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.
I am reminded of our President's "body man," Reggie Love. Anyway, the Reggie, stripped of the biscuit, and with a little provolone is Argentinian. With a little milk gravy, it's a chicken fried steak. Our pal Emeril calls it paneed chicken -- making it more exotic. Those who eat frogs might call it a rustic cordon bleu.
ReplyDeleteIn the summer we sweat, making immensely salty things even more tasty. We are having an early heatwave back in KY -- such that all the blueberries that usually ripen in July have popped. The girls and I went picking yesterday, and in 20 minutes on 5 bushes pulled just under ten pounds -- a pillowcase full. I cooked three cobbler last night and still have ton of berries.
In any event I mention this because (1) I am the crazy uncle and (2) when I woke up this morning and went to Lakeside for a dip, I had to come home for a glass of Worchestire Sauce.