“Listen, Sister,” the Squeeze said to me, waggling a piece of spice-crusted beef in creamy fenugreek sauce on his fork, “I’m not saying I don’t wish this was A-1.” My face must have fallen, just a little (but what did I expect, really?). He continued, smiling, “But it’s good.” Ah,I thought, thank goodness for that.

We’d already enjoyed our poppadoms (those most-delicious spiced and crispy wafers that often appear before a meal at an Indian restaurant) and our pakoras (vegetable fritters with coriander chutney)—both served with perfect accompaniments, full of flavor and not too, too spicy and The Squeeze appeared content as he tucked into his tandoor culotte steak. Across the table, I was a happy little clam. Though we were seated in the middle of the restaurant and right next to the kitchen, I didn’t feel crowded by other customers or by the stream of [friendly without being obnoxious] servers that moved past our table. Even the table right next to us, sharing the same bench on one side, was positioned at a respectable, breathable distance. You can’t enjoy your Carlton Farms pork vindahlo if you’re feeling hemmed in, you know.

And I did enjoy it. The portion size was rather massive, but the dish was quite well executed and flavorful. Even the rice—for which I had no expectations—held its own on the plate. It was light and mild and studded with crunchy (not soggy!) pistachio nuts. I definitely, definitely had my fix.

While I am sure that I enjoyed our meal more than the Squeeze did (I even loved his cauliflower puree, which he had a hard time getting excited about), I believe we both pushed back from the table satisfied, no need to swing by Burgerville on the way home. And though I consider Vindahlo—and the satisfying of my desperate craving for Indian food—a success, I don’t think I’ve exactly converted anyone.

It wasn’t any shortcoming of the restaurant’s, though. It’s just that some of us appreciate fine foods more than others.

Vindahlo
2038 SE Clinton Street
Portland, Oregon 97202
503-467-4550

Whenever I go to Nicholas, which is not nearly often enough, I have a spinach pie (from the pizza menu) and a bowl of lentil soup. In the past, I’ve experimented with various kabobs and mezza platters (you can have vegan, vegetarian, or meaty) and they’ve all been great, but now I’ve settled on the tangy spinach pie (filled with chopped spinach, onions, pinenuts, and sumac) and the subtle lentil soup (great for dunking all that warm, fluffy pita in). Go early in the day or expect to wait; this little spot in SE Grand is always busy.

Four: Miss Delta

The last time I suggested Mississippi Avenue’s Miss Delta to a friend, I was asked if the food was “South Carolina-Southern” or “Cajun-Southern” and I was rather at a loss to answer. I thought of the blackened cajun snapper and red beans over rice, and then of the crispy herbed fried chicken and vegan collard greens. I still don’t know how to classify the food at this fantastic little place, and I don’t particularly care. From the buttered brussels sprouts to the personal-sized pies to the 40-ounce PBR served over ice in a paint can, I love Miss Delta and I’ll call it whatever you want, so long as you go there.

Six: Nostrana

I had the margherita pizza with housemade mozzarella when I ate at Nostrana. I asked for fresh arugula on it too, applied right when the pizza came out of the wood-burning oven so the greens wilted just a little under the drizzle of olive oil. The sweet basil, creamy cheese and tangy rocket sang glorious notes atop perfect tomato sauce and a bubbly, crispy crust. Pizza will never be the same again. The meal was capped by Cathy’s four-ingredient gelato: the pistachio flavor tasted more like toasted pistachios than the nut itself. I don’t know how she does it but, oh my, she does it well.

I recently had the pleasure of talking with Cathy about her passion for exquisitely simple Italian cuisine and her enthusiasm for educating the next generation of cooks and eaters about responsible eating. The resulting article appears in the current issue of Indulge magazine. Click to read or download it, or pick up a copy at your neighborhood Zupan’s Market. You can find me on page thirty-two.

I flopped and floundered about for a few weeks trying to come up with an appropriate and sufficiently awesome celebration. The Squeeze is not a boisterous celebrator; whatever I settled on would have to be subtle in its awesomeness. Not only that, but I wanted to be careful not to go crazy. We’re going to spent a lot of birthdays together — setting the bar too high now would not be doing myself a favor.

At last, I saw a blurb about K&B Bakery in an early issue of MIX Magazine. The piece highlighted the culinary delights near, of all places, SE Foster Road. A tiny, happy lightbulb brightened over my head. K&B does one thing: fortune cookies. And they do them very, very thoroughly. The cookies come plain, candy-coated, fruit flavor-dipped, with sprinkles, or dunked in chocolate (dark, milk, or white). All come individually wrapped, but you can also order sturdy plastic takeout containers or velvet pouches to enhance their presentation. And — get this — you can customize the tiny paper fortunes within.

So I picked out some song lyrics, made the appropriate changes, and placed my order on K&B’s website, feeling rather proud of myself.
The Squeeze’s fortunes were very plain considering all the options the cookie makers offer. When you order, you can choose the text font and paper color. You can add a stock graphic — a heart, rose, duck, christmas tree, or Chinese character, to name a few — or upload your own logo.

I picked the cookies up at the bakery. The storefront isn’t exactly welcoming, in fact I was a little nervous ringing the bell at the security door, but once I gained admittance, everyone was quite friendly. If you don’t live close by, K&B will ship your cookies to you. Even though I arranged for pick-up, the cookies were nestled in plenty of newspaper and bubble wrap to protect them from even the clumsiest mail carrier.

Friends and family be warned: I think this might be my new favorite thing. I thought the cookies made for a quiet, though pleasantly unexpected and entertaining, finale to the Squeeze’s birthday dinner. I’m just tickled at how well they turned out. In fact, I cannot think of an occasion for which custom fortune cookies would not be the perfect treat. Baby showers, weddings, housewarmings, Flag Day: yes, yes, yes, yes! It’d even be a pretty neat way to break up with someone, if that’s something you’ve got to do.

Plain fortune cookies run from $8.50 for twenty five to $260 for two thousand. The super-deluxe candy-coated cookies, with sprinkles, run a bit more. In small quantities they are just about a dollar each, but you can have thirteen hundred for a mere $910.

K&B Bakery
6300 SE Foster Road
Portland 97206

When I am halfway through the door, he asks me if I am the stage (nearly rhymes with “podge”). A little flicker of recognition tickles my brain – I know that word. I knew that word when I was working for the Brilliant French Baker, but I cannot recall quickly enough what it means. The stage, the stage…I realize I am waiting too long to speak and by now he must have figured out that I am not the stage, else I am a very poor stage, unaware of what or who I even am. Then I worry if maybe I am the stage, even though by now I think I remember that a stage is some kind of kitchen intern.

So I say, “I might be. What’s a stage?” I had decided yesterday that I was not going to try to affect coolness this morning as I usually find such endeavors rather futile and exhausting. Besides, by now I am sort of amused by our scene and I imagine that whenever the real stage arrives – probably heavily tattooed nineteen-year-old who has been working in kitchens since before he was born – we will all have a good chuckle.

“A person who works for free,” he tells me. I pause and then reply, “That sounds familiar, but today I’m a writer,” which I see immediately does not illuminate for him why I am knocking at Le Pigeon’s door at ten in the morning.

- – -
My mom drives to Monterey to Sea Harvest or Wharf Number Two and buys cooked, cracked, whole crabs. The dismembered Dungeness beasts are dumped out into the utility sink, washed, and returned to the fridge until dinner. When I set the dinner table around four-thirty, I place a nutcracker and a pick along the top of the place setting, centered between the spoons on the right and the forks on the left. The crab is served cold in big earthenware casserole dishes. Mom’s whole wheat crescent rolls arrive at the table warmed and nestled between cloth napkins in a woven basket. We heap salad onto our plates and use the pick to tease crabmeat out onto the bed of lettuce and veggies.

Until my mid-twenties, I was too repulsed by my abstract, untested notion of crab to eat any myself, though the entire table moaned at its lusciousness. Some other runner-up meal was prepared for me and any other non-crab eaters present, but instead of jumping right in and finishing before everyone else, I moved around the table, helping crack and pick crab for the rest of the family. There was great disappointment when I finally clued in that Dungeness crab is one of the most delicious things a gal can have for dinner.

- – -

At the end of the meal, we were well sated declined the offer of a dessert menu. Our server, in kind, careful English, offered that the house dessert was included in the meal and asked if we would like to try it. Reasoning that it would be rude to refuse, we assented. We didn’t know what the dessert was – I had only understood, or thought I had understood, “water chestnut,” and when it arrived, the dish was a bit of a surprise.

The dessert was a soup, I guess, in a small bowl – the same that held the white rice during our supper – with a saucer. It’s a clear liquid, slightly sweet and hot, in which floats a crinkly matter, not unlike rice noodles but firmer and in short, koosh-ball-esque shapes. And three lychee nuts. Or, they’re berries, right? The lychees were pitted, but still sheathed their rough red skins.

I took up the large ceramic spoon, awkward to my american table habits, and slurped, first the liquid, then with the crinkly bits. I discovered the water chestnut – if that is really what it was – a few bites in, cut up small and sunk to the bottom of the tiny bowl.

The lychee was delicious, and I especially enjoyed breaking the tension of the skin with my teeth to release the soft, sweet flesh inside. The physical sensation of its mastication was as enjoyable, if not more so, than its flavor.

My dining companion looked on in mock – or true – horror. She slurped a little of the liquid, might have tried the crinkly things, broke apart one of the lychees with er spoon, and then set her bowl aside to watch me.

I suggested she try a lychee, making a show of enjoying mine in the exact manner that my father used with trying to convince Baby J9 to eat steamed zucchini slices. Mmmm, just like candy, he’d say. This tactic never worked on me; I don’t know why I was surprised that it didn’t get the lychees eaten either.

When I finished and pushed the bowl away, she made a joke, likening our dessert to gorilla testicle soup.
“I am sure gorillas have much larger testicles than a lychee nut,” I volleyed, determined not to let an allusion to primate genitalia affect my digestion.
“Well, I would have said ‘monkey,’ but I didn’t want to be culturally insensitive.”

- – -

Three years ago I was at the Portland Nursery with my friend Julia. We had gone on a specific errand, but as often happens, we allowed ourselves a stroll through the greenhouses and were unable to resist one or two particularly beautiful, or interesting, or just plain green plants. I spotted a cluster of coffea arabica: coffee. I let out a small, quick noise that betrayed my delighted surprise. Coffee? I asked, for Julia is one of my favorite resources for all matters relating to both fauna and flora. She responded in the affirmative. Yes, that really is coffee and yes, it can grow in the Pacific Northwest. Like citrus, coffee is potted instead of planted so that it can be brought inside in the winter. It took no more assurance or encouragement: I took home eight three-inch tall coffee trees.

The little trees are now three years old and have lived with me in four different houses. Each summer when the temperature is reliably above 60º most of the time, I take them outside and try to tuck them in shady, warm corners of my yard. Coffee plants prefer to live in the shade. Too much sun and their leaves will burn, making photosynthesis impossible. Too few months later when the temperature drops back down, I bring the pots back inside, trying to find places they may be protected from the cats.

Julia’s house is always stuffed with plants and living things, sometimes so much so that it resembles a nursery more than a place where one might settle down in the evening with a book. When she housesits for me in the winter, she brings some of her houseplants with her, hanging the orchids from the baker’s rack in my kitchen and setting pots down on the floor of my living room. When she leaves, my place looks a little empty and I wonder how I survive with so few houseplants.

- – -

Sometimes a girl can walk by a restaurant and just *know* that it’s a winner. I’d like to tell you that I can always pick the great ones, that I am a human dowsing rod for good eats, and I’d like that to be an accurate assessment of my divination prowess. But the truth is, I’ve picked some real losers in this town, and often I don’t see the gems coming until the meal arrives in front of me.

Last week, however, I called it – called it good. A friend of mine has just moved to town and, having neither a proper job nor a full course load to monopolize the hours of my day, I have taken to exploring the City with her. It’s nice to see good ol’ Portland through fresher eyes. We had enjoyed a lunch at the Bridgeport Ale House and were walking up SE Hawthorne Boulevard just to walk up it. Construction compelled us to cross the street six blocks above 39th Avenue, routing our stroll by the Hawthorne Fish House. A sandwich board sign on the sidewalk forced us to walk single-file past the modest-looking door, just outside of which was mounted a translucent plastic menu caddy. As I moved past I reached for one, saying “Gosh, I bet this place is good,” while folding the menu into my bag. I don’t remember why I thought so, or if I could have justified the assessment at the time. Back home, the menu lay folded on my desk for days before I bothered to look at it again.

The Hawthorne Fish House (henceforth, HFH) menu is nearly perfect. Though they do offer one or two items to appease the non-pescaphile (a burger, chicken strips), the majority of their food is fish, fish, or fish. Or clams.

It is, I believe, a profoundly wise restauranteur who can resist needless innovation and clutter on her menu. So it is at the HFH. Make no mistake, I am not herein supporting the hum-drum or the uninspired. No, I am not. I am, however, saying just this: When you figure out how to make what are very possibly the best fish’n'chips this gal has ever had the rapturous pleasure to chew and swallow, it’s best for everyone if you don’t screw with them too much.

- – -

The last time I watched and enjoyed a cooking show was during my grammar school years. I would have been home with a flu or something, watching Jeff Smith and Martin Yan on KQED between episodes of the Woodwright Shop and This Old House.

Cooking shows were different then. Jeff Smith opened his show with a stroll through an outdoor market. Martin Yan made vocal sound effects while chopping vegetables with his imposing, well-honed clever. These guys could cook, too. They didn’t need a pretense – no friends were on their way over expecting an array of munchies to to enjoy while watching the Big Game. Meals didn’t have to be prepared in under thirty minutes, or in only five steps, or with some obscure ingredient that nobody’d want to eat anyway. Jeff and Martin cooked because they were good at it, and I watched them because they were clever are rarely obnoxious. These days the Food Channel makes me cringe, as I do when someone asks if I’ve seen the newest Nigella Lawson cookbook, and when celebrity “chefs” appear on my darned cracker box. Leave my crackers alone, or bring back the Frugal Gourmet.