with. It’s safe to say I’m spending more time on Yelp and Twitter than I should be figuring out the next best happy hour and where to make a reservation for dinner, but it’s necessary when you’ve made a mental goal to visit every restaurant in PDX. I’m systematically bookmarking places we’ve been to on Yelp so I can keep track. Don’t tell Brady that one.
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| The amazing “Pettole”-Fried Stuffed Bread of Puglia |
On Monday night, we attended a benefit dinner for Aviary Restaurant. Sadly, the restaurant caught fire on the 4th of July (yay fireworks), and was ruined with both fire and water damage. Firehouse Restaurant in the NE was gracious enough to host a benefit dinner for them, which we thought was a really great show of solidarity. So, I called them up and we were on our way towards philanthropic gorging. Truth be told, we also liked that the donation included paired wines.
I picked up Brady after work and we ventured into the NE, a place we hadn’t been yet. It was mostly residential with cute little bungalows that lined the street, so there was a tinge of “are we lost?” in the air of the Mini Cooper. But a large brick building emerged behind some houses and I knew we had found it. Firehouse Restaurant is set in, what else? A 1916 firehouse. There were some amazing old black and white photos of fireman, engines and what not against the brick walls, and the kitchen was completely open. A rotisserie rotated around a gaggle of chickens and a brick oven presumably cooked the pizza we would later eat. The restaurant was set-up with communal wooden tables, which meant we would be chatting with our neighbors while eating. For a new couple in Portland, this was hardly a bad thing.
The wine showed up like clockwork when each of the four courses were put out. The menu:
First Course
Second Course
Third Course
Dessert
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| Beer Ice Cream |
Lord have mercy. It was one of those meals where food just kept on coming. Thankfully, it was served family style and they didn’t overestimate how much food to make; there was just enough for the table, which meant we were able to sample everything but not leave feeling like bloated pigs. My favorites from the menu: the “Pettole”-fried stuffed bread of Puglia (seriously, it was the stuff that dreams are made of), the rotisserie chicken and the beer ice cream. I’m vowing to figure out how to make that pretzel nougatine! It reminded me of peanut brittle, only nix the peanuts and insert pieces of pretzel. Heavenly!
I hope Aviary made a killing that night and is able to re-open very soon. There were numerous people at our table who were big fans of the restaurant and bummed about its current state of affairs. We’d never been to Aviary before, so were we impostors? Nah. We just felt like doing a little something good…and we wanted the food too…and the wine. I’d definitely venture back to Firehouse to try out their food as well. The menu was succinct, thoughtful, and Italian. What’s wrong with that?! On a cold, rainy night, I can imagine the vibe behind the roll-up firehouse door: cozy and quaint with food that would knock a fireman out in his Lazyboy recliner.
Culinary Hopscotch 