The Random Update: Clyde the Glide

So sorry, I haven't posted in nearly a month, but honestly, three things have been going on to prevent this: 1) I've been damn busy with a bunch of random things, 2) I haven't been cooking or going out much, and 3) what dining I have done has not been accompanied by my trusty digital camera.
But here's what I've tried that is of note: Clyde Common.
I first went there for happy hour on my birthday. The atmosphere was good, but I didn't really have much opportunity to try the food as I was expected to make an appearance at dinner elsewhere.
Since then (November 1st, for those of you keeping track), I've been there probably four or five times. Apparently, it's my new favorite restaurant. Happy hour, dinner, late night, you name it: it never disappoints.
Their menu changes weekly, but favorites (such as poutine) reappear, rotating back in on occasion.
I tried one rendition of the "Smoked Board" which was particularly tasty: smoked oysters, a delicate little mound of potato salad (a world away from the yellow-tinted grocery-store goo), something else that I have since forgotten, and a shot of aquavit. I tell you, I almost felt Scandinavian!
The last time I went, we decided to have our dinner consist of several appetizers, as a way of conserving funds. Clyde Common is on the spendy side, in case you hadn't figured that out yet. So we ordered a little skewered, grilled quail on a bed of caramelized shallots; a shaved fennel salad topped with some sort of pecorino, and the illustrious poutine. Poutine in a French-Canadian specialty, normally the stuff of fast food, comprised of french fries topped with cheese curds and gravy. Yes, it sounds like a mess. But yes, it is delicious, even in the fast food rendition. But Clyde Common took it to a whole other level. Instead of ordinary cheese curds, it was topped with Gruyere; the gravy was translucent and rich; and to top it all off, it was topped with a couple of slivers of foie gras. Yes, I know foie gras is controversial. But damn! Is it ever good. So that is $12 poutine, ladies and gentlemen.
I've tried two desserts: a flourless chocolate cake, and crepes filled with caramelized apples, topped with something similar to granola and caramel-swirled vanilla ice cream. Both were good, but did not stand out as the savory items did.
The drinks here, however, are great. Two of note are the Anemic Mary (a bloody mary made with tomatillos instead of tomatoes, resulting in a green drink, rather than the traditional red), and the whiskey ginger, my favorite. Maker's Mark (my favorite whiskey) mixed with a little ginger beer and cinnamon-infused syrup results in a drink that is balanced and spicy; not nearly as sweet as one would imagine.
But what about the atmosphere, you ask? Excellent, at least for my taste. The main floor has several communal tables, encouraging conviviality among patrons. It is warmly lit, all hardwoods and white walls, and an open kitchen lets you know where the action really lies. Upstairs, there is additional seating in a dimly lit mezzanine. It's nice, but somehow all the sound accumulates up there, so it's very difficult to carry on a conversation without shouting. The photo below really doesn't do the place justice. It's really much cozier than that.

Clyde Common
503.228.3333
SW 10th and Stark
Portland, OR
http://www.clydecommon.com/

Vandelay Industries Festivus 2007

So the office Christmas party was tonight, and it appeared to be a complete success. As planned, it was at Noble Rot, and as also as planned, there was a gift exchange. I finally decided on "Seinfeld" as the theme for the gift exchange, as it is something that everyone knows at least a little bit about. It's a cultural icon, really.
But I digress. Our appetizers were garbanzo bean fritters and Noble Rot's famous onion tart. Salad was a mesclun mix with apples, cheese, and sunflower seeds. Sorry, no photos of those.
On to dinner. Everyone had a choice of chicken with black lentils:
Or steak with polenta and brussel sprouts:













The most popular choice was lamb with fried potatoes:

Between dinner and dessert, it was time for the gift exchange. Four people were missing, so initially I was afraid the exchange would no longer work out. Fortunately, I was wrong.
Kramer's lollipop, anyone?

















I'm sorry sir, this book has been redlined:





















Pez?





















Teazone for Ahman, and Jeremy got the cash.














Eden will be double-dipping.




















Oh, Mr. Pitt!













Uh, Teazone again.















NO SOUP FOR YOU!














You stopped off for Jujyfruits?


















Excuse me, could spare a square? No! I don't have a square to spare!

















Please help us! My goldfish might die!














Prognosis: NEGATIVE (times three)





























It looked like everyone had a good time. Definitely more laughs than past years.

Whole-Wheat Bread

I was out of bread, and in the interest of economy decided to bake my own, instead of buying a loaf. Then, in the interest of health, I decided to bake whole-wheat instead of my usual New York Times bread. It turned out pretty well, so I'm sharing the recipe I used.

I cut the recipe in half (what am I going to do with two loaves of bread?), and used the dough hooks that came with my mixer for the first time ever to knead the dough. The mixer worked well, but I think if I hadn't cut the recipe in half, it might have burnt out the motor.

Whole-Wheat Bread
Makes 2 Loaves.
3 tablespoons sugar

3 to 3 ½ cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons salt

2 ¼ cups milk
2 packages active dry yeast

1/3 cup butter or margarine
4 cups whole-wheat flour

1/3 cup molasses
1. In large bowl, combine sugar, salt, yeast, 2 cups whole-wheat flour and 1 cup all-purpose flour. In a 2-quart saucepan over low heat, heat: milk, butter or margarine and molasses until very warm 120° to 130°F.). (Butter does not need to melt completely.)
2. With mixer at low speed, gradually beat liquid into dry ingredients. Increase speed to medium; beat 2 minutes, occasionally scraping bowl with a rubber spatula. Beat in l/2 cup whole-wheat flour and ½ cup all-purpose flour or enough to make a thick batter. Continue beating 2 minutes, occasionally scraping bowl with rubber spatula.
3. With spoon, stir in 1 1/2 cups whole-wheat and additional all-purpose flour (about 1 ½ cups) to make a soft dough.
4. Turn dough onto lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes.

Shape dough into ball and place in a greased large bowl, turning dough to grease top. Cover with towel; let rise in warm, draft-free place (80° to 85°F.), until doubled, about 1 hour.
5. Punch down dough; turn onto lightly floured surface; cut in half; cover with bowl; let dough halves rest 15 minutes for easier shaping. Grease two 9” by 5” loaf pans.

6. With lightly floured rolling pin, roll one dough half into a 12” by 8” rectangle. Starting at a narrow end, roll dough up tightly and pinch the edge with your fingers. Seal ends by pressing them with the sides of your hands and fold them under. Place the roll, seam side down, in loaf pan.

7. Repeat step 6 with remaining dough. Cover loaves with towel; let rise in warm place, away from draft, until loaves are doubled, about 1 hour.

8. Preheat oven to 400°F. bake loaves 30 to 35 minutes or until golden and loaves sound hollow when tapped lightly with fingers. Remove from pans immediately so bottoms don’t become soggy, and cool on wire racks. From: The Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook: Revised & Expanded Edition, 1989. Page 434.

A Few Thoughts on Stumptown

This posting might be a bit controversial, I fully admit it. Stumptown is Portland's own beloved coffee roaster (but then again, so is World Cup). Everyone raves about how great it is, it has a cult following, blah blah blah.

Here's what I think: the beans are great, but the preparation of drinks at the cafes is terrible. Yes, you read me correctly, I said TERRIBLE.
Today, taking a little break from work, I decided to go to the nearest Stumptown location near my office: the Ace Hotel. I hoped it would be different this time. It wasn't.
I've had overly wet cappuccinos and so-so lattes in the past, so today I decided to order just a plain-jane cup of brewed coffee. They might as well have handed me a cup of piss.
I think it is best described as a cup of brown water. Really, it was incredibly watery. And, a tiny little cup was $2.00. Come on folks, any dumbass can brew a decent, ordinary cup of coffee. Yesterday, at Sip and Kranz, I had a cup of ordinary-brewed Stumptown coffee, and it was great. Same beans, but it was properly prepared, cost less, and came with a free refill. Huh.
I've bought Stumptown beans and made great drinks at home: drip, frenchpress, and cappuccinos. And I have no special coffee training. I've had great cups of Stumptown coffee at Ken's Bakery, Albina Press, and the aforementioned Sip and Kranz. But not at Stumptown's Ace Hotel location. It's been uniformly bad there, no matter what drink I ordered.
So here's my suggestion: buy the beans at a grocery store, or buy the drinks at anywhere BUT Stumptown. Until they train their staff to make a decent cup of coffee, avoid the Stumptown cafes for everything but people-watching.

Oy! I made bagels.

My co-worker has his own bread blog now (http://www.yeastybeasty.wordpress.com), and perusing through it, I noticed a recipe for bagels. It didn't look too difficult, so I decided that would be my project for the weekend.

You need to start the night before in order to have them ready for breakfast. I'm not going to narrate much, look at his blog for the actual instructions.

So here we go:
Friday Night: I mixed, kneaded, and shaped the bagels. After that, they go in the refrigerator overnight.

***

Saturday Morning: First, I boil them.

Next, I bake them:

Finally, it's time to slice and eat them.

Noble Rot for the Office Lot

Every year for the last two years, I've been planning the office holiday party. The first year, it was at Mother's Bistro. Last year was Saucebox. Both were a success.

So now the time for that has rolled around again, and I need to find something still better, more fun, tastier, etc. Each year needs to top the last. I say that both last year and the year before were successes, but I must qualify that: they were successes except that for many people, there was a come, eat, and leave element to it. So how will I remedy that? Add an activity element to it.

Noble Rot (plus an additional idea) is the solution. Hip, yet cozy atmosphere, the food is supposed to be excellent, the wine likewise (hence the name, Noble Rot), and a private party room. The manager assures me that we will see the chef cooking before us and it will be very interactive. Perfect. But, I had never eaten there. How could I plan a party at a place I've never eaten?

Tonight, that problem was solved. I went to dinner there with Alex (he's been several times). First, the wine: we both ordered Italian. I had a glass of white with a name I've already forgotten but loved the sound of (maybe Fontanabianco). Alex ordered a "flight" of reds--they serve series of three 2-ounce servings of different, but related wines from a particular region. A little taste of each, in other words. His were all from the heel of the boot of Italy, and one smelled exactly like my parents' basement. Interesting.


Next, we shared a "Noble salad": butter lettuce, red onion, sunflower seeds; vinaigrette or blue cheese (we chose the vinaigrette). It was good: vinegary, but not too sour, and the sunflower seeds added a nice crunch.

Main course: I was debating between the duck, and a special of steak over polenta with rapini. Alex wanted the steak, so my decision was made for me. Obviously, we couldn't order the same thing. So I ordered duck breast with roasted potatoes and chanterelle mushrooms over what they called duck "jus." The jus tasted like a foie gras mousse. It was rich, yet delicate. Duck, apparently, is red meat: crispy, roasted skin on the outside, with a rare center.

Alex's steak over polenta with rapini was just as delicious, although more traditional (sorry the photo is a little blurry).

Finally, dessert. We share a huckleberry olive oil cake with maple whipped cream. Sound strange? It wasn't. It was two little light cakes with huckleberry puree and whipped cream sandwiched in the middle, topped with more of the same. Whole huckleberries were strewn about as garnish. Not too heavy, not too sweet: perfect really. Artistically dark photo below:

So what, you might ask, is the other activity element for the holiday party? Secret Santa with some sort of theme. I'm not sure what the them will be, Eden suggested [jokingly] 1980s, and I thought of maybe "The Office" (get it?) or, just now, "Back to the Future." Alex suggested Festivus for the Rest of Us from "Seinfeld."
I know everyone will groan and complain about Secret Santa, but, when the moment comes, it will liven things up and everyone will laugh and have fun. I'm sure of it.

Obviously, when the party night finally arrives, I will document it and show the results here.
In the meantime, here's all the info for Noble Rot:
2724 SE Ankeny
Portland, OR 97215
503.233.1999
www.noblerotpdx.com

The Green Tomato Dilemma...Solved!

It wasn't the hottest summer in Portland this year, at least not during the prime growing period. Result: pounds and pounds of green tomatoes.

What's a girl to do?

First, I tried out The New York Times' Lemon and Green Tomato Marmalade recipe. Not too impressed, although in all fairness, I did forget about it while it was cooking and it got a little, um, toasty, shall we say. It probably would have tasted better and not been so candy-like if I had followed the instructions properly. So we'll just call that one an experiment.

But my next experimental attempt met with success, even though everyone I mentioned the idea to poo-pooed it. Or rather, made a face and said variations on "yuck." But I proved them all wrong. Hah Hah!

And what did this successful use of green tomatoes create? Green tomato cake. Yup. You did not misread that. And it was delicious: spices, raisins, walnuts, a sprinkle of shredded coconut on top, and chopped GREEN TOMATOES mixed in. I brought it to work, and no one could even guess what the secret ingredient was. One guy thought it was some sort of tropical fruit, piggy-backing off the obvious coconut, I guess.

So here's the recipe. I found it here: http://southernfood.about.com/od/greentomatoe1/r/bl10712g.htm

Green Tomato Cake

INGREDIENTS:
2 1/4 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil or melted shortening
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup pecans or walnuts
1 cup raisins
2 1/2 cups diced green tomatoes
coconut (optional)
PREPARATION:
Preheat oven to 350°. In mixing bowl, beat sugar, vegetable oil or shortening, eggs and vanilla until smooth and creamy. Sift together the flour, salt, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg; slowly beat into egg mixture. Blend well.
Stir in pecans, raisins and tomatoes.Pour into greased 9x13-inch pan. Top with coconut if desired. Bake for one hour, or until a wooden pick or cake tester inserted in center comes out clean. Serves 12.