If Spontaneity is the Spice of Life This is a Well Spiced Meal

What is it about Chinese food that has a bad rap. I've always wondered why, if a Hollywood director wanted to visually scream "LOSER!" they would stick one of those cardboard take-out containers in a person's hand. For some reason Chinese food has a bad reputation as the undercooked fare of people who are too lazy to care. That's what the movies tell you.

Any ways, Cyrus is out to once-and-for-all eliminate that idea. He's going to grill a chicken breast in a style reminiscent of, well, Chinese food. The recipe (I rarely say that on Cy's weeks) is from dad's new License To Grill cookbook by Chris Schlessinger and John Wiloughby.

As a side dish dad is teaching Cy to make hobo potatoes, he and Cy bustle back and forth, laying out tin foil, halving potatoes and adding salt, butter, olive oil, garlic and other spices. Then throw the foil wrapped taters onto the grill and finally dress them with Italian parsley from our garden and fresh grated Parmesan (this also works well just throwing the packet straight into the fire). In the salad we have spinach, also from our garden (Clark: there's that local/lo-cal option you were looking for, twice, in more ways than one!) (see comments for: "It Was Like Summer Out There" May 16, 2010).

Wow that is a fragrant glaze- Hoisin Sauce, lime juice, ginger and garlic with gobs of basil. The glaze for the chicken smells like...it's indescribable. Meanwhile Cy has had a kitchen misadventure. He was tossing the bell peppers and onion in olive oil. He poured in about a cup too much oil. When dad realized what was happening he intervened and siphoned off most of the oil into an almost empty jam jar. Then mixed it into a sweet. Bam! Sour. Bam! Olive-y salad dressing.

This is a bit of an odd dinner. The plan is very loose. I thought the salad was done when Cyrus, sitting next to me savoring the short break in the cooking out of nowhere asked, no-one in particular, "Could we put nasturtiums in the salad?" Then he went outside and picked a bunch of nasturtiums from the garden. And now Dad's adding peaches to the salad. If spontaniety is the spice of life this is a well spiced meal. Now Dad's grating parmesan onto the salad? Geez! It looks like it snowed. I think they've gone crazy.

An odd dinner indeed. While the focus was intended to be a chicken covered in hoisin sauce that became a side dish with co-main courses in the hobo potatoes and salad. The whole meal was vibrant and special. The way each bite was so unique and special. The food was so bright. The salad wasn't just green, the chicken wasn't chicken colored and the potatoes weren't just white. This meal was diverse and vibrant. This meal will be remembered. This meal was something from a dream.

A Good Stew On a Dark Day

A woman from out of town walked out of Portland's convention center and sighed. The past three days that she'd been in town, it had been raining continuously. She opened up her umbrella and asked a little boy on a tricycle, "Does it ever stop raining here?" The little boy replied, "How should I know, I'm only six years old."

Even though today is the last day of spring we had to change our plans thanks to the cold weather and stuffy noses. We were going to make bulgogi a Korean seared flank steak. But stuffed noses all around made me change the recipe. (Okay actually we hadn't noticed the 4 hour marination time).

So we switched recipes and moved 7847 miles east to Cuba. For Old Clothes. Old Clothes? Do we need to change recipes again? No we don't, Ropa Vieja is a Cuban stew that (just our luck) uses flank steak. Ropa Vieja also means old clothes.

I'm starting to understand the name Ropa Vieja now. This stew won't be done until I'm an old man and my clothes are in shreds. At least, that's what it feels like. This is taking forever!

The clothes have been shredded. Have you ever shredded flank steak before? It gets harder to shred as it gets colder. Not to mention boring. Yet it does explain the name of this dish, I've never seen anything better at impersonating a pile of old rags. I've also never been so confused by cooking directions. Then I realized I had been reading the wrong recipe!

I'm back on the right recipe and I'm getting the feeling that I'm almost done. In 15 minutes I need to add the frozen peas and olives. and 10 minutes later this meal is done.

It's been a bit of an odd meal preparation wise. It seems that a lot of what was done we did again and again not to mention for the first hour and a half of cooking we had a wide variety of vegetables in the pot, everything from carrots to celery. Yet after that hour and a half we tossed out all the veggies. Seems to me to be a little wasteful, I mean why couldn't we use the veggies in a recipe the next day, they would be perfect in a shepherds pie if you added some potatoes.

Oh well, those veggies have gone down the gullet of our grandma's dog, Maggie, by now.

The stew was amazing. It was hardy, complex and rich, at least thats what dad says, I can't taste anything thanks to my stuffy nose. There was one thing I could taste though, the pimento stuffed green olives, They quite simply exploded with a complex, salty flavor. The stew had a great array of colors with the red and green bell peppers, peas and olives with a back drop of rice and meat. It was a great stew for such a dark day. If only we could get a ray of Cuba's sunshine.

The First Day of Summer

Portland is a special town, it's got all the big city benefits of New York but it's also got a small town feel and is wrapped around nature. Portland is filled with great restaurants, cafes and parks. One of my favorite places for breakfast in Portland is Pine State Biscuits on Belmont street. Pine State has a number of wonderful dishes but their signature dish is the Reggie. The Reggie is a fried chicken breast, bacon, american cheese and gravy sandwiched between a biscuit cut in half.

Cyrus loves the Reggie. He wonders how humans survived before it's invention. He's making Reggies for dinner.

Thing is, Pine State doesn't have a cookbook. So what Cy is actually making is a series of different dishes which will be combined into the Reggie. The bacon is done frying and the chicken is sizzling, the biscuits are on pause for now while Cy prepares the fruit salad side dish. The sizzzzzzle and pop of the chicken, the slliiidddde snap of my brother's knife cutting through one huge apple. The smell of the bacon, the taste of a "borrowed" chunk of apple.

It's like summer time in Portland and I suppose it is, after all, school gets out on Tuesday. There's something odd though about the smell of the frying sausage (for the gravy) it almost makes it more summer-like.

I'm getting the feeling that our cooking is coming to a close. The fruit salad is being mixed with it's dressing and I can't hear any more sizzling/popping noises from the stove. The timer is going off on the biscuits and the sausage gravy is done. The only thing left is the stacking. The penultimate step in the creation of these Dagwood style sandwiches.

That are quite good. The Reggies where immensely salty and the fruit salad was sweet and wet, the perfect thing for outdoor dining in the summer. The sun is still high in the sky and I have the feeling that when I'm done writing I'll go back outside. Today's food was good and today was good too. After a long rainy Spring, today was the first day of summer.

Laughter Is Brightest Where Food Is Best

Does anyone know how to grill in a torrential downpour? If so you might want to share some tips. See, here we are in June. Normally we don't have to deal with rain in June. So, mom suggested that we grill a leg of lamb. A few months ago we had got a whole leg of lamb and since we would have ten mouths to help us eat it today mom suggested (demanded would be more accurate) that I grill it. And then an uncontrollable factor gave us a whack on the head.

Being a morning person I got up at seven-thirty. I woke up laying on my side staring out my bedroom window. After a couple of moments I had the normal order of thought returned to my head. Mmmmm. Sunday. I'm cooking. (Yawn). Oh! I'm grilling! Hmm. It's cloudy. @$##.

That's when I became consciously awake.

I've spent the whole morning with half of my brain sorting out the grill problem and the other half doing whatever was being done.

Ultimately though you just have to face the problem head on. Even after two rain-soaked hours at Oaks Park, our neighborhood's amusement park.

I have no idea what I should be doing. I missed the first hour of cooking and now I feel lost. Oh well.

One of the things I don't like about the days when I cook is that I never have time to write. Now I have time though. I've made a salad and prepared the garlic bread. I've glazed the peaches and watched the leg o' lamb come off the grill (this is the least involved I've ever been in a main course. All I did was stick a thermometer in twice!)

All our guests have arrived bringing us three additional dogs. I have a real good feeling about tonight.

The table has been set but there is something missing. Sure the people aren't there but there's a great big empty spot on the table. It's the lamb! That's what's missing! How long does it take to carve a simple leg of lamb dad!? Ten years?

The ten years have passed and we have eaten.

It was really good eatin' too. The lamb was beautiful and smoky with tart undertones. The salad was dominated by the dressing which was tart yet sweet like a preserve. The garlic bread was perfect and the peaches were tart, not sweet, and I didn't like them but everyone else did so they must actually be pretty good. This was a feast in every sense of the word. I can hear laughter ringing from the dining room. Laughter is brightest where food is best.

The Dark Sky Was Worth It

Shish-kebabs, also kepab, kabab, kebob, kabob, kibob, kebhav and kephav according to wikipedia. Are a dish that originated in Persia as fried, not grilled, meat. The kebabs (or kepabs, kababs...) weren't originally served on skewers they were in fact a wide variety of dishes. Everything from large and small cuts of meat to ground meat and sandwiches, (hence the wide variety of names anyone)?

Tonight's kepabs are the standard americanized version. Cyrus (wait a minute, that's the name of a Persian king and Sun God and my brother) is making a main course of sirloin tip, cherry tomato and potato kababs. These wonder kebobs will be followed by our families ever-present grilled fruit desert. But this time it'll be different. Imagine a kabob with fresh strawberries and cubed mango, grilled. Better yet put that in the middle of your plate and drizzle some hot fudge onto the top of the already wonderful kibob.

My mouth waters just waiting for it.

You can smell the sirloin tips now. Marinating in olive oil and spices. The sky is clouding over and dad and Cy are hunched over the grill starting a fire. The potatoes are parboiling and Frank Sinatra is calling from the speakers. What would we do without Pandora "internet radio"?

The kebhavs are on the grill now getting smoked out beneath the lid. Dad is slicing the mango (which, being a produce broker, he bought, sold and bought again. Odd paradox.) for our desert kephavs and Cy is skewering the strawberries and mango cubes. The smell of smoky sirloin and grilled tomatoes fills our house, and no doubt our neighbor's houses too. The main course skewers are almost ready and the spur-of-the-moment shopping decision naan (an Indian flatbread) is being coated in olive oil to heat up on the grill. I can't wait.

And I almost forgot about the Phizzini (see March 28th post) fixin's we got at IKEA the other day, lingonberry juice concentrate, that we will mix with club soda.

Our main course is done and the sky is getting darker by the minute. This isn't 6:30 PM in late May. At least it's not totally dark, I've never seen brighter, happier, colors as the red-gold combo we just put on the grill. But we must muddy it with the dark of the chocolate sauce like oil has muddied the waters of the gulf coast.

Amazing. The last kebabs were perfect. The strawberries and mangoes just slid right off the skewers and they were slightly warm, near to bursting with warmed sugary fruit juices. Mmmmmmmm. The dark sky was worth it. I'm glad we ate outside

Time

It's Sunday again. I wanted to make shepherd's pie but that just wasn't going to happen. I didn't get home from a sleepover until 4 and we hadn't even started shopping. The shepherd's pie recipe I planned to make said it would take three hours. We just weren't going to have that sort of time.

So dad and I rushed off to the store and got milk, pine nuts, fresh pasta and ground beef. Then we dashed home to begin preparing dinner. We toasted pine nuts and almonds and mixed them with ground beef an egg and bread crumbs. If you haven't figured it out already, as many "Losties" have with their shows end so near, we're making spaghetti and meatballs. This was really a "throw together something nice" dinner but I think it will be quite good.

Wow. I've never spent such a time in the kitchen - it just flew by. I had barely managed to tell what we we're having for dinner and then bang! Pow! We we're eating. The meatballs and spaghetti weren't all that perfect. The meatballs kept falling apart and were undercooked. The sauce was a little watery and could have done with a little more care, precision and time. I suppose we were just hurrying to get dinner done in a reasonable time that we over-hurried and it cost us. Wait a second. Why are these keys turning red? Holy #%^! WERE"S MY FINGER! Just kidding. We weren't that careless!

The greatest standout of this meal though was the salad. Now fairly routine in our house the lettuce-apple-carrot salad stood out thanks to it's apple. I'm not sure what variety the apple was but it was a great big one, larger than my fist, with a red skin and the flavor of carbs that had soaked in honey. The best piece of the apple was the juice, with each bite it's liquid honey flavor oozed out of the apple, down your teeth and straight to your tastebuds which practically fainted the taste was so amazing.

With a side dish uber-success I'll just hope for better luck in two weeks with the main course, shepherd's pie.

It Was Like Summer Out There

It must be summer time here in Portland. It's 70, sunny and I wish I'd put on shorts this morning. Cy just got back from a camping trip with friends this afternoon and opted for a meal in no short supply around our house in the summer. Burgers. Cy will be cooking up a batch of burgers. He'll form the patties by hand then grill them on our old black charcoal grill before placing a slice of cheese on top for any one who wants it. Then, as the burgers come off family tradition says to toast the buns while slicing tomatoes and pickles. And you can't forget put ketchup on the table. These burgers are always seasoned with spices from the Old Chicago Spice House. They're good burgers.

Just moments ago Cyrus kneaded the meat while dad piled on spices. "You know, we don't have a recipe," dad said.

"Yep," Cy said "we don't need one though."

Smoke is rising up from the grill as the sun beats down, the small shoots of our summer garden adding a slight green to the background. Neko Case's voice comes from the speakers placed on our kitchen windowsill.

Flipping burgers complete, a slice of cheddar cheese on mine, Cy has come back in to prepare a salad while dad prepares the asparagus. The dogs stand watch by the door waiting for their chance to eat all the burgers on the grill. We won't give 'em that chance.

Wow, burgers cook fast. It would appear they're almost done. The pickles have been sliced and the buns are about to be toasted. From the look of things we might be able to have our first 5 o'clock Sunday dinner in months. But I doubt it. We've still got to grill the asparagus.

Which I now know, takes about five seconds. One minute I was watching burgers get flipped and the next I was eating the largest burger I've ever seen. We actually pulled off the 5 o'clock dinner. We ate the burgers and grilled asparagus with the sun still high in the sky.

Yet we're far from done, right now we have peaches and apriums on the grill that will be drizzled with honey and creme fraiche. And those took about five seconds too. The grill cooks things too fast to write about them.

At least they taste good. Really good. As Grandma said: "I just had a weeks worth of meat." She was right.

It was like summer out there.