Yard Fresh Pt. 6

Thought I'd post a roundup of good eats -- just a mishmash of good food we've made at home. It's been a busy few months but we've still managed to cook up some tasty food....

White Pine pancakes with maple syrup. Mmmm.

Went camping on the Clackamas and our camp neighbors gave us some of their homemade carne asada!

Homemade pesto pasta with snap peas from the front yard and chorizo.

More potato tacos because these lovely friends brought homegrown spuds.

This year's mostly softneck garlic harvest.

Yard Fresh Pt. 5Yard Fresh Pt. 4Yard Fresh Pt. 3Yard Fresh Pt. 2Yard Fresh Pt. 1

Edible Wild Plants by John Kallas

So much has happened since my last post. Most importantly Monday night was the Food Lover's Guide to Portland book event at Powell's with Nick Zukin, Sarah Hart, Steve Jones and John Cleary. It was fantastic even though I choked a bit at the beginning from nerves and emotion. I know now that it's possible to almost cry out of happiness and fear at the same time. I didn't but was right on the verge. Thanks to everyone who came out. It was a wild, weird and perfectly wangy (had to be there) Portland food time and I loved every second of it. Except maybe the five seconds that I just told you about. Nah, I even loved those. I'll put up some photos from that here soon.

Another big recent event for me was my book launch party on July 1st. One special someone who showed up was local John Kallas -- author of Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods from Dirt to Plate. He had fun at my party and two days later I had a good time at his book launch party. John opened up the backyard of his North Portland home and all sorts of people showed up to celebrate and buy the book and also check out the wild edibles in John's backyard. Over the years I've taken a lot of John's workshops and I'm a big fan. I can't wait to spend more time with his new book. Here are some snapshots from the party...

((If you're at The Bite of Oregon this weekend come by and say "Hi" to me on Saturday from 1-3pm. I'll be at a table near the chef stage signing books.))

John Kallas signing books at his book launch party for Edible Wild Plants.

Gather 'round foragers...

Super sweet edible wild columbine in John's backyard.

Wild mustard and other wild greens in John's backyard.

Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods from Dirt to Plate by John Kallas 2010, Gibbs Smith Publisher Paperback $24.99

Homemade Cherry Wine Pt. 2

Last summer was a big year for my friend Craig's backyard cherry trees. He has two trees -- each three maybe four years old -- and last year was the first year that they went off. The boughs were loaded with Black Tartarian and Rainier cherries. So heavy, in fact, that we decided to use three gallons worth for some old fashioned homemade cherry wine. Neither of us had made it before and we decided to use Sandor Ellix Katz's basic fruit wine recipe from his book Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition and Craft of Live-Culture Foods.

A year later, as in just last week, we siphoned the five gallons into 20-plus wine bottles. And into our mouths. It's delicious! We couldn't be happier with it. We first drank it at room temperature and it was great. (We had an impromptu bottling party and clinked glasses on the front porch.) Once we chilled it, though, is when the real magic happened. I think the best way to describe our cherry wine is as a nice, nuanced pinot noir fortified with the flavor but not the weight of a tawny port. It's not too alcoholic -- I'm guessing 11 percent -- typical for wine -- but it does sneak up on you. That might have to do with the fact that it's hard to stop drinking...

If you want to read about how we made it check out my post from last summer -- Homemade Cherry Wine Pt. 1.

Ten bottles of cherry wine for us and ten for our friend Craig.

Kokanee Trout

I didn't know what kokanee trout was until a few weeks ago when our neighbor brought over a frozen sack of it. I thanked him profusely and learned about the fish from him including the fact that it's land-locked sockeye salmon. This neighbor is unbelievably kind to us -- over the years gifting us everything from freshly hunted elk and venison steaks and wild game sausage to all sorts of line-caught local fish -- mostly salmon and trout.

We've been really busy in recent weeks so I tucked the already frozen fish into the freezer -- with plans to make it soon. (A few weeks later and they're still in the freezer -- soon!) Yesterday afternoon this neighbor's son knocked on the door with another bag for us. This time filled with eight fresh, kokanee trout that they'd caught earlier in the day. They were beautiful looking fish and smelled delicious so I cooked them last night. We had company so I put five in the oven on the red cedar plank that my mom gave me.

My boyfriend trimmed and scaled the already gutted and headed trout and then I stuffed them with slightly sweet homemade garlic scape pesto (made with candied almonds) and thinly sliced lemon. Part-way through baking them for 25 minutes at 350 degrees I brushed the skin with some of the melted butter from the sauteed snap peas on the stove-top and then sprinkled some sea salt on them.

We served the fish with snap peas from the front yard sauteed in butter with fresh mint, slow cooked green beans with olive oil, tomatoes and lemon, some freshly baked kalamata loaf from DiPrima Dolci, and chilled homemade cherry wine. The fish was tender, juicy and delicious. It was similar to sockeye but more subtle in flavor and texture. I hate to use such a cliche but it truly melted in your mouth. The best meal I've had in months. Just perfect.

Kokanee trout stuffed with lemon and pesto and roasted on cedar.

Julia's Omelette

This is a short and sweet post just to let you know how lucky I am. My boyfriend Tyler has perfected Julia Child's omelette. He's been making them for months and honestly his first try with her technique -- high heat, flash in the pan, minimal ingredients -- was a hit. He used chives from the yard in this one and a bit of asiago and tomato. See for yourself...

Yard Fresh Pt. 5

It's summer! I know it was officially summer a couple weeks ago but it finally feels like it. The sun is shining, summer blossoms opening, tomato plants growing. Feels pretty dang good. I haven't been cooking as much as usual lately because I've been pretty busy with things such as this and this but I've still managed to put some good food on the table. Here's a bit of what's been good and yard/home fresh in recent weeks...

Garlic scape pesto with White Pine candied almonds.

Summer salad with stuffed/fried hardboiled egg, anchovies, olives and a lemony mustard vin.

Feta stuffed beef sliders on kalamata buns.

Yard Fresh Pt. 4Yard Fresh Pt. 3Yard Fresh Pt. 2Yard Fresh Pt. 1

Friends in Green Places

I'm lucky to have friends like my friend Karen enrolled in the horticulture program at Clackamas Community College and doing all sorts of amazing garden and landscape design projects around town. Last year Karen gave me A LOT of garden starts for my veggie garden and this year she did the same. She has a beautiful, inspiring and enormous garden and cultivates various seeds for her program.

This year it was a lifesaver for my garden. Especially since it's buy no seeds year...

Cheers to Karen Schwartz!

And there's still all of these left...

Bring on the sunshine! NOW!

Jacques Pepin and Les Ouefs Jeannette

*****First off I just want to let you all know that I'll be on the KBOO FOOD SHOW tomorrow WEDNESDAY, JUNE 16th at 11am talking about PDX food and drink and my book. So if you're able to tune in please do. If you don't catch it and want to listen after the fact there's a handy dandy audio file you can catch here. Onto les ouefs...*****

There's more than one way to fry an egg. And there's more than one way to fry a hard boiled egg. We've been watching the late-90s television series Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home the past few weeks. I never saw this program when it originally aired and I'm really enjoying it.

Unlike most current TV food shows this one allows you to be in the kitchen (Julia's home kitchen) and see entire processes and dishes through. In other words, the only music is at the beginning end, there are no crazy extreme close-ups or frenetic shots. It's the real deal and who better to learn kitchen wisdom from than Jacques Pepin and Julia Child. Charmed.

I've read all sorts of Julia Child books and articles but I'd never read anything by Jacques Pepin so I decided to pick up his 2003 memoir The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen a couple weekends ago at Powell's Books for Home and Garden. I ran into a couple fellow food folks while there, one of which recommended picking up a Grace Young book. Next time.

I'm really enjoying Pepin's memoir. So much so that I recently prepared a recipe from the book for a lazy and lucky weekend breakfast -- Les Ouefs Jeannette. Jeannette was Pepin's mom and this delicious hard boiled egg dish is a complete original.

For it I whipped hard boiled egg yolks with chopped garlic, milk, chives from the garden and then some, returned the blend to the halved eggs, and reserved a bit of the filling for the dressing.

Then I fried the eggs stuffed-side-down while making a warm dressing with the remaining filling whisked with olive oil and Dijon-style mustard. We plated the eggs, drizzled them with the dressing and ate them up with some buttery toasted baguette and andouille sausage. Mmm.

Although I haven't given you the complete recipe I think you can take it from here and be creative. It's a great book and I hope to one day own the TV series so I can turn to it like a cookbook. Two big thumbs for both. Two big thumbs UP for both.

Oeufsfrying

Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, 22 episodes www.julia.cookstr.com

The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen by Jacques Pepin 2003, Houghton Mifflin

Clackamas Master Gardeners Spring Garden Fair

It seems kind of funny to post about an event so after the fact but the annual Clackamas County Master Gardeners Spring Garden Fair in Canby in early May was a good one and there's always next year. Besides, it might give you a little push in the right direction in the midst of this rainy, grey spring. Any garden inspiration is golden at the moment when so many of us are cursing the soggy ground we walk on.

LaAnn Locher of Lelo in Nopo, aka the Sassy Gardener, clued me in to this fantastic plant sale. I'm not sure if I read about it on her blog or heard about it on her radio show but one way or another she planted the seed. A few days later I found out that my friend Karen would be there. What really sealed the deal was going with my friend to Woodburn the same day to visit a very special dog at Project Pooch. All signs pointed to this year's Spring Garden Fair.

I walked around the many outdoor, and a few indoor, booths and even though I paid the cursed $4 add-on fee of the precious on-site ATM I only bought one thing -- some Lucifer Crocosmia bulbs for my mom for mother's day. Not that I didn't see A LOT that I wanted. I just tried to keep it to inspiration and ideas. It worked.

Here's some of what I saw...

Lots of pretty plants...

My friend Karen (on the right) of Ferguson's Fragrant Nursery.

Ferguson's booth...

More than just plants. My friend Alison (in the photo) and I dream of one day owning some Red Pig Garden Tools.

Clackamas Master Gardener Spring Garden Fair www.clackamascountymastergardeners.org/SpringGardenFair

Linda Ziedrich's The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and Other Sweet Preserves

I think it's supposed to be sunny and warm sometime soon. That's what I've always experienced in Portland since moving here in 2002 at least. Since our summer growing season is so short here I feel ripped off when fall rain and grey overstays its welcome into spring, now verging on summer. I recently looked at some photos from last season's garden and this early June one made me particularly sad...

Some of my from seed plants this time last year.

Alas, alas summer will be here at some point and my seedlings will take off and all of those fruits on the vine and trees will ripen up for picking. We have quite a lot of fruit in our yard -- plums, pears, blueberries, raspberries, honeyberries, seaberries, kiwi, pineapple guava and then some. Usually we eat most of it fresh but as the trees mature and the berry bushes get bigger the yield spills over and we make things to carry through the season and into the fall and winter like plum and cherry wine, kiwi preserves and fruit spiked hot sauces and salsas.

I'm really looking forward to reaching for that book in the photo above -- Linda Ziedrich's The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and Other Sweet Preserves this summer and fall when the harvest basket is full. In its pages are 200 recipes divided into various fruit chapters ranging from apple, blackberry, cherry and grape to gooseberry, medlar, papaya, pomegranate and kumquat.

None of Ziedrich's recipes call for commercial pectin. The only pectin Ziedrich uses is the natural kind, the kind already present in the fruit. Here are a few recipes in the book -- coconut caramel jam, rose hip butter, lemon curd, cataloupe jam with mint, cider syrup and raspberry vinegar.

Linda Ziedrich is one of my favorite Oregon food writers and I've written about her a bunch. She's responsible for one of my favorite and most used cookbooks after all -- The Joy of Pickling.

All of our conversations had been over the phone (she lives on a farm near Scio) until earlier this spring when I finally got to meet her in Portland at the IACP Culinary Book Fair. We talked for awhile and she was kind enough to sign her newest book which I bought there...

Thank you Linda Ziedrich.

The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and Other Sweet Preserves by Linda Ziedrich 2009, Harvard Common Press Paperback $17.95