Foraging for Morels in Elk River

It was about mid-May when my friend finally said: It's time to go foraging!

I'd been asking repeatedly when we could go hunting for morels, which grow locally around the inland Northwest. She kept telling me that it had to be above freezing at night, but not too hot during the day. We hit that sweet spot a few weeks into May, and packed up a few cars with friends and dogs and supplies on the first nice Sunday.

The two-hour drive to Elk River, Idaho gave me time to think and reflect. In New York, morels were among the most coveted and rare items on a menu. We'd had them (and by "them" I mean two, cut in half, or maybe it was just one big one) with trout at Recette, and I think we found them on the menu at Dressler, too... maybe with that giant pork chop they used to have? Anyway, we used to think ourselves lucky to have access to that special fungi, and to take a day to forage it yourself -- isn't that the Brooklyn foodie dream? I mean, anyone can eat a mushroom soaked in butter at a city restaurant and nod approvingly, but not many can say they've strapped on their boots, rolled up their sleeves and found some themselves. 

Recette's Fancypants Trout w/ Exactly 3 Morel Morsels

We pulled into the secret woodsy area that I was threatened with my life not to share. And then we let the dogs loose to channel their inner truffle pig and be our mushroom muses. Only Honey Badger the corgi actually used her sniffer to actually find us any, but the rest of the pups were good and stayed close as we spread out.

It was a little slow finding the first morels, but we stuck to the rule: Look for lady slipper flowers and morels typically grow nearby. This was usually near a big tree, where the ground was still a little wet. At first, we would shriek with excitement when we found one. And then it got quieter as we secretly filled up our little laundry bags with as many as we could find. They seemed to be everywhere once we moved past an area that had obviously already been picked over. I was overwhelmed by the abundance.

After a few hours, we were all exhausted and hungry. So we headed into town and got huckleberry ice cream at the general store. TripAdvisor says it is world famous, but of course that's the only site that you can find that it even exists. They don't do much of a Web presence out here. But after hearing about it the old fashioned way, I was excited to get a giant cone and sit out on a bench enjoying the sun.

When we got home, it took a long time to cut, clean, soak and store our morels. The rest of the week there were sauteed morels, morel omelettes, morels with trout as a replication of our New York days past. But that night I made something to truly celebrate our hard work: a risotto! We bought a few scallops from the store to add to the asparagus and morel rice that I stirred constantly in chicken broth for 45 minutes. It was worth every stir. Having morels in this sort of homemade luxury made me scoff at our old ways of overpriced stinginess.

I'm not saying I'm a country girl now and won't move back to the city eventually. But a day like May 17? It changed my perspective in a haunting way that I can't shake. Where will we end up living, when we can finally decide for ourselves again? I'm not certain anymore. But in the meantime there will be morels in the freezer that I can thaw out at any time, and remember what I've learned.

West Coast States are Big.

It used to be that seven hours got us from Brooklyn all the way down to the outer banks in North Carolina. That's New York, New Jersey (almost into Pennsylvania), Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. Six states! Now, seven hours gets us from southern Washington to northern-central Oregon. I don't understand how it's possible, but then again maps have always eluded me. "Cartographer" was my least favorite profession back in third grade, up there with "Hairdresser." Twenty years later and I'm still lost and my hair is still a mess.

Regardless of how long it took, I consider myself to be pretty blessed to have the opportunity to drive down to Camp Sherman for a long President's Day weekend. This is exactly the sort of thing that we would never fly across the country for, so why not pack up the car and experience it all now, while we can?

After a 5-hour drive to Portland last Friday night, which would have been pretty boring had we not debated about the destructive powers of the DSM and Fifty Shades of Gray, we stopped at Ecliptic Brewery to taste test a few brews and have dinner at the bar. This is exactly the sort of place that gives me hope that life exists after Brooklyn. North Portland is sort of like East Williamsburg before all those little fancy bars opened up and people started coming from Manhattan and ruining the gritty little part of Brooklyn that used to feel like a refuge. 

There were some interesting brews, but the best was definitely the Orbiter IPA, which "unites a constellation of "C" hops (Cascade, Centennial, Chinook and Columbus)". Those C hops create a crafty beer that is citrusy, clear and crisp (See what I did there?).

The next morning we were had fantastic breakfast sandwiches from Random Order and hit the road toward Sisters. And I have to say that the Heartthrob sandwich, with herbed cream cheese and sundried tomatoes, definitely made my ticker skip a happy beat. 

What a gorgeous drive from Portland to Camp Sherman. After the first hour or so of highway driving, you seem to descend into a dense forest, alongside a rippling blue creek. Slowly you to ascend again, scaling the sides of giant hills as snow-capped mountains loom in the background. A few acres are totally destroyed from forest fires or volcanoes, their stumpy and charred tree remains stretched out like sunbathers on a beach. Then back into the canopy of trees until you reach your destination: a cozy cottage in the woods.

Our cottage was cozy and woodsy, a fabulous weekend retreat. A two mile riverside hike from the REAL family cottage: a blacksmith-detailed, antler-hanging DREAM of a getaway. I walked in and seriously just about hit the floor. 

But soon I got comfortable and had no trouble relaxing into the coziest moment of my life: fireplace, golden retriever, newspaper. 

Sunday we hiked Black Butte, a challenging two-mile hoof from the parking space about 3/4 of the way up the hill just outside Sisters, OR. The view from the top was rewarding, enough to offset the two days of leg pain that followed. It also bought me two days of dog exhaustion that almost had me worried but mostly had me feeling satisfied that I had never before challenged the pup this much. It was also validating to those spaghetti legs of mine.

Driving home and feeling rejuvenated on Monday, we cut across the northeast part of Oregon towards I-84 instead of stopping through Portland again. With snowy Mount Hood looming in the background and miles and miles of red-dusted, cattle-grazing land, I felt like we were in a cigarette ad. 

It's a freeing feeling, though. Back home everyone is shoved into the subway and shuffling across the street with hoardes of people. And here we are, driving 70 on an empty road with good tunes on the stereo and nothing in our way. The homesickness has whittled itself down to a sliver and in it's place, I feel free.

1 Chicken, 2 People, 3 Days, 4 Meals

After a week of excess in NYC, it's been time to tighten our belts and start living in our means again. The idea of meal planning is actually kind of fun and exciting to me, unless it's actually Sunday and time to get down to it. Then I have to go through recipes and ideas and make a list and then go to the store and find other things and veer from the list and then go home and realize I forgot stuff and then I get frustrated. 

So a compromise: I'll plan a little, and leave room for meal creativity as the week goes by. One cannot choose a wardrobe for the week ahead of time and same goes for food. You just have to have the right items in your closet in case it snows or rains or something. 

To do this effectively, Sunday should be an easy prep day. Maybe a little grocery shopping. Then you make a bunch of rice or quinoa for the week, maybe boil a couple eggs for salads or ramen, but most definitely you gotta roast a whole chicken.

Meal One: Roasted Chicken with Fennel

Stuff the chicken with:
1 head of garlic
thyme
lemon

Slice up:
carrots
onion
fennel

Rub the chicken with oil or butter, salt, pepper, paprika. Place in a cast iron pan over a bed of veggies. Roast for about an hour at 425 degrees. 

Slice off the legs and serve with the veggies and whatever grain you cooked up. Save the breast meat for other stuff later in the week. 

Meal Two: Chicken Soup

The same night you roast the chicken, start the chicken stock. Add the bones, chicken carcass with onions, carrot, celery and parsley to a crockpot and cover with water. Let it simmer on low until the next day. Skim the fat off the top. 

We made a simple ramen type soup with the stock, some shredded dark meat, the leftover roasted veggies and fresh Chinese noodles. I would not recommend getting the flour-y kind of noodles like we did because it made the soup way too thick. I think rice sticks would work better. Also fresh veggies would work better too if you have time to simmer them. Add a hard boiled (or soft boiled) egg to make it ramen-y. 

Meal Three: Chicken Salad

Shred about 1/4 of the breast meat. Add enough mayo and plain Greek yogurt to moisten. Chop up some celery and add salt, pepper, and whatever spices you like. I added almonds too. Mom swears by Bells seasoning but I don't have that stuff so I just used some Penzey's stuff and it worked out just fine. 

Make chicken salad sandwiches with spinach and avocado, or add a scoop to a spinach salad with some mozzarella, a quick chickpea salad (just drain and rinse a can of chickpeas and dress with lemon, olive oil and parsley) and avocado. Tastes like the buffet lunches I used to get in midtown NY, only it doesn't cost $10/lb.

Meal Four: Chicken Tacos

This one comes together quick and works best for a gym night. Heat up some shredded chicken with a chipotle and some adobo sauce. Add to a tortilla and top with cabbage, cheese, Greek yogurt and avocado.

Shopping List
There's room for lots of variation here, but if I needed to build an important Sunday grocery list it would look like this:

• Fennel
• Onion 
• Carrot
• Garlic
• Celery
• Parsley & Thyme
• Avocado

• Greek Yogurt
• Cheddar cheese
• Mozzarella
• Eggs
  
• Chipotle in adobo sauce
• Chickpeas

We just used the rest of the chicken stock to cook a bunch of boneless pork ribs. We'll see where this week of shredded pork will take us.

Selfie Book Club: Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin

So here's my resolution for 2015: I am going to read 25 books this year. 

Usually my resolutions are so vague: "I want to be healthy!" or "I might go to the gym!" But 25 books is a goal and I think I can reach it.

So to kick off the year I decided to treat myself to a food book. For many years these cooking memoirs were all I would read, and of course they made me hungry so I would have to snack while I paged my way through each journey. After reading all the Ruth Reichl and Jeffrey Steingarten I could get my hands on, I had to take a breather. Now I treat food books as chocolates. It's good for once in awhile but I can't let myself rot my brain on them. Also I can't afford that many Fritos.

So you can imagine how pissed off I get when I treat myself to what I think might be a quaint little book about home cooking in 1988 and instead I get lectured about made up nutrition pseudo-science and weird ramblings about pimento loaf. Who even recommended this book to me? How did it make its way onto my To-Read List? And why does everyone on Goodreads think Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin is "comforting," "insightful," "witty"? Did we even read the same book? These cutesy comments make me angrier than the book itself.

So I'll give her this: food memoirs were probably edgy back in 1988. There was no Food Network. The idea of celebrity chefs probably would have puzzled many people back then. She had a couple good stories and a nice appetite and probably a workable typewriter, and she went for it. She wanted to share favorite recipes and dole out advice on things that maybe she wasn't in a position to really give but fact checking was probably a lot harder without Google. 

Okay but I seriously cannot get past the fact that there is an entire CHAPTER called "How to Avoid Grilling" and it includes the message that "Grilling is like sunbathing... everyone knows it is bad for you but no one ever stops doing it" and "Since I do not like the taste of lighter fluid, I do not have to worry that a grilled steak is the equivalent of seven hundred cigarettes." 

WHAT.

Lady, you fry literally everything in tons of oil, but a grilled steak is 700 cigarettes that tastes like lighter fluid?

I also have to give her props for her opening comment, "Unlike most citizens of these United States of America, I do not grill." I guess the humblebrag really was born before Facebook.

These United States. Pssht.

But grilling is not the only thing she despises. Oh no no no. She also makes the claim that "I do not like to eat al fresco. No sane person does, I feel." I mean I get that under certain circumstances it may not be entirely pleasant to eat outside but are you really going to call every happy picnic-going family insane?

Here is a list of other things she does not like:

• (Cake) mixes: "They are uniformly disgusting"
• Stuffing on Thanksgiving (no sympathy for even the disappointed kids!)
• Little Fry Guys: for "nasty fried chicken.... crisp little baby shoes or hockey pucks"
• Fried chicken coated with eggs or crumbs
• Fish eyeballs
• The idea of sweet fruit soup
• Stuffed Breast of VealCaviar "My only allergy is a slight one, making me a cheap date" (humblebrag #2!)
• "Glamorous" food
• Dinner parties. But she throws them anyway to "keep the wheels of society spinning" so "no one will ever know how antisocial you really are." (Honey, I think they have a clue)
• Canned broth: its "pretty nasty"
• Parties at night
• Chocolate cake
• Chocolate ice cream
• Microwaves

Things Laurie Colwin likes:

• Potato salad: "There is no such thing as really bad potato salad."
• Chocolate, which she likes but does not love
• Lebanon bologna, with which she was able to (singlehandedly!) "buck the trend" of grilling
• Some weird thing called beef tea
• Pretty much anything "festooned" with something else (though I guess this does not count as "glamorous;" see above)
• Chicken salad, which has "a certain glamour," but apparently the right kind of glamour; again, see above
• Pimento

Things Laurie Colwin wrongly says "is good for you":

• Vegetable fritters formed into cakes and fried in butter
• Fried zucchini
• Broccoli di rape, which would be true, but she sells it as "a perfect foil for buttery food."

In the chapter called Feeding the Fussy, she goes to extremes to tell us about how she isn't fussy and can eat pretty much anything and that makes her the "universal recipient - the O Positive for hostesses." (Insert blanching emoji that doesn't exist). She goes on to make fun of people's idiocyncracies about food restrictions, fads, diets, notions, phoebias, religious limitations, etc. I feel like she must have been a really long lag while writing this book where she forgot about this chapter and penned the later chapter called Without Salt where she TALKS ABOUT HOW SHE CAN'T EAT SALT BECAUSE SHE HAS HYPERTENSION and then reminds herself that when she's giving those dinner parties she hates that "when I feed people without salt, I am actually doing them a favor."

To boot: we are asked to take inspiration for "low tea" from P.L. Travers' Mary Poppins.

I'm sorry to hear that she died of a heart attack not long after writing this book. But I really do wish she'd done her research on nutrition before giving a condescending diatribe about the virtues of things fried in butter.

TWO STARS because maybe I should just give festooned pimento a chance 

To Huevos Rancheros and Maya Angelou

I regret taking this title from that song in Rent, but La Vie Boheme has been in my head since my parents' dog groomer was jamming to The Tango Maureen while clipping little Maggie's paws.

But to the point. Huevos rancheros. My go-to thing to order at brunch when I'm in the city. And how did it never occur to me to make it at home? 

We were watching that Amazon Prime show Transparent the other night and Mort's daughter's new lesbian lover's ex stepdaughter (it IS that kind of show) says to Mort's son  "You like huevos rancheros? It's my specialty," and a fuse in my mind blew a little. It should be MY specialty! And also Jeffrey Tambor looks awful in drag.

So here we are on Saturday morning and I'm hankering for those huevos rancheros before I'm even conscious. I read through a few recipes to see where I should even start. But when I get to rifling through the cabinet and fridge I find that I'm missing few vital ingredients. No black beans, no sour cream, no fresh cilantro, no tomatoes. So I made a few substitutions and have to report that I'm pretty happy with what I came up with.

Sorta Huevos Rancheros (for 2)

Salsa-ish Sauce

1 chipotle marinated in adobo sauce (from those little cans I always have lying around), chopped, plus some of the sauce itself

1 half onion, chopped

1 large garlic clove, chopped

1 TBS of pasta sauce (Shh, it was all I had)

1 drizzle of olive oil

Dash of cumin

Salt & pepper

Set sorta sauce in a saucepan on medium low and simmer while you arrange everything else.

Heat oil in a skillet over medium, add 4 eggs and cook about 1 minute. Then set to medium low and cover until almost at desired doneness. I turned the heat off and let them steam a bit for a nice medium sunnyside up.

Meanwhile, chop up some cheddar cheese and avocado.

When everything's good to go, fry 2 small corn tortillas over medium high heat in canola oil, about 30 seconds on each side.

To plate: Top each tortilla with 2 eggs, cover in sauce, sprinkle with cheese and arrange avocado. Add a nice dollop of Greek yogurt if you don't have sour cream. Sprinkle dried cilantro on top.

Even with all the substitutions, it came out pretty great. No 30 minute wait at Brooklyn Label necessary.

What to do with Chinese Fermented Bean Curd from Vancouver

I guess it was a happy coincidence the other day when my plans for a pork stirfry coincided with a new Chinese ingredient that Rob pulled out of his backpack at the end of the day.

"Joseph brought this for you."

Well, honestly, if it was anything other than a jar of strange liquidy red stuff with a label that I couldn't read, I would have been surprised. 

This spurred a texting frenzy where I ask our humanitarian a ton of questions: What is this stuff? How do I cook with it? Can I skip the marinading overnight and find a way to integrate into dinner right now? He gave me a few pointers before sending me off with a confident "play with it!"

So I popped the cap and gave it a sniff. I expected the sauce to be thick like a paste, but its as sloshy as thin paint and as bright red as blood. It's really bitter by itself, but can be properly tempered with sugar, cooking wine and a little soy sauce.

I have no idea if this stuff is readily available in most parts of America, but it sure isn't around here. I even went into the new Asian Market in Pullman to nose around and sure enough, no liquid fermented bean curd. For now I'll just be thankful I have a friend who takes frequent trips to Vancouver and brings us back cool stuff. 

Anyway, here's what I did, and I think it worked pretty well:

Bean Curd Sauce

three parts Chinese fermented bean curd

one part honey

one part mirin

two parts soy sauce

two parts sesame oil

splash of whiskey  

Heat over high heat in a wok for about 1 minute. Remove from heat.

For Stirfry

Add cubes of meat (I used pork) to the wok and cook until no longer pink. Remove from heat. Add vegetables (I used sugar snap peas, broccoli and asparagus) until slightly charred but still crispy, about four minutes. Add the meat back to the wok and top with the bean curd sauce until warmed over.

Serve over quinoa cooked in chicken broth. Hey... it's still healthy!

Welcome Home Beef Stew

I'm finally home after three weeks on the east coast! It was a long visit full of rental cars and family visits, fish markets and holiday meals, mall shopping, city walking and topped off with a wedding. It was a fun but exhausting few weeks, and by the end of it I was craving my own bed, my own dog and even my own cooking. 

Throughout the long, jetlaggy Monday at the office, a tiny craving for beef stew grew steadily in my tastebuds. I wanted hearty beef, flavored with beer, no potatoes, over egg noodles. No matter what there would be egg noodles and God help me if there are potatoes. 

I made something like this a few years ago in Brooklyn when I had the day off and Rob did not. It took me all day to stew everything down and thicken the broth properly. I figured there must be a quick way to assemble it, I just needed to find a few shortcuts. So I did my research and meshed a few recipes and here's what I came up with, ready in about two hours. Let the record show that it came out almost as good as the all-day-simmer.

Mustardy Beer Broth Beef Stew

Ingredients:

2 1/2lbs boneless chuck roast, cut into 1-inch cubes

1 onion, chopped

5 garlic cloves, chopped

1 12-oz bottle amber beer (I used Full Sail)

4 carrots, peeled and chopped

1 cup chicken broth

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

dash of salt

dash of caraway seeds

dash of black pepper

dash of paprika 

2 bay leaves

3 tablespoons Wondra flour 

Instructions:

Brown beef on all sides in two batches over medium-high. Set browned beef aside.

Reduce heat to medium low and sautee onion for about four minutes. Add garlic and stir until fragrant. Add beer, the beef with any remaining juices and the rest of the ingredients up to the bay leaves. Increase heat to high and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat to low and simmer for 1.5 hours. In a small bowl, add Wondra flour and water together to thicken the stew to taste. 

Serve over egg noodles and alongside a simple kale and cucumber salad with Parmesan dressing.

It's true that it isn't much after a week of epic meals in New York (read: hours of omakase, a giant bottle of fancy sake and flakes upon flakes of fresh-shaved truffles) but this stuff was damn satisfying.