Madrid for the Toro Bravo Cookbook

In late September I was lucky enough to get to go on an eat/drink pilgrimage to Madrid and Barcelona for the Toro Bravo Cookbook with Toro Bravo's chef-owner John Gorham, our McSweeney's Books editor Rachel Khong, the book's photographer David Reamer, the restaurant's chef de cuisine Kasey Mills and charcuterie manager Josh Scofield. We hit the ground running and only slept a few hours a night the entire trip so we could maximize or eating/drinking/exploring time.

The last time I'd been to Spain was in 1996 when I'd I worked on a culinary herb farm via WWOOF for three months a couple hours outside of Madrid in the Extremadura region. At the end of my work stay I traveled around a quadrant of Spain -- to Toledo, Cordoba, Sevilla, Cadiz, Malaga, Granada and more -- with my mom and grandma who came to visit me there. It was a magical time for me and I was so excited to find out that I would get to return 16 years later with the brave bulls for the cookbook.

And just a word on how extremely generous Toro Bravo chef-owner John Gorham is: he bought all of our tickets, paid for our hotels, paid for a major meal every day during the trip and then some. Forever grateful. Incredible.

I'm going to let the photos that I took speak for themselves. After this post about our time in Madrid I'll post about Barcelona. Without further ado...

Langoustines on ice at the Mercado de San Miguel just across the street from our hotel near Plaza Mayor.

First bites and drinks at the same market fresh off the plane.

Meaty goodness at one of Madrid's many Museos del Jamon -- a cured meat chain there.

John took us later that night -- still no sleep -- to the Argentinian steakhouse De Maria Parrilla for their grilled sweetbreads and chimichurri that he'd loved on a previous trip to Madrid. Josh (next to John) liked them a lot and so did we.

Kasey serving up Taberna Maceiras' house specialty arroz marineiro for brunch the next day.

Funny menu at a cafe in Retiro Park. One of my favorite parks in the world. Went here every time I visited Madrid when I was in Spain in 1996.

David is not about to eat that entire roasted suckling pig on his own. Dinner at Sobrino de Botin -- the oldest restaurant in the world. Open since 1725.

Churros and chocolate at Chocolateria San Gines. Where all the staff hates you if you aren't Spanish but you don't care because you are still slightly drunk from the night before.

This was taken at the end one of the best meals that we had in Madrid. That bottle is filled with a really tasty housemade peach liqueur. Go to Portobello if you're in Madrid -- some of the best food of the trip.

Of course we went to a bullfight on our last night in Madrid.

The procession at the beginning...

Can't think of a better closing shot for the brave bulls' trip to Madrid.

Stay tuned for the next installment -- Barcelona!

Wordstock 2012 + Toro Bravo

Did you go to Wordstock this year? I go every year. I love it and look forward to it every fall. I've had a lot of milestones at Wordstock -- my first book Food Lover's Guide to Portland was born at Wordstock and a lot of other good fortune and good times have come to be for me at festivals past.

This year I tabled all day Saturday and Sunday at the Hawthorne Books booth. I've been an editor and publicity director at Hawthorne since late summer/early fall of 2009. Three years! I got to hang out with a lot of our authors (and sneak away for a couple of their cool events) as well as with publisher Rhonda Hughes and senior editor Adam O'Connor Rodruguez. Good times.

I also got to spend time with the publishers of the book that I am currently writing with John Gorham -- the Toro Bravo Cookbook: The Making, Breaking and Riding of a Bull. We are so happy to be doing this book with McSweeney's. Dream come true.

I hosted the McSweeney's folks during Wordstock this year so that meant late night karaoke, 20 boxes of books in my front room, plum wine on the front porch and a lot of fine eating and drinking at Toro Bravo, of course (we had a huge dinner where cava and txakoli flowed freely and we tried a lot of the new dishes inspired by our recent trip to Madrid and Barcelona), Biwa and Tasty n Sons to name a few spots that we went. They even had to break into my house once while they were here. I won't give you all the details on that but it worked.

AND I got to finally meet our high-rolling, ass kicking literary agent Kimberly Witherspoon. We're very lucky to have Kim on our side and it was great to finally meet her in person. She moderated a panel this year at Wordstock and while she was in town she got to have a really nice meal at Toro.

Our literary agent, Kimberly Witherspoon, of InkWell Management moderating a panel at Wordstock 2012.

So, if you didn't get to Wordstock this year please try to make it next year. It's an incredible annual Portland event for readers, writers, editors, publishers -- basically all book lovers. And it might just visit some very good fortune on you as well. You never know...

Wordstock www.wordstockfestival.com

For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 7

There's a lot going on right now so I'm sorry to do two of these types of posts in a row but such is life. We had an incredible eat/drink trip to Spain last week for the Toro Bravo Cookbook and hit Madrid and Barcelona hard. Three hours of sleep a night hard. We only had a little less than a week in Spain total so we felt like sleep should be the last thing on our agenda. While there we ate old cuisine such as roast suckling pig and Cocido Madrileno, new cuisine at Ferran and Albert Adria's restaurant Tickets, drank all sorts of tasty cava, cider, wine and spirits and we had some true blue adventures some of which I'll describe in detail in future posts and some of which I never will. When in Spain. I plan to do a series of posts with photos from Spain in upcoming weeks. I hope that you're doing well!

www.torobravopdx.com For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 6For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 5For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 4For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 3For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 2For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 1

For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 6

We leave this week for our week-long trip to Spain for the Toro Bravo Cookbook (McSweeney's Fall 2013) and I'm so excited! I've been looking forward to this trip for a while and to have it come at the end of the cookbook writing process not long before our final deadline is perfect. John Gorham, Toro Bravo chef-owner, got us all tickets and rooms (incredibly generous) for this eating/drinking pilgrimage. Going on the trip: John, the book's photographer David Reamer, myself, the book's editor Rachel Khong from McSweeney's, Toro's chef de cuisine Kasey Mills and Toro's charcuterie manager Josh Scofield. I'm probably not going to post for a few weeks because of the trip and everything going on when I get back but I thought you might like this peek into the book. We only have 10 recipes left to test! Hope you're doing well and enjoying the last bit of summer.

www.torobravopdx.comFor Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 5For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 4For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 3For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 2For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 1

For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 5

Things have been crazy around here in more ways than one so rather than writing much this week I'm putting up a snapshot from recipe testing for the Toro Bravo Cookbook: The Making, Breaking and Riding of a Bull (McSweeney's fall 2013). We're quickly approaching our deadline and making so much headway. And in three weeks we head to Madrid for it! Hope you're doing well and spending as much time outside as you can.

www.torobravopdx.comFor Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 4For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 3For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 2For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 1

For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 4

I don't have time to do a proper blog post today so I'm putting up a snapshot from recipe testing for the Toro Bravo Cookbook: The Making, Breaking and Riding of a Bull (McSweeney's fall 2013). We're full steam ahead with the book and I have a lot of recipes to write this week so I'm going to get back to that. I also have a nasty sunburn to apply aloe to every few hours since Portland summer has finally arrived. Hope you are doing well and getting out and enjoying summer to the fullest. I spent Saturday at the river and Sunday at a lake. Lucky.

www.torobravopdx.com

For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 3For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 2For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 1

At Home on the Range presented by Elizabeth Gilbert

I went to San Francisco in late April to meet with McSweeney's, visit friends and a city that I've missed and haven't been to in five years. I was really excited to meet with the fine folks at McSweeney's because as I've mentioned here before -- working with them on the Toro Bravo Cookbook is a dream come true. The only plans I had with them were to stop by the office after I arrived and a couple days later have dinner with some of them. When all was said and done I ate ice cream that David Byrne, yes that David Byrne, had delivered to the McSweeney's office while they finished up his book How Music Works which comes out later this summer and gone out for drinks and then dinner with the majority of the fine folks of McSweeney's and a very special someone.

If it had been just me visiting McSweeney's I bet two at the most three people from the publishing house I would've come out to dinner but the morning of I texted my editor and she said something to the tune of when we'd meet, where (Mission Chinese Food) and oh, Elizabeth Gilbert is coming to dinner too. What the fuck?!

I could go on and on about how generous, warm, and smart Elizabeth is because she is (She reached out for my arm as we walked into Mission Street Chinese and asked me to sit next to her at dinner so we could talk. Above and beyond. I couldn't have been happier about that and the rest of the night.) but instead I'll turn to the book that brought her to San Fransisco and therefore dinner that night.

It's the book above -- a reprint of her great grandma Margaret Yardley Potter's cookbook At Home on the Range which originally published in 1947. It turns out that Dave Eggers had been talking about doing some sort of a charitable book collaboration with Elizabeth when she came across her great grandmother's cookbook. Would Mr. Eggers like to reprint it and give all the proceeds to ScholarMatch and 826 Valencia? Why yes he would.

Fast forward to me getting my first package of books from the McSweeney's Book Release Club which I just became a member of...

My first box of books arrived for the McSweeney's $100 for 10 books Book Release Club...

With three incredible books including...

Two down, one to go!

I started reading At Home on the Range on a Saturday and I finished it on a Saturday. The same Saturday. It is that good. If you like what I write about here -- DIY cooking projects, gardening, food adventures and all sorts of other eat, drink and be merry things I think you're really going to enjoy this book.

I've only cooked two things from it so far -- a classic meatloaf and the chicken cacciatore -- and both were delicious. The recipes are all written as this one below -- in paragraphs and often with more insight and voice than ingredients. Page after page of honest and full-of-life stories.

Some selections from At Home on the Range:

"So go our culinary ways with confidence and without apology. Use only one standard in trying out strange foods or seasonings: that you like the result."

"'Which is more necessary in the house, the bed or the stove?' has almost as much chance of being satisfactorily answered. Granted that the three most important happenings in life, birth, marriage and death, take place in bed; three equally vital occurrences, breakfast, lunch and dinner, daily owe their success to the stove."

Followed by this advice for a new couple to purchase the best bed and stove they can afford:

"Don't rush either purchase, for these important articles, like a husband, should last a lifetime if well selected."

At Home on the Range meatloaf recipe.

All together now.

Filled with three unsliced hardboiled eggs and topped with bacon.

And a can of tomato soup...

Slice and serve!

Chicken cacciatore over spaghetti with arugula hazelnut pesto.

At Home on the Range Presented by Elizabeth Gilbert Written by Margaret Yardley Potter pub. date April, 2012 originally published in 1947 240 pages $24, McSweeney's Books

For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 3

We're just at the mid-way point in terms of writing the Toro Bravo Cookbook: The Making, Breaking and Riding of a Bull (McSweeney's fall 2013) and that means things are really cooking now -- literally and figuratively. I don't have time to do much more this week than meet my monthly deadline for the book so I'm putting up a snapshot that I took while at the restaurant a few weeks ago during prep. and service. I got to ride with the bulls and it was a lot of fun. If you didn't get to come out and celebrate Toro's fifth anniversary this past Friday I'm sorry but you missed out. I'll put up photos and possibly a video from that up here eventually as well. The best part: the marching band procession from Tasty n Sons to Toro Bravo that kicked it off.

www.torobravopdx.comFor Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 1For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 2

For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 2

Every once in awhile I get too busy work-wise to put together a blog post so I throw up a photo and call it a day. We've been busy working on the Toro Bravo Cookbook so that means a lot of recipe testing and essay writing. I love it all -- having so much fun with this project. I'm also doing all my other usual work and then some -- all of it involving words, food, or words + food. Good stuff. I hope that you're doing well and enjoying spring. Happy late April Fools' Day! Hope someone got you good this year. I fooled a few...

www.torobravopdx.com

For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 1

Happy Anniversary Blog: Three years and counting

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!