Prix Fixe

PSU Bounty: August 29th 2009

Golden Chantrelles, Bogatyr hard neck garlic, Oregon Truffle

Not pictured: Porcini Powder

Purple Bell Pepper

The Portland State University Farmers Market

Video: Cookie Covered Ice Cream Balls

Of course, done Wylie Dufresne style..

Wylie Dufresne, Liquid Nitrogen, and Frozen Ice Cream Cookie Balls from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

Wylie Dufresne of WD-50 shows Adam Frucci of Gizmodo how he and his pastry chef use liquid nitrogen to create ice cream balls perfectly encased in chocolate cookie crumbs. Mmmm, delicious!

Culinary School Confidential: 1.3

This is the third installment of what will be a mult-part series. I finished up with Culinary School at the end of June - and have been let loose on the industry. I figured I should get some of this written down while it's still fresh in my mind. Some of the names have been changed to protect the innocent - some haven't. That's just the way it goes.

Part 1.3

"For the love of god, beam me up Scotty"

Just before school started, I had thought about driving to Gateway and taking the MAX the rest of the way into town. But me, being anal retentive about being on time, if not early (and sometimes overly so) - I just couldn't bring myself to put my getting to school on time in the hands of public transportation. So, I'd be driving myself - and having to pay a hefty fee to park in the parking garage located directly under the school itself. I could have paid to park on the street, which was fine to a point. I just didn't want to have to run down there like every hour and a half to pump the meter like a lot of the students do.

I just didn't have time for that. I wanted to be in class, and absorb as much as possible - so parking garage it was. Actually this worked out great, I'd get to school early. I'm able to finish my coffee and head up to the fifth floor. One of the rules of the school is that at school you are either completely in uniform - or completely out of uniform. I chose to wear regular clothes into school, and then change into my whites in one of the dressing rooms.

Doing this was two fold really, 1. It's about a 45 minute drive from my house to school in downtown Portland, I'd rather be comfortable. 2. I wanted to keep my uniform is unwrinkled as possible, there was no way I was going to get kicked out of line up, just so I could iron my jacket or apron.

Because of where I lived and with class starting at 7a, I had to get up earlier than some of my counterparts. To be out of the house and at school at the time I wanted to be there, it meant getting up at 4:30a. I've never had to get up that early, that was a perk of working in radio and clubs. I usually worked afternoons or nights. I'm a night owl, it's when I get most of my work done - so this was going to screw up my body clock for sometime.

Another bonus to driving is, that I could enjoy my coffee, a smoke and not have to interact with anyone. I'm not much of a morning person, and I prefer about a hour ramp up time - just to interact with others of my species. Plus I could catch up on my baseball news, listening to XM on the way in. I know what your thinking, why would a guy with ties to terrestrial radio - listen to XM? Easy, they put a way better product out - and it's great for road trips.

I bought XM because when I lived in Medford, I did a lot of driving north to visit my parents and my kid for the summer. Trust me, put a lot of miles on my car - but never once was forced to change stations because something went out of range. And I love the variety of channels, I mean how can you beat a station devoted totally to baseball or Frank Sinatra? You can't.

Anyways..

I arrived plenty early, parking across the street the first day not realizing that it was slightly cheaper to park under the school. I've got those first day jitters, or is it the coffee? At this point I'm not sure, I take another smoke out and start puffing madly hoping to finish before reaching the double doors that lead into the back lobby of where the elevator is supposed to be.

Extinguishing my smoke in one of the provided ashtrays I took a deep breath and open the door and up the small fight of stairs. I spy the elevator off to my left and head over pressing the 'up' button. A couple seconds later I was rewarded with the doors sliding open. At this point, I noticed I was pretty much the only one on the lower level thus having the elevator to myself.

Once inside the small box I reached over to the control pad and pushed "5". The door slid closed...

..and did nothing. Thinking that I might not have hit it right "Because hey it's not the person but the machine..", I reached out and hit the button again. Again, nothing - well the doors opened again to the same floor I entered on. I scratched my head and thinking third times a charm I hit the "4" button again and what the door close.

The end result was the same, nothing.

By now you'd think I had caught a clue, that no matter how hard I pressed the button (by nature I'm a 'percussive' maintenance kinda guy if you know what I mean) I was doomed to be stuck on the first floor. Like some paradox out of a Star Trek episode I was forced into some sort of loop. Shaking my head, trying to get that thought out of my mind - I needed to do something (like what? Dummy). The door swung open one last time, looking up another student entered the the elevator and asked if I could push the 5th floor button.

Funny thing I thought, I'd love to go there too.

I managed to mumble something about have a hell of a time getting to work. She (I was fairly sure) gave me that "You must be new look" and took out her school ID. She waved in front of a sensor and pressed the elusive "5" button.

Much to my amazement(relief and happiness) we began our trip to the fifth floor. That's when it dawned on me. The Friday before I was to attend school for the first day, I needed to pick up my school ID.

Not off the the greatest of starts.

"Way to go dumb-ass" I thought. "Great way to set a tone.."

Previously: 1.1 ,  1.2

100's, Cherry, San Marzano

The garden is beginning to bear fruit.

How many errors can you spot?

We've all seen errors on Menu's...but man. I think this menu takes the cake, tip of the whisk to Bon Appetit who picked up on this in the first place. I mean really, how did this get past everyone from the General Manager right down to the Chef.

Click here for a better look.

PSCP: Belly Timber + Whiffies?

Sounds like a match made in culinary heaven.

According to @Whiffies on twitter this morning announced that Whiffies would be debuting not one, but two signature pies on Tuesday. But that's all the information that was given and that they would tweet more when they knew whats up.

Here's the tweet itself.

On Tuesday @bellytimberpdx will be debuting 2 signature pies @whiffies. What will they be? Tweet more as I have the info.

My guess, is whatever is up - is going to be pure fried pie goodness. And you have to believe that it's not going to be vegan friendly. Now if I could get them to do a duck confit pie, this man would be in heaven.

Stay tuned as more info is released.

If you have twitter (and frankly who doesn't these days) you can follow Whiffes Fried Pies - @Whiffies, and Belly Timber is @BellyTimberPDX.

Amuse

Time for another edition of Food Porn Friday:

Watermelon, Tomato Confit, Red Pepper Flake

Culinary School Confidential

This is the second installment of what will be a mult-part series. I finished up with Culinary School at the end of June - and have been let loose on the industry. I figured I should get some of this written down while it's still fresh in my mind. Some of the names have been changed to protect the innocent - some haven't. That's just the way it goes.

Part 1.2

The "Dog" Stare

Orientation was to take place a week before classes were to start. 

 

This is where we'd receive our uniforms, a lay of the land, do's and don'ts. You get to hear from everyone - from Career Services to the President of the School. I'll be honest here, I've never been good with crowds or around a lot of people I don't know (how'd I survive in radio so long?). Hadn't even started my first class yet, and I already felt like a fish out of water.

There are two possible outcomes when I'm nervous - I either clam up, or begin to uncontrollably ramble. Not random things mind you, but I'll make it interesting. According to Ian (whom I'll get to later and was there that day) I was talking a wee bit to much, and he was starting not to particularly care for me (and I'm betting he wasn't the only one). This I wouldn't find out until a couple months later.

They herded us into the schools restaurant, to the back portion of the dining room. They had various snacks, soda and water laid out just before reaching the rear of the restaurant. I scanned the room, not a empty table anywhere, which would've been great. I spied a table off to my left, two women already sitting there - with a extra seat. I walked over and half mumbled "Is anyone sitting there?". I'm not exactly sure what they said, I just nodded and took a seat. Come to find out both of them were headed into the Patisserie Program.

That's when I took a look around the room, it was then a couple things dawned on me, like a large blunt object striking me on my dome.

One, I was the oldest in the room, excluding school officials.

Two, all the good looking women in the room (not to mention several years my junior), were all bound for the Patisserie program. "Figures.." I thought to myself. Come to find out, the whole 'older than everyone else' thing was going to be a repeated theme (not that I expected anything less).

Anyways, back to orientation..

Like any 'get to know you' session, the obvious question was asked. "What did you do, and why did you enroll in Culinary School". This would be the beginning of the "dog stare" and having to explain myself damn near every time this question was asked of me. Now I didn't mind it, but maybe because I was in radio so long that I'm numb to the whole allure of the biz from someone on the outside.

So it was my turn.

"Well for thirteen years I was in the radio business"

She cocked her head to the side, you know like dogs do when they're trying to figure out just what in the hell you're babbling about. Usually it's blah, blah, Sparky, blah blah blah. I know that stare when I see it, if I had just a mere nickel for every-time I seen that look - I most likely wouldn't have been sitting in that room getting ready to face a huge unknown to begin with.

I simply answered "After being in the industry for so long, I felt it was time for a change. My passion for food rivals my passion for radio and it won out".

Chef Wendy nodded and mentioned that I had a 'radio' voice (if I had a dime for every time someone said that to me, I wouldn't have been sitting in that room).

I was the change of career guy, most of these kids were either fresh out of high school or figured out that masters isn't doing then a damn bit of good and like me needed a change.

We were paraded through the school - hitting each different "Station" this is when we received our whites, shoes. I was disappointed though, we wouldn't get out knives until we started actual classes. All in all it took, about 2+ hours from start to finish. Now I was really getting anxious, just a week from this very day - I was going back to school.

TBC...

Previously: 1.1 

PSCP: Getting national attention

PCSP: Portland Street Cuisine Project

As we all know Portland offers some of the best street cuisine around, and we've known this for ever. It seems that people outside our wonderful state are picking up on this too. Last week saw two national articles, and in both Portland gets a huge nod. Don't know about you, but that just tickles me salmon (I refuse to use pink there, cause hey I'm a guy!).

First up is Woman'sDay.com with "Food Trucks Worth Lining Up For" by Brynn Mannino. Four out of the ten carts listed, four are from Portland.

Second up is a story from Nancy Rommelman "The Art Of The Street Cart" on BonAppetit.com. This one is completely PDX centric - and I must say I love and agree with her opening paragraph.

Portland, Oregon, is leading a delicious dining revolution. And it's not taking place at restaurants—small trucks and mobile carts are serving a range of diverse, inventive, and budget-friendly food. Join us as we visit the carts and meet the cooks who are creating a new curbside cuisine.

She hit the nail on the head.

So as you can see I'm not the only one, Portland offers some of the best food around that's not in restaurant's. That's not taking anything away from restaurant's (natch) it's like comparing apples and oranges.