Why didn't I watch Portlandia first?

(July 5th, 2012) Portland.  PDX.  The place with great food and an even better salt store (more on that later of course).  By whatever name you choose to call it, Portland on a sunny day is a transcendental experience.  I suppose I had the insane luck of not seeing a significant cloud at all during my west coast trip (July 5th-9th), though by New Mexican standards, it was beautifully overcast.

When I heard that Kim needed to go out to Seattle (in a few more posts...patience please!), I jumped at the opportunity to finally kick off the west coast road trip that I'd been contemplating for months.  First stop, as you can guess from the top of the post, Portland.

Now as has become the trend when I travel, everything was planned around reservations at James Beard award winning restaurant and other food musts.  Yeah, sure, there's culture and people to see and meet, but I'm far too much of a pretentious foodie to even give the illusion that I'm going on these trips for some other reason (okay, maybe I do have one other really good reason why I've been going on some of these trips, but we'll leave that out of these posts as I try to do).

Portland...it's the land of the 90s, and if you're not getting any of these Portlandia references, march yourself straight to Netflix and start watching.  Just the first episode will suffice as it tends to be a bit banal and repetitive if you watch the entire series in one sitting (hey, I was too sick to do anything else that day, okay?!?!), though still worth watching and enjoyable.

But, anyways, I digress as usual.  First stop: The Heathman Restaurant.  My trend of alternating hits and misses continued with this stop.  Let me clarify though...the food at the Heathman was quite pleasant.  Very nice, fresh, local, but not James Beard award winning.  That being said, I still thoroughly enjoyed it.  As you can guess, first up, since I was on the west coast again, oysters.  At times I regret that my love for oysters came so late in life.  I remember growing up, and even in my early twenties, how fond my father was of oysters.  Ah, if only I had known better at the time...just think of the experiences we could have had?  But, in lieu of that, I shall endeavor to enjoy them for him as well as myself.

Oysters, so good...all a local Oregonian type.

After a dish from the sea, I next brought my culinary experience back to land.  Apparently, this was the perfect season for fresh, local berries, and my waitress was raving about the fresh berry salad.  Her raves were well justified...I can still envision those berries in my mind...crisp, juicy, and just the right blend of sweet and tart.

Mixed fresh, local berry salad with goat cheese.

The dish that was a slight let down had to be the main course...fresh salmon served over succotash with a sweet corn fondue sauce.  I have no fact checker to verify the sauce (luckily I do have the internet to double check with), but it was good.  Unlike at the Fat Canary, this sauce was thick enough to hold together, and the succotash was filled with pacetta.  You all know my weaknesses by now...I just couldn't resist once I heard that.

Fresh salmon, succotash, sweet corn fondue sauce, and pickled red onions.

What really made this dish, though, was the pickled red onion.  I actually had to ask for a bowl filled with them since I loved how the crunchiness of the onions contrasted with the smoothness of the salmon, and how the vinergary taste complimented the smoothness of the fondue.  Those simple little onions actually inspired a lot of thought on my part about what makes food good.  I came to a startingly simple conclusion:   good food is characterized by the presence of complimenting and contrasting tastes, textures, and colors.  That one simple conclusion has helped me re-imagine the first chapter of my cook book...an excerpt of what's in my head:

Consider the following progression of food. 

• Cheese - on it's own, it can be nice, even good, but never something to write home about.  Okay, every so often there will be a cheese so fantastic that you have a moment of pure ecstasy as you consume it, but the average cheese is just one color, one texture, and one taste. 

• Cheese on crackers or bread.  On the surface, it's virtually the same, but now we've introduced a contrast in texture.  This still isn't going to be something to write home about normally, but it's a more enjoyable experience than gorging on cheese and nothing but cheese.  

• Caprese salad.  Here's where the fun starts.  Mozzarella, tomato, basil, and some balsamic vinegar.  Red, white, green, and balsamic...okay, you've got the complimenting and contrasting colors.  The balsamic also provides a bit of flavor contrast in itself, but it pairs well with both the mozzarella and tomato, and the basil does the same thing.  The textures, though...everything, unless the tomato is perfect, is going to be somewhat similar - soft... 

• Bruschetta.  Now that can be interesting.  Cheese, presumably mozzarella, toasted bread, a slice of tomato, and a sprig of basil topped with some balsamic vinegar.  All of the same visual queues and taste sensations, but now you've added that last dimension of texture.  The trick to make this a fantastic dish, though, is to pair the ingredients just right.  The failing of most bruschettas is that too much of something is used, or that the ingredients aren't fresh enough/crisp enough.  These small details are important.  Alternatively, you could do a spinach salad with crisp onions or croutons, grape tomatoes, goat cheese, etc. 

Good food doesn't happen by accident.  Okay, sometimes it might, like when a caveman left out some water and flour, and natural yeast started fermenting to lead to the precursor of the sour dough bread that we know and love today.  But more often than not it requires attention to these details of how everything pairs together.  Taste, Texture, Appearance.

But, I digress, back to the Heathman for the all important last course, dessert - berry trifle.  The same deliciously fresh, local berries as before were featured.  Pure bliss.  I need to start acquiring trifle dishes so that I can make this at home too...

Berry trifle.  Much like how the sauce is dripping down the side, I'm drooling as I think about this dessert.

It's a shame that I'm not being paid by the word, because that's just the start of the weekend...I'll continue the rest of Portland in the next post.  Stay tuned kiddos!