BaltimOregon

The gefilte patties, poached in tangy court bouillon.

The perfectly-formed patties, pre-poach.

We finally hosted our first (and last) seders in Oregon…next year in Jerusalem (I mean Maine). I never did learn to make gefilte fish from Dan’s Bubbe, who passed away when we were back East in January. I only grew up with the Manischevitz-jarred version, which my father relished doused with horseradish and chased with a tall glass of V8. (Note: this year, I concluded the all-natural Yehuda brand is superior to Manischevitz, which, gasp!, apparently contains MSG).

I never grew up with homemade gefilte fish. And after making it from scratch again this year, I’m not sure it’s worth the effort for the most (unfairly) reviled Passover food. This year, I poached homemade gefilte, in a tart court bouillon. The Pacific Northwest patties were made from salmon and haddock/cod (which I substituted for halibut). Perhaps I should have sprang for fresh Chinook over the frozen standard wild Alaskan Coho I got at Trader Joe’s. Somehow salmon doesn’t taste quite right in gefilte to my palate. But it looked pretty in the perfectly-shaped pink patties this year. The haddock/cod (or halibut) flavor is undetectable in the presence of salmon.

Poaching didn’t add enough over the bake-in-muffin tins short-cut I’ve taken the past two years. If you want an easy way to prepare your own gefilte, this is one way to go. You could try any combination of fish in the following recipe. I would also keep the addition of lemon zest, chopped fennel frond and matzo meal (I thought all gefilte fish was made with matzo meal) from Jenn Louis’s recipe.

Salmon Gefilte Fish from Judy Bart Kancigor’s Cooking Jewish (adapted from Marlene Sorosky)

Vegetable cooking spray

2 medium-size onions, cut into  1-inch pieces

5 medium-size carrots, cut into 1-inch pieces

2 ribs celery, cut into 1-inch pieces

1 cup curly-leaf parsley leaves

3 pounds skinless salmon, cut into 2-inch pieces

3 large eggs

½ cup vegetable oil

¼ cup sugar, or to taste

2 teaspoons kosher salt, or to  taste

2 teaspoons freshly ground  black pepper, or to taste

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray 24 standard muffin cups. (I don’t grease the pop-out silicone ones I use).

2. Place the onions in a food processor and pulse until they are minced. Transfer the onions to a very large bowl.

3. Process the carrots, celery, and parsley until ground. Add to the onions.

4. Process about two-thirds of the salmon, adding 1 piece at a time through the feed tube, until ground. Add the processed salmon to the onion mixture.

5. Process the remaining salmon, adding it through the feed tube. Then add the eggs, oil, sugar, salt, and pepper and process until well blended. Add this mixture to the onion-salmon mixture and combine well.

6. Divide the salmon mixture evenly among the prepared muffin cups. Bake until the top feels set when touched, 25 to 30 minutes. Let the fish cool in the muffin cups, then unmold and place on a bed or greens surrounded with thinly sliced cucumber, a few grape tomatoes, and horseradish. (If the “muffins” are prepared ahead, remove them from the refrigerator about 30 minutes before serving.)

20 oz. Ring O' Challah from New Morning Bakery in Corvallis. The stuff is more dense, eggy and sweet back East, but this is a decent substitute. Hä-lä, as the bakery spells it out phonetically, is no longer a rare delicacy here.

Our first night in Corvallis, almost exactly two years ago. Funny, Dan has returned to sleeping on the floor some. He thinks it's good for his back. We need to get a tatami mat.

It’s September 2010, which means we’ve been here exactly two years now. Though after another summer mostly out of town, it somehow feels like we’re moving in once again. It’s a time of new beginnings. With the new school year and approach of fall (it’s friggin’ cold here!), somehow it makes more sense to celebrate the new year now instead of in January. It also just so happens to be the two-year anniversary of this blog!

Yet walking around the Corvallis Farmers’ Market yesterday with a gal from back East who is new to town, I realized how comfortable I’ve finally gotten here. I’m especially grateful for the farmers, chefs and activists who make our local food community so vibrant.

Speaking of Rosh Hashanah, this article on kreplach, the Yiddish dumpling, made me nostalgic. I only made them with Nonny (and my mother) once, but I have fond memories of rolling out the dough and stuffing the wontons that day. Nonny’s mother’s kreplach recipe calls for cinnamon-spiced chopped brisket or roast beef, but any leftover meat can be used. Maybe I’ll try a vegetarian version, since we feel compelled to eat less meat these days.

Any other Jewish foods (Ashkenazi or otherwise) to out try this time of year? I plan to make Stuffed Swiss Chard (like dolmades) once I stop testing Hangzhou recipes for my next NPR column. Enough Chinese food already:)

Local challah, local Honeycrisp apples from First Fruits Orchard, local Honey Tree Apiaries honey for a sweet new year. Plus, a real honey wand I picked up in Brazil. Now, I see the beauty of these things. Less sticky mess when drizzling honey.

Chilled fresh pea soup

Be sure to spring for some fresh shelled peas before it is too late! I grabbed some from Gathering Together Farm last week to make my favorite tangy “Chilled Fresh Pea Soup.” It’s a great recipe that says goodbye to spring. For a lighter touch, I substituted yogurt for the heavy cream. And I topped the soup with those purple pansies growing like weeds up through the cracks in the patio and throughout the garden.

I tried my hand at growing peas this year but got them in the ground a tad too late. Mid-to-late February seems ideal here. I also mixed up snow pea and shelling pea varieties. They must have cross-pollinated, or something, because I got some strange hybrid looking pods. But they still taste good. I folded a few of the peas into fresh wonton wrappers I needed to get rid up tonight. I also love them raw. And I feel like there’s a recipe from James Beard’s Delights and Prejudices — maybe creamed peas and potatoes? –that I wanted to try. Speaking of Beard, check out the great, albeit brief, OPB documentary of his life: A Cuisine of Our Own. It’s also a larger culinary history of Oregon. What riches there are here.

Peas in the garden.

My pea harvest Sunday.

Bill Lackner, leading a clam clinic on Siletz Bay in Lincoln City Wednesday.

Our bountiful harvest of purple varnish and Eastern softshell (think Maine steamers) clams.

I am officially obsessed with foraging for food. And there are boundless opportunities to do it here. So when invited to try my hand at digging for clams on the nearby Oregon coast, of course I leapt at the opportunity. We went out at low tide Wednesday morning on the Siletz Bay just down the road from Mo’s Restaurant (famous for their chowder). Bill Lackner, who founded a local Clam-Diggers Association, was our generous guide. He offers free clinics up and down the coast to promote recreational clamming and ensure that the shellfish are harvested sustainably so all can enjoy them. He quickly demonstrated the technique and then we were off!

Let’s just say clam-digging is immensely easier than foraging for wild mushrooms. If you don’t mind coating yourself with cold, wet sand. You just use a spade or a clam gun to dig about a foot down and then feel your hand all around the perimeter of the whole. Almost every time I found a clam. Instant gratification. Of course, with the cold water, our fingers got numb, making it difficult to feel out the shells as the digging progressed. I also kept cracking the shells with the shovel or gun. It takes finesse not to do so.

Our Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife shellfish license entitled us to each collect 36 clams per day. Let’s just say you shouldn’t have a problem meeting that target.

We found mostly hearty purple varnish clams (native to Japan, planted on the Oregon coast in the 1990s) and a few large Eastern softshell, I believe the same species as our beloved, chewy necked steamer clams in Maine. And when life gives you clams, you make chowder. Spicy tomato Manhattan-style is my chowder of choice, which I fondly remember my Bronx-born Nonny would make. The applewood-smoked bacon and the Spanish chorizo I added to the broth really gave this chowder bite. I first made this recipe (see more details below), from Arthur Schwartz’s New York City Food, for a review I penned for The Sun. I also threw in caraway seeds to make it like they did on Coney Island.

Ingredients

• 2 dozen large chowder clams, well-washed
• 4 ounces bacon or salt pork, cut into ½-inch pieces
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 medium onions, cut into ¼-inch dice
• 1 medium carrot, cut into ¼-inch dice
• 1 large rib celery, cut into ¼-inch dice
• 1 large green pepper, cut into ¼-inch dice
• 1½ pounds potatoes, cut into ½-inch cubes (about 3 cups)
• 1 (28-ounce) can peeled plum tomatoes, with their juice, the tomatoes coarsely chopped
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 large bay leaf
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Salt to taste

Make a Clamato cocktail with the leftover clam juice!

Directions

In a 5-quart pot, combine the clams and 6 cups of cold water. Cover and place over high heat. When the water begins to boil, uncover the pot and boil the clams until they open, 2 to 3 minutes.

Remove the clams from their shells. Set aside in a large bowl.

Strain the broth through a sieve lined with a few layers of cheesecloth or a tightly woven cloth napkin. Leave behind any sand that may have settled in the pot. You should have slightly less than 8 cups of liquid. Set aside.

Rinse out the 5-quart pot and dry it.

Put the bacon or salt pork in the pot and cook over medium-low heat until some of the fat has rendered and the meat has lost its raw color.

Add the diced onion, carrot, celery, and green pepper. Toss well, then cook over medium heat until the vegetables are well wilted, 10 to 12 minutes.

Add the potatoes and the reserved and strained clam broth. Bring to a boil, then adjust heat so broth just simmers. Cook until the potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes.

Add the chopped tomatoes, the thyme, and the bay leaf. Continue to simmer another 30 minutes or so, until the vegetables are very tender.

Meanwhile, push the clams through the medium blade of a meat grinder, or finely chop them in a food processor.

When the chowder has cooked for half an hour, add the clams, then shut off the heat.

Add freshly ground pepper to taste. Correct the salt—the chowder may not need any because clams are salty, and the tomatoes have salt, but usually it does.

The chowder is much better when it is allowed to stand for several hours, or refrigerated overnight, then gently reheated just to the simmering point.

Cougar/Flickr Creative Commons/By ucumari

Yikes! A ferocious cougar was spotted mauling a house cat right here in Corvallis last month. Once hunted to extinction, it seems record numbers of the giant cats live in Oregon these days. Now a young college student has mobilized to save the spotted cougar’s life here. If one crosses my path, I just hope it’s at a safe distance.

It’s pretty surreal to be living in proximity to such a feral beast, which mostly seemed a mythical creature as our school mascot. The closest we got to seeing a real cougar growing up was the stuffed, glass-encased one in the gym.

Oregon asparagus

Baltimore (well actually Seaford, Del.) asparagus

You’ve heard about the rhubarb. Well, asparagus is that other early spring vegetable for which I eagerly await. Its presence marks the start of this abundant season. Maybe I’ll eventually plant my own asparagus bed, like Barbara Kingsolver, but you have to wait three years for the harvest. For now, procuring the green (and sometimes eggplant purple) spears from local farmers will more than do.

Asparagus featured prominently at my beloved old Waverly Farmers Market in Baltimore, which I got to visit when briefly in town for a wedding last weekend. That’s Hannah and I fingering the skinny, almost stringy stalks for sale at the stand run by a farmer from Seaford, Del. But Hannah said they’ve been tough and not that flavorful. Here in Oregon, the spears are mostly sweet and fat. I received deliveries of them from the local organic Sunbow Farm here in Corvallis. Just order $10 of produce and they’ll deliver to your door. Pretty nice when you don’t have a CSA but are out of town for the weekend farmers market.

What do you make with your April and May fresh asparagus? I recommend this “Sesame Noodles with Fresh Asparagus Tips” recipe from Deborah Madison, via Culinate. I added local sauteed shittake mushrooms to the mix. Also substituted flat rice noodles for the Chinese egg ones, but don’t recommend that. And tonight I topped pasta with fresh local fava beans and asparagus, sauteed with leeks and green garlic in olive oil and a chicken broth and lemon juice sauce. Topped with chopped parsley, dill, tarragon and chives from the garden, it made for a light springy meal.

Sesame Noodles with Asparagus

Tonight's lemony asparagus pasta

This Year at the White House/Obama's Seder (Official White House photo by Pete Souza), which just happened to be organized by Carolyn's Harvard classmate.

President Obama hosted his history-making Passover seder at the White House, and we were invited to two here in Oregon, that most secular of states where there are more Buddhists than Jews (but lots of Jew-Bus).

Homemade rye matzo

The first invite came at a matzo-making party I attended with my chef friend Intaba. She’s teaching me to make all the Jewish breads. It’s really a wonder more folks don’t make their own matzo instead of subsisting on the Manischewitz boxed-stuff. You just mix two cups of flour to one cup of water, don’t let it sit more than 18 minutes and then bake at 400 degrees. But I realize, who has time to make matzo when preparing the other dishes for the seder feast?

For our first seder, I prepared an unusually savory carrot and sweet potato tzimmes, accented with fresh thyme and chopped green onions. I’d make this side dish year round. That the veggies are roasted with lots of butter doesn’t hurt. I also made a Sephardic version of charoset, blending dried figs, dates, apricots and raisins together with the traditional apples and walnuts. It got rave reviews and the fruity paste spread nicely on matzo.

Carrot and Sweet Potato Tzimmes

Fruity charoset

We’re constantly impressed by the kindness of practical strangers, and neighbors, here. We had only met the host of the Wednesday night seder once, and there we were comfortably reclining around her table until 11 p.m.

But our Friday night hosts, Slow Food Corvallis president Ann Shriver and her husband Larry Lev, both of OSU’s agricultural econ department, we met back during our first weekend in Corvallis. I made the matzo ball soup for that meal. Let’s just say the balls were a tad rubbery and marked with my fingerprints, rather than in perfect spheres. Still tasted good though. Ann prepared a feast: Moroccan chicken tagine (see recipe below), purple cauliflower and potato puree, grilled asparagus and Greek salad. Larry’s simple Ashkenazi-style charoset was sweet and delicate: peeled and grated apples, chopped walnuts and pecans, a bit of grated lemon peel and dashes of wine, cinnamon and sugar. Ann indulged us with a cheese course (featuring a prize-winning hard Tumalo goat cheese from Bend) and a delicate ginger-dark chocolate mousse served, with a fresh whipped cream cap, in demitasse cups. It was an informal, secular, social justice-minded seder. We didn’t even go back to the haggagah after the meal. Very reminiscient of the McCandlish-Friedberg seders growing up. I was right at home! Next year in Corvallis, right?

Moroccan chicken

Chocolate mousse

Chicken Tagine with Preserved Lemon & Olives (from Ann Shriver)

Mocha Brownie Torte with Raspberry Coulee

We really need to start cooking in for Valentine’s Day. We know restaurants exploit the Hallmark holiday, usually charging a premium that makes the meal cost more than it’s worth. But we couldn’t resist a chance to return to our favorite local farm, which had a dinner tonight though it is closed for the off-season through March.

Gathering Together has an informal ambiance: mismatched plates, they don’t replace silverware between courses, etc., but the food couldn’t be better and features the freshest local meats and produce. Meat tonight included a “Crispy Sweets with Honey Mustard Dip” appetizer. No, those sweets weren’t a succulent vegetable, but tempera-fried veal brains (the thalamus). The grey matter was moist and tasty, similar to sweetbreads (pancreas). Most memorable was the beet “ravioli” salad with chevre, orange, mizuna and pistachios. Instead of pasta, thin slices of beet sandwiching a lump of the goat cheese formed the ravioli. A playful trompe d’oeil, hmm?

It also revived the spirits to dress up in an actual dress and heeled boots. I put on some real make-up for the first time in months! Fashion is about the last thing one worries about in Oregon. Though I might have a wardrobe crisis when I return to New York next month.

Beet Ravioli

Crispy Sweets

How fortunate are we to have forest mycologists for next-door neighbors who are among the premier truffle experts in the state. I leaped at the opportunity when they invited me to hitch a ride with them to the Oregon Truffle Festival in Eugene today. It’s a hoighty-toighty gourmet event, but luckily today anyone could attend the marketplace event for $15. It was well-spent

That admission price included indulgent samples of truffled dishes and truffle-accented cheeses and olive oils. And this budding food writer absorbed numerous story ideas from panel discussions and other conversations there. Truffles could become a tobacco-like cash crop salvation for struggling small farms, the writer Kevin West said in a talk. Unfortunately most of us can’t afford to cook with truffles, as they go for $100 to $1,000 a pound. Hence the reason so many amateurs here try to forage for them themselves. I saw a festivalgoer today bartering some Oregon white truffles for wine and first-press olive oils, as if the truffles were gold.

The festival hall was redolent with the heady, pungent perfume of the truffles. The rare Oregon Brown Truffle (see above) had an especially potent, Roquefort-like aroma. Only the relatively more common white and black truffle varieties were featured in the food we sampled.

The chefs from Caprial’s Bistro in Portland whipped up a truffled fennel-potato soup and a simple roasted carrot salad. (See recipes below).

A cloyingly rich marsala pasta with white truffles and flecks of foie gras followed from Newman’s at 988 in Cannon Beach. And Vitaly and Kimberly Paley of Paley’s Place in Portland were on-hand to sign their new cookbook.

Truffles are a gift of nature that fruit in the earth in all regions of the world. Desert truffles, I learned today, are abundant in the Kalahari region of sub-Saharan Africa, in Austrailia and in the Middle East. In fact, there’s evidence that shows the “manna from Heaven” that fed the Israelites was likely morsels of desert truffle. How cool.

Roasted Carrot Salad with Sherry Dressing and Goat Cheese and White Truffles (have you noticed sherry vinegar is all the rage? I just got some for the first time.)

Serves 4

4 large carrots, peeled and large dice

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

salt and black pepper

Dressing

2 tablespoons sherry vinegar

2 cloves garlic, chopped

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

6 tablespoons olive oil

salt and black pepper

2 bunches watercress, washed and spun dry

2 ounces soft goat cheese

thinly sliced white truffle

Preheat oven 425 degrees convection bake setting. Place a heavy gauge sheet pan in the oven to pre-heat for about 10 minutes. Toss the carrots with olive oil and salt and pepper. Place on the hot sheet pan in a single layer. Cook until tender and golden brown, about 20 minutes.

While the carrots are cooking, prepare the dressing. Whisk the vinegar, garlic and mustard together. While whisking slowly add the oil and whisk til incorporated and smooth. Season with salt and pepper.

To serve the salad, divide the watercress onto 4 plates. Top with the warm carrots and drizzle with the dressing. Top the salad with goat cheese and sliced truffle and serve.

Courtesy of Caprial and John Pence of Caprial’s Bistro

Who knew that seemingly tropical fuzzy Hayward kiwis grow in Oregon and are available fresh in winter. But they are locally grown here at the Greengable Gardens in Philomath. They harvest the sweet fruit in November but they easily keep, at a temperature of about 35 degrees, and can be sold fresh for the next four months.

What do you do with your kiwifruit? I made a tropical yogurt bowl last week, with sliced kiwi, mandarin oranges and pineapple. Kiwi jam or sorbet, maybe, or even kiwi salsa are other options I’d like to try. Of course, I love just scooping the fresh flesh out of a halved kiwi with a spoon. I’m just thankful for fresh fruit in the dead of winter. Knowing it’s local makes all the difference.