Portland Day 1 and 2: Portobello, Hunger Tiger Too, Prasad

We arrived on Thu afternoon and for our first meal in Portland, we met up with the lovely Geanna from Green Vegan living at Portobello.  Portobello is a slightly upmarket but affordable vegan Italian restaurant. Our first impressions of Portland were that there was lots of gorgeous trees, the city itself was quite small and that restaurants like Portobello were in the middle of nowhere.We shared the cashew cheese stuffed sweety peps, which were not spicy and had a slightly sweet flavour. The cashew cheese was smooth and creamy. They were a great start to an excellent meal.

I couldn't resist ordering a gluten free pizza, I chose the Patata pizza which has thin slices of potato, carmelised onions, pine nuts and fir tips on it. I was surprised that there was no vegan cheese on this pizza or any pesto/tomato base but it was still tasty. The gf base was excellent and made me realise that gf pizza in Australia is inferior.

Toby and I shared the nectarine-beet risotto croquettes and both enjoyed this dish.  Toby also enjoyed his gluteny dish.

For dessert, I had the cookies and cream. For some reason I just presumed that this was ice cream but instead it was coconut and black pepper 'cream' which was mousse like in texture. The black pepper was not strong but occasionally provided a slight amount of heat to the coconut 'cream'. The cookies were maple flavoured and were quite crispy and thin and great with the 'cream'. I also enjoyed the grilled fruit that come with this dish.

I also tried a bit of Genna's chocolate and rosemary tart. I hate rosemary but wanted to see if it was subtle, unfortunately it wasn't but I'm certain that if you like rosemary you would enjoy it.

Day 2

On second day, we met up with fellow Aussie Susan from Kittens Gone Lentil who was also in town and staying at the same hotel as us. We went to Hungry Tiger Too, an omni cafe/bar which is super vegan friendly and lots of gf options for brunch too. We ordered way too much food which including this giant gluten free and vegan pancake as a side to my breakfast.  It actually tasted good too

Small scrambled tofu:

And this was Toby and my favourite tofu 'chicken' with  a gluten free and vegan waffle. The tofu was super tasty. I'm not sure what the batter/spices were but it was addictive. This place had me announcing on my first full day that I already loved Portland. I mean where else could you find gluten free and vegan pancakes, waffles etc.

And then we walked the short walk to vegan mini mall and visited 3 out of the 4 stores, since none of us wanted a tattoo :-) Susan and I spent a long time browsing very carefully at everything and spending a fare bit of money at food fight-vegan grocery store while Toby went to find coffee. We also both bought the same top from herbivore, thankfully we live in different ciies in Australia!

And lastly we visited sweetpea bakery- a vegan bakery. I didn't have much room in my belly, but you know dessert is a different stomach compartment, right? I ordered the gluten free chocolate chip cookie which was huge but unfortunately a bit disappointing flavour wise, it just kind of screamed gluten free, I can't name it, but perhaps it was strong rice flour flavour.

For dinner, we decided to go for healthy option near out hotel and visited Prasad.  They share a space with a yoga studio and seemed to focus on healthy/raw dishes.  Toby had the soul salad with tempeh, avocado, slow roasted tomatoes, spinach and a red chilli vinagrette. He said that it 'not boring and very refreshing'.

I had the dragon bowl which comes with quinoa, avocado, kale, seaweed and beans. You then choose what sauce and Susan shared her secret that last time she selected two sauces, I copied her and ordered lemon ginger and peanut. I loved both and it seemed like a great way to balance out the junk food that we had for brunch.

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Rest of San Fran

I unfortunately got sick in San Fran but am now feeling better due some amazing Amercian medication, but it did make me drowsy and made our short time feel like a bit of  blur. It also meant that we fell behind in blogging so I've decided to combine the rest of our eating into this one post. San Fran is very pretty with it's colourful old houses and murals and hills. The hills meant that I didn't really feel like walking like I did in New York. I highly recommend doing a mural walking tour it is so much more interesting knowing about the political/social meanings behind each mural. There is a large homeless population in San Fran and there times were I felt unsafe. I'm not sure if we actually were but there a few areas that I wouldn't want to spend too much time at night. Anyway on to the food.

We went to Gracia Madre twice, which is a vegan Mexican restaurant in Mission. First time ordered an appetiser and two mains and it was way too much food. The appetiser was called Gorditas- potatoes with cashew cheese on top, so delicious.



I ordered the cactus taco dish,it had another name but I can't see it on their online menu which comes with slightly sour tangy filling, beans, rice and corn tacos on the side. The corn tortillas were quite different to other tacos I've had, they were super thick and Scrumptious suggested that it was because they are handmade rather than made it a machine. I think I preferred the thinner variety.

Toby got the tacos each one had a different filling: greens, mushrooms and plantains. He said that he liked the plantains and greens but thought the mushrooms were a little bland.

The second time we met up with the friendly Scrumptious from In My Box and she suggested ordering a range of appetisers so we had enough room for the flan for dessert. I think she is right and this is not only a better idea but also includes the tastiest dishes.The sweet potato and caramelised onion dish was probably my fav, it was called Quesadillas de Camote.

We also enjoyed some quality guacamole which comes with tortillas:

The Pozole which is a hominy stew was better than the version we have tried in viva vegan, but scrumptious explained that she has had better pozole.

The flan was pretty awesome both in texture and flavours and also made us realise that the flan that Toby made before we left  from Viva Vegan was pretty authentic.

We also went to the fancy Millennium for dinner. I had this thai rice cake, the texture of the rice cakes was unlike anything I've had before. It was combined with mild curry and fresh veggies.

And we ordered the sunken souffle which comes with salted peaches and nectarine sorbet. The combination was perfect, neither of us had anything to compare the souffle with but it was basically a nice cake.

We also went to loving hut at westfield shopping centre since it was convenient. I was told that one dish could be made gluten free, the noodle soup. Unfortunately, I had a couple of mouthfuls and then discovered a piece of gluteny mock meat. I went and inquired and sure enough it was, so they got me another one. I didn't really feel like eating it afterwards.

And lastly we accidentally ran across a farmers market which sold the amazing scream sorbet. I had the vanilla almond and Toby had the chocolate hazelnut and Strawberry Rhubarb. So good, I would like more right now.

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200 Years of Australian cooking

The other day, I was browsing through our local second-hand bookshop--a favourite haunt of mine!--and came across a book that I remembered well from childhood: 200 Years of Australian Cooking, or the Captain Cook Book, by Babette Hayes. My parents, who are interested in the food of all the places they have lived and had been dismayed by the fact they couldn't find a book about 'genuine' Australian cooking, had bought it in 1970 when it first came out(to mark the Captain Cook bicentenary no doubt) and I remember my dad trying out various recipes in it. I remember too how pleased they were to see that the author was of French origin herself, but brought up in Syria. As to myself, as a kid I enjoyed looking at the pictures and reading the bits and pieces of history and anecdote in the book and so it was with great pleasure that I found it in the bookshop, bought it and took it home to enjoy once again.

It is a most informative and entertaining book in many ways, with chapters on native ingredients and gold rush gourmets, survival food and bush food and food for the 'upper crust' fit for the Governor's table, and all kinds of migrant influences from Chinese to French to Eastern European to Mediterranean. As well as lots of interesting little potted social histories and anecdotes, there's lots of recipes, everything from oxcheek soup to stewed pigeons, damper to coq au vin, how to barbecue a whole pig to how to pickle mushrooms and lots more in between and beyond. It's also, as I mentioned earlier, got lots of illustrations, from 19th century drawings to lavish recreations of suich settings as an upper crust dining room, a bush settler's cottage, etc. At times, there are reminders of the relative unsophistication of the general Australian market at which the book was aimed, compared to now. But it's also got an eccentric charm all of its own--this isn't your standard cookbook but something rather similar to Dumas' cooking encyclopedia, complete with remarks such as 'What would Captain Cook have thought about it all?' or 'When a man is ravenous, mutton and damper can taste like manna.'

This is a book that really deserves to be rediscovered and enjoyed by a whole new generation. Babette Hayes is still living and working in Australia, though she concentrates on design these days. Her website is at

http://www.babettehayes.com.au/

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Italian a la frangourou

Following on from my Germanic-inspired meal, I made one with an Italian flavour this time, but rather eccentrically interpreted, very much a la frangourou. The menu consisted of: Entree of various vegetable antipasti(not illustrated)--our home grown olives and preserved eggplant and cauliflower, on a bed of rocket and sorrel salad; a main course of a frangourou version of the famous veal dish 'saltimbocca', and risotto with roast pumpkin and roast whole mushrooms. Dessert was a jar of our bottled greengage plums, heated up and served with cream.

Here's my frangourou version of saltimbocca: Take some veal steaks, pound till quite thin, then spread with shavings of semi-hard goat cheese, chopped sage and garlic. Roll up to form neat parcels and fry them in olive oil, turning over so both sides get brown. About 5 mins into cooking add some Marsala to the pan (we use the Australian variety that goes by the charming name of 'Boronia' as 'Marsala' is of course a protected appellation)and cook till meat is cooked and has absorbed the Marsala. (The pan can then be deglazed and sauce poured over the meat.) The risotto, whose basic idea I've pinched from the repertoire of a friend's son(thanks, Ned and Sue!)needs a little more preparation but is pretty easy too. You prepare the diced pieces of pumkin and whole mushrooms, brush with olive oil and a little salt, and bake in oven till done. Meanwhile, fry some diced onion and garlic in a little olive oil, add the arborio rice, as much as you need(we find 1/2 cup is enough for a good serving for 2 people, not the 1 cup recommended on many rice packets!)and once you've given the rice a good stir through, add half a cupful of white wine, and stir till wine is absorbed, then add stock as required, as many times as required till risotto is nice and sticky and cooked but not overdone. I made some very appropriate stock by steeping thyme in water with olive oil and salt, turned out very nicely. Then once rice is cooked, put into serving dish, add the pieces of roast pumpkin throughout, and put the roast mushrooms on top.

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A bit of German influence

German cooking isn't very highly regarded in France, where it has the reputation of being too heavy and stolid--and as well, the sweet and sour flavours beloved of central and eastern Europe don't have much appeal for a lot of French people. But they do for me! I've always loved good sausage, sauerkraut, heaven-and-earth potato and apple, smoked fish, pickled red cabbage, and the like. Not that I'd want to eat it all the time but it is delicious once in a while.

So the other day I made a bit of a Germanic-inspired meal, which was just great with a good glass of Alsace riesling.

Here's the menu: Entree: a salad of pickled herring(rollmop style), with fish cut up in small pieces and mixed with very finely sliced onions, gherkins, chopped pickled beetroot, and mixed with sour cream, a little mustard and pepper, and served with a grated carrot salad surrounding it--very colourful! Main course was bratwurst(from a Germanic smallgoods producer in Queensland): the sausage was very nice but to me ressembled more weisswurst than bratwurst--still, very tasty with mustard and/or horseradish cream(Saskia Beer's lovely version.)Vegetables were rosti, a grated potato pancake which is really easy to make: you just grate raw potato and fry it in oil till brown and crisp, half way through cooking add cream and cheese and stir through, it melts nicely in the potato and makes it stay together, and red cabbage cooked in a little wine, cider vinegar and brown sugar(recipe in my post on cabbages). Dessert wasn't particularly German but not outrageously not: we had meringues left over from another time, so had those with whipped cream. It all worked out really nicely indeed!

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Baba a la David

Who doesn't love that luscious classic, the 'Baba au rhum', or rum baba? It's a staple of French cake shops and restaurant desserts but apparently it was originally introduced to France by the Polish king in exile, Stanislas, in the 18th century, and when his daughter married the French king Louis XV, her cooks carried the recipe to the court, and then it became popular in pastry-shops and the like. The word 'baba' originally refers back to a yeast cake popular in Poland and Russia, whose name derives from the word for 'grandmother.' (Sweet and nurturing and warm--a rather lovely image for a grandmother!)

Babas are certainly that too: with their glazed sugary top and rum-flavoured sugar syrup moist interior and the yeast-light texture of their crumb, served slightly warm with whipped cream they are beloved of adults and children. You can certainly overdo the rum--I remember one legendary instance when we had bought some beautiful-looking rum babas from a little boulangerie-patisserie in Bram, near Carcassonne, and proceeded to eat them on the spot, but soon grew so cross-eyed by the incredible saturation of the rum that we had to go for a long walk around the block to clear our heads! I reckon they must have tipped a good glassful of rum in each cake and it quite overwhelmed everything else.

But it's much worse if babas don't have enough rum (and it's got to be the real thing, not flavouring in a bottle)or are dry from not enough syrup. The right balance isn't easy to strike, especially for a home cook, but recently David had a go at making this classic dessert and it turned out great. He improvised a fair bit, including getting the dough to rise in a breadmaker rather than in the air--gave it a large-pored crumb which absorbed the rum and sugar syrup really well.

Basically how you make a rum baba is first to make a yeast dough with plain flour, yeast, caster sugar, warm milk, egg yolks, butter, and lemon rind. Proportions vary depending on how many you are making but to make four individual babas(they are usually served as individual cakes), you'll need 110 g plain flour, 15 g fresh or dried yeast(if using dried yeast you need of course to let it work first in a little lukewarm milk or water)15 g caster sugar, 90 ml warm milk, 2 egg yolks, grated rind of half a lemon, 55 g butter. You mix the soaked dried yeast or fresh yeast with 2.5 ml of the sugar and 5 ml of flour to make a thin batter, then whisk the egg yolks with rest of sugar and the lemon rind, melt the butter. Put the flour in a bowl, make a well in centre, add the yeast mixture and the eggs, mix well with your fingers, adding a little warm milk as needed, till you have a nice soft dough then add the butter, and knead well--it shpuld look like very thick batter. Then leave to rise either in a bowl in a warm place or like David did, in a breadmaker, till it has doubled in size. Meanwhile make the sugar syrup--dissolve 170 g caster or white sugar in 225 ml water in a pan on the stove and boil for a few minutes, till it has thickened well, add rum to flavour. (1/4 to half a glass is ample.)When the dough has doubled in size, knead it a little and put it in four separate and greased baking moulds(David used china ramekins)and leave to prove in a warm place for another 10 mins or so, then bake in the oven at about 190 C, for about 30 or so minutes or until the top has gone golden brown. When cooked, take them out and while they are still warm, prick them all over with a skewer or toothpick and then pour on the rum sugar syrup until the baba is saturated with it and the top has gone all shiny. Serve warm or cool as you wish, with whipped cream.

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San Fran Day 1: Little Bird, Pica Pica, Cafe Gratitude

We went to Little Bird Coffee House for a late breakfast on our first full day in San Fransico.

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 K had the special of the day: Vegan "bird nest" ($7, scramabled tofu on hash brown).

K thought it was pretty yummy but a bit small. (Fair enough, considered it is only $7) and she ordered the signature dish (pardon my Masterchef talk) Blue Corn Waffle with blueberries, banana and real maple syrup ($6! What a steal!).  It was amazing.

Their coffee was amazing too, I will talk about it more on my up coming Toby's America Coffee Adventure blog post.

For lunch, we went to Pica Pica Maize Kitchen, a vegan-friendly gulten-free restaurant in the Mission district. (menu here)

K ordered the  Vegetariana Arepa ($8, as you can see, it's got grilled tofu, avocado and grilled plantains)

It was relativelty cheap, filling and super delicious.  K declared that it was the best Mexican food she's ever had. I orded the La Shuli Cachapa ($9, corn pancake with black bean and friends).

I loved the texture of the pancake and the black beans and mixtures of toma(y)to and Mexican (h)erbs.  K seems enjoying it too.  We both had the Morena sauce, which is a cold black bean sauce.  It was surprisingly mayo-like and amazing (Sauce of the month idea, Lord Of The Fries?).  I stole some of Matt's Yuca (or Plantains) chips.  It was awesome!

 

And then I walked around the massive Amoeba Music...

For the last meal of the day, we went to Cafe Gratitude in Mission (Menu here), an all vegan and  organic cafe.  It was pretty new age without being too airy-fairy.

K had the "I Am Warm-Hearted" ($11, Grilled polenta with cashew ricotta and Brazil nut Parmesan).  I had a few bites, it was pretty interesting, in a good way.

I felt like something healthy, so I went for the "I Am Fortified" ($12, Veggie with quinoa, brown rice and Thai-almond sauce).  It wasn't blend at all. The sauce was nothing like a satay sauce but very tasty.

Little Bird Coffee House
835 Geary St, Tenderloin
San Francisco, CA 94109

   
Pica Pica Maize Kitchen
401 Valencia St, Mission
San Francisco, CA 94103

Cafe Gratitude
2400 Harrison Street, Mission
San Francisco, CA 94110

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NYC Day 10: Stogo, Souen Noodle Restaurant and Lulas

I am writing this from the plane (although will have to click publish at the hotel) as we fly from New York to San Fran. I have loved New York so much and can't imagine San Fran and then Portland being able to compete. Jess and I keep joking that San Fran is going to suck and that we wish our flight was cancelled but I'm sure it is going to be great. New York really is amazing though. It's crazy I wasn't the biggest fan of London and I really thought New York would be similar but it's not. I can't even fully put my finger on what is different, but there is just this amazing energy in New York, it also doesn't hurt that there are 3 vegan dessert places in New York and vegan food everywhere. I didn't even get to try the gluten free (and vegan) cannelloni at a regular italian restaurant called John's of 12th, plenty of raw desserts and vegan treats. The graffiti, buildings, markets, accents are also super cool and it just kind of feels like anything is possible. Corny, right? It's inspiring and definitely my favourite city so far.

Today on our last day so I went to Stogo and had this piece of heaven, aka chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich with Bourbon ginger ice cream which had a hemp base. Excuse the phone pics!

Chinese medicine says that ice cream (and cold things in general) are bad for colds so I figured that the ginger might kind of counteract it. The woman who I guess runs/owns the place is super friendly and joked with me that I could come back for free sample spoons since it was my last day. I was so so tempted! This little place kind of makes me want to work on starting a similar vegan ice cream place in Melbourne, which won't happen but it's nice to feel inspired.

For lunch, we tried to go to pukk (vegetarian thai place) but the waiter very honestly explained that the only gluten free option would be greens. Atlas was a similar situation. I think New York is super vegan friendly but not quite as gluten free friendly. So we went to Souen Noodle Restaurant. I had the mapo tofu minus the seitan and Toby had the ramen special lunch deal but with rice noodles instead of ramen. The noodles were a bit bland but Toby said that was exactly what he wanted and the mapo tofu was not spicy at all which suited me fine, I felt that it was the perfect healthy dish to sandwich between two ice cream desserts.



As part of the lunch deal, you could choose what side you wanted, toby chose the brown rice ball which was really subtle.

Here are his noodles:

And here is the mapo tofu (brown rice on the side not pictured):

I also managed to fit in one last visit to lulas right before we had to leave. I got a brownie a la mode which basically just means brownie (gf in my case) with one large scoop of ice cream. I had already decided that I was going to have the peanut butter flavour but they didn't had it. Both lulas and stogo seem to rotate flavours. So I settled on mint choc chip which was refreshing. I was pleased that the brownie was soft and gooey and served warm.



Jess and I sat and ate in a community garden near by. I love that there are these tiny little community gardens, all quite different and free and so cool on a hot summers day. This one was one of my favourites, although I have to admit I didn't get to visit quite as many as I wanted to.

Also while on the plane I ate more mini banana choc chip muffins and gluten free brownies from Babycakes. Yes 3 lots of desserts in one day from my 3 fave places in NYC.

10 days was not enough, I think I could have easily spent 3 weeks there, as there still so many places we didn't get to explore/see/eat but it's been a blast NYC!

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The old-fashioned charm of candied flowers and Flavigny sweets

One of the things I love about France is the fact that at least about food, it is a conservative nation that doesn't just ditch or monkey with old-fashioned favourites just because they've come down from an earlier time. Not only do people keep traditions in cooking and making things by 'artisanal' methods, they also perpetuate old manufacturing firms which have been producing their local specialities for centuries. That includes not only the obvious things like cassoulet and pates and chestnut purees and so on, but also things like cordials, syrups, sweets, and candied flowers.

Toulouse is well-known for its many culinary products based on the city's most famous flower, the violet. You can get violet sweets, violet syrups to flavour creams and icecreams, but most of all you can get candied violet petals. They are a charming and delicious decoration for cakes and can also be crushed and used as a kind of praline in desserts. But though the violet is far and away the most famous product of Toulouse's candying industry, rose petals and mimosa buds are also used, as well as angelica--the latter you used to be able to get in Australia but I've not seen for years. I always bring back some candied flowers from Toulouse and when I use them on a cake or a dessert, I'm always reminded of the beautiful violet-seller doll my parents had bought me once--she was pretty and dark-haired, dressed in a violet-coloured skirt and white top, with a little straw bat and a straw basket containing candied violets. It seemed to me like one of those magical things, and I ate those violets slowly, over days and days, savouring each mouthful. Even now, the taste of candied flowers reminds me of childhood times in France.

As do the lovely little oval tins of 'Anis de Flavigny', the little white-sugar-coated aniseed sweets that come in various floral flavours, including violet, jasmine, rose, orange flower water, and more. On each little tin is a charming illustration of young lovers in the costumes of the 18th or 19th centuries, canoodling on a bench or under a flowering tree, or whatever. Inexpensive and easily found in just about every grocery shop or supermarket, they are not only fun to collect but also make great little distinctive gifts for people back home as well, especially but not only children!

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Chicken in lemon and mustard sauce

This is my quick and easy version of 'poulet au blanc', the famous French chicken dish. It's lighter than the original cream-rich dish, but not deliberately: I simply discovered I had no cream left in the fridge when I was going to make it and so decided to improvise, with things I did have in the cupboard. The result was delicious.

For two people, you need 4 chicken thigh fillets, a little butter, an onion, one or two garlic cloves, depending on taste, salt, pepper, parsley and tarragon, juice of half a lemon, tablespoon full Dijon mustard, one egg yolk, a little flour, and chicken stock. Dice the chicken, fry quickly with the onion and garlic. Add the salt, pepper, most of the herbs, and then the stock, to just cover the chicken. Simmer for about 20 minutes. When the chicken is cooked, take off stove. Pour off the stock into a dish. Melt some butter in a pan, add a little flour to make a roux, then add the stock bit by bit to make a thick smooth sauce. Add the mustard, and then the lemon juice, stir for a few seconds. Take the pan off the stove, stir in the egg yolk till well-mixed in. Serve the chicken in the sauce, sprinkle herbs on it if you wish. Very good with rice.

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Cooking with the Three Musketeers: Dumas on food

The creator of The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas, was not only one of France's most popular and prolific writers in the 19th century, his swashbuckling historical novels selling in vast numbers(many are still in print today in many different languages)but he was also a curious traveller, a well-known bon vivant and a great gourmet. He loved entertaining guests and devised wonderful meals with his cook, and on occasion cooked himself for them. He hugely admired the great Brillat-Savarin(about whom I wrote in an earlier post) and it was as a kind of homage to him that he wrote his Grand Dictionaire de Cuisine, a vast and rambling tone that was a mixture of anecdote(some pinched directly from Brillat-Savarin!), recipes, travel pieces(there is a fascinating section for instance on the caviar fisheries of the Volga, which he visited)and food philosophy of all sorts. It's not always very reliable, and it be a bizarre and a little slapdash at times, but it has a great personal charm: he says he is, for instance, terrified of 'the appearance of mushrooms at table' (in case they're the wrong sort), and that 'larks have the double advantage of being liked by gourmands and lyricised by the poets' , and that 'the wild boar is quite a misanthropic animal' . He provides Cardinal Richelieu's menu for an all-beef menu, going through seven courses, and a recipe for how to cook bear paws, and has a lovely anecdote about Breton onion sellers trying to encourage English market-goers to buy their onions with a hand-lettered sign, in capital letters, the only English they had learned: The English Onion is not Good. (Rather like the cheeky English cassoulet-maker at Castelnaudary, they discovered the locals didn't much take to this form of direct marketing, but still carried the day!)He has a long section on the truffle, the 'gastronomers' holy of holies' as he puts it, and claims that the colour red 'excites anger in turkeys, just as it does in bulls'. He has a lovely section on water, because, as he says, 'people who habitually drink water become just as good gourmets about water as wine drinkers about wine', and reveals that for 'fifty or sixty years of my life, I have drunk only water,' but then proceeds to tell a funny story about a wine-loving Franciscan monk, who tricked by some mischievous visitors to the monastery into agreeing to partake of a bottle of water instead, got out of the hated chore by asking his superior to bless the water--and once it had been done, refusing to drink--because who had ever heard of a Franciscan drinking holy water?

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