119 replies to this topic

[mkayahara]

Thanks for sharing your cooking week with us, Genkinaonna! I'll be taking my first trip to Portland later this summer - and very excited to do so - so I'll be following along with great interest!

I love bubble tea, but my partner can't stand it. We're both looking forward to visiting Powell's, though!

[Genkinaonna]

Now onto my cabinets. I just reorganized, I tend to enjoy buying interesting food stuff, and it was getting hard to keep track of everything. I'll start with the pantry and work my way around the room.

[Darienne]

Thanks for sharing your cooking week with us, Genkinaonna! I'll be taking my first trip to Portland later this summer - and very excited to do so - so I'll be following along with great interest!

I love bubble tea, but my partner can't stand it. We're both looking forward to visiting Powell's, though!

Ed and I have never had bubble tea. I've seen recipes for it...but then I wouldn't know what it is supposed to taste like anyhow. Can you purchase a glass of mediocre or poor bubble tea?

I'm sure we could get it in Toronto.

[Genkinaonna]

Here's the pantry.


I have wine at the top, mostly red and some dessert wines, I'm not a wine person by any stretch of the imagination, but I do enjoy a glass now and again. Oregon has some amazing wineries, which you'll see more of on Saturday. I also have a big basket of tea up there. I love tea, mostly black, but I've been drinking quite a bit of white tea lately as well. It feels more virtuous than coffee, since I don't add sugar or milk to my tea, and coffee gets lots of sugar and creamer. The next shelf down is pasta, mostly. I didn't realize how much we had until I reorganized the shelves. There's also a bowl with shallots, onions, and garlic, plus some oil and a bin of beans/grains.


The next shelf down is canned goods and prepared stuff on the left, and baking/dessert type stuff on the right. Below that is cereal and bread.


The bottom shelf has Gio's food and snacks in the lego bin, treats and snacks for the girls in the middle, and various kinds of rice in the basket on the right. On the floor we've got pretzels, disposable coffee cups, and some other misc big things.
.

The next cabinet over is liquor at the top, we don't drink a ton but I do use alcohol a lot in my baking, measuring cups in the middle, and coffee and tea accessories and syrups on the bottom shelf.


On the other side of the sink is my baking cabinet. The top shelf is gelatin, flavor compounds, and cookie cutters. The middle shelf is nuts on the right, chocolate on the left, and vanilla beans at the far right. The bottom shelf is extracts and flavors on the spinner and my pastry tips and some of my gum paste tools on the right.


On the next wall, the cabinet has canning stuff at the top, measuring cups and the large boxes of salt in the middle, and the specialty salts and honey at the bottom.


The final cabinet is for my cake deco tools and materials. The top shelf is chocolate and fondant molds and food coloring/luster dust. The middle is cupcake papers and gumpaste (hence the label saying "gumpaste") and the bottom shelf is sprinkles and dragees.


I recently made room for the deco cabinet by putting all my spices on a ginormous spice rack in the pantry. I have the spices organized by savory, baking, chilis, large bags at the bottom, and vinegar on the second to last shelf because that's where it fit! Here's the top:


And the bottom:


Just looking at how neat and pretty the spices look all lined up makes me smile!

[Genkinaonna]

Chris- I'm open to going to some kind of interesting cocktail place. Is there one in particular you'd like to see?

Darienne-I've not had a lot of luck making bubble tea at home, I'm sure you could get it in Toronto. It's definitely possible to get bad bubble tea, if the bubbles aren't cooked enough they're too hard in the middle, and if they're cooked too much they turn to sticky mush (appealing, huh?) so it's a fine line. You want them to be springy, but not rubbery. And the tea/juice needs to taste good too. It depends on what kind of powders they're using, and what kind of tea.

Thanks everyone for all the kind words! It's nice to know you're finding my blog interesting.

If anyone has a particular thing they'd like to see, please let me know!

[Darienne]

It all looks great! It reminds me of having the in-laws for a visit...which we are this week...gets one to do a great clean-up and fix-up job. ...not that I am suggesting that your cupboards don't always look this great!

[Genkinaonna]

I'm going to take a little break to eat lunch. It is half of the meatball sandwich I didn't post from lunch yesterday...but I assure you it was tasty. Here's what it looked like at the restaurant. If you squint, you can see it in the fridge pic I'll be posting soon too!



It's from Bugatti's, which is one of my favorite restaurants. They have killer calamari and focaccia bread with garlic olive oil too. There's some advertising, guys, feel free to give me some gratis meals!

[Lilith]

Well, you've certainly hit the good spots so far! Pastaworks is full of incredibly tasty stuff, and I miss it.

New Seasons Market is one of the local area chain supermarkets that is very good - kind of between Whole Foods and Safeway in price, but their deli, bakery, meat, and fish departments are always of excellent quality.

Out Beaverton way, Uwajimaya is great for all of your Asian food needs.

Olympic Provisions is tucked away off of MLK, but well worth the trip.

Penzeys Spices will make you fall in love with cooking all over again.

Townsend Tea has teas made right (including bubble tea). It's great for some quiet time with a book.

Ponderosa Meats in Aloha has great cuts of beef, bison, thick-cut bacon, etc.

If you make it all the way out to Hillsboro, there's a great taco truck usually right near the Baskin Robbins, called Mely's Tacos. SOooo good. Up the street is Pho Viet, which makes a heart-wrenchingly good bowl of pho.

[Genkinaonna]

Allrighty, I'm back and now that I'm not famished I can focus fully on the task at hand. Here's the fridge:


And the freezer:


I'll admit I'm not as good at utilising what I throw in there as I should be. It's basically where food goes to die. I'm hoping to get better about this since I have a new vacuum sealer. The things that we actually USE from the freezer are the frozen pretzels (my husband's a junkie for them) the frozen peas (Gio's favorite snack veggie) and the frozen blueberries (my daughters' favorite means to destroy their clothes) along with the yeast, nuts, and ice cream. Everything else pretty much languishes until I guiltily throw it away...I seriously need to participate in one of the eGullet freezer cleanouts sometime soon!

Next up, cookbooks. Stay tuned!

[Genkinaonna]

Lilith-It's like you were walking around in my head! I had Uwajimaya and New Seasons planned for this afternoon. They just opened a new Penzeys not far from my house, and since it's a Wisconsin company, and I'm still a Wisconsin girl at heart, it's nice to see them here. I actually live in Beaverton, so I've been to most of those places. I'll have to check out the taco truck, I usually go to Ely's on the corner of 185th and TV Hwy...there's also a new place that does amazing pollo asado about 5 min from my house. I'll have to look up Townsend Tea too, although with the kids bouncing around, quiet times are few and far between. I do love to read though, maybe I can convince my husband to wrangle the kids so I can check it out, purely for research purposes, of course!

And another family cooking skills update: I have been instructed to tell the kind folks reading this that my mother is in fact a perfectly competent cook. She just does not enjoy it and chooses not to indulge in said activity. Let's see who else in my family I can annoy by week's end...

Edited by Genkinaonna, 23 May 2011 - 04:21 PM.

[prasantrin]

I have a few family members in Murrayhill. They're the ones who introduced me to Annie' Donuts, and also to some Chinese restaurant in PDX that has very good salted pepper squid. Generally, though, they're not fond of Chinese in PDX. Nowhere near as good as YVR or even YWG Chinese, they say.

[Chris Amirault]

Chris- I'm open to going to some kind of interesting cocktail place. Is there one in particular you'd like to see?

Well, I've been to most of the PDX cocktail hot spots, but I think our members would enjoy a twofer at Clyde Common when Jeffrey Morgenthaler is on hand and Teardrop Lounge when Daniel Shoemaker is shaking up stuff. Then there's Blair Reynolds, aka Trader Tiki, at Thatch; then there's David Shenaut, reigning supreme at Beaker & Flask. Then...

You get the idea. You live in a cocktail mecca.

[FauxPas]

I also think it would be fun to read about visits to a cocktail spot or two!

I'm curious about the spice storage that you have on the inside of your pantry door - was that shelving put in by the builder or by you? Can you tell us anything more about it - who sells it, cost, ease of installation?

Do you do any veggie gardening? Any fruit trees in your yard?

Looking forward to a visit to the winemakers! (I think you mentioned one might be in store?).

Looking forward to the rest of your blog!

[Genkinaonna]

Next up, a trip to one of the panaderias/pastelerias dotting the area. This one's called Espiga Dorada. It's about 5 minutes from my house. They have mexican pastries, churros, galetas, etc...a pretty big selection. Some is in bakery cases and some is on rolling racks. It works like this: there's a stack of half sheet pans and tongs next to the bakery case. You take one of each and pick out the pastries you want, then take them to the front register and they are individually wrapped and bagged. They vary in price from 75 cents to 2.00 per pastry. We got a napoleon type pastry, custard and pineapple filled empanadas, a custard filled bread horn, two caramel filled churros,a cheesecake slice, a bread pudding slice, and a puff pastry type thing filled with custard called a taco. Our total cost was $9.00 including $1.00 for three cones of piloncillo. Here are the cases:






They also had some Mexican candies, pinatas, and some general grocery items.






The last picture was about half of the shelf of hot sauces, they had about 10 different ones to pick from.
The woman working there was really nice about explaining what everything was. A lot of the buns weren't filled but they were covered in sugar, I bet they'd be great with hot chocolate.

Edited by Genkinaonna, 23 May 2011 - 07:54 PM.

[Genkinaonna]

After Espiga Dorada, we moseyed across the street to another store called Frutas y Verduras el Campesino. This is a place I go on a regular basis for chiles of all types. They have half an aisle, four shelves high, with about 50 different kinds of dried chiles. The other half of the aisle is all the different spices and nuts you'd use in moles of all sorts. It's pretty cool. Here's the chile end of the aisle:


And the spice/nut end of the aisle:


They also have an entire aisle of Mexican candy. It was difficult to explain to the girls that most of the candy has chile in it and would definitely be too spicy for them!


Two cases of fresh cheeses, and homemade sour cream made me contemplate doing some ersatz mexican later in the week, but I think I'm already overbooked as it is, so I held myself back.


Ironically the one thing I wouldn't really buy there would be fruit or vegetables, since that's supposed to be what they focus on. Everything kind of looks like it's on it's last legs, some of it is moldy in almost every bin.

[Genkinaonna]

For dinner tonight, my Dad requested roast chicken and potatoes. It's kind of funny, I have no issues with making wedding cakes, chocolate showpieces, PITA fiddly stuff, but the idea of roasting a whole beast fills me with fear and dread. So instead of confronting the issue head on, I opted to use his suggestion as a jumping off point, and made cheese and spinach stuffed chicken breasts instead. For sides, we had carrots and mashed potatoes, with corn that Dad grilled (while pointing out to me that he could, in fact, cook, so make a note of it...). Here's the carrots being prepped, sometimes the kids will do better with veggies if I cut them in novel shapes, so I thought triangles might be the way to go:


And then into the sous vide bag with butter, salt, and pepper. I cooked them at 185 degrees for an hour and a half and then chilled them down until the chicken was almost done, when I tossed them back in the SVS with the chicken to reheat.


The chicken got filled with this:


About half a 16 oz bag of frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry, mixed with sauteed shallot, two smashed garlic cloves, salt and pepper. I also added a strip of the cheese I got at Pastaworks yesterday. The chicken breasts themselves were pounded flat, filled with the spinach and cheese, and rolled up, with the ends tied off with butcher's twine. Then vacc'ed and into the SVS for about 2 hours at 140 degrees. Here's the chicken before it's bath:


For the mashed potatoes, I use the microwave and a food mill. Doesn't require peeling, from spud to table in 20 min or so. I poked holes in the potatoes (learned THAT lesson the hard way, let me tell you...) popped them in the microwave for 6 min, flipped 'em, another 6 min, and in this case, flipped them again and gave them another three minutes. Sometimes they're done in the first 12 minutes, sometimes they need up to 15 minutes or so, depends on the size of the spud in question. While they were cooking, I put half a stick of butter, about half a cup of heavy cream, and a big pinch of salt in the bottom of a serving bowl. Then I put the food mill over the bowl, cut the cooked potatoes into halves and fed them through. Once all the potatoes were through, a quick stir and done. Here's the meal all put together:


I think next time I'll tweak the seasoning on the chicken a little, but other than that, a satisfactory meal all around.

[Genkinaonna]

I just realized I haven't posted pics of my cookbooks yet. So here they are. I tried to go shelf by shelf so you could actually see the titles. I have one big 5 shelf bookcase with baking and pastry books, and two smaller bookcases with savory cookbooks. I'll start with the dessert stuff first. Shelf one is actually NOT baking books, it's food-related fiction and reference. It's where I had room. So sue me!


Next shelf down is regional baking and my culinary manuals, my one specifically bread focused book, plus cookies and cake pops (I have three cake pop books, one is on loan to a friend and Mina had the other one in the playroom...) and jam/jelly/preserving books.



Shelf three is general baking books, including my signed copy of Baking From My Home to Yours. Yes, I still use it, it's beat to hell. Shows I love it!



Fourth shelf is plated desserts, cakes, cupcakes, and cake decorating books. Mmmm...Johnny Iuzzini...nothin' more attractive than a tattooed man who can bake...



Fifth shelf is professional books, good for larger scale recipes as well as reference. I use the Alain Ducasse book for inspiration all the time, it's just so darn pretty!



Can you tell my mom is a reference librarian? Yeah, it's pretty obvious...

[Genkinaonna]

And now my savory cookbooks. They're not organized as neatly as the baking books are, mainly because I did a quick once through the house and collected them from all over to put them back on the shelf. That and Gio likes to pull them off and sit on them. Here's one shelf:


And the other:


Yes, I have Rachel Ray books. I'm not ashamed of it. At least she cooks with real ingredients, rather than mixes (I'm lookin' at you, Ms. Lee...) although I'd have no desire to run across her in real life. I don't watch any of her shows, I find her whole demeanor and way of speaking to be super annoying. But some of her recipes are pretty decent.

[Genkinaonna]

FauxPas-Gardening is unfortunately NOT a strong suit of mine. As a matter of fact, I have the dubious honor of saying I killed mint, and everyone knows that's damn near impossible. Our back, or should I say, side yard, is teeny tiny, the houses in our subdivision are packed in like sardines. We have a strip about 18" wide and about 4 feet long that gets any sort of sunlight, the rest is shaded by the neighbor's house. I did plant some chives this year, that's the one thing I can't seem to kill, and I use them quite a bit when I cook. There's also some sunflowers in pots, but nothing else edible. I'm contemplating planting some potatoes in garbage bags, that's supposed to be pretty low maintenance. But I might wait until next year. At least we're within about 10 minutes from quite a few U-pick farms, so we do pick quite a bit of fruit through the summer, which I use to make jam. As for the spice rack, it's actually Elfa, from the Container store. The track mounts to the backside of any door, and then you just mount whichever shelving baskets on it that are appropriate for your space. It was about $130 total and it took about 10 minutes to install. There's no drilling or anything, the only tool that you really need is a level, if I remember correctly. I happened to come across one on the internet somewhere, and I went out that night and bought it. I can't say enough good stuff about it, I want to get more for the back of the other closet doors!

[Genkinaonna]

I'm going to bake something now...I promised I'd bring treats to my business class tomorrow morning. I'll post more when I'm done.

[Pierogi]

OHHHHHHH ! You have "Three Ancient Cuisines" by The Frugal Gourmet ! Ohhhhhh, you're my kindred spirit ! I so love that book....

[Genkinaonna]

Alrighty, baking done. Will post pics in the morning...must...sleep...zzz...

[Darienne]

FauxPas-Gardening is unfortunately NOT a strong suit of mine. As a matter of fact, I have the dubious honor of saying I killed mint, and everyone knows that's damn near impossible.

...

I did plant some chives this year, that's the one thing I can't seem to kill, and I use them quite a bit when I cook.

I think we must have been related in some former life. I haven't tried to kill mint, but I bet I could. And I do have chives by the carload and use them all the time.

The photos of your Hispanic ingredient type stores brought tears of sorrow to my eyes. In our small nearby city, we have nothing more esoteric than Jalapenos and El Paso boxed 'stuff'. Oh, now one chain carries Poblanos and I keep wondering when the manager will tell me...so sorry...

[mkayahara]

I agree with Darienne: Those pics of the chile aisle are what jealousy is made of. Even our Latin market in Toronto doesn't have that many types of chiles!

For mashed potatoes, have you ever tried the retrograde starch method? I think it produces a superior result, though I don't always have the time to do it.

Do you ever cook from the Iuzzini book? I've thought about picking that one up, but haven't pulled the trigger yet. It didn't help that my partner didn't much enjoy his dessert at Jean-Georges in December.

[JTravel]

OHHHHHHH ! You have "Three Ancient Cuisines" by The Frugal Gourmet ! Ohhhhhh, you're my kindred spirit ! I so love that book....

I have that one too....and Jeff Smith was an introduction to international cooking in the "early days". He was from the West Coast I think? Portland?

[Genkinaonna]

I figured I might give people chile envy with that one ...I'm very blessed to live in a really diverse area. Right in that same strip mall is a great little Filipino bakery/import shop, and there used to be an Ethiopian import store there as well, although they've since gone out of business. There are about 10 little tiendas within 5 minutes of my house, one specialises in meat, that's where I get my lard for refried beans and pie crust. Another one is a little bigger, and has a lot of kitchen stuff, but I go there for the tacos el pastor cart outside their front door, and their guava empanadas.

Darienne-Let me know if there's anything that you would like, I'd gladly drop some in the mail

Pierogi-The Frugal Gourmet was one of the shows I grew up watching...my mom got me the cookbook when someone donated it to the library she worked at (some people get rid of the silliest things...)

Mkayahara-I've made components of some of the dishes, but not any whole desserts. He did introduce me to the combo of strawberry and basil though, so even if he wasn't super studly, I'd love him forever for that I have unsuccessfully tried the retrograde starch method, but I know the it was operator error on my part...I'll try it again at some point.

JTravel-I'm pretty sure that Jeff Smith was from the West Coast somewhere, but I don't think it was Portland...I'd have to check on that. I know James Beard is from here though.

I have my business class today, so I'll be stopping by an amazing German butcher shop for lunch a little later. Breakfast this morning was:

The custard empanada from Espiga Dorada and coffee. Not necessarily the breakfast of champions, but I'll have a big lunch, so I want to be hungry later.

Edited by Genkinaonna, 24 May 2011 - 09:27 AM.

[pastameshugana]

...Reminding them to stop messing with the books lest they be Craigslisted...

This wins the "Quotable Quote of the Day" Award, and gives me some ideas for 'encouraging' my 4 (soon to be 5) short people.

;)

[catdaddy]

I agree with Darienne: Those pics of the chile aisle are what jealousy is made of. Even our Latin market in Toronto doesn't have that many types of chiles!

For mashed potatoes, have you ever tried the retrograde starch method? I think it produces a superior result, though I don't always have the time to do it.

Do you ever cook from the Iuzzini book? I've thought about picking that one up, but haven't pulled the trigger yet. It didn't help that my partner didn't much enjoy his dessert at Jean-Georges in December.

Do tell....What is the retrograde starch method?

[mkayahara]

I agree with Darienne: Those pics of the chile aisle are what jealousy is made of. Even our Latin market in Toronto doesn't have that many types of chiles!

For mashed potatoes, have you ever tried the retrograde starch method? I think it produces a superior result, though I don't always have the time to do it.

Do you ever cook from the Iuzzini book? I've thought about picking that one up, but haven't pulled the trigger yet. It didn't help that my partner didn't much enjoy his dessert at Jean-Georges in December.

Do tell....What is the retrograde starch method?

In short, you cook the potatoes at a low temperature (say, 66C) to gelatinize all the starch without letting the granules burst, chill them down to fix the starch, then boil them to break down the cell walls. Then you can puree the potatoes for days in a food processor without them getting gummy. More information here.

Edit: Punctuation.

Edited by mkayahara, 24 May 2011 - 10:10 AM.

[Genkinaonna]

So last night I baked some almond blueberry and lemon mini cakes (in my world cupcakes have to have frosting) for everyone in my business class. The recipe is dead easy, it's based on the Almond Cake recipe from Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich.

Here's the mise:

Flour, baking powder, almonds, lemon, limoncello, almond extract, sugar, and blueberries. The lemon gets zested, and the zest put in the food processor bowl with the almonds and sugar, then finely ground , like this:


Then in goes the butter, eggs, sugar, limoncello and almond extract, and buzz it again.

Flour, salt, and baking powder are last in the pool...

Once the batter is in the molds, you drop in the frozen blueberries, then bake. Here's the result:


They were a hit with the class.

Edited by Genkinaonna, 24 May 2011 - 01:32 PM.