Portland, Oregon has been getting way too much press lately. It was given the “Delicious Destination of the Year” award by the Food Network. A recent article about Portland made it onto the New York Times’ list of top ten most e-mailed stories. Jane & Michael Stern were raving about Portland’s Voodoo Doughnuts on the latest edition of The Splendid Table. Even I am guilty of gushing about the many splendors of Portland. Well, no more I say. I’m tired of hearing about how wonderful and enlightened my southerly neighbors are. I’m putting Portland on notice and going back to promoting all things Seattle! Oh, except that I just picked up a bottle of Erath 2006 Pinot Gris for this week’s winesday, and Erath Vineyards just so happens to be located about an hour away from Portland. Oops.

Erath Vineyards is located in the Willamette Valley, an AVA best known for its Pinot Noir. By now, pretty much everyone is aware of how good Oregon’s Pinot Noirs are, but less people know that Oregon also produces wonderful Pinot Gris. The Willamette Valley, which follows the Willamette River from the Washington-Oregon border in the north to the city of Eugene in the south, is perfect for growing Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris grapes. Its cooler climate is similar to that of other Pinot-friendly regions such as Alsace and Burgundy. The long, temperate summers allow the grapes to ripen slowly and, in the process, they develop more complex flavors. Oregon Pinot Gris is typically medium bodied and crisp with flavors and aromas of pear, apple, and melon.

To go with the Pinot Gris, I made Halibut with Green Lentils and Toasted Bread-Crumb Salad from Seattle Kitchen by Tom Douglas. This recipe calls for French green lentils. Unlike the more common brown lentils, green lentils stay firm and retain their shape, even after lengthy cooking, making for a much prettier dish. I just love them. The toasted bread-crumb salad part of the recipe was really more of a bread-crumb garnish, but it was very good. It consisted of bread crumbs, lemon zest and lots of Italian parsley which are tossed together in a lemon vinaigrette. I made my own bread crumbs from leftover Italian bread so they were nice and rustic. It was a really good dish. Halibut is in season right now, and it is so amazingly tender and moist. The Pinot Gris was delicious as well. Really flavorful. It had all of the characteristics that are expected in a Pinot Gris: apple, pear, and melon, but this one even had a touch of spice I thought. It was actually one of the more reasonably priced Oregon Pinots which makes it even better. Yeah, okay, so maybe all of the recent buzz about Portland really is more than just hype. But, Seattle has some good things too…

Robert and I are both sick this weekend. It sucks. Neither of us felt much like going out for dinner so we did something we rarely do: ordered take-out. I don’t have anything against take-out; it’s just not part of our normal routine. Occasionally we will pick up piroshkies from My Favorite Piroshky or burritos from Tacos Guaymas but, for the most part, I either or cook or we dine out in restaurants as these are two of my favorite pastimes.

Last night, we headed up to the Hillside Quickie Cafe for gourmet vegan sandwiches. The Hillside Quickie restaurants are run by the Howell siblings from Tacoma, WA. Their mother, a follower of the Rastafarian religion and diet, began a wholesale vegan food business several decades ago (I remember buying her Jamaican tofu sandwiches in health food stores a long time ago.) These days, the family owns two cafes, the original Hillside Quickie Vegan Sandwich Shop in the U-District and the newer Hillside Quickie Cafe on Capitol Hill. The Capitol Hill location is tiny but cheerful, with lime green walls and about 5 small tables and lots of windows. It mostly does take-out business. Luckily for us, it is located only a few blocks from our apartment.

The Hillside Quickie Cafe serves only organic, vegan foods. The menu mainly features sandwiches and wraps filled with some sort of flavored tofu, tempeh or seitan. Some of the more interesting choices include the Mama Africa which is a quinoa millet burger, the Fire Roasted Yam which comes with smoked seitan and smoked yams, and the Big Fish, a mock fish burger made with breaded tempeh. There are also daily specials including their semi-famous Macaroni & Yease (made with nutritional yeast.) When we were there, the deli case was full of vegan pizzas. I’m not really into vegan food, especially when it comes to pizza, but these pies did look pretty good. One looked like it was spread with baba ganoush and another was piled several inches high with beautiful roasted vegetables.

Robert and I both ordered the same thing, the Crazy Jamaican Burger. And crazy it was! This sandwich consists of a jerk-marinated tofu burger topped with grilled onions, sweet heirloom tomatoes, fried plantains and vegan mayo all served on a hearty wheat bun. I think there was even a thin smear of potato salad in there as well which was totally unexpected. Our burgers came with a small side of barley and vegetable pilaf. It was all very tasty if a bit on the oily side (it may be vegan and organic, but it ain’t low fat.) The tofu itself had tons of flavor and the toppings made it even better. Even the tomatoes were sweet and good. Service can be a bit slow and the sandwiches aren’t exactly cheap ($8 to $9 each), but for the inventiveness and yummy flavor plus the fact that these sandwiches will more than fill you up, it is well worth the price. Besides, any place that serves fried plantains as a sandwich topping is okay in my book. The Hillside Quickie Cafe is located at 324 15th Ave. E.

My mom and sister and I just returned from a short, fun-filled trip to Portland, Oregon. We took the train down which was very relaxing and, surprisingly, doesn’t take much longer or cost much more than it would to drive. Our hotel, the funky Inn at Northrup Station, was located within walking distance of all of the best neighborhoods. We walked all over town and did plenty of shopping. We also visited the Classical Chinese Garden which was beautiful. Mostly, though, we spent our time dining out in some of Portland’s great restaurants. Portland is known for being a really good food city and it certainly lived up to its reputation during this trip. Here are the highlights:

Andina - Andina is a wildly popular Peruvian restaurant located in Portland’s very hip Pearl District. It consistently gets rave reviews from critics and diners alike. The menu features traditional and modern Peruvian dishes and has a long list of tapas-style plates which you can order in small, medium or large sizes. We chose a bunch of small plates to share including marinated mussels topped with tomato-corn salsa, grilled asparagus, an amazingly tender grilled octopus skewer and a Peruvian specialty: causa with smoked trout. A causa is a cake made of lime-flavored potatoes with some sort of filling. It was a pretty stunning dish, featuring alternating layers of lavender potatoes and pink smoked fish topped with pale green avocado slices and black sesame seeds. With our meal, we were also given homemade quinoa rolls with three dipping sauces. To drink, I stuck with a traditional Peruvian pisco sour which was as delightful as the rest of the meal.

Kornblatt’s - When we first arrived in town, we were hungry and just needed a quick lunch near our hotel so we went to Kornblatt’s. Kornblatt’s is a New York style deli known for its Reuben sandwiches. I ordered the bagel & smoked fish combo which is a large toasted bagel, one half piled high with smoked whitefish salad and the other with cream cheese and hand-sliced Nova lox (flown in from New York.) The whitefish salad was really yummy, especially topped with capers and red onion. The lox was good as well. I wasn’t expecting much from Kornblatt’s since it was just a quick stopover meal but our lunch ended up being really tasty. I ate way more than I thought I would and was barely hungry in time for dinner that night. Kornblatt’s is on 23rd Avenue NW, another trendy Portland neighborhood.

Mother’s Bistro - Mother’s Bistro is located in downtown Portland. The focus at Mother’s is comfort food. Not the greasy kind, but the “everything prepared from scratch using quality ingredients” kind instead. We went to Mother’s for breakfast on our last day in town. At Mother’s, you are given a choice not only of what coffee you want to drink but also the method with which you want your coffee brewed (”French press vs. drip?”) I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in a restaurant before. And I’m from Seattle, the coffee capitol! We ordered coffee from Guatemala in a French press. For my breakfast, I had migas which is basically a corn tortilla, pepper and egg scramble topped with salsa and sour cream. It was served with really great home fries. My sister had a tasty mushroom omelet and my mom had the wonderfully tart and sweet blueberry pancakes.

Park Kitchen - We went to Park Kitchen for dinner our last night in town. It is located just at the edge of the Pearl District. With its intimate yet casual setting and inventive menu, which changes monthly and features lots of local ingredients, Park Kitchen is my favorite type of restaurant. Again, we ordered a bunch of small plates to share. We had the chickpea fries with squash ketchup, rapini fondue with hazelnuts and bread crumbs, salt cod fritters, roasted beets with almond tahini and a salad of shrimp, roasted cauliflower and arugula. We finished the meal with a cheese plate which consisted of 3 raw milk cheeses, including one of my favorites, Mt. Townsend Creamery’s Seastack. The cheeses were served with incredibly light and flaky house-made crackers. Park Kitchen’s cocktail menu equals their dinner menu in originality. I had the Widow’s Kiss: Calvados brandy, Benedictine, Chartreuse and Angostura Bitters. My sister had a pear brandy sidecar and my mom had the Bakers vs. Makers Manhattan sampler. It was an extremely wonderful meal. I highly recommend Park Kitchen.

Pok Pok Whiskey Soda Lounge - Before any vacation, I usually do a little bit of online research to find out what restaurants people are buzzing about in the city that I’m visiting. After reading reviews of Portland’s restaurants, there was one Thai restaurant that I knew I had to try: Pok Pok Whiskey Soda Lounge. Located just south of the funky Hawthorne District, Pok Pok consists of an outdoor takeout shack with a few seats and a tiny downstairs dining room. The food has been described as Thai food unlike any you’ve had before. The focus here is on authentic street foods, primarily of Northern Thailand. For our lunch, we ordered Yam Samun Phrai, which is an herbal salad featuring unusual ingredients such as betel leaf and sawtooth. We also had Yam Makheua Yao, a smoky grilled eggplant salad. It was incredible, the eggplant was lightly smoky in flavor and airy in texture, like little pillows. Finally, we had the Khao Soi Kai which is a mild yellow curry soup made with house-pressed coconut milk and topped with fried yellow noodles, pickled mustard greens and spicy chili paste. Delicious! Our drinks were just as exciting as the food. My sister ordered a bloody mary with Thai flavors, my mom had an apple gin rickey flavored with something called apple “drinking vinegar” and I had the salted plum vodka collins, also made with a drinking vinegar. I had never heard of drinking vinegars before, but apparently they are a big hit in Japan. They were delicious in our cocktails. Our waiter showed us the bottles and told us to look for them near the sake in Asian markets since, like sake, they are a fermented product. I looked for them in Uwajimaya on my way home from the train station, but they only had two kinds, apple and peach, and I have a feeling they are diluted with water since they were located near the bottled juices and teas rather than with the sake. Oh well. I guess this means that I’ll have to go back to Portland soon for my salty plum drink fix.

Everything that we ate in Portland was wonderful. It is rare to not strike out at least once when dining out in a new city so we were very, very happy. And, the best part? It was all totally inexpensive. If you add in one night of dessert and drinks at Papa Haydn, some souvenir chocolates from Moonstruck and a few pints at Bridgeport Brewery, our total food and drink tab for the trip was only about $130 each, including tip. And that means that I can afford to go back again and again and again!

As I mentioned in my last post, I picked up an interesting sounding wine at Pike & Western Wine Shop to feature for this week’s winesday: Domaine Gerard Millet Menetou Salon 2005. Menetou Salon is a wine appellation in the Loire Valley in France. It is neighbor to the famous Sancerre appellation and, like Sancerre, Menetou Salon produces mostly Sauvignon Blanc (the only other grape that is planted in this area is Pinot Noir.) Since Menetou Salon is less well-known than Sancerre, the wines from this region are usually much lower in price. I love Sancerre wines, but I am rarely in the mood to pay for them. The woman at the wine shop also told me to look for wines from Quincy, another neighbor of Sancerre.

To go with my French wine, I decided to make a classic French dish, Brandade de Morue. Brandade is a puree made from salt cod, garlic, olive oil, cream and sometimes potato. Salt cod, also called bacalao in Spain and baccala in Italy, is essentially just cod that has been salted and dried. Its use dates back centuries, when salting and drying were important techniques used to preserve fish so that it would keep for long periods of time. These days, although we no longer need to rely on such methods of preservation, a fondness for salt cod persists and there are countless recipes available for salt cod dishes. If you have never used it before, be forewarned, salt cod is one of those ingredients that falls into the same category as fish sauce and some cheeses: stinky but good. It kind of smells like rotten fish.

To prepare salt cod for use in a recipe, you must soak it for up to several days, changing the water a couple of times per day. You can sometimes find pre-soaked salt cod in Italian or Spanish markets. The salt cod that I picked up at The Spanish Table was actually packed with a small amount of liquid. I wasn’t sure if that counted as pre-soaked or not so, just to be safe, I still went through the step of soaking the cod as my recipe directed. Once the salt cod is done soaking, you can use it as you would any other kind of fish. To make brandade, you simply need to cook the cod for a short while and then mash it together with cooked potatoes, cream, garlic, and olive oil. You can also season it with lemon juice or thyme.

I served the brandade as an appetizer with crostini and olives. For the main course, I made clams in fennel-tomato broth and served it with a mixed greens & radish salad. The brandade was very good. The salt cod flavor was pretty subtle, however, despite the fact that I used less potato and cream than the recipe called for. I think it was a recipe designed for salt cod newbies. Next time, I will use even less potato or maybe I’ll try a completely different, more hardcore salt cod recipe instead. As for the wine, it was delicious. It was light and zesty, with touches of grapefruit, just as good as any Sancerre I’ve tried. And, for nearly half the price of Sancerre wines, it really can’t be beat.

We’ve been having such nice weather here in Seattle lately so Robert I decided to spend the day down at Pike Place Market. This is one of our favorite things to do. We love just wandering around, eating and shopping and discovering new things in the market’s nooks and crannies. Of course, we didn’t once stop to consider the fact that it was a holiday weekend and that the crowds, our absolute least favorite thing about the market, would be out in full force today. If we had, we might have made other plans. Still, despite the fact that the market was packed, we managed to have a fun time.

We spent a while looking around in our favorite shops and walking through the produce stands, checking out what veggies and fruits were fresh. I sampled a few fancy items at some of the fancy new shops around the market including a delicious raspberry balsamic vinegar from Pappardelle’s and a homemade potato leek soup drizzled with white truffle oil at La Buona Tavola. The man at La Buona Tavola had me sample the soup first without the truffle oil and then with the oil. It definitely added an intriguing flavor to the soup.

Next, we headed down to Pike and Western Wine Shop. They have a really great selection of Northwest wines available so you’re bound to find wines there that you might not be able to get elsewhere in Seattle. I picked up an interesting-sounding wine that was on sale. It is from the same general area as Sancerre, one of my favorite wines. Like Sancerre, it is minerally and crisp, but this wine tends not to be quite as shockingly acidic. I’ll highlight it during this week’s winesday.

In need of some rest, we ducked into Kell’s Irish Pub for a pint and a pasty. Robert loves the beef pasty at Kell’s. He also likes the dark, cozy atmosphere and lack of crowds. My veggie pasty was primarily rich pastry served with an even richer cream sauce but it did have some vegetables in it, including sun-dried tomato which gave it an interesting flavor. It went very well with my Irish beer.

On our way home, we decided to pick up some groceries. First, we stopped by Beecher’s to get some cheese. Beecher’s is my favorite recent-ish addition to the market. They make their own award-winning cheeses and they also sell a wide variety of cheeses from other Northwest-based cheesemakers. We picked up a package of Fruit Nut Crostini by Anjou Bakery and Brandywine Chevre from Rollingstone in Parma, Idaho. This chevre is aged in a mixture of hard cider and brandy and then wrapped in a grape leaf. It should be delicious with the crostini. After that, we headed over to Sosio’s to pick up some vegetables for an Easter salad to bring over to my parent’s house tomorrow. We got some asparagus, fresh English peas and mint, all for super cheap. Finally, we couldn’t leave the market without fulfilling our sweet tooth. From Three Girls bakery, we got a nutty brownie and an espresso brownie. Those we will eat later tonight!