low-key dinner-during-daylight with family and a few friends.

various pasta including this green garlic one (and an amazing asparagus ravioli):

grilled sardines with perfect asparagus and peas:

desserts including a pea leaf panna cotta(!)

Sauteed a chicken thigh in a little sesame oil with garlic for 10 minutes.

Poured some chicken broth and a little soy sauce and brown rice vinegar around it, then let it simmer covered on medium until mostly reduced and thick, another 10 minutes or so. I poked at the chicken and it didn’t look pink any more…

Cracked in two eggs, whisked them, and covered it again to steam them on low for another few minutes. Then laid it out on cooked rice (rinsed 6 times until clear, mixed 1:1 rice:water, brought to a boil, then let sit covered on low heat until done, about 20 minutes). Not bad, but it could have used less soy and some other sauce or seasoning at the end. Hmm.

Plus my new favorite quick pickles (inspired by Nancy Hachisu’s Japanese Farm Food): coarsely smashed/hand-torn cucumbers + sea salt + minced green garlic (bulb and stalk), mixed together, sealed in a ziploc bag, and refrigerated for an hour.

Heart Coffee: Easily the best coffee of the trip. A very light roast, lemony, smooth. Highly recommended.

Apizza Scholls: 

Oh, wow.

I’d been here many years ago and remembered it being good, but the first hot slice of Margherita this time was one of the best slices of pizza I’ve had anywhere (including New Haven, Brooklyn, and Naples). Perfect. They nailed it. Thin crust without being crispy, elastic without being chewy, tender without letting grease soak through, tart distinctively tomato sauce without being too acidic, small pockets of excellent cheese and basil, and just the right temperature…. even 15 minutes later it wasn’t as amazing. The New York White Pie (fresh mozzarella, pecorino, ricotta, garlic) was also very good and moist, but not in the same league.

Yeah.

Horse Brass Pub (again):

I had to come back, it was as British-dark-wood cozy as I remembered, and the cask conditioned Hogsback Stout tasted as good. The beer equivalent of light roast coffee, with toasty grapefruity flavors.

Cascade Brewing Barrel Room:

Barrel-aged sour beers. Really good ones. 2 oz tasters let me gradually work my way through all 10 of them. And not at all crowded (well, at 3pm on a Friday…) A great way to spend all afternoon, and up there with Hair of the Dog in my favorite brewpubs in Portland.

The Noyaux was fantastic– I have to track it down. Blondes and tripels aged on oak for years, then another year on raspberries and apricot pits. Tart to the point of saliva-stimulating at first, then getting more and more funky (in a barnyard-straw way) as it warmed up. It smells like it would be sweet, but it’s not at all. A+.

The Vlad was also very good, a quad blonde aged in bourbon barrels, not one-note, and it kept developing as it warmed up. I don’t know if it would be interesting enough to drink a full pint, but I really enjoyed this small glass.

The Manhattan NW was the most interesting though not my favorite: a quad aged in bourbon barrels with sour cherries. Very woodsy in taste, but it smelled too much like grenadine syrup.

I thought the Chocolate Burbonic sounded interesting (porters, bourbon barrels, cinnamon, dates, chocolate? what’s not to like?) but I thought it was disgusting, evoking “subtle notes of bile”. Humbug.

Oh, and the apricot, cherry, and blueberry sour beers were all good, tart, and about what I expected from past bottles.

Lardo:

Yeah, yeah, a posed-food-getting-cold low-depth-of-field juxtaposition photo, I have to take one of these in between all the blurry quick cell phone shots.

A burger covered with porkstrami / pork belly, on a half-size loaf of bread because they were out of rolls. Don’t get me wrong, it was delicious– but the “lardo sauce” was over the top and the whole thing was just too *pow* in my face creamy. Great at midnight after a beer at Apex, and I’d try something else from their menu, but I have no need to have that burger more than once in my life.

Luce:

A cheerful, friendly Italian bistro, which by total chance I was standing in front of when I  got a message I should check it out. The $12 steak and salad lunch plate was a great deal, and the salad was remarkably good: interesting greens, parsley, dill, other slightly bitter greens– it tasted fresh out of someone’s backyard garden. The steak was fine though nothing special — if I’m there again I hear I should try their pasta.

Broder:

A fun place to eat brunch, though not mind-blowing or deserving of a Zagat 27 and a “Best Brunch Spots in Portland” award.

Excellent dill-infused aquavit bloody mary:

Baked scrambled eggs in a square skillet and a mashed potato pancake were cute twists on the typical brunch dishes… but neither tasted better than any generic eggs and potatoes:

Evoe, the counter in Pastaworks:

This was one of my favorite places to eat the last time I was in Portland. It was quite good this time but just short of excellent.

The oven-roasted rapini with meyer lemon and anchovies was fascinating: who knew that rapini would roast so well? The leaves were crispy but the stalks stayed moist, chewy, and really flavorful, unlike many roasted greens (I’m looking at you, kale):

A cauliflower soup with bottarga and a raw shaved squash salad with mint and balsamic were both interesting but very one note.

See See Motorcycle Coffee Company:

I went for the ambiance, the espresso was quite good.

Apex:

A huge beer selection (taps and bottles), the kind of place I’d think would be right up my alley– maybe if I went with a group of friends. I stopped by after a film festival on my own and it didn’t quite click for me. The not-so-cozy space and the bright high-tech beer lists were a little off, and the one beer I tried was nothing but a hop punch in the face.

Little T Baker:

Nice space, very good pretzel roll…

Less memorable: Common Grounds Coffee (though I do appreciate their fox logo and $1 coffee), the Pie Spot (a fine marionberry tart, nothing special), the crepe food truck near Ladd’s Addition, the Korean taco truck next to Prost, Lucky Lab (so-so pizza and beer), Amnesia (friendly outdoor seating and strangers, reasonable beer).

I picked up a local, pastured chicken, peppered and salted it (about 2 tsp sea salt), put it in a Dutch oven, and surrounded it with 8 cloves of garlic, two minced shallots, minced carrots, rosemary, bay leaves, and a sliced bulb of fennel.

I browned it breast-down on the stovetop for about 6 minutes, then flipped it for another 7, stirring the vegetables around the edges to cook them.

Then I covered it with both foil and the lid for a tight seal and slid it into a 250F oven for 80 minutes.

I took it out, rested it under foil for about 15 minutes before carving, and made a simple gravy: I took out the roasted vegetables (to serve on the side, minus the bay leaves, as almost a vegetable jam), strained out most of the fat, and cooked the juices down with the juice of two meyer lemons, making about a cup of brightly tart/rich sauce.

A spinach and farmer cheese salad, some very sweet first snap peas of the season, carrots, baby radishes, and a friend’s excellent shaker lemon pie rounded out the meal. It’s good to be back in springtime.

What could I improvise out of nearly-empty cupboards to scratch that general itch (aromatics + heat + umami + fat) in under 30 minutes?

For a curry paste I minced and fried up: shallots, coconut oil, fresh turmeric root, some hot dried chili brought back from Singapore, tinned anchovies (loosely filling the role of shrimp paste / fish sauce), a little lemon zest, and some dried lemongrass and ginger.

I stirred a cup of boiled rice and a pile of fresh nettle leaves into the paste for about 5 minutes, and voila!

It was good. I think the anchovies really tied it together.

Steamed nettles (I’m obsessed), eggs, tuna, roasted beets, and Cowgirl St Pat (nettle-wrapped spring cheese).

Seared a delicious half-pound Five Dot Ranch ribeye 4 minutes on each side in a cast iron skillet and set aside to rest.

Deglazed the pan with red wine, added a pat of butter, and fried (very thin-sliced) three cloves of garlic, a cippolini onion, and a beet.

Yeah, that was good.

Poached eggs, spinach, nettles (good!), bacon, first peas of the season, and a dressing of olive oil, black pepper, poppy seeds, fresh horseradish, and orange juice.

A friend and I were there for a long, leisurely dinner past 1AM, as the staff were eating post-shift meals and generously not kicking us out.

And it was one of the best pasta tastings I’ve had there. Their classic agnolotti dal plin was as good as I remembered, the fava radiatore with quail was soft, delicious, and different with every bite (with a bit of nice acidity from something?), and the combination of lamb, cocoa, and beets really worked. They even humored our hungry eyes with bread to mop up leftover sauce.