Misted From Our Minds

Sometime this summer we began to talk about were we wanted to go on an international trip this spring. At first the front runners were Peru and India, I didn't want to go to either of those places and was advocating Greece. Slowly Peru then India fell out of contention as possible travel destinations. As a compromise between India and Greece Mom had suggested a few days in Spain then Morocco. Sounded good to all of us, so although we have yet to buy tickets, we plan to take a trip to Spain and Morocco this summer or spring. In anticipation of the coming trip I've decided to make a Moroccan dish for dinner tonight.

The dish in question is a well spiced, lemon infused, Moroccan chicken. Moroccan culture and cuisine is widely influenced by most of the Mediterranean. With it's native Berber cuisine absorbing the influences of Andalusia and the Moors, the Turks, Jews and Arabic cuisines, a Moroccan meal promises to be a wide infusion of all Mediterranean tastes. For side dishes we have hummus and pita bread and couscous and a salad.

Cy is sick, so Dad took him to get checked out. The cooking is coming to a head. The preserved lemons, olives and wine are in with the onions and pita bread is toasting in the oven. Chicken broth is melting in the microwave. (Dad makes home made Chicken broth and freezes it.) We are starting the salad and the couscous should follow soon.

I just accidentally put way to much chicken broth in the main pot. If only Dad was here to help. But he's with Cy who's getting an ultrasound, Cy might have appendicitis. The salad is on the table and everything else is on it's way. The pita bread is taking turns warming up in the oven while the couscous liquid, a quarter of which is the extra broth, is heating up on the stove. Any minute now we will be ready to eat.

The chicken is almost ready and the smells wafting through the house are amazing, so thick you can taste them. I bet they could cure Cy no matter how sick he is. The chicken is ready. Dinner is served!

The couscous was both excellent and amazing. One moment I was poring it into an immense amount of water and broth. The next I glanced over and the lid of the pot was being physically lifted by the couscous. The chicken was excellent and lemony. And I probably toasted the pita to long. As we ate you could almost see the great white canvas of a Berber tent building around us. Then the phone rang and our canvas sheets fell to the ground and misted from our minds. Turns out Cy doesn't have appendicitis. We returned to our plates and the wonderful flavors of North Africa.

Thank You Cyrus, Dad, Neighbor Andy And, Smith&Wesson??

You'd have to live in a cave to not know that the University of Oregon's football team is going to play Auburn for the national championship. That's nice, but what has us (and by and large the rest of the neighborhood) excited is the U of O's a cappella group "On the Rocks". They just got a spot on NBC's The Sing-Off", a limited run holiday season series. One of their members is an old swimteam coach at the local pool. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTFh8LCBZeQ&feature=related) Teigh Bowen is the blond guy to the right of the main singer in most of the videos. He was an awesome swim coach.

With all sorts of talented Oregonians in national competitions Cy decided to make a dish that baffled us when we first made it, but now we're good enough at it that it could win a national championship. Pirogi. The cheese has been grated and mashed into the potatoes, now the cheese potato mixture is being mashed into small balls for the filling, and the onions are sizzling away filling our house with their fragrant buttery, greasy, wonderfulness. The dough is done resting now, and the onions are almost caramelized.

Last time we had pirogi for dinner it wasn't the best. The dough was tough, you couldn't taste the cheese in the filling and the onions were over done. The time before that was, I think, Super Bowl Sunday.

Cy is now assembling the pirogi. After rolling out and cutting the dough into small circles he puts one of the small cheese-potato balls into the middle, then crushes the edges together into the classic dumpling shape. Meanwhile on the stove sauerkraut and some venison sausage our neighbor Andy gave us are heating up together on the front burner. Andy had been hunting this fall and got a buck in Eastern Oregon. Otto's , the little German deli/butcher shop in our neighborhood smokes game for the hunters in the neighborhood. These sausages were super smoky and super delicious. On the rear burner of the stove, the pirogi that have already been made are boiling away in a big pot of heavily salted pirogi water.

While we're waiting for all the pirogi to finish cooking we've been snacking on the leftover cheese balls. We have probably 20 extra cheese balls. On the outside they are slightly greasy and slippery. They look to be just orange tinted mash potato balls. The light glints off of them in such a way it appear they are sweating. When you bite in at first you just taste the potatoes. Then the cheese sneaks in. Sharp and cheddary you get a wonderful taste of the cheesiness (which the government wants us to eat more of) and the fattiness (which they want us to eat less of). The pirogi are ready, we eat!

That was really good. The pirogi were by far the best we've ever made, in fact, it was good enough to rival the pirogi that Eastern European immigrants sell on Saturdays from the basement of the Ukranian church in our neighborhhod. Next time though, more onions. And the sausage, that was good. It was really good. Imagine the best venison sausage you ever had, the multiply it by 10. After we had finished eating Mom said, "Thanks for the wonderful meal Cy and Dad, and Andy," then Dad broke in "and Smith&Wesson."

Practice Makes Perfect

We're making sushi again. I've made sushi twice before, and every time I've been amazed by how incomprehensible the cookbook is. Does everyone have gram measures in their homes except for us? Besides, 20 grams of sugar is not necessarily equivalent in volume to 20 grams of salt! How did we end up with a British - Sushi cookbook anyway? It's kinda funny how the first time I decided to make sushi Dad asked me if I was sure I didn't want to try something easier and then this morning Dad asked if I was sure I didn't want to try something harder. It really is interesting how you can go from completely ignorant to almost an expert so quickly. Fear too, is kind of similar I think. Two other dishes really scared me before, (lasagna & pirogi) but the third time I've made those dishes they didn't seem as scary or exotic or cool. I started cooking and before I had started it seemed like I was done. All the little setbacks are predicted now. The lesson I have learned is that if it seems hard, try it three times, then it might be easy.

The sushi rolls are being cut. Some are sitting on plates, ready to be eaten; others wait to be sliced, their outsides colored either black-green or orange and white. It looks just like plates of sushi in a sushi restaurant. The salmon sashimi looks to be straight out of a restaurant too.

The first course of miso soup was good, but the wakame (the Japanese must have 1000 words for seaweed) was a little thick and a little slimy. Otherwise the miso was good. The sushi though, that was really good. The salmon in the sashimi could have been fattier, and the roe wasn't spread that evenly on the California roll, but it was good. We had to deal with the Sellwood-Moreland sushi dilemma of course but this was by far the best sushi dinner yet! We have a sushi restaurant in our neighborhood that makes really large sushi rolls. They are too big to put in your mouth all at once, but you can't really bite them in half without them falling all over the place. We call that the Sellwood-Moreland sushi dilemma.

The sushi was beautiful and it was free from a lot of the old mistakes that were in the other sushi dinners. Practice really does makes perfect.

Dutch Tacos

It rains a lot in Portland. The other day I heard somebody say "Yesterday I saw Oregonians with umbrellas." That is a sign that it was raining really hard. Of course, it is a rain forest. Despite the rain Portland is home to one of the most vibrant outdoor dining scenes in the nation, maybe the world. Food carts, are an interesting phenomenon. It came from a combination of organic food loving hipsters who had just graduated from college (or maybe not) and wanted to start a restaurant. But starting a restaurant takes a lot of start up money that these hipsters didn't have. So instead they start a low budget food cart. One of the very first was FlavourSpot. FlavourSpot was run out of a video store parking lot on Lombard street. Like a number of carts it serves a foreign variation on a classic dish here in America. In this case waffles. When the hipster manning the truck gives you your waffle he hands you a foil and wax paper wrapped package with just a little corner of waffle sticking out on top. As you unwrap the foil and pull down the wax paper you find a waffle folded in half. Then you bite in. Depending on what you ordered you may taste maple syrup and sausage, or nutela, or turkey, Havarti and bacon.

Tonight Cy is making a home made version of these so called "Dutch tacos". He's mixed together the waffle batter while Dad was shaping sausages, then Cy got together all the fillings while Dad read the instruction manual for our waffle iron. (It's a really nice waffle iron but we've used it once in the year since we got it. Our last waffle iron was an antique that exploded into a ball of blue sparks and acrid smoke, at least it made our Saturday morning a little more exciting. Maybe better to stick to antiques that don't involve electricity.)

The waffles look good, but they don't all get done at once. For the fillings we have a sort of self serve filling bar. Set out for the waffles is lemon curd, whip cream, strawberries, maple syrup, and sausages. Mmmmm.

That was good. It was delicious and sweet, or delicious and savory depending on the fillings. And there's plenty of leftovers. Our thick Belgian waffle iron isn't quite on par with the thinner circular ones at FlavourSpot. These took only about 45 minutes to make, perfect for anybody to make on a week night, and there's plenty of leftovers.

While we absolutely love these home made waffles, it's good to know that there are experts we can go to for still better "dutch tacos" on the cheap. The ambience of a picnic table in a parking lot on a cold rainy morning can be magical. Friends and family are what make a meal.

I almost forgot, heres FlavourSpot's website http://flavourspot.com

The Power of Paprika

I remember the first time I had goulash. It was my first summer at sleep-away camp, dinner on Thursday night was goulash, red meaty sauce and noodles. I loved it. Then as I was trying to decide what I was going to cook tonight, with grandparents in town it had to be something extra special, Mom suggested I make a goulash recipe she had torn out of a magazine years ago. I thought goulash was the best idea ever.

Which put us here, and now. Dad is working on his trademark apple crisp for dessert and we have the dough for dumplings resting in the corner. Memma (our name for our grandma) is playing checkers with Cyrus, and we're all snacking on some cheese and paté that we picked up while we were shopping earlier.

Dad's apple crisp is coming along well and the dough has rested for it's requisite hour. The onions are having a little trouble caramelizing simply because there's so many of them. The dough for our dumplings has been kneaded and now gets to rise for the next hour and a half. We're now working on cubing the meat for the goulash.

We're really having a lot of trouble getting those onions to caramelize. right now we have three separate skillets on the stove with onions in them, Memma has been designated the chief onion caramelizer and is standing over them, stirring and trying to get the darned things to caramelize.

We got the onions to caramelize and now the meat is browning (also in three separate pots) a few moments ago Dad and I set out on a monumental task. Peeling and crushing 22 cloves of garlic. Thats not a typo, 22 cloves of garlic. It's a lot of garlic. In a few moments all the garlic will go into the three pots on the stove that have the pork browning (and sizzling, you can hear it upstairs).

All the meat went into one pot, the onions went in too, then the 22 garlic cloves, followed by the paprika and tomato paste, then the beef stock went in, followed by the caraway seeds, the marjoram, and the salt and pepper. Now the orange Le Creuset pot filled to the brim with orange (from the paprika and tomato paste)juices and meat will simmer away for the next two and half hours.

We just got to stab the dumpling. After we boiled the dumpling for 13 minutes we pulled it out of the water, and immediately stabbed it three times on both sides of the loaf. It was kinda fun, and no I didn't actually get sent to an anger management class. Now we get to eat!

The pork was wonderful, and when doused in the paprika sauce, which just exploded on our mouths, the pork was absolutely amazing. The dumpling was surprisingly bland, though, like the pork, when covered in plenty of the sauce it was amazingly flavorful. Dad and I were both interested and amazed by this meal. It was a lesson in the power of paprika.

And Dad's apple crisp? Amazing as ever. He has the apple crisp down to a science.

A Dark November Night

Cy really loves mac' n' cheese. While the rest of our family finds the stuff from the box palatable he loves it. Then, occasionally, Mom will make this excellent, crusted cheesy but not goopy mac' n' cheese. As with most of our other great meals this one comes from the Gourmet cookbooks. Normally Mom will make this mac' n' cheese for us about every three weeks, but it's been a lot longer than that since we feasted on the crunchy cheese and bread crumb topping of this dish. Figures of course, that Cy would be the one to make this dish.

The crust has been mixed together, cheese, bread crumbs, and butter, and the roux that makes up the inside of the mac' n' cheese is being whisked together, red pepper flakes, flour, milk and more butter. Dad is grating more cheese and Cy is stirring the roux. It just started raining hard.

The weather today has been really strange. One moment it's been bright and sunny,the next it's pouring down rain. We were at a birthday party earlier today. It was bright and sunny and a lot of people were on the back deck outside. Then suddenly everyone came rushing in. It was pouring rain. Hey! It stopped raining!

The pasta, roux and crust (not to mention all the butter) have been incorporated in the baking dish and have been sent into the oven for half an hour.

The macaroni and cheese is out of the oven our guest is here and the collard greens are just finished up. We eat!

That was a good dinner. Until now I didn't know that the recipe called for red pepper flakes and Mom didn't put them in, Dad has whipped some cream to go with the loaf cake and the berries that Friend Ben brought. Cy practices his trumpet.

The cake was very good, and with the splash of whip cream and the berries it was a taste of summer on a dark November night.

Better When You're Eating

Remember pirogi? Well the weather over here changed so fast this year that it's already winter. And as far as Cy and I are concerned winter weather means its pierogi time. So Cy is kneading dough and Dad is chopping potatoes and we're getting ready for a pierogi feast.

The dough is resting and with nothing else needing to be done, Cy spotted a brown paper grabbed a rubber band and put it on his head. "Chefs Hat," he declared! Cy proceeded to take a block of cheese and grate it to mix with the potatoes as the filling. Click, click, mash, mash. Yip, hooowwlll, dog dreams. Click, click, mash, mash, wait, wait. Just a quiet Sunday afternoon in Portland.

Since Dad is outside working on adding mudflaps to my bike Cy has taken it upon himself to shape the cheese and potato mixture into balls to fill the pierogi whilst the onions simmer in butter on the stove and the dough sits resting, waiting.

The smell of butter and onions fills the kitchen, the mouthwatering aroma of fresh dough mixing with the greasy sensation of cheesy potatoes wafting in and through the kitchen building the rafters and supports of a great shifting building to fulfill all the senses. This is the whole idea behind the open kitchen in a restaurant. This is going to be a true fête. For whatever reason we had a few extra cheese balls which, luckily, make an excellent snack.

Ohh. Is that kielbasa and sauerkraut I smell warming on the stove? Let the feasting begin.

Wow that was good. The kielbasa was rich and smoky, the pierogi were soft, greasy and wonderful. Don't try and get me started on those onions that got simmered in melted butter. Mmm. And everything was salty. I need a tall glass of water. Pierogi are always better when you're eating.

End Of Summer Steaks

Well, the first week of school is over and another Sunday is here. This morning Cy, Dad and I woke up and went fishing with our neighbor, Kim. So of course I was hoping to cook a fresh chinook salmon that had never seen the inside of a refrigerator. But instead of reelin' 'em in we just sat there ... waiting, talking, waiting and talking. We didn't catch any fish so instead of the freshest salmon of our lives we made alternate plans. Mom called on the cell phone about an hour before we gave up; Dad asked her to buy steaks. Despite the lack of fish, we had a great time hanging out on the river.

I've seasoned them with salt, pepper, cinnamon and olive oil. Last night I was looking at our google analytics page. It shows us where all of you are looking from, how much time you spend on the blog, your page views and all sorts of other cool stuff. A couple months ago we were surprised to find visits from Moscow, Spain, The Netherlands, Brazil and Australia. But last night our jaws dropped to see a visit from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Better known as Saigon. Now, while Moscow, London, Melbourne, Amstelveen and Zurich were cool, This one topped all because we spent a couple of days in Saigon about a year-and-a-half ago. We love the international readership we've drawn with our cooking. Now back to the steaks.

Now that we've started the grill we are chopping our basil and scrubbing the potatoes. We have an all potato hobo pack planned and a corn dish where we put kernels in browned butter and basil. Our friend, Ben, has brought us dessert, a large watermelon, which is very heavy for its size. Dad says this is because sugar is heavier than water, and this one is loaded with sugar.

We've added a little more to the steaks seasoning and have prepared a hobo pack for our millions of potatoes. I'm not sure if it qualifies as a hobo pack though, it only has the potatoes, olive oil and butter in it. Once the steaks go on the grill (where the hobo packs are) I'm going to start our corn dish.

The hobo pack is on the grill and the steaks are almost ready. I have finished sautéeing the corn and just pulled the steaks off the grill. I think we're ready to eat!

The potatoes were succulent and buttery, the corn was sweet and fresh and summer-y, and the steaks were tender, and perfectly seasoned. That watermelon sure lived up to its name, sweet and watery. It was a wonderful meal for this end of summer day.

Summer's End

How did summer fly by so fast? It almost seems like yesterday when I stood behind a classroom door with all my friends and counted down to the beginning of summer. It only seems like yesterday. Yet Tuesday, Cy and I must go back to school. The summer just flew by and so, too soon we find ourselves in the kitchen on the last Sunday of summer with squid on the menu.

Squid will forever be calamari in restaurants, if simply because it sounds less slimy. But here its squid that slimy elongated cousin of the octopus. When your in fifth grade at Llewellyn Elementary School (where Cy goes and I went) you spend three days at Camp Magruder doing in-the-field science learning, and you get to dissect a squid. Tentacles, eyes, ink sac, it changed calamari to squid forever.

Right now the squid is being battered and put in the oven Cyrus has already prepared a mayonnaise, garlic and lemon juice dipping sauce for the squid. We also have a salad and (shh, it's still classified) ice cream and brownies for desert. Even though the squid is in the oven the kitchen is still a flurry of activity. Dad at the mixer mixing brownies, Mimi at the sink helping keep the kitchen tidy, Cyrus stumbling over the dogs with a package of something in hand to add to the brownies. The wonderful scent of cooking, breaded squid wafting through the air.

For one reason or another the squid aren't browning. I'm getting the feeling however that we will be eating them anyways as Dad is scraping them off the bottom of the pan.

We ate 'em alright. They were good, yes, but they weren't as good as they would have been if they had browned. Oh well, I guess we will never know what went wrong and kept the squid from browning. The dipping sauce was great and dessert was sublime.

Friends Under The Red Rocket's Glare

The Fourth of July means different things to different people. For me Independence Day will always be about the fireworks. In Oregon the state government is in the middle ground on fireworks. It's not like Vermont were sparklers and pop-its are barely legal, but we are not in Washington either, where you can shoot off just about anything. Thing is, here in Portland it's only a short drive to Washington's plethora of fireworks stands. At the Fourth of July party we always go to, there are two dad's who didn't mature like our dad. On the weekend before the fourth they take there kids up to Vancouver and buy some fireworks. Then they light them off at the Craney's annual party (the Craney's have an awesome view of the city's sanctioned fireworks). But this year the Craney's are out of town. They're not having a party. So we are.

We invited twenty of our friends for a Sunday dinner. We got fifteen bratwurst and fifteen kielbasa from Otto's, a local "sausage kitchen". We enlisted our friends to bring dessert, a salad and drinks. We bought fireworks and asked everyone else to bring some too. We bought navy beans and soaked them, strained them and are currently simmering them to make baked beans. I'm looking forward to this party.

We've started cooking in earnest now. We're making bacon on one burner, simmering beans on another and making barbecue sauce on the third, the fourth burner is broken. I've only been cooking for about fifteen minutes and the kitchen is hectic. I should probably be cleaning. Oh yeah, Simon, (a good friend who will be at the party) you were wrong this dinner is probably going to take three hours not fifteen minutes.

I've been running around the kitchen chopping all sorts of things for the beans but the most important ingredient, the beans themselves, still aren't done. In the baked beans we'll have green bell peppers, garlic, onions, bacon fat and bacon, barbecue sauce and molasses. The cooking is at a stand still thanks to those beans.

Finally the beans are done. We crumbled in the bacon added the veggies and then as dad was putting away some spices he came across one that intrigued us both. Hickory smoke seasoning the label read. Dad and I both smelled it. It smelled like wonderful, kentucky style ham. Slowly cured and smoked over a hickory fire. We added about a tablespoon to the baked beans. "Do you think that over the millenia that humans cooked food over open fires our brains became hardwired to like this smell?" Dad asked. "Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm," I replied inhaling the wonderful scent. I can't wait for this dinner. We haven't even started the main course yet.

Mom walked into the house after watering our garden and said, "Wow, Tucker you should go outside and come back in after a couple minutes." So I went outside and stood in our wonderful green garden for a little while. Then as an ice cream truck went by I came back into the house. I'm not even going to try to describe the scents that hit me like a sucker punch.

I think I'll tell you about our guest list. We're having our grandma (of course) Rachel a friend of our parents, Shanta, Dave, Simon and Tate Calem (Dave was a friend of our parents in college and Simon and I have been fast friends since about the second day of kindergarten), Tonya, Tom and Eli Huckabee-Gray and Sherri, Mark and Nicholai who we just met and are friends of the Calems.

We've lit the grill and the guests are starting to arrive. Cyrus is going outside to shoot pop-its out of his slingshot as a plume of smoke rises from the grill.

The first set of dogs are off the grill and we're starting to load our plates.

That was a good meal from the sauerkraut to the fruit and macaroni salads, the coleslaw, and baked beans (one of the few dishes I actually made), I feel like it was a good meal all over, I'd like to describe each piece but there were just to many pieces. For desert we've got a "freedom" tart by Rachel and a pecan tart by Sherri alongside some vanilla ice cream. I think it will be good but I can't be sure yet.

It was good! The freedom tart was amazing, Rachel! And that chocolate sauce, how can we be sure it wasn't just melted candy bars. We've had a lot of good food today and I'm sure we're all looking forwards to some good fireworks. The sun is beginning to set and is texturing the clouds The adults murmur outside momentarily silenced by the boom of a massive (and illegal) "mortar" firework. This meal stood tall under all it's challenges. It stood tall under the red rockets glare. On this beautiful summers day 233 years ago the whole course of history was changed. I'm glad it happened. And it was nice to have friends over for a Sunday dinner. We shared something special with them.

PIROGI!

It's Cy's week to make dinner, and he has decided to make pirogi. They were such a hit when I made them on Super Bowl Sunday that he decided to make them again so we could blog about it. For those of you who grew up or have lived in the mid-west or eastern Europe you know what I'm talking about. For those of you who don't, pirogi (plural is the same as the singular) are traditional Polish dumplings, they are stuffed with a cheese/potato mixture and are served in golden-brown onions (fried in butter! yum!) with kielbasa, (keel-baasa) a Polish sausage. So, after a wonderful day of middle-earth style capture the flag (Cy is always Legolas) we came inside and Cyrus began making pirogi dough and filling. As I write this, Dad is dumping the onions in the butter to fry and Cyrus is stuffing the pirogi dough with the pirogi filling. Cy will add the kielbasa to the sauerkraut soon not to mention our pirogi water (like pasta water) is almost at a boil. It'll be good eatin' tonight!

The food is ready and we are about to sit down with our Grandma, eat and watch Apollo 13. The pirogi look very good! Tucker out.

Robin here. Dinner was fantastic and we made it half way through the movie but now it's time for the kids to be heading for bed. Our whole meal was pirogi, kielbasa with sauerkraut and a lovely salad with blue cheese dressing.

Ben received a whole wheel of Rogue River Creamery's Crater Lake Blue cheese from a grower he does business with. It's an embarrassment of riches, but I'm not complaining. Our dressing recipe is adapted from the Gourmet cookbook.

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1/4 cup sour cream

1 Tablespoon of lemon juice

1 cup blue cheese

and a splash of milk to thin to your desired consistency

Mix it up and it's totally insanely delicious. Keeps well in the fridge too.

Another successful Sunday meal, thank you to Cyrus!

How It All Began

Sunday night dinners had become a drag. Due to some medications that I'm on, I always feel like I have the flu on Sunday nights and it was getting harder and harder to get dinner together. Ben rarely felt like cooking by the time Sundays rolled around either. A solution was sought, and so six weeks ago our family decided to institute Kids Cook Sundays, and I don't mind bragging, it has been a wonderful thing.

As a family we decided that the kids would take turns cooking Sunday dinner. The meals would have to be delicious and well balanced. Tucker, our 12 year old and his brother Cyrus, our 9 year old have stepped up in a way I could never have imagined. To date we have enjoyed for our main courses Spaghetti with Meatballs, Spinach Sausage Lasagna and Pierogis from Tucker and Pho Ga (Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup), Fish and Chips and Chicken and Potato Enchiladas from Cyrus. All of those meals included various sides and the kids really do do most of the work.

Tonight is Tucker's turn and he'll be making Ravioli with homemade pasta and ricotta accompanied by his newly famous garlic bread (not heart healthy but oh so good) and a big green salad. As things progress, we'll keep you posted!