Sour beer here: Belmont Station and Biercafe

Although I never stepped inside the original Belmont Station bottle shop I've heard plenty of stories about the legendary tiny location next to the Horse Brass on Southeast Belmont. A friend of a friend used to work there when the bottle list was usually around 450-strong but there was only space for one bottle of each beer to represent on the floor. If you wanted more an employee would disappear for awhile and find what you wanted in the back.

The new location -- just a few blocks north on Southeast Stark -- generally has about 1,200 types of beer available and a lot are available first grab from the beer coolers and aisles of all things ale. In addition to beer Belmont sells hard cider, mead, sake, wine, soda and more. If you like hard cider you can find just about every local variety here.

I met up with owner Carl Singmaster (he owns Belmont Station and Biercafe with Horse Brass owner and beer god Don Younger) last week. After talking to him about his musical past -- he owned seven record shops in the Carolinas for nearly two decades -- and his long seated love of beer my friend showed up and the three of us did what you're supposed to do at Belmont Station's Biercafe -- we drank.

Carl really likes cask-conditioned beer (less harsh, more flavor) so we started with an IPA showdown -- a taste of Alameda Brewhouse's IPA (delicious) and a taste of cask-conditioned Double Mountain IPA (delicious). It was interesting to compare the two and the pluses (longer shelf life...) and minuses (debatably less interesting flavor...) of force-carbonated beer. They were both tasty. Jury's out for me but we weren't exactly comparing apples to apples with two very different, fine IPAs.

The most interesting beer that we tasted without a doubt was the Mouton Rouge -- a sour beer from Cascade Brewery. This was my first ever sour beer so it was quite a shocker. This locally brewed version of a traditional Belgian style sour beer is injected with very particular yeasts to give it a winky full flavor with the lingering aftertaste of in Carl's words Sweet Tarts. It's true.

This is the kind of beer you'll find at Belmont Station proper and the adjoining Biercafe. They've got all the regular hoppy beers that Portlanders love (right now the top seller in shop is Sierra Nevada's Torpedo) in addition to heaps of other interesting quality craft local and international beers that you can't find anywhere else in town.

When one of the 17 kegs blows at the Biercafe it's always replaced with something different

Belmont Station and Biercafe 4500 SE Stark St. 503.232.8538 www.belmont-station.com

Everything is Connected: Portland cheese, bread, pastries and chocolate

Portland isn't so big and once you've anchored yourself in the food community it's hard to buy a loaf of bread without some sort of connection -- oh they're using thatlocal co-op's flour or that's the amazing bread that I used to always wait in line for at the farmers market... Well, the web of connections has been growing to Charlotte's Web proportions lately as I research and write my book which is why I feel ok lumping such a diverse group of people and businesses together in this post.

A couple weeks ago I met with Piper Davis one of the owners of Grand Central Baking. We talked about the history of her family's business, which began in Seattle, while sharing a buttery strawberry raspberry danish. After getting all the details of GC's timeline and current operations I took a tour of the Fremont bakery and snapped some photos...

Grand Central's Easter cookies

Last week I got to meet one of Piper's back-in-the-day employees -- Julie Richardson, now owner of Hillsdale's Baker & Spice Bakery. Julie and Piper are close friends and in many ways they've mirrored each other the past couple years, mostly in terms of writerly pursuits. More on that later, but let's just say that there are a lot of buns in the oven in terms of Portland food books by Portland food folks soon to be published.

Baker and Spice's Katie Buns sheeted and ready to spread with cinnamon and raisins

Julie told me about how she started her first bakery in Ketchum, Idaho at the wee age of 23. After moving to Portland in the late 90s she managed to build up a successful farmers market bakery business. She opened the brick and mortar Baker & Spice Bakery four years ago.

Baker and Spice's bread is baked by Richardson's husband Matt Kappler.

I also recently visited with David Briggs of Xocolatl de David. He's been crafting chocolates for more than three years in Portland and his current commercial kitchen is in the back of his friend's hopping Southeast Portland sandwich shop Meat Cheese Bread. When I visited with David there I got to try his caramelized cacao bean honey brittle, all of the base chocolates, one of his tasty fleur de sel chocolate caramels and a soon to hit the shelf chocolate bar. I met with David in the morning and with one of his friends -- Steve Jones of Steve's Cheese -- in the afternoon. David and Steve worked together at Park Kitchen for six months while David was sous chef and Steve was a server. Now David makes regular deliveries of his chocolates to Steve's shop.

David Briggs has been making his chocolates full time since leaving Park Kitchen a little more than a month ago.

That afternoon Steve and I sat in the back room of Steve's Cheese and tried some tasty Zingerman's poundcake samples while talking cheese. In addition to nearly 200 cheeses in the case at any given time Steve's Cheese also stocks cured meats and all sorts of non-perishable treats such as arbequina olive oil, harissa, sardines and pickled peppers. Oh and he'll let you borrow his Raclette machine as long as you buy at least a quarter wheel of the semi-firm, nicely meltable cheese.

Steve's Cheese case -- always cut and wrapped to order

These are the kinds of wrapped gifts I want from Steve's Cheese reach-in

Anyway the friendship of two premier Portland female bakers and a local cheese vendor and chocolatier has proved yet again that everything (in Portland) is connected, which makes my work all the more enjoyable.

Grand Central Baking Company -- www.grancentralbakery.com Baker & Spice Bakery -- www.bakerandspicebakery.com Xocolatl de David -- www.xocolatldedavid.com Steve's Cheese -- www.stevescheese.biz

Pix Patisserie off the market!

I was very sad when I heard the news late last summer that Cheryl Wakerhauser was selling Pix Patisserie. The original Southeast Pix is home to one of my favorite Portland food events Dim Sum Yum Yum and the North Portland Pix is Portland's answer to French cafe seating. When the weather is decent the wicker chairs near the roll-up garage door face out toward the street and sun and the small tables get topped with wine, espresso, Belgian beer, macarons, ganache covered cakelets, housemade chocolates and more. If it's my table there's most likely a hazelnut and chocolatey Royale, a few different macarons, and a dessert wine or Lambic on it all getting equal attention.

Long live the Pix -- North Portland location

I met up with Cheryl yesterday at the North Portland Pix right after she'd tipped back some raw Chelsea Gems down the street at EaT Oyster Bar. While we talked she sipped on a fleur de sel rimmed margarita and soaked up the sunshine. Everything seemed right with the world -- especially when she told me Pix was off the market. The gist: after meeting with interested parties she doesn't have faith that anyone would be kind enough to her fabulous employees or loving enough and true to her devoted customers.

Lately she's figured out ways to spend more time working and experimenting with ingredients that she's passionate about, which is hard when you manage 40 employees at two rocking dessert-and-beyond houses and host more regular events than just about any other place in town: Annual Bastille Day Block Party, Culinary Trivia Night, Concoct Yo' Own Dessert, Monday Movie Night...

I feel lucky that I moved to Portland in 2002, the year that the original Southeast Pix opened, especially since we rented a house just a hop and skip from it for three years. When we moved to North Portland and bought a house in January 2006 the North Portland Pix had just opened its doors. If I thought that another move might garner yet another Pix I'd consider it. Pix is one of my favorite Portland places which is why I'm so happy that it's sure to shine on. No one can fill Cheryl Wakerhauser's shoes. Long live the Pix!

No, you are not dreaming

Pix Patisserie Southeast 3402 SE Division St. 503.232.4407

Pix Patisserie North 3901 N Williams Ave. 503.282.6539 www.pixpatisserie.com

Homemade Hard Cider Pt. 2

A quick recap: We rented a mill from F.H. Steinbart Co. in Southeast early November and supplemented our meager backyard apple supply with some heritage reds from Woodland, Washington. After a day of rinsing, halving, milling and pressing we filtered the cider, added some champagne yeast and then funneled it into a 3-gallon carboy. We let the carboy sit in the utility room to for a few months and do its thing.

That's where we left off.

Come January we racked off the cider which means we siphoned it into a clean carboy. Well, in our case we siphoned the cider into a food-grade bucket, cleaned the carboy and then siphoned it back in. Before cleaning the carboy we poured the yeasty sediment in the bottom into a stainless bowl and then wondered what to do with it.

According to the great Sandorkraut -- Sandor Ellix Katz author of Wild Fermentation and The Revolution Will Not Be Micorwaved:

When you rack and bottle wines, you are left with yeasty sediment at the bottom of the fermenting vessel. This sediment is not pretty, so generally it is not bottled or served. But all the deceased yeast is full of B vitamins. If you’ve ever used nutritional yeast, it is essentially the same thing as this.

Wine dregs make a rich and flavorful soup base. Try following a recipe for French onion soup, substituting wine dregs for one-quarter of the liquid. Be sure to boil it for awhile to cook off the alcohol. Inhale the fumes for an intense sensory experience!

Deceased yeast

Over at the food website Culinate I also got some advice from a site member to marinate some fish in the cider lees. I meant to do that but the only thing I did with the lees was add a few tablespoons to some braised greens. Then it started to make the kitchen ripe so I tossed it in the compost. Next time...

Racking gave us a chance to give the cider a taste (the only other time we'd tried it was at press) and it was already pretty good -- fresh, slightly sour, subtly sweet. Much better than we thought it would be considering we didn't use very complex apples. Typically hard cider includes some tannic, sour and not-so-good-to-eat-fresh apples.

So we racked off the cider and set it back in utility room to do its thing. The cider was fairly clear at this point, as opposed to how hazy it was when we first pressed it, and getting more and more golden by the week as tiny particulates continued to sink to the bottom of the carboy.

Come mid-February we added a final jump of sugar, corn sugar to be exact, for natural carbonation. Prior to this the yeast had been feeding solely on natural sugars -- no sugar added. We did this as we bottled -- adding a half teaspoon to each bottle -- while siphoning the cider and then capping the bottles with an old capper I found at an estate sale.

We kept the twenty-some bottles in a corner of the kitchen until a beer and mead brewing friend told us that would kill off the remaining yeast needing to carbonate it. He recommended a warmer spot for the final ferment so we moved the bottles upstairs next to a small wall-mounted heater and waited.

A month later at our first barbecue of semi-spring we cracked open a few bottles of the cider with our friend. It was crisp, light and effervescent, slightly sweet, and the essence of autumn apple. In other words, it was delicious. We were happy that we hadn't botched the mild carbonation by keeping the cider in our cold kitchen for a few days after bottling. In the end we had less than 30 bottles from about 80 pounds of home-pressed apples.

Will we do it again? Yes. This year? Maybe. I'm making dandelion wine for the second time this weekend but hard cider requires a lot more time, energy and equipment. It was worth it but I'm thinking it may be more biennial for us.

Almost ready and waiting

Hard Cider Part One...

Portland Chocolate

My sweet tooth is small -- as in baby tooth just before it falls out sized. It grows when in the presence of those of the larger-sweet-tooth ilk (and often when in the vicinity of Pix Patisserie) but shrinks back to its normal size when the sugar obsessed retreat.

In 2001 I traveled around New Zealand working on farms with my friend Ingrid from London. Ingrid like all honorable Brits rarely has a cup of tea without a biscuit or something sugary to snack on and I followed suit. During those months of tea breaks throughout the day I ate more sweets than ever before and became hooked. I needed daily ginger cake, chocolate cookies and sweet and sticky lemon bars. That sweets-everyday-throughout-the-day phase passed, however, once Ingrid and I parted. As I type this I'm enjoying a nice cup of tea no sweet in sight.

I admit that I've always thought of chocolate as just another sweet. Sure, I've had some really good chocolate (and sweets of course) in my life but it's not something that I've ever been all that crazy about. For me chocolate just doesn't compete with say garlic cheese grits, fresh Dungeness or bread, cheese and wine.

Well, in the past few weeks I've visited with all kinds of Portland chocolatiers and chocolate retailers and in the presence of such chocolate hounds my sweet tooth has grown canine sized. I don't know if I can keep it from all the the porcelana chocolate, the chocolate Thai peanut butter cups, or the drinking chocolates for long. Good thing I meet with David of Xocolatl de David this week...

Cacao owners Aubrey Lindley (left) and Jesse Manis (right) checking out my rapidly growing sweet tooth. Aubrey says I'm looking a little rabid and Jesse as you can see is speechless.

Although Cacao's countertop cases look museum-like the chocolates can in fact be touched and eaten

Alma Chocolate owner Sarah Hart communing with her gold leaf gilded chocolate icons

Alma Chocolate bon bons and truffles

Moonstruck Chocolate Master Chocolatier Julian Rose in the chocolate lab

Moonstruck employee hand painting Easter truffles

Cacao www.cacaodrinkchocolate.com Alma Chocolate www.almachocolate.com Moonstruck Chocolate www.moonstruckchocolate.com

Make Cheese! Kookoolan Farms

The only cheese I'd ever made prior to last weekend was paneer for a chickpea buttermilk curry in college and it was great even though I used regular old store-bought homogenized, pasteurized milk.

If I had to choose one food as a favorite it would be cheese. It's my favorite snack and rare is the day that I don't eat at least a bite of it -- e.g. this morning's breakfast was a feta, sour cream, lime and herb spread on toasted baguette. I love cheese which is why I went to Scott Dominic Catino's goat cheese making class this weekend in Yamhill at Kookoolan Farms. Kookoolan is an amazingly diverse small farm with orchards, vegetable gardens, chickens for eggs and meat and a few Jersey milking cows. It's about an hour southwest from Portland and a beautiful drive once you get off I-5

This is the second year that Kookoolan's Chrissie and Kooroosh Zaerpoor are offering cheese classes with various cheese makers through the spring and summer. Classes fill up fast.

If you don't want to attend a class but are in the area Chrissie and Kooroosh also operate a farm store stocked with heirloom chicken eggs, broilers, kombucha and more along with cheesemaking and dairy cultures and supplies including kefir grains. It's best to call ahead if visiting the farm store for the first time. Kookoolan Farms also operates a booth at the Hillsdale Farmers Market in addition to delivering chicken, eggs and more weekly to many fine Portland restaurants such as Navarre, Nostrana and Biwa.

Some of Kookoolan's cheese making supplies for sale

I plan on making some homemade goat cheese this spring. I bought a chevre culture, a cheese making book and vegetable rennet from Kookoolan. Now I just need to source some raw goat milk when I'm ready. Catino keeps Nigerian dwarf goats (he's had 40 births in the last two weeks, including quintuplets) and I've never tasted such sweet, fresh milk. No wonder his cheese is so good...

Catino's raw goat milk cheese that we got to try

Kookoolan Farms (and farm store) 15713 Highway 47 Yamhill, Oregon 97148 503.730.7535 www.kookoolanfarms.com

Call Chrissie at the number above to register for a cheese making class.

April Fool's Wedding: Voodoo Doughnut

I don't know about you but I think April Fool's is one of the best days of the year. In the past when I was a server I convinced some unassuming diners of amazing things: "A zebra just walked down the street right in front of the cafe but I can't leave because I'm the only server!" One year I fooled my boyfriend and his co-workers into thinking Gus Van Sant had met me and asked me on-the-spot to be in his newest movie. We'd start shooting in a couple weeks. This year I convinced my brother and friend that my wounded finger (I sliced the tip of it off last weekend slicing vegetables and had to go to ER -- truly) had become gangrenous. It would have to be amputated on Friday -- most likely just below the second knuckle. Hopefully it wouldn't spread...

I don't have to establish the fact of a doughnut wedding at this point because I have photographic proof above. On April Fool's Day this year (before getting my right ring finger amputated) I attended a Voodoo Doughnut wedding. Voodoo co-owner Cat Daddy locked the downtown door just a few before 11am and then quickly became a Mexican wrestler/marriage baron in order to wed Alison and Adrian. He channeled the voodoo spirit, wrote ancient cat scratch with chalk on the floor, and said all sort of hole'y things before deeming them husband and wife.

Why was I there? Because I'm writing this book and wanted to talk with Voodoo owners Kenneth "Cat Daddy" Pogson and Tres Shannon. I was also already heading across the river for my finger check-up AND Cat Daddy said the more the merrier.

I might tell you more about the magic that is Voodoo Doughnut later but for now, just for the record: Vicodin plus Mexican wrestler look-alike presided doughnut April Fool's weddings equals fun.

Headquarters of the Official Doughnut of Portland: the Portland Creme

Voodoo Doughnut 22 SW 3rd Ave. 503.241.4704

Voodoo Doughnut Too 1501 NE Davis St. 503.235.2666 www.voodoodoughnut.com

Give gardening a chance: Oregon Food Bank

A couple week's ago I started my volunteer practicum for the OGCP that I took this fall. I'm planning to volunteer with several different food/gardening organizations in town this year so I can learn as much as possible for the book while helping out. A couple weeks ago I volunteered at Oregon Food Bank's Eastside Learning Garden.

Dig In! is an ongoing early spring through late fall program at Oregon Food Bank's two Portland learning gardens for which volunteers of all ages help weed, prune, sow and harvest food for various local relief agencies. If you've ever been to the Northeast Portland DEQ you were just a stone's throw from Oregon Food Bank headquarters and its next door 17,000-square-foot Eastside Learning Garden.

For my morning shift -- on a Thursday 9am to noon -- we met up in the barn, introduced ourselves (nine or ten of us), discussed what needed to be done and then did just that. I started off by pruning a young but sprawling grape vine with a seasoned OFB volunteer and then for the remainder of my shift harvested several rows of big and healthy collard greens planted late last summer in between the chicken coop and the berry brambles. We composted the critter munched and slug slimed lower leaves and left plenty on the stalks for a staggered harvest.

There were mothers and daughters planting peas, others pruning raspberries, and folks removing over-wintered cold frames from raised beds until everyone came together a bit before noon to rinse and box the morning collard and beet harvest. When all was said and done several buckets full of fresh collards and beets were hand-carted just a few steps away to Oregon Food Bank headquarters where they'd soon be repacked and distributed to various local relief agencies.

Although I won't be back for awhile now due to a significantly sliced and bandaged right ring finger (apparently my kitchen mandoline doesn't differentiate between radishes, apples, carrots and fingers) once I'm shovel-in-the-soil ready again I'll be back to lend a hand. There's a lot to be done in the OFB gardens this spring and it's not a huge time commitment.

Another way that local green thumbs can help out with OFB is the Plant a Row for the hungry program. I'm thinking about doing that too...

Eastside Learning Garden 7900 NE 33rd Drive Westside Learning Garden 21485 NW Mauzey Road

Harvesting collards

Homemade Hard Cider Pt. 1

Last fall my boyfriend and I decided to finally make good use of the apples from the ancient apple tree in our backyard. I'd heard that F.H. Steinbart Co. rented out one of their cider mill/presses every weekend in the fall for $20. I called as soon as I found out last summer when our apple tree was set with loads of good looking fruit. I thought it would probably ripen around late October just as it had the previous fall so I reserved the press for the first weekend of November. That happened to be a very busy weekend -- Wordstock, my first face-to-face with my publisher, an all-day rain garden/stormwater management class for the Organic Gardening Certification Program, and cider making 101.

Two things happened that had a huge effect on the latter. First, we lost a major limb of the apple tree mid-summer, which completely obstructed the street behind our house and sent tennis-ball-looking, unripe apples all the way up and down the street. Because of that we had to do some major emergency pruning to save the tree. The next impediment to our home cidery: the slim-pickings apples that remained ripened early. Very early. Most were good to go by early September. Although apples keep well -- two months was pushing it and to be honest there just weren't that many still on the tree. Our cider press reservation was firm, however, and no other weekends were available. I started hunting for apples.

I surfed Craigslist and found a man with a small home orchard in Woodland, Washington with ripe heritage red apples (not a variety just a description -- he's not sure what kind they are) ready to sell for a good price that sounded like they'd make a decent, but probably not great, hard cider. I was ok with a small batch of decent cider for a small chunk of change. It'd be good practice for our future bumper crop cider. I drove out with my puppy picked up the loot and headed home. The apples had been sweated (stored for a couple weeks so that they'd ripened into peak flavor and sweetness) and were ready for cider. We rinsed them, halved them and threw them into the apple mill/grinder -- stems, seeds and all...

Into the mill

After milling we put the apple pomace (the resulting bits and chunks) into the press and then started hand cranking the juice. That took the most time.

Pressing the cider

Cider Falls

As you can see a lot of bits made it into the cider. That didn't matter because before pouring the cider into the carboy, with a packet of champagne yeast, we filtered it through cheesecloth. Apple Bits was a nickname my friend Mary Ellen gave me in grade school. If only she could see me now.

80-plus pounds of apples became a mere 3 gallons of cider. Our how-to book Cider Hard & Sweet: History, Traditions, and Making Your Own by Ben Watson for The Countryman Press doesn't suggest an apple to juice ratio but surfing around online it seems like the consensus is that roughly 15 pounds of apples usually translates to about a gallon of cider. Either we need to do some push-ups in prep. for this fall or our apples weren't exactly up-to-snuff juice wise.

Cider's home for a few months

After all that, which took the better part of a day, we had three gallons of cider in a carboy with a purge tube stoppered to the top leading to a half-full bottle of water. This way nothing noxious or foreign could travel into the cider but if the fermentation got particularly feisty and bubbly the cider would overflow into the bottle of water. We kept it in the utility room and checked on it every few hours at first and then every few days. Once the initial fermentation was over, about a week or two I think, we removed the tubing and topped the carboy with a regular fermentation lock. Then we left the cider largely unattended until January.

Hard Cider Part Two...

Zenner's Sausage Co. since 1927

I've been a big fan of Zenner's since I moved to Portland in 2002. I first had one of their sausages at a short-lived little sausage/dog cafe on Southeast Belmont called Java Dogs. I was just starting to make my own sauerkraut at the time and after listening to Java Dogs owner Steve Yazzolino wax poetic about Zenner's sausage, and then trying a couple myself, I returned with a jar of red kraut with juniper berries for him. I was hoping he'd like it so much that he'd incorporate it into his dog topping line-up. The sad reality: several weeks later he closed shop due to a difficult family situation.

The next memorable Zenner's sausages I ate, when I knew they were in fact Zenner's, were at Helser's on Northeast Alberta. Their sausage breakfast is one of my favorite PDX breakfasts. I usually order one Louisiana red hot and one chicken apple sausage (they also have bratwurst) with their potato cakes, a ramekin of creme fraiche, two eggs any style and a small side of fruit.

Last Friday I stopped by Zenner's and talked with the good folks there all about their 80-plus years of crafting small batch (130-240 pounds at a time) sausage, and smoked/cured meats in Portland. It was an amazing slice of local restaurants past since the company has been a small, family-run friend of local restaurants and markets since the 1920s. George Zenner Sr. started the business and George Zenner Jr. runs it today. Restaurants that we spoke of that regularly serve Zenner's sausages and meats included Besaw's, Serratto, the Rheinlander, Sanborn's, Helser's, The Original Pancake House, Highland Still House and many more.

The Zenner's door is always open for walk-ins even though they don't operate a store-front. They'll sell you any of their wholesale products by the case and sometimes if you're nice they'll even break a case for you.

A slew of Zenner's sausages -- photo courtesy of Zenner's

Zenner's Sausage Company 2131 NW Kearney St. 503.241.4113 www.zennerssausage.com