We had good friends over for this one -- Vij's lamb curry. It was really tasty and we will definitely be making it again.

I first wrote about Vij’s cookbook — Vij’s Elegant and Inspired Indian Cuisine — here in late December. At that point I’d cooked a few tasty dishes from it (love their Vancouver, B.C. restaurant so much) and just about licked the plate clean with every one. Since then I’ve cooked some more from it and I’m sharing some of that here with you.

I don’t often cook so much from any one cookbook in such a short amount of time but this one never lets you down and I’ve learned so much. I also happen to love Indian cuisine and haven’t found too much of it in Portland to be honest that hits the spot. (Although I’m really looking forward to checking out the newly opened Bollywood Theater.) If you love Indian food as much as I do I recommend checking out this book.

We served the Vij lamb curry with this quick cabbage curry with mustard seeds that still had a lot of crunch and flavor to it and was really tasty.

I went ahead and bought a twenty pound sack of basmati from Fiji Emporium on North Interstate Ave. since I cooked a lot of Indian food over the winter and early spring.

I've been bulking up on my Indian spices as well...

This simple vegetable curry was really tasty with raita and black chickpea curry.

We make a lot of the Vij chai now too. It's a simple one with green cardamom and fennel.

Vij’s Cookbook Pt. 1

Vij’s Elegant and Inspired Indian Cuisine
www.vijs.ca

I decided to cook up this blackened bluefish recipe in the second issue of Lucky Peach...

I’ve been pretty loud and clear about my love of Lucky Peach magazine published by McSweeney’s. I wrote about it here in late November but at that point I had yet to cook from it. (We also hadn’t sealed the deal for the Toro Bravo Cookbook with McSweeney’s, fall 2013, at that point…) Now that I’ve cooked from it — and now that issue number three has hit the shelves — I’m putting photos of a couple of the things I’ve made here. That’s it. Oh, and go get yourself a copy if you don’t have it already. It really just keeps getting better and better.

I got the fixings together -- homemade miso mayo made with my year-plus old homemade miso, pickles, spicy chips and thinly sliced iceberg.

I blackened dover because that was what looked best at the market...

And then I put it all together in between buttered and broiled ciabatta. So fucking delicious. Cook this!

I made a custardy breakfast sandwich with the leftover blackening spices, miso mayo, iceberg and some cheddar on ciabatta.

The third and latest issue of Lucky Peach, on shelves now, has this story by Rachel Khong...

Including a recipe for this Two Minute Chocolate Mug Cake that I've made a couple times now. It's not so pretty but it is fun, quick and tasty.

LUCKY PEACH
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I've had this Nigel Slater's cookbook Tender for about a year now and I'm really looking forward to cooking more from it this summer.

A peek inside...

When I first started writing about food professionally in 2003 I turned to Nigel Slater and his writing in The Observer and I loved his voice. A lot of food writing can wax poetic and favor form over the content but Nigel Slater’s writing never does. It’s honest and I’ve really enjoyed reading him over the years. If you haven’t read his memoir Toast I recommend it. It’s a wonderful book and I had fun reviewing it for Culinate way back when. (While putting this post together I learned that a film based on it starring Freddie Highmore and Helena Bonham Carter aired this past Christmas on BBC1 and at the Berlin, Taipei and Warsaw Film Festivals. Can’t wait to see it!)

I purchased one of Nigel Slater’s newest cookbooks — Tender — pretty soon after it hit shelves last spring in America and I’ve enjoyed cooking from it ever since. (It was published in two volumes in the UK in 2009; in the US by Ten Speed Press in 2011, the second US volume Ripe comes out this April.) The book is part recipe and part narrative — giving you background into Slater’s London home garden that he broke ground for in early 2000 and maintains with his partner.

Chapters are based on ingredients sourced from Slater’s garden and cooked in his kitchen so it’s homespun and inspiring and feeds right into my Yard Fresh ways. I love this book and I hope that you will too. Here are some of the tasty foods that I’ve cooked from it lately…

Thinly sliced roasted potatoes with butter and thyme.

Beer braised beef stew with homemade applesauce and roasted potatoes.

Stew and potato leftovers with one over-easy for breakfast.

This cauliflour cheese mustard soup is so good that I got a few friends to make it in the same week. Really.

Cabbage sausage soup with a few other bites on the side.

Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch
by Nigel Slater
pub. date April, 2011
620 pages
$40, Ten Speed Press
www.nigelslater.com

It’s been three years since I started this blog and I still really enjoy doing it. It’s especially good for me now that I’m freelancing less. Most of my writing work these days goes to writing the Toro Bravo Cookbook, being an editor and publicist at Hawthorne Books and working on my fiction.

I pitch a story every now and again but this blog has become my most regular outlet for local food stories. I’m grateful to have it and to have loyal readers. I try to give you as much news and inspiration as I can here and I hope that you enjoy it. Below is a look back on the past year for the blog. (I did this sort of recap last year and the year before if you’re interested.) Here’s to 2012 — Year of the Dragon!

Without further ado…

Spring 2011 was a really good one for nettles and I harvested a ton of them. Unfortunately I learned from experience that you should never take your dog with you foraging for them. Our poor, poor wolfie.

Stinging nettle booty.

Spring quickly became summer in fly-by fashion since my boyfriend was busy getting his new business up and running — Grizzly Tattoo on North Williams. I helped him kick it off in style with a huge, tasty opening party in June with food and drink donated from local restaurants, bars, breweries, food carts and me, myself and I. It was grand.

So much good food and drink from Tasty n Sons, The Bye & Bye, EaT Oyster Bar, Pix Patisserie, Che Cafe, Jaime Henderson and Hopworks for Grizzly Tattoo's opening party.

With crazy long lead times a lot of stories that I got assigned right after Food Lover’s Guide to Portland came out in summer 2010 published in the summer of 2011 as well.

My dog claims to be co-author.

Late in the summer I got to tag along on a Hardy Plant Society Kitchen Garden Group outing to Montinore Estate vineyard and winery just outside Forest Grove. Some of that trip went into a story about biodynamic wine that I wrote for Willamette Week about Katherine Cole and her excellent book Voodoo Vintners…

My friend Karen checking out the bull horn stuffed with...at Montinore Vineyards.

Summer sped by — honestly it didn’t feel like we had much of it — and we had an incredible third annual Portland Fermentation Festival at Ecotrust in October. We got a ton of publicity for it leading up and a line out the door and around the block of Ecotrust where it was held. We’re working on getting more space for this year’s festival.

Festival organizers David Picklopolis Barber, me, and Mr. George dapper foodist Winborn right before the doors closed.

Wordstock 2011 was a blast as always in October. I was there for my book Food Lover’s Guide to Portland and also with Hawthorne Books where I’m an editor and publicist.

Todd Sattersten, me, Kelley Roy and Jen Stevenson after our panel at Wordstock 2011.

Lucky Peach magazine from McSweeney’s made its debut in 2011 and I wrote about it after the second kick-ass issue came out in the fall.

Second issue of Lucky Peach hot off the presses!

And then several short weeks later we got to announce that McSweeney’s Books is publishing the Toro Bravo Cookbook, due out fall 2013, that I’m writing, David Lanthan Reamer is photographing and my boyfriend Tyler Adams is illustrating. Fuck yeah! Go Toro Bravo!

This is the proposal that our agent sent out to seal the deal with McSweeney's Books.

Thanks for reading, thanks for being you! Happy 2012!

Butler Farms in Stayton, Oregon in December 2010.

Although peppermint grows easily in Oregon it has its problems, like most crops, when cultivated on a large scale. Butler Farms wages a continuous battle with pests–everything from spider mites, cutworm, crane fly and nemotodes to symphylans, mint rust and verticillium wilt. One year, they lost 25 percent of their peppermint crop to mint rust. Mint rust, a fungus that blisters and destroys mint leaves, took Butler Farms from profitable to breakeven in one short week.

In other words, says Butler, “You don’t just throw it out there and hope for the best, because there wouldn’t be much.”

In the Willamette Valley, peppermint is perennial. It awakens from its winter dormancy in late January to early February. At that point, Tim Butler goes out into his fields with a winter herbicide spray to keep the weeds at bay.

By the first of March, the peppermint shoots are visible and growing quickly but Butler’s first fertilizer and fungicide applications don’t happen until several weeks later in mid-April. Butler then crosses his fingers, hoping that insecticide application isn’t necessary.

Throughout the year the Butlers monitor their fields with integrated pest management. An agronomy professional scouts the farm testing for nemotodes and other detrimental insects. Depending on the results, some fields get insecticide application while others don’t.

From April on, the peppermint is hungry and thirsty as it grows at breakneck speed. In the summer it’s irrigated with roughly an inch to an inch and a half of water weekly and fertilized heavily as well.

Early-to-mid-August at Butler Farms means peppermint harvest. They swath it, put it in rows, chop it, and pick it up with a harvester (similar to alfalfa, clover and corn harvest). From the field the mint goes into eight- to nine-ton mint hay tubs which are taken to the mint still by truck.

Stay tuned for the next two installments of this story.

Stay tuned for the next two installments of this story.
Read Pt. 1 Oregon Mint
Read Pt. 3 Oregon Mint