Website -- Liz Crain

Food Lover's Guide to Portland Blog...

began as a collection of some of the research, recipes, images and culinary adventures that went into the making of Food Lover’s Guide to Portland. The first edition came out in 2010 and I started the blog in February 2009 as a companion piece to it and to help organize my thoughts while researching and writing it. The second edition came out in September 2014 from Hawthorne Books. The blog is now home to all different food, drink and beyond things I want to show and tell.

I didn’t think I’d like blogging when I first started this, but it turns out I really do, mostly because I get to shout out people and things that I love.

We had a home on the range, quiet Christmas this year. It was just my boyfriend and I so we decided to cook up two of our favorite things -- seafood and dim sum. For supplies we went to Uwajimaya in Beaverton. We filled the cart with shao mai ingredients, two Dungeness crabs (live when we chose them but killed and eviscerated before handed over the counter), a couple pounds of prawns, nice sake, Kirin Ichiban, and more.

On Christmas Eve for dinner we started with Dungeness in drawn butter mixed with a generous squeeze of lime. One of my favorite things in the world to eat. Then we set to making our traditional shao mai, skins and all, from the cookbook below. The next day we used the same techniques but changed the filling to mostly shrimp with lots of serrano, ginger and shitakes. Awesome.

I've had Mai Leung's book for years and finally got around to using it. I love potstickers and have pretty much used the same Florence Lin recipe, and variations of it of course, for years. I've finally taken a bite out of this book now and I'm looking forward to trying other recipes. I love Leung's stories peppered throughout. The illustrations are pretty great too. Here's what we made. Happy New Year!

This is what we filled the shrimp/serrano/ginger shao mai with...

We also made these classic shao mai -- skins and all.

Uwajimaya 10500 SW Beaverton-Hillsdale Hwy. Beaverton, Oregon 503.643.4512 www.uwajimaya.com

My boyfriend and I went to Vij's Restaurant in Vancouver, B.C. for the first time several years ago and we've been dreaming of going back ever since. We remember just about everything we ate there that night including the wild boar curry and the lamb popsickles in fenugreek cream curry. Now we can do our best to recreate both at home thanks to Vij's cookbook.

We've been cooking our way through Vij's Elegant and Inspired Indian Cuisine the past several weeks (I hear that Vij's at Home is good too) cooking everything from ground beef curry and Vikram's mom's chicken curry to warm fennel salad and garam masala roasted almonds. Our house smells great and we feel so loved by this book and its recipes. If you're a fan of Indian food too I highly recommend it. (And if you need a last minute gift for someone who loves to cook, consider this book.) Here's some of what we've made so far...