It's February 13th, 42 degrees and overcast in Portland, Oregon. The winter landscape possesses its own stark beauty this time of year, but still, it's when I miss color the most. Color, warmth, the scent of tropical fruit, salty ocean breezes and brazen flowers. My thoughts can't help but turn to Hawaii. I took a trip to Oahu in October, and wrote a story about it that came out in this month's Mix magazine - perfect timing to relish in these memories, images, and dreams of my next trip. You can read it here. The day I saw my words in glossy print, accompanied by the photos of the very talented Marco Garcia, was one of my happiest.

The trip to Oahu itself was heaven - a full week to stay with one of my best friends, Meleana, in her cottage in Palolo Valley, eating (and drinking) our way across the island. We traveled to Paris together many years ago, and it was fun to explore familiar turf with that same sense of discovery as a traveler to a foreign land. But even better than a trip abroad, we were greeted with aloha everywhere we went on this Hawaiian flavor journey, and made many new friends along the trail of good taste.

A few snapshots from the trip...



















This article turned out to be quite short in the end (as most do), and I wish I had room to add Prima restaurant in Kailua, which had just opened when I went there. They are raising the bar of island cuisine, for sure. I loved their curry papardelle pasta, and a dessert that had fennel incorporated in three different ways. Tim Rita is an amazing bartender, whom we met while he was working at Lewers Lounge, but has since gone to the Modern hotel's Lobby Bar. Go see him. And I serendipitously found myself sharing a meal with Reid, Oahu's most dedicated restaurant blogger, of Ono Kine Grindz.

I’m leaving Portland to go back to Kauai for the holidays, but I already feel like I’ve eaten my fill of decadent seasonal treats. Here’s a quick list of some of the tastiest things I’ve put into my mouth here in the past few weeks:

Roasted beef heart and octopus skewer over raw and roasted beets at the Woodsman Tavern

Oven roasted Brussels sprouts (and every vegetable dish there really) at the Firehouse

The Margherita D.O.C. pizza at Via Tribunali (pure and simple)

The Calabrese Salami pizza at Oven and Shaker (spicy salami, pungent provolone and honey!)

Eggnog at Clyde Common (just a sip and I was convinced)

Pumpkin bread pudding at the Woodsman Tavern

Ramen at Biwa, because it is just my favorite

The roast duck banh mi sandwich at Double Dragon

The outrageously delicious ice cream flavors at Salt & Straw (gloriously open until 11pm), specifically the Lumberjack Stack (maple syrup ice cream with bits of blueberry pancakes inside!)

The simplest sparkling holiday cocktail, which I had at a luncheon at Castagna: prosecco and Clear Creek Pear Liqueur. You can get the recipe and read about that wonderful meal on my friend Jen’s blog here.

Hele on to He'eia Pier

Oh, the power of Twitter. Through this rapid-fire social medium, I've met people in Portland and as far away as Hawaii. First online, then in person. One of my coolest discoveries on my last trip to Oahu was He'eia Pier General Store and Deli on the island's windward side, all because I was following chef Mark "Gooch" Noguchi, aka @musubman, on Twitter. The photos he posted of his creativity with native ingredients (ulu, aku, kalo, wild pohole ferns) online were enough to entice me to first fly to Honolulu, then drive out there. When I arrived, I met Gooch, ate, talked story, and was later led on a tour of the nearby fish ponds and l'oi where the taro is farmed that ends up on the menu. Their commitment to hyper-local sourcing and investing in the community are inspiring. Not to mention the scenery. Check out this video that tells the story.

Ramen Quest

Ramen is one of the most difficult foods to photograph. It’s also a complicated soup to prepare. David Chang wrote in the Momofuku cookbook, “Of all the challenges making ramen poses, getting the noodles right might be the toughest.” That’s what seemed to be at play when, on my third visit to Ippudo in New York, I finally had the patience to wait long enough to eat there. For almost two years leading up to this, I read and listened to groans of praise from food friends coast to coast about this ramen.

When the bowl of steaming noodles was placed before me, something immediately looked odd. Why weren’t they thick and glistening? Why were they whitish, thin, and almost undercooked looking? I tasted one and it was slightly floury, not chewy, as I had hoped. This thin style of noodle was unfamiliar, and I didn’t love it. What I ordered was the Akamaru Modern ramen (pictured above). The broth was cloudy, rich and savory with pork, miso and saké. The soup was addictive, but I didn’t like the noodles.

The chew: that is how I personally measure ramen. Then there’s the broth, and the garnishes, and all the rest. I developed a taste for the thick ramen noodle as a kid on Kauai, at Hamura’s Saimin. They’ve made those noodles from scratch with a winning texture for over fifty years. Toothsome wavy noodles, noodles that you can grasp with chopsticks, slurp, and bite into with satisfaction – that is what I look for in ramen. So after visiting this branch of the highly regarded Japanese chain, it affirmed that some of the small restaurants serving ramen in Portland are really doing something good.

I’ve been going to Biwa for years, and have tasted Gabe Rosen’s ramen evolve through different noodles, broths and toppings. I think that its current incarnation is the best it’s been, and the best I’ve tasted. The noodles are thick, the broth is a hearty blend of chicken and pork broths, and it comes garnished with an egg cooked in shoyu and chasyu pork.

Wafu opened recently on Division Street, and the first bowl of ramen that I had there (a couple of weeks after it opened) was a bit disappointing. But on my second visit (and apparently after the visits of many other vocal patrons with culinary backgrounds), the ramen had morphed into a deep and complex broth of pork, chicken and bonito, with chewy house made noodles topped with slow-roasted pork belly, scallions, kamaboko and corn. It won me over.

One of Portland’s sushi masters, Hiro Ikegaya, wanted to open a Sapporo-style ramen restaurant for a while, and this year he did. Mirakutei is a stark space with a counter along the kitchen and feels the most authentically Japanese. It’s a place where you can come in, find a seat, slurp down your noodles, and be on your way. There are a few styles here, but I like the Mirakutei Original Ramen. The flavor of the tonkatsu (pork and miso) broth is good, and the noodles are just right. It’s satisfying with minimal garnishes.

One day I’ll visit Japan and taste ramen at the source, and see how these compare. It’s at the top of my list of international travel destinations. Last year when I found out that I had to change planes in Tokyo on my way to Thailand, I was determined to eat a bowl of noodles there. I ordered airport udon, and it left me with so much more to desire. The watery broth tasted of packaged stock, but the noodles did have chew.


Ramen references: the Momofuku cookbook and Lucky Peach magazine

"As our palates improve, we appreciate finesse, perfume, subtlety...characteristics Pinot Noir has." Daniel Johnnes at IPNC, 2011

The IPNC is a multisensory experience that starts washing over you the minute you step onto the Linfield College Campus in late July. The heat, and smell of the dry fields of the Willamette Valley, the soft manicured greens of the quad beneath your feet, the red brick buildings around you, these are the familiar elements that immediately put you in the mindset of what is to come. And what that is are three days of joy, learning, working, eating, drinking, camaraderie and friendship forging. For the hundreds of attendees and volunteers fortunate to be a part of it, this is the weekend looked forward to year after year, to reunite with friends from another town in Oregon, or another part of the globe.

The International Pinot Noir Celebration started twenty-five years ago in McMinnville Oregon, by a group of passionate food and wine lovers in the Willamette Valley. It has grown in size, allure and esteem while still maintaining its strong local base, but now including wine producers from Pinot Noir growing regions around the world. This year, there were wineries represented from France, New Zealand, Austria, California, Canada, Italy, Australia, Washington and of course Oregon. I was most pleasantly surprised by the wines that I tasted from the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia, a region I hadn't tried before.

As a lucky volunteer, my experience was richer than I could have imagined. Helping to set up various seminars and tastings, I was able to observe them, too. In a wine and cheese pairing seminar with Laura Werlin, I learned that white wine pairs far better with cheese, and that Oregon cheesemakers are producing an incredibly wide range of European cheese styles that are exceptional to eat with wine (she procured them from the Oregon Cheese Guild). The “classico” made by Tumalo Farms in Bend was outstanding.

In a farm-to-table panel, I listened to Greg Higgins share his hard earned wisdom as a chef sourcing directly from farmers. "I don't think you have to be a great chef to make great food,” he said, “you have to have great ingredients." He went on to explain how lucky we are in Portland to have access to the produce that we do, and that we (and likeminded communities), need to make a conscious effort to support them to maintain that resource.

In a panel titled “Secrets of Sommeliers” (inspired by the new book by the same name), some of the country’s best, Larry Stone, Daniel Johnnes and Rajat Parr, sat and bantered about serving and selecting wine for customers. I found out that the least expensive wine on a restaurant’s list often has the highest markup, and that I share one of Daniel Johnnes’ current pet peeves -- red wine served too warm. At one point during the panel, I notice that the mediator, author Jordan Mackay, was standing barefoot behind the podium. This moment perfectly exemplified how wonderfully relaxed everyone is at IPNC, joined by a love of wine knowledge, a subject often thought to be so formal.

Every meal on campus at IPNC was served outdoors, either on a great lawn or under the trees in the old Oak Grove, and it all seemed so magical. The white tablecloths against the foliage, the flowing wine, the starry sky, the sommeliers and waitstaff serving with skill, and the food prepared by esteemed chefs from throughout the Pacific Northwest, all set an incredible stage that can only be experienced during this one time each year, in the summer of Oregon.

Late last summer, I had the fortunate opportunity to follow culinary instructor Blake Van Roekel of Keuken on a tour Zenger Farm in southeast Portland, and then a short cooking class in Robert Reynolds' lovely Chefs Studio. She prepared simple but wonderful zucchini cakes. We ate them with wine from Cameron (I think it was the Giovanni), and I was charmed by the whole experience.

This week, after running around all summer from trip to trip, I finally had some time and motivation (as well as inspiration from the farmers market) to flip through cookbooks, and actually cook. I made a simple tomato sauce with spaghetti on Monday night, with tomatoes so ripe I could peel them without boiling, and a salad with peach, arugula, feta, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Summer produce makes cooking so simple.

My new favorite cookbook is David Tanis' (of Chez Panisse and legendary Parisian dinners) "Heart of the Artichoke." The recipes are fairly simple, inspired by his own experience, and most are in small enough portions for me to prepare for myself. The book itself is beautiful as well. So, with all the zucchini so abundant this time of year (as well as summer squash), I cooked his zucchini cakes, substituting the recommended scallions for shallot, as that was all I had, which actually provided a nice deep flavor. What a great use for these vegetables, with a dish that you could eat as an entree with tomato sauce or pesto, for breakfast, or cold as a frittata-like snack. I took mine and ate them with brown rice, pesto and pinto beans, as I'm on both a budget-tightening and health-conscious kick this week.

You may look at these and think that they're not so pretty. Well, it's not the recipe's fault, it's all mine. A word of advice: when cooking zucchini, don't talk on the phone with an old friend during the part when you're supposed to drain the zucchini. You will end up with watery batter, as I did, and the cakes, while delicious, will not fry up firm.

I wish I had bought a wok in Thailand. I just brought back a couple of cookbooks and aprons. I don't think I envisioned myself cooking pad thai at that time, and now, here I am in Portland, craving the stuff. The real deal though - what you can buy in alleys in Chiang Mai for less than a dollar, cooked with egg and garnished with peanuts and a squeeze of lime. It's that sour, salty, sweet, savory, oily balance that takes place as a result of the unification of all of those flavors. There was a place in Seattle I used to go to in college that topped it with a fried egg. That was delicious. At the time that seemed authentic to me, but now, who knows. I can't find any that stack up here, so sometime soon, I'll make some myself with the recipe from David Thompson's six pound tome, "Thai Street Food."

I was immensely intimidated by the heft of the book, as well as by its expert author, but I cooked his crab fried rice and it turned out perfectly, with local dungeness from Linda Brand Crab at the Portland Farmers Market. I could've used a wok for that.